Take Heart, by dutchbuffy2305 1-7 WIP

Rating: R; warning: character deaths and squick

Timeline: After a different Primeval, BtVS 4.21

Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305

Spike cautiously peeks out of the tunnel entrance. Sunnydale has been reverberating with explosions for days now, but he thinks he's detected a lessening in frequency. The air is veiled with smoke, leavened with odors of burning meat and charred demon hide. Everywhere he looks he finds remains of people, both soldiers and civilians. Some of the soldiers are Adam’s hybrids, but most of them are the ordinary kind. He’s finished the last of his blood and he’s extremely hungry now. Even the rats have left Sunnydale, like the sensible creatures they are.

He decides to make his way over to Willy's. In a war it’s generally the publican who makes a buck out of it, and he knows old Willy would certainly try. One of the corpses he found was reasonably intact and yielded a wallet full of cash, so if necessary he could even pay for his blood. When he rounds the last corner to Willy's he runs smack into Harmony. She's a shining vision in pale blue polyester amidst the smoke and rubble, and she wears a tiara with a little silver horn in the middle of her forehead. Very cute. 

"Spikey! Oh, baby bear, you look all sooty and hungry! Why don’t you come with me and I’ll give you a nice meal and a hot shower," she exclaims and trips over to him.

Spike is a little surprised by her friendliness, but then again, it’s about time she did him a good turn. He slaps her tight shiny arse appreciatively and follows her. Straight into the arms of a dozen of the Initiative hybrid soldiers. 

"Bloody hell, Harm!" Spike bellows as he dodges a hybrid Polgara-Mohra-human. "What have I ever done to you to deserve this?"

"Gee, Spike, how can you even ask? You betrayed my boyfriend. I owe it to him to bring you to justice."

“And who’s the boyfriend then?” Thud. Yank out those entrails.

Harmony preens, miraculously still unspattered by any of the gobs of multicolored gore that fly through the air at regular intervals. "He’s the top dog of the New Initiative, Spike. Much more powerful and masculine than you. His name's Adam."

Of course. Harmony's such a born follower, she’d latch on to anyone who was anything and lick his arse until it shone.

For God's sake, how could he have let his guard down for sodding Harm? There are too many of them, and it’s close to dawn. He enters an oddly detached state of mind as the minutes pass and more cyberdemonoids keep coming in. He's a good fighter, and they're demons, so he can defend himself; but he knows this is going to be the end, there are just too many. Three giant Polgara hybrids attack him at the same time. He kills the one, ducks the second, but sees the third one's bony bayonet coming at him inexorably while both his hands are still occupied. He lets out a great shout of defiance.

To his surprise the Polgara buckles in mid-cleave and the axe drops from its mottled hands. Spike finishes off the second one and only then sees the tiny glowing figure of the Slayer standing there, her hands dripping of vital demonic organs and purple gore. Her eyes stare with a strange orange glow.

"With me or against me?” she asks tersely. She drops the heart and finds a stake that was hidden somewhere on her tiny person.

"With you," he pants while wrenching off another demon head. Bugger him if he knows what she means, but he doesn’t need another opponent.

"Let's go then," she says and hacks them a way out of the mêlée. 

He follows her, chagrined and relieved at the same time. This is the second time she's saved him, more or less, and he's not getting any more grateful. Uppity bint.

When they're clear of the hordes he stops and inspects his duster for damage. The Slayer waits for him with her hands on her hips and her little booted foot tapping impatiently.

"Don’t stand there tapping your sodding feet at me, Slayer," Spike says angrily. "Thanks for saving me, ta ever so, off you go now."

Her boiled egg eyes stare through him. Christ, she's weird. Looking funnier than Adam's hybrids, actually. He’s always thought the Slayer was some kind of demon herself. Maybe stress brought it on. Or unrelieved sexual tension, since Soldier Boy’s been chipped and forced into service by Adam weeks ago.

"You’re not going anywhere, Spike,” she intones flatly. "You owe me. Follow me."

Yeah, right. He waits until she's turned her back and marches on to wherever she’s going, and then he takes off as quick as he can in the other direction. Before he can round the corner, something lands on his back and topples him. His head smacks hard on the pavement and when his eyes can focus again he finds the Slayer sitting on top of him, staring at him impassively.

“I said, Spike, that you owed me one. Don’t run away again. I can rip your throat out as easily as any other demon's. "

Spike sighs and relaxes all his limbs. Her persistence is one of her more annoying traits. No wait, she only has annoying traits. Her size zero butt on his hips is very warm, and he’s hungry. Horny too, now that he thinks of food. He'd been hoping to get a leg over with Harm, and it’s been far too long. If he can’t escape the Slayer, he might as well needle her.

He wriggles his hips suggestively and shows her his tongue. “I knew you were hot for me, Slayer. No need to be so coercive about it. Say the word and I'll make you a happy woman."

"What?" 

It still gets her, which is kind of a relief. He doesn’t much like the faraway staring look in her eyes. Granted, Adam’s taken over Sunnydale, and he has no clue what happened to her little pals or her mum, but she’s supposed to be eternally perky and win, for God's sake. Slayers are supposed to take care of apocalypses and the big stuff, so he can hunt and kill in peace. 

She gets up hastily and hauls him up by the scruff of his duster. Is it his imagination or has she gotten stronger?

She marches off again and he follows reluctantly. 

"You got some blood in the fridge for me, Slayer? If you haven’t, least you can do for me is open a vein. They haven’t been keeping up the butchering or the hospital supplies and I’m hungry!" he says plaintively. 

Not as if he really expects an answer, he just feels like griping. He likes the way she looks when she gets pissed off at him.

"Shut up, Spike,” she says, but it's without passion. 

Pity.

They walk on silently, through the smoke of a thousand fires, cars, homes, just-for-fun fires. Reminds Spike a bit of the Boxer Rebellion. Those were the days… Under the smoke, there is the sweet stench of decomposing bodies mixed with yummy barbecue smells. They say human meat is just like pork but he easily recognizes the difference. To his surprise, they turn onto Revello. He wouldn’t have thought she’d still be going anywhere near it. Adam must know how to find her Mom’s address. 

There are two fairly fresh graves in the front yard. Joyce Marilyn Summers, it says, Beloved Mother, 1956-2000. Aw, hell. He liked old Joyce. Too old to eat, but a bloke could talk to her. The other one says Tara Maclay, She was family, 1979-2000. The shy witch, the sweetest and most beautiful of them all. He generally prefers his women skinnier and bitchier, but he’d have happily drunk her dry. They don’t make women like that anymore, sweet but strong deep inside.

"They got your Mum, Slayer?"

She turns her bird-like gaze on him. "Yeah. What do you care?"

“I liked Joyce. She was alright."

"Huh."

She’s behaving like a robot., a scary zoned-out robot with glowing lightbulbs for eyes. She opens the door. It’s been kicked in and repaired with crudely nailed planks. Spike steps inside gingerly, and notices with surprise that his invitation hasn’t been revoked. Silly, silly Slayer. Now where has she gone?

"Spike!"

Her impatient voice reaches him from the basement. He sighs and slogs over there. He senses three more heartbeats down there. It must be her little pals. How touching. He can’t imagine why the Slayer invited him along, because he’d be far from their favorite person right now. He almost had them at each other’s throats. Of course, if he hadn’t been sowing the seeds of discord, they might have been more effective at fighting Adam. Bugger that. Thinking makes his head hurt, and what-ifs won’t make the world go round.

In the dim basement, he sees three motionless figures lying on cots and mattresses. Blankets sharply delineate knees and emaciated hipbones. They don’t stir at all. The air smells of sickness and stale unwashed humanity. He was right; it's the librarian, the witch and the floppy boy. 

"What’s happened to them, pet?” he asks curiously. 

He walks over to give the boy a kick in the ribs, but not only does the slack body not stir at all, even the Slayer doesn’t react. He resents that. Needling her is one of the few remaining pleasures in his life.

The Slayer has grabbed a bottle of water and drinks greedily. Inconsiderate of her, since he’s still doing without. 

"Not very hospitable, are you, love? Should offer me a sip of your delicious neck, you should."

The Slayer sighs. Spike almost misses her eye rolls. He throws off his duster and sprawls on the silent washing machine. Slayer ought to use it more; her clothes are far from pristine. He stretches luxuriously and checks if his wounds are healing nicely. Not as fast as when he'd have been properly fed, but tolerable.

"What do you want from me, Slayer? Getting kind of bored here."

She walks up to him and crosses her arms. “I want you to kill my friends."

"What?"

He can’t have been hearing that right. There must be another word ending on 'ill'. Bill. Dill. Pill. What is she talking about?

"The four of us did an enjoining spell to kill Adam. The spell connected us all and gave me my friends’ powers to use. I can’t undo the connection and instead of giving me their essence, they’re draining mine. My heart, my spirit and my mind are being consumed because of our link. I need you to kill them."

Spike jumps off the washer and starts pacing. He can’t think if he’s sitting still. "Supposing I could kill them - which I can’t because I’ve got the sodding chip, remember - why would I? Why not do it yourself?"

Actually, this ought to be priceless. The Slayer, begging him to kill her friends? He’d never have believed it if someone had told him this would happen.

“I can’t," she says flatly, and goes to stand in the way of his pacing. “I tried. The magic won’t let me, even after Giles told me to do it."

"But, but…" Spike throws his hands in the air. "This is no fun, Slayer! There is no challenge here, no stalking, and no fight. Why should I do this?"

"Because I would kill you?" she says with that same toneless voice and straight face, while she suddenly holds his head in her unnaturally strong hands and starts the corkscrewing motions that will result in his head and body parting company. Spike believes her.

"Alright, alright, I'll do it. I'll try. You know the chip will fire and I won't be able to go through with it?"

“Of course you can do it, Spike,” she says. "You wanna stay happily undead, don’t you?"

"Why should I care about that, eh, when all I get is pain and boredom and no fun at all? Anyway, I need to feed first. The way I feel now a small headache would make me pass out," he says truculently. See if he can get a raise out of her. 

She comes over and looks at his wounds. "They don’t look so bad,” she says. 

He lifts up his T-shirt to show her the great big gap in his side, where some unseen beastie with jaws like a shark chewed on him. "How about that, eh? Makes me feel faint with blood loss!"

She touches the lips of the wound with her burning hot fingers and in spite of himself, he feels a pleasurable shiver. If she wasn’t the Slayer, a warrior, she’d be exactly the kind of little girl he'd like to fuck and feed on till she died. Feel the soft curvy body grow slack and heavy, the last tremors still. There’s something gorgeous in departing life, apart from the obvious satisfaction of a full belly and a spent cock. Too bad that this one would fight him, and that he feel she owes her an honorable death. He really should dispense with his silly scruples someday.

The Slayer takes out a knife and makes a quick business-like cut in her arm. "Here," she says.

The scent of fresh human blood fills the air and he can’t help reacting to it. His fangs shoot out, his dick fills with blood and he growls hungrily. 

“I’d prefer that sweet little neck of yours, Slayer,” he says, but it’s token resistance, he’s already bending over to lap up the slow blood pumping from her vein. It’s been almost a year since he’s tasted it fresh from the prey and it's heaven. He sucks as hard as he can and he pulls her closer to steal her body heat as well, he wants it all. At last, she yanks back her arm and he pants and claws blindly to get the delicious flow back. 

When he finally opens his eyes, his nose has long scented a curious smell. The Slayer likes it. Her breath is going fast and shallow, and her little nipples prick through her skimpy dirty T-shirt. He's not going to hesitate to take such a sweet offering. He grabs her hips and grinds his dick against the sweet mound of her sex. She lets him for a moment, eyes closed and body swaying, but then she belts him in the face with her elbow.

"You're such a pig, Spike! Keep your filthy hands off me!"

Spike lies on the floor with a very sore nose, but he doesn’t care. "You liked it, Slayer; I knew old Angelus would have had you trained for it. I knew it. What’d you call someone who likes pig? A susophile?"

"What? Shut up, Spike. Just do what you promised already." 

Spike sniffs up the blood from his nose and licks up the rest. No point in wasting anything. "Any preferences about who goes first?"

To his surprise, the Slayer answers this immediately. "Yeah. Take Xander. He hurts the most. He’s the heart, the one who’s holding us together. Maybe it’s enough if we kill him and we won’t need to do the others."

Spike shrugs. What does he care? "How do you want me to do it? Can’t drain him, I think. Chip would kick in and it mightn’t be enough to kill him. Cut off his head with an axe?"

There's a tiny ripple across her stiffly composed features, almost gone before he’s seen it. Then she shakes her head quickly. "No. You have to take out his heart. Your hands, or a knife, doesn’t matter which.”

“Knife, I think. I’ve got to be quick before the chip goes off.”

She hands him the knife. Spike advances on the supine boy on the cot. Harris’ face is thin and slack, his chest barely moving. He thinks of something. 

"You got a bucket, Slayer? Catch the blood for me when I’ve passed out from the pain." 

Spike looks around and grabs a chipped vase full of old dirt from a shelf. "This would do fine."

Buffy practically yanks it out of his hands and cradles the dusty unwieldy thing tenderly. "This is Angel, Spike. Keep your hands off him."

Spike gasps before he can prevent it. "Angel? Right. Who got him?"

This is not how he would have imagined Angel ending. Ashes in Joyce’s flower pot. He never thought Angel would end. The old man should have been eternally glowering just around the corner. Now he’s truly on his own.

Her face is eerily smooth and undisturbed. Her eyelids lower over her nectarine eyes once, slowly. “Adam, of course,” the Slayer says softly. "Angel came to help me, but he failed. He died a hero."

Spike wants to bridle but shuts up. He’s not a hero. Why should he want to be? Heroes are boring blokes with heavy brows who stride around rescuing virgins and don't even take their virginities, or blood, or riches, and then die. That's so not him.

Buffy stares at him silently. The she nods jerkily and empties cloths and a mop from a plastic bucket beneath the sink. "This okay?"

"Sure," he says. 

He opens up the loud grimy shirt Harris wears and cuts the T-shirt underneath it open. The pale olive skin is stretched tight over the ribs and the boy’s gotten so thin he can see the heart beat south-east of his breastbone. He mimics the movement he’s going to make; he needs to do it in one quick slash, and then yank out the heart, he doesn’t have the time to open him up first. He cuts quick and deep and wrenches the heart out while the first blinding zigzags of pain race through his brain. Then lightning strikes him down. A great jet of bright red arterial blood spouting into the air is the last thing he sees.

*

Dru is licking his face with her cool raspy tongue and he’s missed that so much that it almost makes him cry. He keeps it in, though, Dru doesn’t like him snively and sentimental, except when it means giving her presents and doing everything she wants. The slight pressure of her breasts on his chest is wrong, somehow, warm where it should be cold. He opens gummy heavy eyelids and stares straight into the face of the Slayer, who’s bathing his face with a washcloth, looking serious and concerned. He shuts them again hastily so he can think. Right. Slayer. Breasts. Washcloth. This train of thought doesn’t yield anything useful so he abandons it and tries to guess at his surroundings. The smell of blood, not fresh, an hour or so old, loiters in the room like a sultry wench, ripe for the taking. 

A warm soft arm slips under his head and tilts it gently upward. Spike lets it happen, too bemused to do the obvious, like biting her neck and draining her dry. No. wait, there’s another reason not to do that, but he can’t get at it right now. A cup of blood is held under his nose and he drinks. A Slayer offering him blood? What…

The blood finally clears his mind a bit and he suddenly identifies the vague background smells. Revello Drive, the basement probably. Scoobies somewhere. For God’s sake, he’s drinking dead Xander Bovril! His eyes fly open and memory floods back. He sits up and is shocked at how weak and dizzy he feels. The chip must have blasted half his brain away.

The Slayer puts down the empty cup of blood and offers him a dripping maroon lump on a plate. It has the same blood smell and he identifies it as a clumsily cut out heart. Really. He doesn’t eat human meat, he drinks blood.

“Wha?” his own voice reverberates blurrily in his head. Is he drunk? His tongue feels as dead and lumpish in his mouth as the Harris heart.

“You have to eat the heart, Spike, to finish the dismantling of the spell.”

Great. Food. Just what he doesn’t need right now. He needs buckets of blood and bed rest, actually. The Slayer holds out the heart with that implacable face while Spike considers his options. He gives in. Time enough for options later. When he's not feeling so bloody weak.

He stuffs the heart in his mouth and tries to swallow it away as quickly as he can. Would the Slayer consider roasting it for him, or slathering on some barbecue sauce? He knows the answer already and chews on morosely. Pretending it’s Buffalo wings doesn’t really work without the sauce.

When he’s swallowed the last unpleasant morsel a wave of nausea or something like it washes over him and he falls back to the floor. A gasp from Buffy makes him clamber back upright. She’s wiping away a tear and looks at him with her big beautiful eyes shining with more unshed tears. 

“Thank you, Spike,” she says in a small tremulous voice.  “I can feel so much more now. It’s pain, but that’s still better than feeling nothing.”

He hugs her tightly. This must be so hard on her, so many losses, his poor spunky girl. He kisses her wet nose and wipes away another trickle of salt.

“Better?” he asks tenderly.

“Yeah.”

She nestles closely against him and Spike breathes in the deeply personal Buffy-smell wafting from her hair, spice and sweat and half-forgotten shampoo. “What are friends for, if not to comfort each other in a time of loss?”

Friends? Hey, this is getting peculiar. Since when is the Slayer his friend? They both draw back and stare at each other in shock. The Slayer’s heartbeat stutters and accelerates, boom-boom, boom-boom.

“Bugger!” Spike says.

“Ew!” the Slayer answers quickly.

His tongue is working again, he notices. Pity it said such wet things to the damn woman. Has he eaten Harris’ soul along with his heart? Magic is a tricky thing, he knows that. He might actually have been better off letting the Slayer kill him instead of joining her in this doomed venture.

“Right,” Spike says. “Just gonna step outside for a fag, Slayer. Won’t be a sec.”

A vise clamps around his arm at about halfway up the stairs. 

”I think I’ll keep you company,” she says with a tightlipped smile.

Spike shows his teeth. Bitch.

The Slayer’s sitting with her legs swinging on the porch railing, while he cowers in the deepest shade. The sun crowns her with spun gold, her face is in the shadows. The sky is hazy with smoke and magic, but not hazy enough to be safe for Spike. Spike considers doing a Jan Palach, but he guesses the Slayer would be as unimpressed as the Russians were, and there’s no one to benefit from it, especially not himself. He’s not the suicidal type.

He dawdles on the smoke as long as possible, but finally he grinds out his fag on the wooden planks of the porch. The Slayer makes a disapproving face but she can go hang with her expressions, although there is a strange pulling sensation behind his breastbone when she looks like that. Aftereffect. It’ll pass.

“Are we done now, Slayer?” 

She jumps off the railing and turns her face into the light. Her eyes stare at him like a crazed chicken’s, all big round yellow irises and tiny pupils That’s his answer.

He nods at her. “Next, then?”

“Willow”.

She blinks rapidly and it’s very uncomfortable for him if she keeps airing the feelings all the time. Has she no consideration for him at all? He almost takes her in his arms again, which is positively creepy. Sworn enemies should keep their distance, he reckons, not start acting like bosom buddies. Although, if he could become the buddy of her bosom he wouldn’t care too much about the side effects.

The Slayer’s eyes are taking on that glow again. Not pretty. They walk back downstairs silently. 

“So, um, any special thoughts on the method?”

“She’s spirit. Breath. You have to choke her.”

The Slayer sobs on the last words and Spike has to clench his jaws and ball his fists hard to keep from comforting her. Very astute of her to take Harris first. If it had been Superlibrarian he’d have been coolly calculating the odds and been long out of here. This must have been his fiendishly clever plan.

Spike takes a look around. “Bit of rope, B…Slayer?”

She looks stricken but looks around dutifully.

“Never mind.”

Spike unbuckles his belt and works it out of the loops. Is it his imagination or is the Slayer really staring at his belly? He’s a handsome fellow, he knows that, but so far her neck has played a bigger role in his fantasies than the rest of her body. Interesting. He shifts his jeans in a more comfortable position and notes with glee she’s mirroring his motions, adjusting her own olive combat pants. Gotcha.

No reason to put it off, is there? He flexes his neck and shoulder muscles. He feels alright. Maybe killing Harris didn’t destroy quite as many brains cells as he feared, although his present thoughts about the Slayer are disturbing. He loops the belt around Willow’s neck, gently, doesn’t want any more headache than strictly necessary. His throat hurts a bit and his eyes sting. Odd. He clears his throat and prepares to yank the belt tight.

“Wait!” the Slayer says breathlessly. “Take a breath out of her mouth first. You can’t do that after…you know.”

It’s indescribably annoying that’s she so coy about this. Can’t she just say out loud he’s going to kill Willow? He doesn’t quite trust his own voice, though, so he bends over to the still paper white face and breathes in as Willow breathes out. It makes him feel giddy, which isn’t even possible. On with it. He angrily yanks the belt tight and an atomic bomb explodes in his head. He’s blasted through the roof and looks down on all of blackened ruined Sunnydale. The smoke is blown eastward by the wind.

*

He wafts down, tugged earthward by an invisible cord. He whooshes through a house and looks down on a man in black lying on the floor of the basement. He looks dead. A golden-haired girl is tenderly stroking his bleached curls away from his forehead and crooning a little song. That is so sad. There is no one in the whole world who loves him like that. No one, he’s all alone. At least someone is mourning for the dead guy, and he’d prefer to be dead too rather than feeling so lonely. This thought pulls him into the slack body and he looks up at the sweet, pretty girl who gazes down at him with such concern and love. Her eyes are the most gorgeous bronzy green shot with golden flecks. He uses the dead hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. 

She gently lays the man’s head down on something soft and smelling of old leather and smoke. He used to have a coat that smelled just like it. The girl lugs another body over to him, a tiny woman, her short dyed hair flopping around her upside-down face like a dandelion head.

“Here, drink.”

He doesn’t quite get what she means, but his face crunches and twists. It’s very painful, and at the same time sexy. Strange. His head shoots forward without his volition and he bites down hard into the girl’s neck. Gah. The guy’s a vampire? He doesn’t want anything to do with something as disgusting as that, but the borrowed throat drinks on anyway. The taste is a revelation. Somehow he knows it isn’t as warm and tingly as it should be, but it’s still slides down like molten copper, making him feel alive, horny and feisty. 

He humps the golden haired girl’s side where she hangs over him while supporting the dead woman. She’s so hot, literally and metaphorically. She’s probably his girlfriend. And here he is, drinking Willow, which would have been a major success a few months ago, and now it only makes him melancholy. Willow? Spike gags and pushes the corpse away. He’s drinking Willow, and not in the good way, which would be drinking from her live, pulsing artery, fucking her senseless and generally having a ball. This is just…sad.

Buffy looks at him gravely and presses his hand. “Hey. Are you back, Spike?”

“Yeah.”

It’s like being a fledgling, waking up with twice the amount of senses he had before he died and no clue what to do with all the info that came pouring in. Everything in the bare basement has extra shine, or value, whatever you'd call the magic properties every object insisted on telling him about. He tries to get up but the basement swims around his head. It’s like being a goldfish in a bowl, everything curves back in on him and his legs buckle under him.

Buffy's hand supports him in the small of his back and there's something very comforting about that. Something isn’t quite right here but he can’t think what. 

He presses his fingertips against his aching temples, trying to massage the headache out. It doesn’t work, because it isn’t a tension headache, obviously. Great. Next thing you know he'll be Googling or doing complicated sums in his head. 

His head still hurts. He needs a fag and booze, in that order. He inhales deeply from the cigarette that he discovers on his lower lip. Only when the smoke hits his lungs does he realize he never got out his cigarettes, or his lighter.

Buffy looks on, openmouthed. 

“Could Willow do this?” he asks her.

“I don’t know. She didn’t smoke. She could float a pencil.”

"We'd better get on with it then, eh Buffy? 'S not gonna get any more pleasant. "

"Giles was the Mind. I thought…"

"Cut off his head?" he says helpfully.

"Yeah. I don’t know how to do the ritual thing, like with Willow and Xander. How do you share someone's mind in a magic way?"

That's easy. "Eat his brain, and just hope I don’t get mad cow disease."

Buffy is apparently beyond the 'ew' he'd expect at this point. Well, he can certainly empathise with her. This must be hell.

"How long have they been like this?" he asks. "Since the night you tried to get into the Initiative and kill Adam?"

The night he ran off when he had enough of the fighting and judged it time to cut his losses. He doesn’t mention this, and neither does Buffy.

"Yeah," she says. “I was all powered up with nowhere to go. We couldn’t find Adam."

A silence falls. Not really uncomfortable, though. More like gathering courage for the next bit.

“Axe?" he asks, before he loses the last of his determination. They're in it together now; they have to see it through.

He lifts the axe and takes it through its trajectory. He’s got to get it right in one stroke, he’s not going to get a second chance. The chip will blast him. He’s kind of curious to see if he’ll live, but he doesn’t really care. He lifts it again, balances his body on the balls of his feet and lets it descend. At the last moment, a high keening shriek comes from the throat of the man and the Slayer simultaneously, and she almost succeeds in diverting his blow. It lands sweet and true, however.

*

Spike wakes up to a rather unpleasant headache. "I say, Buffy, that washcloth would be very welcome right now. And a nice cuppa, as well."

"Sorry, no power, no water," Buffy says, but she’s back with the cloth quickly enough. "You should drink up Giles while he’s still warm."

Still warm? That stirs him enough to prop himself up and he bends over the crepey neck. Not his preferred fare, he being a veal kind of guy, but it would be ridiculous to be dainty about it now. The blood tastes almost the same, after all. Not dusty or booky, just bloody. It’s a luxury problem anyway if you’re a good enough vampire to pick and choose your victim. Plenty of decent decades-old fellows making a living off the homeless and gormless. 

The blood makes Spike feel better on the one hand, and queasy and too full on the other. It’s like he’s going to slosh over and spill half of it. He hides his face in his hands, trying to hide his weakness from Buffy. She comes to sit next to him and rubs his back, making soothing noises.

The silence becomes expectant. He raises his eyes to Buffy’s. She makes a grimace in the direction of Giles’ head. Right. Well. It can’t be worse than eating Harris’ heart, can it? Turns out it can. He has to cap the top of Giles’ head like a soft-boiled egg and eat his brains with a spoon. Buffy’s not looking. He understands; he’d rather not see this himself.

When it’s done and he can finally look in her in the eye he’s relieved to see that she's looking well, not a trace of orange in her eyes. Things are not quite right, though. He knows what she’s going to say before she says it, how she’s going to flip her hair over her shoulder before she does it. She's going to start talking about moving away from here.

"We should find another place to hole up, Spike. Adam can find this too easily. Your crypt?"

He's shaking his head and saying, “No, he’s been in there before. Too risky." Mentally he’s still processing the 'we' that rolls so easily from her lips. And he can feel himself agree with it too. Now she’s going to want to rescue Soldier boy. Not on his life, is the only thing he can say to that.

"We're gonna rescue Riley. We could use him for our resistance movement."

He ate a messenger girl for the French resistance once, and it gave him indigestion. Too stringy. The Jerries were much better fed, with thicker, richer blood.

"I saw him, love. He got chipped by his evil Mum surrogate. Him and his mate are probably all demoned up by now.

Buffy sets her face and crosses her arms. He touches the delicious pout with his finger and smiles. 

"We'll talk strategy and tactics later, Buffy. A new hideout and rest first. Do you, um, want to bury your friends? Don’t want them to fall prey to scavenger demons, do you?"

"You're right,” Buffy says, stricken. ”They can be next to Mom and Tara."

Joyce. The reminder of her death stings him again.

Buffy extends her hand to help him up and the moment he touches her the world goes to photo negative. Buffy’s hair is black against the stark glaring whiteness of the basement walls and he can feel the current move through their clasped hands. 

"Whoa,” Buffy breathes. "Spike, your eyes are orange!"

He’s not in true face, he’s certain of that, but he checks with his hand anyway. Buffy’s hand crackles in his and her hair lifts of its own accord. They unclasp as by mutual decision and he sags when the power subsides. 

"What the hell was that?"

"It was just like when we first did the enjoining spell,” Buffy says, awe still in her voice. “I could feel their power, and I felt like I could do anything."

“Except kill Adam," Spikes says practically.

"Hey! I'm sure I could have, if I’d been able to find him in time! But I didn’t, and then the power drain was too heavy on Giles and Willow and Xander."

"So, now I have ingested their essences and I’m your walking talking undead power station?"

"You won’t get tired or run out of power, will you, Spike?"

He supposes not. If he gets enough blood, maybe a sip of Buffy now and then... he can go on a long time. In many ways.

Buffy hesitantly touches his hand again, and the power and the knowledge slot neatly back into place. Spike takes her other hand and the current doubles in intensity. He can feel himself charge up like a battery, and he hopes the gel in his hair is holding out. He doesn’t want to look like he’s wearing an exploded cauliflower on top of his head. On impulse he bends over and kisses Buffy. This closes other circuits which don’t go through his hand and head but through his guts and his cock. He shudders with the strength of the connection and wrenches loose. A few seconds more and he'd have come in his pants. Buffy touches her lips with her hand and looks at him with big scared eyes, heart going pitter pat and hormones zinging through her veins. Bless vampire perception.

“What was that? I didn’t have that with my friends."

“I should hope not,” Spike says. "Giles is twice your age!"

“And you’re a spring chicken? Seriously, Spike, don't do that again. I don’t wanna go there with you. I just wanna save Riley, and Sunnydale."

Spike puts his hand on his heart and promises never to do this again. Yeah, right. A man needs some perks if he takes on a thankless job, doesn’t he? This creepy Slayer-Vampire mind meld may have vaulted them into the super plus power range, which is okay because they’ll get to kick a lot of ass, but no way is he going to leave the extra topping with sparkles on unexplored. Just you wait, Buffy Summers.

After the grave detail’s been handled they stride off in the direction of Kingman’s Bluff. Buffy figures the height will give them tactical advantage. A Gora demon slouching towards the Bronze doesn’t know what hits him, as he and the Slayer each yank out a heart in perfect unison, without missing a step. 

Spike lugs the sack up Kingman's Bluff. Gas, ammo, axes... enough weaponry to make Attila blush and he starts to feel like he's carrying Angel on his back, possibly with Darla and Dru included. He doesn't get it. Sure, it's a steep climb. But, he's eaten a great big wholesome meal of three people yesterday, it won't be dawn for hours yet, so there's no good reason to feel this bloody tired. The only thing that keeps him going is the  superior smirk he doesn't want to see on the Slayer's face.

So he's surprised to find he's the first to get back from the provisioning raid. He dumps the weapons at the back of the shallow cave they've holed-up in and decides to have a lie-down. After a quarter of an hour of gradually feeling worse, his muscles start to tingle and he perks up a little bit. His strength builds steadily until it takes a sudden leap when the Slayer pops a weary, bedraggled head into the cave.

"Hey," she says and drops a blanket full of cans and crackling plastic food packets. "God, I feel like the Buffy the cat dragged  in. Must be from yesterday. I could sleep for a week." She curls up on the spot and sinks into an instant doze.

Spike watches her fade and remembers her disgusting perkiness  from earlier this evening when she woke up. Makes a bloke think a spot of Slayercide might go down well right about now, just so he'd never have to live through it again. He gets up on his hands and knees and crawls over to her. His head keeps getting clearer and he notes the pallor of her face and the violet shadows under her eyes with interest. He has a theory and tests it by grabbing hold of the Slayer's thighs. He could have taken her hands, of course, but why be boring?

Her eyes snap open. "Get your hands off me, Spike! You're too close. Canada would be too cl..."

Her voice trails off and a look of wonder grows on her pinched face, which is slowly suffusing with healthier color.

"Spike....what?"

Spike doesn't know either, but he does know it feels good, it feels just right to be touching her, complete. He lifts his hands briefly to see if it's really true, and is immediately overwhelmed by waves of despair and futility. Hastily he puts his hands back. The jangling discord his body has been dancing to calms and smoothes into harmony and peace. What common sense he's got left grasps at his unease as it tries to leave quietly through the backdoor. He needs that feeling.

"Magic, Slayer, consequences, always," he says bitterly. "Great. We'll be like Chang and Eng, Just what I've always dreamed of. Slayer?"

The Slayer sighs, a happy floaty sound, staring off into the distance.

"Please pay attention. Buffy," he begins. "Item the first: We're not all right when we're apart. Check?"

"Check," she agrees.

"Second: That situation is unacceptable. Check?"

"Check. You really are channeling Giles. It would be cute if he hadn't died."

The Slayer takes in her own words with an expression of disbelief and the fragile cheer slides off her face. She turns her head aside and pretends he can't see her tearing up. Spike waits impatiently. Crying won't bring back the dead. Lots of things will, but not crying. He decides not to mention those options.

"Three: we need to end that situation. Check?"

"Well....sure. After I find Riley. Believe me, I really don't want to be stuck to you with the tractor beams from hell, but for now, we're pretty powerful like this. We need that power to free Riley and destroy the Initiative."

"Great. So I'm, what?,' he says. "Your undead Ma Bell? I ring up the spirits of Scoobies Past and help out while you're looking for Mr. Goodbore? Not seeing what's in it for me."

"How about not getting staked?" She pauses, cools down. "Look," she says. "I don't expect you to understand this." Her voice drops. "Riley is all I've got left.

"Oh, and I'm chopped liver, am I?"

Spike wonders uncomfortably when he started giving a rat's bollocks what she thinks of him. After a bit, he realizes they're still lying on the uncomfortable floor of the cave, hand in hand, staring at the ceiling. The making and executing of clever plans isn't working, so far.

"Slayer, get up. You need to eat. We sleep during the day and do a recce when it gets dark."

"I could do one of those now," she says petulantly, but she's not moving and still holding his left hand in that death grip.

"Sure, Slayer, sure. You'd last half an hour before blacking out, I reckon."

"I don't like you when you're right, Spike. In fact, I never like you."

Spike doesn't bother answering that one. He sits up, and Buffy has to follow if she wants to retain her hold on his hand. He randomly picks up one of the cans she's gathered and thrusts it into her hand.

"Here. Eat up. And please, no need to wait until I can have a proper dinner. I'll just gaze hungrily at you."

The Slayer stares at the can with an embarrassed grimace. "I forgot to bring an opener," she says.

Spike sighs, vamps out and tears off the lid with one of his fangs.

"Ew," she says. "You don't think I'm gonna eat this after you've had your icky fang in there? Who knows where it's been?"

Spike rolls his eyes. He's remembering why he dislikes her so much. The one moment of shared purpose he recalls from yesterday was definitely a spell-induced folie-à-deux, but he can still see what she's thinking and the disgust is only a thin layer of desperate denial over panic and hunger. He doesn't want to know that, even if he can make good use of that vulnerability later. He prefers his arch-enemies on a pedestal, to make the victory taste the sweeter.

"Suit yourself," he answers curtly and stalks off to the darker part of the cave.

Letting go of the Slayer is like taking off an artificial limb; it makes him feel lopsided and incomplete. He can take it though; it isn't half as bad as when they'd been separated for hours. Let the spoilt little bitch stew in her own loneliness. He rolls himself in his duster and firmly closes his eyes. Sleep now.

But sleep is impossible when he can feel every movement the Slayer makes in his gut. She mutters to herself, eats the contents of the can, roots around a bit, pees around the corner and finally crawls to his end of the cavern. She picks the opposite wall for bedding down, and that's fine by him. He just wishes he could stop breathing along with her and feeling cold and empty where she isn't touching him,  meaning everywhere. At last he gets up, plunks himself down next to her and spoons against her back. His missing limb slots neatly back into place and he falls toward sleep immediately. The Slayer, to his surprise, doesn't say a word and is asleep before he is.

Spike dreams his wedding tackle is hanging over the edge of a big cauldron, slowly being cooked. Buffy is going to eat it and she looks on avidly, knife and fork at the ready.

"Just a few more minutes, pet," Spike says proudly, and slides a plate and some salad under his reddening member. The green makes a very pretty contrast.

It's well-done soon enough and Buffy starts sawing away with the knife. At first the pain is bearable, even pleasant, but then it gets really bad. He spurts red blood all over her and yowls in anguish, waking himself up.

A man could wish his dreams were a little less indicative of his waking situation; which is with his cock against a searing hot Slayer bum and her hand squeezing his balls so hard he's sure they're going to explode.

"What? What? Let go of me, you bitch, what the hell do you think you're doing!"

Buffy lets up slightly.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she bites back. "I woke up and we were...I mean you were humping me. Without my consent."

"Yeah, right," Spike sneers. "You were only too happy when I crawled in with you last night, weren't you?"

Strangely enough, he's feeling very sharp and with-it, even though he's about to come. And that in spite of the strangulation grip she has on him.

"Let go then, Slayer, and I'll move away. Wouldn't that be the first thing you'd want?"

"Of course," Buffy snaps.

She lets go and he can't help himself, he bucks his hips against her again and then he does come in his pants like an overexcited teenager. When his eyes uncross, he checks out her face, steeling himself for a flood of disgust and derision, but instead it's flushed and her eyes glazed. Someone is interested, alright.

Their thighs are still smushed together and if he concentrates, he can feel her interest straight through the two layers of denim. He wiggles his knee closer to her crotch, as an experiment, and she turns blood red, shudders hard, digs her hands in his thigh hard enough to bruise, and faints.

Spike can't suppress a triumphant guffaw and that snaps her out of it instantly. Her eyes pop open, he sees the realization, the shame, the checking if he knows what went on, the rush into anger. It's delicious.

The Slayer is biting her lip, and for once she has no quip. Her finger points at him, quivering with rage, and he can guess at the feelings about to burst out, but she keeps them in and stalks away. Chalk one up for him. Of course, now his jeans are soiled, which is uncomfortable and smelly, but it's a small price to pay for her humiliation. Getting off on an evil undead knee is not something you can brag about to your friends, is it? Oh, wait, they're all dead. There's a fly buzzing in his ear. No, there isn't. Spike shakes his head, trying to dislodge the feeling. Weird. Why is he thinking of Harris?

He thinks of a few comments he might make, but he decides he won't even bother. She needs his help for now, and every time she looks at him she's gonna feel the shame. It's like a present he can open again and again. Priceless.

The Slayer comes pouncing back, cheeks still a lovely, shamed blood red, lips a-tremble, and flings herself at the disorderly heap of equipment. She retrieves whatever it is she's looking for and stomps back outside. Spike lies back and suppresses the urge to hie himself over there by taking a drag from his fag. It's like his private show. The small form outside, backlit by a faint glow from Sunnydale down below is doing something he can't quite make out, but her frustration is easily visible at thirty feet away and that also dulls the pain any distance between them causes.

Spike freezes as the smoke in his lungs clears his head. He doesn't recall getting out his lighter and smokes, or lighting the cigarette. He's done it again, conjured up a lit fag on his lip without even being aware of it. He remembers Willow playing with a pencil in the Magic Box while he leaned against the ladder, too bored to watch something else. Cool ability, but not much you could do with a fag or a pencil, except stake a tiny little vamp, or poke someone's eye out in a fight.

And just like that he has a pencil in his hand, gleaming yellow in the half light of the cave. He studies it, bemused and awed at himself. Float, he tells it, not really expecting a result. It rises obediently for about half an inch above his palm. He's about to fling it away from him when the thought lights his mind with a thousand watt's worth of idea. He inhales reflexively, the air runs head first into exiting smoke and a fight ensues. When he's stopped coughing he lies back to turn his brilliant notion over in his mind and examine it properly from all sides. It can work, but he'll need practice; this is one job he can't afford to botch up.

He's made the pencil flit about the cave, do back flips, spirals and pirouettes and is just in the process of writing a poem on the back of his duster when the Slayer calls out to him.

"Sod off, Slayer, I'm busy," he says, but his feet are already taking him to her. He's almost too happy about his plan to feel resentment at his automatic obedience.

Buffy's crouching at the rim of the cliff, training her binoculars on the smoke-veiled town below. She extends her arm behind her grouchily.

"Spike. Pinky."

Spike wishes he didn't know what she means, but he hooks her little finger in hers. The low-level buzz of the connection asserts itself again. It's amazing how this negates his irritation at being at her beck and call. It even feels good, which displeases him. He's got things to do, and after that, places to go, places which are not Sunnydale.

He keeps his face in the direction of the town, but his attention is elsewhere. The pencil is lying next to their sleeping bags and he's trying to lift it from here. Sense it, find its location and then float it gently over here, parting the air molecules with his mind so the pencil meets no resistance. He thinks he's got it. He can't confirm it with his real eyes yet, but he's sure it's hovering just left of the cave entrance.

"Spike," Buffy's petulant voice interrupts his concentration and he feels the pencil slip from his hold.

Bugger. Can't she just shut up for two minutes?.

"Spike, I can't see well enough. Stand closer."

He obeys with a sigh. He moves his hips against hers, the bulge of his cock in the cleft of her ass, and puts his hand on her shoulders. He ignores the automatic heat that flares. She's either food, which is meant to be fucked during dinner, on the condition it's pretty and young enough, or she's a great warrior, whose death brings him honor. He doesn't want to confuse the two and hump her like a dog.

"See anything?" he asks.

She nods, but keeps frowning and twiddling the binocular's buttons. She looks back at him and bites her lip. "It's not enough."

Spike sighs. He's noticed the power surge is bigger the closer they get, the more sexual the touch is. Don't tell him she hasn't. Can't she just say it? He starts rubbing the front of her jeans with impatient movements and feels her growing warmer under him. A little frown forms between her eyebrows and she purses her lips in concentration. It's not going well. Buffy's concentrating so hard she's practically vibrating and her hand is boring a hole in his upper arm.

"Is it working yet, pet? Feeling a yawn coming up here."

This is not strictly speaking the truth, there's a kind of pleasure in smelling her desperation and arousal and seeing her work so hard, but it's not like it's interactive.

The Slayer opens agonized eyes, big and black with concentration, and claws at him. "Don't stop, you evil monster. Faster!" She freezes completely and stares at him in shock. "Oh my God. I really just said that, didn't I?"

That cinches it. He takes away his hand and folds his arms. "This is not working, Slayer. You know why? Supposed to be mutual, not me slaving away and not getting anything in return. I'm not your sex toy."

"Isn't this bad enough already you're doing this to me, without you throwing a hissy fit?" she retorts. "We have a mission, this is urgent!"

"You have a mission, I have places to go. Places where I could be already if you hadn't bound us together with one of these spells that keep going wrong around you."

She gets up and almost topples over on unsteady legs. Fury makes her stutter and wave her arms. "The sooner you help me out, the quicker you'll be out of here. You can play helplessly chipped former bloodsucker somewhere else."

It's so bloody easy to keep his temper now that he has prospects again. He just lifts his eyebrow and waits her out. She throws panicky looks over her shoulder as if Sunnydale is going to go away if she doesn't hurry.  It's a trade-off kind of thing. Together, they're powerful but too blissed out to notice anything, apart they're with it but too jittery to act. She knows it too.

"Okay, I give," she says. "What do you want me to do?"

Spike just sets his hands on the waist of his jeans, his fingers pointing quite clearly at the place he wants her to be.

"That is so disgusting. I have to touch your grungy vampire boy jeans? That is just a world of yuck."

Spike waits, grinning.

The Slayer rolls her eyes at no one in particular and reluctantly brings her hips against his, her hands balled and to the side. She grinds a few times with her eyes closed, then checks his face to see if it's enough. Well, hardly. Is this all she can do? He's about to say something cutting when he catches the faintest whiff of insecurity in her eyes and he remembers everything he's gotten to know about her without even trying. Angelus ditching her after one go, that college sod when she took his ring of Amarra from him. Not to mention dating Captain Cardboard, who looks like he does it with the lights off and his eyes closed, who wouldn't have allowed her space to try things out. She really doesn't know what to do.

The words he'd normally use to smother her in scathing derision are at the back of his throat, ready for use. He swallows them. Now is not the moment to slag her off. For one it would mean not getting off for old Spike, and it wouldn't make getting out of here any faster. And he hasn't exactly pulled out all the stops himself  just  mechanically rubbing her inseam, has he?

Well then, here goes. He steps up close against her, brings his arms around her and says huskily in her ear, "Lemme show you how it's done, Slayer."

She jerks reflexively, as if wrenching away from him but doesn't actually move.

"Feel my hands on your back? They're going to slide lower, down to your luscious little bum, very slowly, very slowly, so that by the time they get there, you're already feeling them there, feel my hands burning on your arse , straight through your trousers..."

Her breath shudders on his neck when he pushes her against his hard-on, grinding her slowly on it, his hands lifting her up, digging his fingers in the soft flesh of her thigh, close enough to her pussy to feel the searing heat of it. The Slayer moans and hides her flaming face in his shoulder. He pretends not to notice this but files it away for later reference. Right now, he's spinning a tale to breach her defenses. He sinks slowly down on his knees, willing her not to notice, talking her into submission. "Close your eyes, Slayer, think of the good work we can do if we're fully recharged, think of the mission, nothing else matters. "

His finger slips under the button of her trousers and fillips it loose without jerking or alarming her. He slides down the zipper. The tiny sound makes her buck and moan. Spike can't help getting more than just perfunctorily interested himself. The smell of her arousal salts the air, the twitching of her warm flesh against his makes him lose focus, makes him want to rip off the clothes he's so carefully peeling away and just plunge in, ride her hard and drain her dry. That's not going to happen, though. He needs the connection, and he needs to keep his wits about him.

Anticipation prepares the link between them, powers it up with little sparks trailing up and down his spine. The Slayer is a mass of quivering jelly on his lap and he forgives her for not participating as actively as he wanted her to a minute ago. This is not about the balance of power between them, this is about need.

He positions her with her head down on the ground and her hips on his legs. With one hand stroking her pussy, he wriggles out of his jeans as far as he needs to and positions himself. He hesitates with the tip of his cock at her entrance and checks out her face. He knew she was hot for it too, but this is bordering on ecstasy, and she hasn't even come yet. Part of the bloody spell. He thought the handholding was bad, but how will they go about killing and maiming if they're glue together at the hip? Besides, it'll make him look silly.

"Slayer..." he croons. "How about if I did this?" He glides a finger into her pussy, then another. Works up to rough thrusting.

The Slayer yelps and twitches but takes good care to realign her legs so he has good access.

"Isn't that nice? Do you want me to go on with this?"

"No..." she moans. "I mean, yes. But it's wrong!"

"Maybe you like this better?" He plays his thumb over her clit.

There's only moans and shudders for an answer. Spike takes back his hand and licks off his fingers.

"Delicious," he announces.

He slides his cock in a little bit and the Slayer opens her eyes wide and tries to scoot back. Oh-oh, she's panicking.

"Get off me, this isn't what I meant, go away, get your disgusting.. . thing out of me, I..."

He thrusts his fingers in her hot opening again and uses them to fuck her hard while she struggles to get away. She goes limp as putty again until she seizes up and comes, clenching down on his fingers so brutally they would have broken if he'd been human. The thought of those muscles gripping his dick is so unbearably hot that he unexpectedly reaches orgasm himself, shooting white gobbets all over her belly. Damn. That wasn't the plan.

"Spike! This is the grossest thing ever! Look at me! I've got your...spunk all over me."

"Worse than shooting it up your hot little pussy?" Spike says automatically, thinking hard now that he has a moment of clarity. There won't be many tonight; he has a feeling about it.

The Slayer blushes hotly in the rosy evening light and he knows that she's in the same place he is. She's still lying over his thighs, and in spite of her angry words, not moving at all. Now what? Spike wouldn't mind giving it another go, but he doubts that the Slayer will allow it. There's something he's going to try anyway. He shoves her off him and moves a foot or so away from her. She shoots upright as if galvanized and reaches for his dick with panicky hands. She doesn't subside until she has a firm hold of it. It's possibly the scariest and yet best sensation his dick has ever felt. She's magic. Her face doesn't lose its determined, angry expression and Spike wonders about what's going on in her mind. Does she even realize what's she holding on to?

Spike coughs. "Slayer. Take a look. Who's doing what to who?"

"Oh my god. Oh my god. I'm touching your thing. Your big fat evil thing. The last thing on earth I want my hands on, thank you. Why can't I let go? This is not right. I'm so killing you now you've seen this, Spike. Soon."

Spike grins. He couldn't have dreamt of a more entertaining way to spend the evening. "Let go then, Summers. Or shall we just forget about patrol and recharge a bit more?"

Buffy has her head turned away and stares in the distance, thinking hard. He doesn't think she's aware of the rhythmic kneading her hands are doing. It's not what he normally recommends for a hand job, but her every touch makes the world shiver and shimmy. She needs the connection more than he does, he reckons, maybe because she's alive. Her breasts wobble slightly with every movement of her hands and he suddenly can't wait to get his hands on them. He needs to fuck her, now, and at the same time keep his head and not come all over her again. He's got a job to do while he's at maximum power.

He pushes her shirt and her bra away from her breasts. They're small but plump and sweet, with tiny nipples, little candied cherries topping a rice pudding. He tweaks the one and sucks the other hard, teasing a surprised squeak out of the Slayer. Her hands clamp down on his dick and he has to wrench loose or be emasculated.

Buffy opens dazed eyes, all black pupil and quivering eyelashes. "Wh-wha?"

Spike retreats a few paces from where she's sitting. It hurts to leave her vicinity.

She squirms with a heartrending moan. "Spike! Come back here! Now! I'm going to punch your nose and stake you if you don't come over here!"

Her utter discomfort is a joy to behold at first, but then Spike starts receiving strange twinges in his head. It's not the deprived feeling of not touching her, it's something different, something vaguely familiar yet completely alien. It urges him to stop torturing her. What can it be? He decides to ignore the strange compulsion. He must be a little addled from the spell.

Spike smiles expectantly at the Slayer, who's still staring pitifully at him, unable to keep still. She tries to touch herself but it's evidently not satisfactory.

"Spike! Please!"

"On one condition. Spread for me like a good girl and no yanking on my dick like it's a bell rope."

"Yes, okay, but first get me off!"

She doesn't care what she sounds like anymore, Spike notes with glee.

"I think not, Slayer."

With one brutally quick movement, he pushes her legs up and shoves in, finally. He thrusts deep and hard, changing the angle until she cries out. The heat and delicious friction almost makes him lose his head but he manages to rein himself in. He keeps up a steady pace so the Slayer won't know he's thinking of something else. The power of their connection thrums steadily in his veins, and he knows he can do this if he can hold off long enough.

He pushes her face in the crook of his shoulder so she won't be able to see his face. He closes his eyes to concentrate better, and although that has the effect of making the sensation in his cock more urgent, his new power sharpens as well. He feels around delicately until he's quite sure where the small object he wants to move is, and then - strand by tiny strand - loosens the  minute wires in his brain. He wishes hard and feels the tiny prickly object land on his lower lip, as if it's a cigarette. He squashes the laugh that bubbles up in him at the strange workings of his brain and lets go. He's free now, or he will be when they dissolve the spell, and at this moment he's absolutely sure he will.

By God, he's William the Bloody again, doing what he's supposed to do, fucking a quivering, mewling victim into the ground. His fangs elongate, his forehead scrunches with the delightful pain of the change, he can smell the blood thundering in her veins. He almost strikes, but the streak of hard commonsense that's made him a Master Vamp yanks him back from that precipice just in time. He bangs away at the girl underneath him so hard that he would have pounded her into a pulp if she hadn't been the Slayer. He lets loose his climax and falls over a precipice so steep and long that he shouts in fear and ecstasy combined.

Spike comes to with his nose against a piece of rock and his knees next to his nose. What the hell? He stops cataloguing the location of his limbs and simply uncurls onto the floor of the cave. He can sense Buffy lying still a few feet away. There is no discomfort. Weren't they fucking at the edge of the bluff? Then he remembers what his real purpose in that fuck was and he stretches out his arms to their limit and bellows his joy to the roof. He's back. He's bad, he's mad and he's gonna kick the world's ass. If he gets out of here.

He lights a little fire and then kicks the Slayer awake.

"Oi. Slayer. Wakey wakey. Time for reconnaissance."

Buffy glares at him with a baleful eye and carefully and slowly unfolds herself from her embarrassing position. She turns away to put her clothes in order, as if he hasn't been getting several eyefuls of all her intimate bits, not to mention the sounds she makes when she's being thoroughly porked.

"You're quite a woman, Slayer," he says. "You've got more wild and greed in you than most vamps."

"Ouch." She still knows how to find his nose with great accuracy, even in a dark cave.

"Shut up, Spike," she says. "If you ever mention this to anyone, I will kill you."

"Hardly, Slayer, hardly. Not exactly a point in my favor to shag a Slayer instead of killing her."

Buffy shifts around uncomfortably. "Why didn't you?"

Spike shrugs. "Chip, Slayer. Memory getting wonky on you? Must have been some shag, eh. Spell is doing mighty funny things to us. Best get rid of it soonish."

"But Riley....Yeah. This can't go well."

She slogs over to the fire and warms her hands. "I'm hungry again, and I so don't wanna eat more cold soup straight from the can. If I throw one in the fire, will it explode?"

Spike feels quite generous all of a sudden. "I'll feed you. Wait and see."

He opens a can, maneuvers it into the fire with a couple of sticks and stirs it with yet another piece of wood until it starts to bubble. "Slayer. One can of hot soup, courtesy of Spike."

Buffy sniffs it suspiciously. "Did you spit in it?"

"Hey! Throw a nice gesture back into a fellow's face, that's pleasant!"

"Sorry. It smells good."

He's succeeded in making her feel a little guilty. It's a first.

"Eat it, then. The night isn't getting any younger, what with fainting spells and compulsory sex."

"Don't say that word! It wasn't sex! It was...something else.  It was hormonomania. Of the spell-made variety." She sounds pleased with herself. Then the red face steals back. "We will never ever bring it up again."

"Promise," Spike says. Everyone knows that promises to a good person don't count.

They're back at the edge of the cliff, trying to locate Finn's patrol down below in the increasing murk. Spike doesn't know what Adam's plans are, but some of his human parts must have overdosed on Lord of the Rings; he seems to be trying hard to recreate Mordor down there. How to pinpoint Mr. Bland in time before they blast themselves to unconsciousness and waste another night? Spike can't afford not to find Riley, he needs to be out of here for his happy ride into freedom. The Slayer will never release him from the spell unless they find the tosser; the soldier is her only remaining link to her old life, what with her mum and the Superfriends pushing up  daisies.

"Slayer? Shall we?"

She unbuttons her jeans and he shoves them down for her, opens up his own pants and slides in easily from behind. In spite of his irritation at her, his boredom with the whole shebang, the living heat of her keeps surprising and overwhelming him. The surge of power between them builds to greater heights with each fuck. Spike closes his eyes and thrusts slowly, trying to control the flares of energy racing through them both, wanting to postpone the climax and the total loss of control he fears.

The moment he closes his eyes he's falling, clawing his hands in the air at the sudden loss of footing and inexplicable vertigo that hits him. They're falling over the edge, he hadn't realized they were that close, and they're...not falling, but floating over Sunnydale. The whole grid is laid out beneath him; he knows they're up high, but he can still see every detail, like an eagle suspended on a column of hot air.

"Look," Buffy says in his mind. "A looting party."

They zoom in to check it out. They're a motley crew, mostly dressed in khakis, and it's only when you come close that it's noticeable there's not a normal being among them. No pure blooded demons, no humans; each and everyone is patched together from different bits. They shuffle and shamble, not being symmetrical, most of them, and it's hard to guess why Adam would create beings like these. Can this lopsided lot of Frankenfreaks really be effective in battle?

The leader lifts an orange arm, bits of khaki battledress still flapping from it, and croaks out an order. Spike feels Buffy twitch, and it almost lands them back in their bodies. It's kinda off-putting to see them crouched there on the cliff, rigid grimaces on both their faces, taut and agonized. They zoom in again to get a better look at the leader, and yeah, it's Soldier Boy, what's left of him anyway. Not so pretty anymore, although there are remnants of healthy Idaho hide, sitting strangely tan amidst the green and purple of his assorted parts. Spike could almost pity him. If it were up to him, he'd just put him out of his misery. Well, after having a bit of fun with him, probably.

His focus wrenches back to the Slayer quivering beneath him, about to go over the edge. His own embarrassing level of excitement is a sure sign he's about to follow suit. It'll take them at least an hour to get down the cliff path; if only they could be down there already.

The ground hits his feet with spine-shattering impact, and in his surprise and shock he lets go his last pretense at control and convulses hard, clawing at the Slayer's shoulders. He's strangely sorry he can't see what she looks like right now, next time he wants to fuck her face to face. Kiss her. The unnaturalness of that idea jolts him out of his stupor and he takes in his surroundings, casually holding the Slayer close to him with his hands on her breasts. Her heartrate is slowing down and her body hangs limp and warm against him.

They're in a cemetery, close to his crypt. That's where the patrol they observed a minute ago was headed. How did they get here? Did they actually jump down the cliff and land here? He lifts a dusty boot and sees it's left an indentation of at least 4 inches in the not so soft California soil . Curiouser and curiouser.

Spike's sharp ears pick up the stomping of dozens of clunky demon boots coming in their direction and he picks up the Slayer and shuffles into his crypt. Let's hope they look like one of Adam's creatures themselves, a Slayer-vampire hybrid, the scrumptious Slampire.

He knows he could just have shoved her off his dick and let her walk himself. He's definitely slipping; plenty of hot pussy waiting for him in the outside world, no need to get attached to this one. It may have the strength of 10 Hoover Power Vacs, but quim's just a starter. He prefers the main course of live blood.

Spike leans the Slayer against the wall of his crypt and she moans throatily when the cold stone touches her bared breasts. Why can't he stop fucking her? They don't have time for this. She starts sliding down to the floor, her legs won't hold her up anymore and he lifts her on top of the sarcophagus. It's too high to fuck her standing up, so he climbs up after her, much hindered by the trousers around his knees, and heaves a sigh of relief when he slides inside her hot cunt again. Ah, now he can look at her. Her face with its golden tan is deliciously flushed, her eyes are enormous and her mouth is the most wonderful ripe red... He sucks on her lower lip, thrusts his tongue in her mouth, stealing her breath and her sanity away from her.

Spike vaguely hears voices outside, but he prefers to concentrate on the scorching hot slayer hips undulating below him. Buffy freezes and starts talking to him, hammering weak fists on his chest. She should shut up and let him get on with it.

"Spike! Stop! I hear Riley out there. We have to get to him now."

Spike's not so sure that's really necessary. They could just fuck some more. The Slayer pushes him off and he falls down hard. She's futilely wrestling with her clothes, which he could have watched for hours if he hadn't been planning on fucking some more.

"My hands aren't working. Why are my hands not working? Spike, did you do an evil spell on my hands?"

Time to show her what a vampire is made of. His hands are rock steady and he zips and buttons the Slayer up with impressive speed. His knees are as wobbly as the Marshmallow man after the Ghostbusters hit it, but she won't know if he keeps on kneeling.

They sneak out of the crypt, doing their best silent and stealthy act, which doesn't rate high on Spike's stealth-ometer, but he's making allowances for discomfort in the crotch area. The troop of demonic hybrids is easily visible in the bright lights of the Sunnydale cemetery. Finn is pacing up and down in front of them, setting out a battle plan or some such. All the demons are at least as tall as the overgrown soldier himself; apparently height was a selection criterion, which everybody knows is bollocks. Twenty really tall mean demons. He guesses the Slayer and he need a battle plan too.

They slither back to the shelter of the crypt.

"Did you see Riley? They've given him more demon parts than Adam even! I have to save him! Turn him back!" the Slayer whimpers.

"Not every monster can be turned back, Slayer," Spike says. "It's nothing like putting a soul back in."

Her fists are balled and she looks at him as if he personally transformed her lover into three quarters Nightcrawler.

"We separate him from his troops and take him to a safe place," she says, ignoring his sensible advice. The degree-of-difficulty score hits her. She wilts a little. "We can do that. Right?"

"We could just blast them with our death ray," Spike suggests.

"We have a death ray?" the Slayer says.

"Worth a try, innit? Who knew we had helicopter-view and teleportation?"

"Yeah." She doesn't sound convinced. "We'd have to...assume position, wouldn't we, for it to work? Nothing is worth Riley seeing me like that. Death ray is out."

Pity. The Slayer looks at him doubtfully. They're sitting very close, knee to knee and almost nose to nose, and he can see every little gold fleck in her irises. She purses her lips and he can't resist kissing them. His brain ejaculates an idea. He never realized he knew so much about military jargon and tactics. Wearing that SS jacket on the sub all those years ago must have rubbed off on him.

"We'll just have to revert to the good old tactic of guerrilla warfare," Spike says.

"Remind me of the good old guerrilla tactics?"

"We pick 'em off one by one under cover of darkness." It sounds like a quote from a movie, but blimey if he can remember which one. He wishes he could, it would give him a clue as to the success of said tactics.

"I can do picking off," the Slayer says, visibly perking up. But then she sags against him again. "What if they have power stations like Adam?"

She's good, Spike has to admit that. Brains as well as brawn, really tiny but effective brawn.

"We could hold hands and rip their hearts out? That worked well that time in front of your house, didn't it?"

"Okay. Let's go do it." The Slayer trips to the crypt exit, wiggling her luscious arse. "But not Riley. We do not kill Riley. Maybe stun him, but not damage him."

"Cross my heart and hope to die," Spike promises solemnly. She's moving away from him and the connection between them lengthens with it, the power contained for the moment but ready to spring into action.

She raises an eyebrow. "You are dead, remember?"

"Right," he says. "Dead like me."

"Kay. Let's go kill the cavalry, then," she says.

"I think we're the cavalry."

"Didn't you learn anything at Thanksgiving? Cavalry equals bad guys. Indians equal good guys." She pauses. "Shumash revenge-demons may not be the best example. But anyway, I'll be Sitting Bull and you can be Geronimo."

"Geronimo? Don't think so, Slayer," Spike says.

They move under cover of gravestones and crypts.

"If you're Sitting Bull," he says, "I'll be General Custer."

They're getting closer to the orderly row of marching demons.

"You do remember Sitting Bull killed Custer, right history-boy?"

"Oh. Yeah. Well, now you mention it, I'll be Sitting Bull."

"I'll buy the "bull" part," she says.

"Hey—"

"Shh. Don't talk while we're sneaking up on people," the Slayer says. "It kind of makes the sneaking pointless."

The vanguard demon is a mostly ochre-colored dinosaur thing, whose heavy tail swishes threateningly to and fro, with a human head and hands.

"How do we kill it, Spike?"

"Rip its head off. He's got an extra heart in his arse, no point in going for the upper heart. On three. One, two, three!"

The moment their hands touch, they don't need to talk anymore; each of them knows exactly what the other's position is. It's clumsy but effective; they jump forward, holding hands all the while, and with their free hands each grab a jaw and twist. Bright orange ichor sprays all over their clothing, smelling strangely of mouthwash. One down; nineteen to go.

The next one has a certain familiarity about him, a buddy of Riley's maybe. Spike doubles his pace to prevent the Slayer realizing this and hesitating.

"Assimilate this!" he whispers fiercely as the orange and brown patched thing crumples to the floor.

"Shut up, Spike. And stop channeling Xander, it's majorly wigging me."

"Grumpy," he retaliates. "Also, Dopey, Sneezy, Bashful and Happy. In fact, the only one you're not is Doc."

"Spikewhite comes out of the closet of Disney-love," she sneers softly as they do a tiger crawl over the moist cemetery turf.

Spike grins for a few seconds, enjoying the thrill of the hunt and the rapid back-and-forthing between him and Buffy. Kicking ass is his third favorite thing in the whole world, especially with a partner who seamlessly predicts his every move. Top of the list is drinking blood, of course, and second fucking the Slayer. The grin disappears when he hears himself thinking that and remembers just whose arse is bobbing up and down in front of him. His mortal enemy's arse. The girl who could be his third Slayer. He clenches his jaws and catches up with her again. He shouldn't forget about this all the time, he has his reputation to think off. What's left of it.

Two more without a hitch. The fifth, an Initiative soldier-Polgara blend, shouts a warning into the night and they have to make a run for it after they've disemboweled him, which didn't kill him outright as he thought it would.

They press against a crypt wall. The Slayer is panting attractively so that he can't resist pivoting over to her to get in a quick kiss and a grope. She mumbles protests against his lips but it only buzzes his skin softly. If she really didn't want to she'd kick him in the balls. Somewhere far away it worries him that he wants the macking. It's her death he should want as his trophy, not her mouth.

They are like one creature now, gliding through the night, invisible and deadly, depleting the numbers of Finn's troop steadily. Is it magic? Finn stumbles around in the mist of smoke and blood, shouting for his missing soldiers, but before he gets them in his sight they're all down. The soldier hybrid, bewildered Middle America staring from his blue human eyes, sinks to his knees and bellows at the skies to help him. Buffy lets go of Spike's hand, but their connection is so strong now he can still feel it, reeling out like a power cord between them, thrumming with sex and magic and victory.

Finn's human hand stretches out before him in entreaty. "Buffy..." he says, before his other, green, hand whips up the gun and starts shooting.

It must feel like a chip in the head, Spike thinks, wanting one thing and doing another. He touches the chip in his pocket for luck.

Buffy laughs and plucks a bullet out of the air, throws it up and catches it like an M&M.

"Tasty," she says in a sing-song voice. "Hot. Come to me, Riley, and I will make you better."

Riley whimpers and tries to crawl backwards. His demon arm covers his eyes, his human hand grabs at the blades of grass as if they will hold his weight. She doesn't know what she looks like right now, hair dancing around her head like Medusa's fangy friends, eyeballs orange and glowing and as big as golf balls. Of course Lieutenant Finn in there is scared, and his loaned parts had better be as well.

"Riley," Buffy carols sweetly. "Don't be afraid, it's me, Buffy, I'm going to help you. I'm gonna make you better."

The Slayer kneels down beside Riley and places two hands on his head, as if giving him her blessing. The former Iowa linebacker bucks up and cries out harshly. Spike wanders closer. What the hell does the Slayer thinks she's doing? Is she planning on torturing the poor sod to death?

Demon Finn screams and writhes. His thrashing feet threaten to dislodge the Slayer, and Spike sits down on the meaty thighs to help her.

Finn gives a last gurgling, choking scream before his head falls back on the turf and the Slayer gasps. She jumps off the still body and backs off, stammering and pointing.

One of the green demon arms has come off, bleeding sluggish fluid, but the human stump it was attached to bleeds profusely. That must really hurt, which is okay if it's Finn. Also, yummy blood smell.

"What the hell are you doing, Slayer? Performing field surgery?"

"I didn't do it! I was comforting him, telling him he'd be alright, and then his arm came off just like that!" Buffy stammers.

"The miracle is it took you this long to break your bumpkin boy-toy. If "comfort" takes his arm off, you must have been holding back when you two were doing the nasty. Or should I say, 'the vanilla'?"

The Slayer Is looking dazedly at the stump and pushes it against the seeping torso like a girl trying to mend her doll.

"Admit it, Slayer, you need a bit of monster in your man. Too bad his monster parts are only tacked on."

"Shut up, Spike," she says, but there's no heat in it.

She sounds miserable and frightened and he takes pity on her. "Cheer up. We're magic, ain't we? We'll put Humpty Dumbass here together again."

"But its not his real arm, it's a demon arm!"

"Yeah, well, you got any ideas about finding the demon who's wearing Soldier Boy's arm? 'Sides, you still sure you want to save the wanker? When he's like this? Might not thank you for it."

The Slayer nods and he feels her attention come back to him. The connection splutters to life with a surge of white heat that shoots straight to his groin. He catches her eyes and sees the same fire there. She licks her lips in an unconscious gesture and automatically he steps closer to her, aching for her touch, her smell.

"No, Spike, we have to join him together."

Right. He knew that. He grabs the surprisingly heavy arm and positions it against the red bleeding stump. A sizzling sounds and the smell of pork chops pervades the air. Riley's chest heaves and he sits up and sinks back down again without opening his eyes or giving any other sign of consciousness. The arm looks to be attached.

"Um, should we maybe check to see if he's still alive?" she says. She's sort of hovering over the soldier, hands fluttering, obviously afraid of repeating the girlfriendly dismembering act.

"I'm thinking you should."

"Riley? Honey?"

No answer. She taps his cheek lightly. Spike enjoys her impression of gentleness, it's almost lifelike.

Finally the Slayer takes the thick wrist in her tiny strong hands and takes a pulse. "Well. Thirty beats per minute sound all right to you?"

"Do I look like I know about heartbeats?"

It's getting colder and in addition to the smoke and the darkness a thick mist is forming close above the ground. The Slayer's anxious face floats above it, head cocked to catch a sound Spike himself can barely hear. Is she getting vampire traits? Unobtrusively he checks his throat for a heartbeat. Nothing, thank God. He's perfect just as he is.

He opens his mouth to tell her they should pick up the unconscious Finn and get out of here when a blue-green arm shoots out from the mist and grabs the Slayer by the throat. Adam. She reacts like he knew she would, doing all the right things to get out of Adam's grip, twisting and kicking and elbowing but his strength keeps her dangling above the ground like some low-rent grifter being hanged for petty crimes.

"Buffy!" he yells and throws her the knife he keeps in his boots.

She catches it but the green hide is impervious to her backward stabs. Spike dances around the unperturbed Adam, who's intent only on choking the Slayer. Spike's nothing but an annoying insect buzzing around his big important head.

I'll show him, Spike thinks, ticked off no end. Show the Slayer that he's someone to be reckoned with, but his mind is a blank. He kicks the back of Adam's knees, a move that has crippled many a bigger enemy, but the powerful thighs don't even tremble. Bugger bugger bugger. Adam's alone now, but of course, there'll be reinforcements coming in. He can feel the life force draining out of him through his link to the Slayer. He'll have to be fast. What did the she say? Power cell? Heart? He reaches desperately for the slackening link between them, grabbing as much power as she still has to give and plunges his fist in the green and tan back, under the chromium-plated ribcage, angling upwards towards the heart. He pours in their peculiar magic with all the force he can muster, willing the human and demon patchwork to part ways.

His fingertips encounter a hard lumpy object and just when he grabs tighter to pull it out a green elbow comes at his face with the speed of a military jet breaking the sound barrier.

Spike lies flat on his back, unable to move around the mountainous lump of pain that sits on his face. Occasionally a quick flash of the fight moves across his field of vision. The Slayer flies by at a level of approximately 4 feet, horizontally, head first. Not a good sign. Then Adam stomps on his left thigh while pursuing her. Spike doesn't feel it. He notices the gaping hole in the hybrid's back, with a black object visible through the gore, the seams oozing motor oil or whatever it is they use for his Borg parts.

He should tell the Slayer. When he opens his mouth there's an eruption of pain from the Fuji Yama on his face and he blacks out again. That won't do. Talking is clearly out, so he pushes himself to his knees silently. He can't see very well. His nose, larger then he remembers it being, sits in the middle of his eyes and he can only see around the edges of it.

Adam and the Slayer come towards him, pirouetting by in a tight embrace. It's like getting into a fast-moving revolving door and he judges his moment as best as he can. He jumps onto Adam's back and holds on through all the lava flowing and earthquakes happening on his face. What was he doing here again? Oh, right, heart machine, and he digs his slow clumsy hands in the hole he finds. He hasn't the strength to wrench out the whole thing and snaps a wire.. Adam's whole titanic frame shudders, and he hears keening form the Slayer, but the giant doesn't fall. Snap, another wire. The next. Slowly, like a continent sliding into the sea, the broad back beneath him starts to tremble and incline downwards. Spike grabs an ear-shaped handle somewhere and hangs on for the fall.

When he comes to, the situation hasn't much improved. There's still pain, Tunguska-sized craters of pain, and he can't see. A rat is scrabbling at his corpse, trying to open his pants and he swats at it weakly. The rat snaps at him and he cries a little at the indignity that even rats talk back to him now. Life isn't fair. Has he fallen that low? The world becomes a little sharper, but also stranger when he feels hot hands closing around his dick.

For God's sake, he's expected to service the bloody Slayer in this condition? She can just go to hell. A man has his pride, but right now, he has none, there's just pain and movement he wishes would stop. Adam's elbow makes the Slayer's fondness for his nose seem like love taps. He contemplates speaking sternly to the Slayer about unreasonable expectations but he remembers talking's out.

His cock, however, refuses to lie down and go gently into that good night. The ornery thing perks up and starts sending messages to his brain. Well, he's not playing. A hot wet velvet envelope slides over his cock and if she wouldn't move at all it might be passing nice, but no, of course she does. He's crankily feeling himself tugged towards true arousal and then he realizes he can see again. The Slayer is lying over his legs, combining sucking his dick and anxiously talking in a dizzying variation. Oh, hey, his ears are working again.

"Spike? Spike, can you hear me? I'm guessing this is going to work healing you, making the energy just like we did for Riley. Are you okay? Is it getting better?"

Her head bobs down again.

"Unh," he says and it still hurts but it's kind of a victory to speak at all.

The Slayer flushes when they make eye contact and his dick flops out of her mouth onto his belly. "Spike? Are you back? Oh. Okay. I know this looks kind strange, but I thought..."

"Unh," he says again, making it a nice, drawn out moan. She's not gonna stop now, is she?

She starts moving again, hesitantly, her tongue swirling around the head of his cock, her hand firmly pumping the root.

"I can feel the healing start," he whispers dramatically. "There's brain damage, I think, but if you can hold on for a bit longer?"

This is nice. He stares at the sky, gray in the middle and pink at the edges. There's a slow gathering of forces through his whole body, excruciatingly slow but inexorable and finally he comes gently into her mouth, managing to move a minimum of muscles. Aah. He does feel better. He might even try moving a fingertip or so.

The Slayer, as is her irritating wont, has other ideas. She has the gall to tug at him, which you should never do with brain-damaged people. "Spike, I didn't just put my mouth through the grossness Olympics for nothing. Come on. Get up. It's getting light. We need to get out of here."

Where's 'here,' exactly? Much to his surprise his brain supplies the answer. In a graveyard in Sunnydale, not ten yards from his own crypt. Yes. And dawn approaching. A good idea to move out of the open, definitely. He sends a reveille to his limbs but they refuse to stand at attention. The Slayer has figured this out, too, apparently. She grabs him by his armpits and lugs him towards the crypt entrance, his boots digging black traces in the turf.

The welcoming dankness and darkness of his home soothe his anxieties. He finds a comfortable spot on the stone floor and plans to sleep.

"Wait here," the Slayer hisses. "I'm going to get Riley."

Wait? She must have an exaggerated idea of his powers of locomotion. He's not going anywhere. He closes his eyes for a minute and the crypt door is banging open already. He knows it's the Slayer, just like he knows she's carried the comatose body of her piebald sweetie here in a fireman's grip. The Slayer even has sufficient sense to crawl over to him and curl up against him tightly. Her warm hands slide under his T-shirt and he falls toward sleep contentedly. Sleep and heal. Get the strength to get his dechipped self out of here tomorrow.

The sun is shining on Spike's back, warming him and making him feel wanted and loved. He stretches luxuriously, taking his time about it and shifting back into the delicious fiery heat. A big dark cloud moves in, obscuring the light and warmth and sucking the life out of his blissful state.

"Hostile Seventeen," a voice grates harshly and Spike wakes up from his sunny dreamscape, rolling away from the green and orange fist, which he feels more than sees descending. He's instantly alert and scrambles up, happy to have a proper scrap for breakfast. Not-so-pureblooded-human being-anymore Finn may be this great big lumbering creature but Spike's got speed and strength on his side. For Spike the true glory of it all is being able to hit him again, being able to fight, to count for something. Although now that Finn is part demon, he might have been able to anyway, but never mind.

Spike lands a few exploratory kicks on the parti-colored legs and dodges the return swipes Finn tries on. Hah. Spike wasn't taught his fighting in boot camp, he learned it through many decades of scrapping and back-alley catfights and he can predict every standard move the ex-man tries on. What a berk the guy is, demon or not. His fist connects to Finn's nose with a wonderful crunching squelching sound and Spike shouts for joy.

"Spike!" the Slayer squeaks. "Don't kill him, remember the spell."

Yeah, yeah. He was only playing.

Unfortunately, the Slayer has drawn attention to herself and it soon becomes clear that Lover Boy hasn't retained his former affection. He goes after her just like Mr. Bit Parts himself. Spike sees the Slayer take it hard in the midriff because she's foolishly standing still and babbling to the big lug, who's completely oblivious to the tearful looks the Slayer throws him. Aw. If he was a man it would soften his heart, but he isn't, so he just follows the altercation with interest.

"Riley, it's me, Buffy. Riley, please, honey, don't you recognize me? Riley!"

She keeps on dodging the fists and repeating her entreaties in a dozen different ways until Spike finally, well, not takes pity on her, because he wouldn't, but gets bored by the repetition.

"Give it up, Slayer," he says. "Bloke's been properly brainwashed and all. Let's just slug him on the head and do our mojo on him, all right?"

The Slayer throws him a dirty look. "Yeah, okay," she pants, "But be careful. Don't damage him too much."

As if he can't be subtle when he needs to be. Which is not now, so Spike just grabs one the ornamental stone vases next to the entrance and catches demon-boy on the knees with it, and when he staggers to the floor Spike gets him on the upswing at the back of the head. The impact on the skull makes a wet scrunching sound and Spike knows our Captain won't be hearing reveille in the next few hours. He puts the vase back in place and turns proudly to the Slayer, dusting his hands.

She grabs fistfuls of duster and tries to drag him down to face her. Her hands are so tiny it hardly makes a crease. "What part of careful did you not understand? You broke his head! I'd kill you for that if I didn't need you!"

"Why bother saying it, pet, if you're not gonna do it?" he says, unfazed.

Not even a token tap on the nose. She must be getting soft on him. Heat radiates from her skin and moist plumes of warm breath caress his face like bursts of steam from a little worked-up engine.

She releases him with an angry thrust and starts pacing the crypt. She's not taking on his mannerisms, is she? He'll have competition for the artery market next.

"So, do we even have a clue how to begin? Last time I tried to touch Riley he fell apart. How do you know what to do? How do you know it'll work?"

Know? He knows nothing. This is just seat of his pants guesswork. All this anally retentive needing to know is not his style. Although he does have inklings, strong inklings, fuelled by the weird passengers in his brain, he wagers.

"Slayer," he says, trying for calm and reasonable, "all we have to do is have at our sexy mojo again and put our hands on your multicolored sweetie. I have a posh lecturing voice in my head telling me so."

"Really?" she says, her eyes big and awed. She raises a trembling hand. "Hi Giles. Thanks for still being there for me."

Christ. "Not like that, you nit!" Spike says. "'S just a feeling."

He checks out the crypt and spots couple of level flagstones. "Here. No reason not to make ourselves comfy, is there?"

He takes off his duster and spreads it out on the floor. He can be gentlemanly, too, what does she know about him anyway? He starts taking off his shirt and grinds to halt when the Slayer turns purple with rage, pointing at him with a quivering finger.

"Now what!" he says.

"You're taking off your clothes! Don't take off your clothes! I don't wanna see your gross undead body!" she spits out, backing off against the tombstone in the middle of the crypt.

He tries reasonable again. "Slayer, we're gonna have to generate a mighty big power surge here," and he can't resist posturing, putting his hand on the waistband of his jeans and pointing to the goods on display. "Stands to reason that the more fun we have and the more comfy we are, the bigger the power's gonna be."

"Fun? Fun! As if! It's never gonna be fun with you, Spike. It's duty. You're a vampire, I'm a vampire Slayer, do the math."

"Vampire equals hot, yeah, yeah," he says, grinning. "Been there, done that, eh Slayer?"

Now she is trying for his nose but he dances away from it. He knows just how to improve on this, though. She needs a little sop for her conscience, because, hey, vampire nose-info. She's hot for it.

He takes off his shirt and T-shirt while she looks on in frozen dismay and advances on her in his best panther prowl. "We're gonna make sex magic, Slayer, and you have no choice in the matter whatsoever. I'm gonna force you to submit to my evil prowess and you'd better behave, or else!"

Anybody saying nay? His vampire hearing gives him heavy breathing and the heart of the Slayer pitter-pattering like mad. He takes off her jacket with faked roughness and forces her down on his duster.

"Lay back, Slayer," he growls. "For the sake of your friends' fate I order you to fake enjoyment. Big enjoyment. Not because it's fun, but because it's your duty. Lie back and think of Sunnydale!"

The Slayer nods. "Right. For the mission."

He's almost sure she's buying it but then he catches a look from her eyes that makes him think she's completely aware of what he's doing. So much the better.

He takes her clothes off, occasionally growling or yanking hard on a piece of clothing to keep up the pretense. Every time he does that she bucks or gasps or closes her eyes in ecstasy. So, the Slayer really likes it rough? When she's naked, she gets an attack of shyness and fights it by starting on his clothes to make them equal. Spike grows still while her little hands busy themselves on his jeans or bootlaces. He needs to savor these completely surrealistic moments. The Slayer, kneeling at his feet to take his boots off. It almost makes him feel awe in stead of just arousal, but he's an evil vampire. He's done this countless times before, seducing a victim before draining her dry at the height of passion. Gives them a good death at least, don't it? Only difference now is that he'll let the Slayer live. They're partners for now, time enough to kill her later.

She lies down shyly and opens up her legs for him. The sight of her and the scent of her arousal make him powerfully hard and he has to fight the urge to throw himself upon her and plunge in. He tells himself he's going for maximum effect before lowering his mouth to her fragrant cunny. The Slayer moans from pleasure and surprise both, and her hands claw at his hair. He knew she'd like this. He takes his time licking every fold and crevice, glorying in the warmth and softness of her thighs against his cheeks and the incredible lemon-and-salt nectar on his tongue.

His fingers slide into her pussy with ease and he blows softly on her clit. "Slayer," he says, "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."

"Hm?"
 

"The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman."

He moves upward, his lips seeking a path to her breast, but gets distracted by the sweet swell of her belly. "Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies."
 

"Whoa, you got a weird simile thing going on there, Spike. Or do I mean metaphor?" the Slayer muses, not dissatisfied, it seems.

"Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies," he murmurs. He's on a roll now. She's eating it up.

"Roe? Fish eggs? Hey! They're not that small!"

"Enough with the weird pop songs, Spike, and just..." she pauses. Spike levers himself up on his elbow to watch her say it, but she wavers and retreats. "Get on with it."

 
Spike sighs. She'd be like that, he might have known. Instead of basking in his words, the sound and reverberation against her clit, she's taking it literally, and is completely unaware of the source of these wonderful phrases. Never mind. If she knew it was from the Bible she'd expect the words to burn his tongue, ignorant modern chit that she is.
 

"I mean, Slayer, that you're a hot little thing and a man should count himself lucky to be pleasuring you."

"Oh," she says.

She sounds pleased, but she recollects too soon who they are and what they're doing.

"Don't say that. It sounds like you're my boyfriend and you're so not. Let's say, Buffy's a pleasure to work with in the battle against evil," she says sternly.

 
The Slayer bucks and cries out wordlessly. Spike takes mental notes. War and weaponry metaphors, check. The time's ripe for his own pleasure and he can't help moaning when he slides in her hot slippery pussy, overflowing with readiness for him. Oh God, he didn't know he was that suggestible, murmuring all those words directed at her has made him feckless and grateful, so that he sighs in earnest as he look upon her flushed face and sees her parted lips. He just has to kiss her and he realizes he hasn't done that before, and it's so interesting he forgets to move his hips until the Slayer shimmies beneath him, catching him unawares and nearly making him spend right then and there.

 
Oh, she's...he loses his train of thought and needs long moments of concentration just to be able to go on. She's all bronzed limbs and silky skin, velvet cunny and spun gold hair, her lips red and luscious and moving against him like liquid mercury, molten, strong, clenching around him. They're hot together, they're combusting and he's going to shed his tight skin and he's gonna mushroom outwards like an atomic bomb. They're burning together and he can't keep going anymore and goes supernova like a sun she's his sun...
 

Their bodies still locked in embrace, faces grimacing and straining from an overdose of joy, they stride, joined, towards the warrior who needs their help. Tombs and stones are no hindrance for their magical substance and Spike sees their twinned hands stretch towards Riley Finn, alabaster and amber, big hand and small hand as one. Their infinite vision pierces this tiny moment. They see what must be done. They touch him on head, heart and hand, and gift him with some of their glorious shining power, channeling it into him so that he can be once again what he was.

The joy of giving the power away is immense, as large and shiny as ten orgasms and the combined Buffy and Spike see the soldier twitch and glow and change, his demon parts fall off and wither. His limbs, half his face and his torso, which were still tan and human, start expanding to make up for lost substance and use up the power to become human again. The growth is going very fast, too fast, there is already more of Riley than there has ever been. Buffy-and-Spike become worried and try to stop sending the power into him, but they can't, he takes over and keeps devouring it. They become afraid; it's too much, they can't give more. The Riley mass of flesh keeps twitching, multiplying, and it's taking all, all the power they amassed, all the power that was in them is sucked out and the Buffy-and Spike creature simply vanishes.

Spike's eyes snap open. He's lying with his forehead on the Slayer, who's awakened at the same moment he has. They're glued together by cooling sweat and sticky come. The Slayer is showing signs of disturbance, forehead wrinkling up, eyes pinching shut, lips grimly clenched together.

He climbs off her, carefully, just as she says "Get off me, Spike. Right now."

He steps away from her and surprisingly, he isn't missing the connection. He feels normal, a separate being from the Slayer, who has returned to her regular state of anger and frustration, stomping around and putting on clothes with her back to him. He still likes the lush curve of her bum, make no mistake, his hand itches to give her an approving slap right there, but he doesn't feel the slightest inclination to recite the Song of Songs to her. What has happened?

Strange sounds from behind the sarcophagus sharply bring back the recent magical happenings in his brain. Lieutenant Finn has risen and multiplied like an exceptionally springy loaf of Wonderbread and it did not go well. He finds his jeans, jumps in and gets out his emergency stake, ready to defend himself against whatever creature is hiding behind the stone coffin. His boots can wait. The Slayer has similarly shrugged on some essential items of clothing and they may not be one creature anymore but they're still agreed on the next course of action, so much is clear. He nods to her that he understands and they carefully circle the sarcophagus. God knows what they'll find.

They see not one giant Riley, but an olive and pink and white amorphous creature rolling helplessly on the floor, now forming hands, then other limbs and even different faces.  "Buffy!" all the faces shriek. "Help us!" And he's as shocked as a heartless soulless being can be when he sees who the faces belong to. It's not just Riley, but also Willow and Harris and Rupert Giles, forming and reforming on different places in the fleshy blob on the floor, screaming in delicious agony and fear and confusion, begging for release.

"Kill me, Buffy, please kill me..."

Spike grins and turns to watch the effect this has on the Slayer. She sinks to her knees, pushing her fist in her mouth. "Oh God," She says, over and over, "Oh God, what have we done? They weren't dead; they must have been inside us, and now they're all in here, and oh God, o God. Spike, we have to help them, Spike, we have to do something."

Spike opens his mouth and makes a wonderfully liberating discovery. He feels no compulsion to help the Slayer at all.  No strange feelings of compassion in his head. He's truly free now, chipless. His fingertips do a quick check in the pocket of his duster to feel if the chip's still there, and it is.  He can just up and go and leave Sunnydale and the Slayer and her troubles behind. He could even kill her right now if he was so inclined; she's utterly helpless and lost.

So why is he still here, turning over his options in his mind? Time was, he'd have been halfway to his car if he so much as felt the beginning of a desire to leave grow in his mind. Is there a residual effect? Nah. He's remembered who is, is all. William the Bloody, slayer of Slayers. He's not gonna pass up a perfect opportunity to kill his third Slayer, is he now? And it's gotta be a fair fight, not with her all weepy and broken, or it won't count. He's got a reputation to maintain. That's absolutely the only reason that he nods to her and helps her up.

"Best put it out of its misery, Slayer," he says. "Even your little pals don't deserve a fate like this."

Her face gets that look of absolute determination he's seen before, the face that makes her turn a certain defeat into victory. "No. No way. I'm not giving up on them. I'm gonna take the power back out of there, out of that thing and get them back in their own bodies."

"Um, Slayer, their own, buried and decaying bodies you mean?"

She grimaces and turns her body away from the agonized moans issuing from the heaving blanket of flesh. "Well. Yeah. It's only been a few days, right?"

"Ye-ah," he says, doubtfully. "What makes you think that will work?"

"Of course it'll work," she says. "We'll make it work. Like you said, Humpty Dumpty. "

'We' again, he notes. He's not feeling the 'we' so much right now.  The moaning and screaming is distracting him, makes him think of having a bit of supper. "Yeah. Well. What I actually said was, 'Humpty Dumbass.'"

He sees her glower and his nose feels a pre-punch twinge. Before her fist can act, he points out, "Just sayin'  all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again."

"Don't be a downer, Spike. It's only a nursery rhyme. And besides, we're not 'King's men.' "I'm 100% USDA prime – ." She catches herself. "I'm an American woman and you're a hell-spawn vampire. So."

At first he's not planning to point out the many flaws in her plan. Hell, it's more flaw than plan, but he cant help touching on a major dilemma.

"S'pose it works, Slayer. S'pose you get your friends' power back out again. What about Soldier Boy? Will he survive it?" He jerks his head towards the shriveled remains of Finn's demon parts. "They're not looking particularly lively."

Her eyes grow even bigger. Then she shakes her head. "No, not gonna listen to this. We're gonna take all the, the stuff over there with us and use it to make a new Riley."

She gets up and tugs on his arm. She's jerked back when he doesn't move. "Spike. Come on. We have to get moving. Every second counts."

"Does it?"

Spike's just happy he's not slavering on her heels like a sick puppy anymore. That wasn't right. He'll join her under his own steam, not tugged along like an errant toddler.

The soundtrack of misery Muzak coming from Finn and his all-Scooby orchestra is clearly getting on the Slayer's nerves. Even he's not enjoying it so much anymore. He doesn't like seeing the Slayer fray at the seams, at least, not when he isn't the one pulling the stitches out.

Buffy sighs, harried and exasperated. She's not part of him anymore, but the rise and fall of her breasts is a riveting sight, now that he knows her skin is golden even there and her nipples are pinker than he'd have expected with a fake blonde. They fit right into his hands, the perfect size for breasts. He hasn't paid enough attention to them so far, really. Always the rising tide of the spell- induced ecstasy getting in the way.

"Spike!" she grates. "Stop staring at my midriff and get to work!"

He quirks an eyebrow. "Midriff? Slayer, I believe your penchant for euphemisms is getting out of hand. I was ogling your pretty tits."

She stomps her foot. Her frustration's balm for his feelings - embarrassment and lust in one confused package. This dance he knows. He thrusts, she parries; she lunges, he turns her point away. But when it's emotions instead of swords, she's not so proficient.

"Shut up," she says. "You don't get to say those words. You're not my boyfriend! We'll never ever go there again."

"Oh, please, and how will we get the mojo to resurrect your friends? I think we both know what will happen the next few hours. Don't fool yourself." The words are boiling out of his mouth, hot and uncontrollable. "You'll be having the best sex of your entire life, sex the like of which you'll never ever have with Captain Straight-up-and-down here, the like of which you'll still remember when you're a little old lady!"

He's shouting to be heard over the din of complaining, confused voices. Of course she refuses to acknowledge the truth of his words and evades the issue entirely.

"Gee, I'm so glad I'll get to be a little old lady, Spike, since that means you won't manage to kill me for the next fifty years. Just don't think I have given up on slaying you."

"Just you wait, missy!" Spike says, stepping into her personal zone. "I'll yet feel your neck crunching under my teeth, your heart beating out its last pitiful bursts of life."

She will bend to his will some day soon.

Buffy steps up even closer, grabbing his duster again just like she did a few moments ago. "While a plain old stake in the heart will do for you, Spike."

They're yelling, but the voices subside into faint wailing. They're standing close, almost nose to nose, breathing hard, and it strikes Spike with a strange sense of foreboding how similar almost engaging in mortal combat is to almost engaging in mindblowingly hot kissing. He knows that if he values his independence he'd better get out now. No good can come of this. He's teetering on the brink of a very deep abyss here, and he doesn't fancy falling down the next hundred years of his existence. He'd best do what he's meant for and kill her or die trying. Right. On three.

Spike closes his eyes. Okay, maybe option three. He'll teeter a bit longer. He clenches his teeth and steps back from the seething Slayer.

"Let's be a bit more professional about this, bitch. Let's get going. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can kill you and go back to terrorizing the rest of the world."

"You? Terrorize? Hah. You couldn't scare a four year old in pink knee socks anymore, William the Bloody Chiphead."

Count to ten. He can't even clock  the bitch now because she'll know he's ditched the chip. It would have to be a kill. And he won't kill her now because she's not at her best, grieving and exhausted, and he wants to brag he killed her at her very strongest and fittest moment.

He grabs her by the arm and drags her over, muttering but almost willing, to the sad thing writhing on the crypt floor. Thank God, the things they're saying have degraded into the unintelligible. Eyes in various colors travel over the mottled flesh-colored mass, appearing and disappearing. Patches of hair sprout of transitional heads, in a wildly varying array of texture and color.

"Look at that, you silly bint. Don't waste your time being mad at me. Get it over with."

"You don't get to tell me off!" she hisses, purpling in greater rage. "You think I don't ache for them?" She chokes on her grief audibly then swallows it and turns the fury back on him. "You're a foul evil creature and you don't have the moral sense of a...a hedgehog! So shut up and don't tell me what to do. You're not my mom."

Spike knows it'll be seconds before she'll be sniveling against his coat once more. How has he gotten to know the Slayer that intimately? Also, she's still not hitting his nose. Is there a subliminal Slayer sense thing telling her she'd get punched right back on her own schnozzle, which is not as pretty as his is anyway? He grabs her upper arms and pulls her only slightly resistant form against his duster, which is getting moisturized by more Slayer snot and tears than it ever could have imagined.

It hardly takes a minute this time. The Slayer steps away from him with a shake of her head. She rolls her shoulders a little, shakes out her arms and declares herself ready. It gets easier and easier to hold back on the snark. Bah. He's getting trained like a dog.

She takes hold of his right hand and they both sink on their knees and touch the heaving babbling blob at exactly the same time, as if they've rehearsed it. Perhaps he should turn her. They'd make a great team.

Nothing happens.

"Spike?"

"Don't look at me, love. I haven't the faintest clue. You were there for the original spell," Spike says. "How did you do it?"

Buffy wrinkles her forehead as if she's actually trying to think. She looks like a puppy, all sweet and earnest. He's had puppies in times of dire need; he prefers kitten blood.

"It's called the enjoining spell and there was talking in Siberian. Giles did that. And then Willow did the magic and Xander was the heart."

Siberian? he longs to say, but decides to skip it, not wanting to jinx his good nose-day. "You remembered the words?"

She rolls her eyes. "Duh. Of course not. I wasn't there, and even then...She shrugs. "I just was the vessel of Power, the hand. Willow, Spirit, Xander, Heart, Giles, Mind, invoking the First Slayer."

Spike sighs. Bloody useless, the Slayer on her own. If it's any more complicated than staking a vamp or buying shoes, she needs three people to hold her hand. He's clearly gonna have to talk her through it.

"Okay, Slayer," he says, trying to sounds as Rupesy as he can. "Close your eyes. Remember what it felt like when the power first surged through you. Picture yourself in the same surroundings you were standing in then. What it smelled like, the sounds you heard. Remember the Power. It's close to you. Reach for it. Haul it in, like a fish on a hook, it's like coming, innit, you know it's gonna happen if you just concentrate."

He didn't think it would work, but he's feeling a tingle in the hand that is touching the heaving blob of flesh. If he hadn't been so bludgeoned by chip pain all three times he consumed the Scoobies' powers, he might remember a bit more himself.

"Feel it, Slayer? Tingling on the edge of your perception? Let it come to you. The power's waiting for you to receive it, open wide, open your legs and let it in."

The Slayer giggles, shockingly inappropriate in a solemn moment like this. "It's open your mind, Spike, not your legs. Not everyone keeps their brain there."

"It's a metaphor, Slayer. Shut up and concentrate," Spike bites out. All the backtalk is making him crabby. He's trying to do her a good turn, for God's sake, can't she be properly grateful and do what he says?

When the rush of power suddenly flares up it's strong enough to blast through Spike's brain like a tornado, no a meteor, destroying everything in its path. The Slayer, already too big a blip on his internal radar, looms big and bright, shining in his mind like a terrible sun. Did he think he was making sensible choices a minute ago? Well, forget about that. There is no escaping the gravity well of this particular star. He's caught and will have to circle her for eternity.

There are new sensations trying to crawl inside his mind, prying it open at three different locations, with a crowbar, with dirty too-soft white fingers or hot rough angry calluses, boring into him, confusing him with all the sensations on going on at once. Goose bumps skitter over the folds of his brain with prickly little black legs like skater-bugs on a pond. His brain's a pond, with a monster Nessie lurking on the bottom, feeding on the slithering shoals of voracious piranhas infesting it.

His hands are plunged into the sun, burning them to the bone, consuming the bone until it's as charred and brittle as a spent match, and still the burning doesn't stop, and the screaming, can they please just stop the screaming?

"Spike! Shut up!"

Her words are bracing, a slap in the face, and Spike takes a deep breath to deliver a stinging reply. The screaming stops and he realizes with rapidly blooming shame that it was him who was doing the screaming. Bugger. The witch and the Watcher and the boy are careening around in his brain, not at all enjoying the amusement provided, addling him with their widely different flavors and manners of thinking. Like mixing pepper, fleece and mud. Nobody could turn that omelet into three whole eggs again, he thinks desperately, staring into the Slayer's green eyes as if that will help. Her pupils are huge, sucking him in.

"Spike? Say something. Are you in there?"

His tongue is sluggish. "Yeah. Just barely."

Spike turns his neck in tiny increments, like a very old man. His head is feeling big and fragile, as if it might drop off any moment now. It's not a fun feeling. He really hopes he hasn't condemned himself to a lifetime of walking around with the Scoobs in his head, just because of one moment of inexplicable weakness.

Finally he sees what he was looking for. An inanimate heap of flesh, of unattractive mottled coloration. He gingerly feels around in his head for a fourth occupant, trying not to stir up the other three. It's so much worse than before, having them poured in the cracks between his thoughts. God, it was nice and quiet in there for those few moments between the sodding let's-blitz-Spike's-brain-into-milkshake spells.

"Where's Finn?" he says.

The Slayer's face crumples and smoothes out again, but like a Kleenex, you can still see the fold marks. "Isn't he in your head?" she asks.

So that's what she was hoping for. He's bloody glad it didn't work out; Finn's truly the last person he wants in his head.

"No, Slayer,' he says, more gently than he planned. "He's not."

Spike idly wonders what it must be like to have your friends resurrected and your ex crucified all in the same moment. Which of the two is worse, dead friends or dead boyfriend? He can't tell from her face. Whatever's in there, she's not showing it. Maybe she doesn't know yet herself, but his bet is she's more invested in reviving her friends than the lieutenant. Not that he cares, of course.

She blinks furiously and with a grim set to her jaw sets out to explore the still warm fleshy amoeba that's cooling on the crypt floor. Automatically he lends her strength when he senses she needs it.. A strangled gasp tells him she found something. He toddles over and, folded under a darker flap of hide, there's the Lieutenant's face, his eyes open and staring. Spike thinks he's lucky to have all of his features in one place when he died. The Slayer closes Finn's eyes with trembling hands and Spike squeezes her shoulders reassuringly.

What do you say when someone you really disliked dies a terrible death? 'Liked the screaming in the end, Captain America?' 'Got your girl, nya nya nya nya?' He's gotta go a long way back to remember anything resembling usefulness. Your father died an honorable death, Master William. The sentiment is right, but not quite the right words.

"I'm sure he'd prefer death to being Boris Karloff Revisited, Buffy."

"Shut up," she says reflexively but he can tell she appreciates what he said.

Spike steadies himself with his hand on the sarcophagus and strikes a pose of waiting impatiently for the Slayer, trying to disguise his own trembling thighs and fuzzy vision. He's not, he repeats, not going to fail now. He can't quite remember why the bloody hell he's still here instead of heading out in the DeSoto, music blaring and a few coeds under his belt, but that shining vision is still beckoning in his near future. Give a man a goal and he'll walk through fire.
 

In the small lonely hours of the night, Spike and the Slayer finally drag their weary bones onto the yard of 1630 Revello drive. Problem is, theirs aren't the only weary bones they're dragging. Carrying three people on their backs shouldn't tire out either a vampire or a Slayer, but when it's all balled together in a lukewarm mass of Riley flesh, the size and consistency of a couple of monster bean bags, even vampires start to feel old and hard-used.

The Slayer, though, has sufficient energy left to stumble to a halt at one of the home-made markers that grace the front lawn and to whip up a few sobs at the thought of her mum being buried there. She grabs his hand and her fingers are colder than his. It tugs faintly at his usually unmoving heart and he shakes his head like a dog, trying to dislodge the sympathy that's been squatting there lately, leaving crumpled wrappers of care and empty bottles of nice.

"Don't stand there gawping, Slayer. Mr. Bloat here is killing me."

She doesn't listen. Like that's new.

"Spike?" she says. "Ya think we could try my Mom?"

He looks down at her not even faintly hopeful face and knows he doesn't have to answer, he could just raise a sardonic eyebrow and she'd be reduced to tears. Instead, he tucks her limp hair behind her ear – 'shell-like ear', the bad poet inside suggests.

"Think not, love," he answers softly. "Not a magical death, not living in my head."

"Yeah," she says. "That's what I thought."

She keeps standing there, staring at the clumsy lettering and Spike can feel all her determination run out and drain into the grave. He doesn't want her to lose that, he realizes. If she doesn't care anymore, they're just going to be two pathetically fucked up losers, flotsam on fate's breakers, bound to be smashed against the next likely rock.

He drops his end of the fleshy amoeba they're lugging around and takes a deep breath. Right. Because, who better to counsel the traumatized than the causer of so much trauma?

"Saw some nice flowers a couple of houses back," he offers. "What color did old Joyce like?"

Her spine straightens infinitesimally. "Yellow. She really liked yellow."

She doesn't meet his eyes but there's the faintest spark in her gaze again.

"I could go pick some, or maybe just show you where they are?"

"Yeah. Okay."

They trudge back, but without the triple-Riley weight, it isn't so hard anymore. The sky is lightening faintly on the eastern horizon and the small stand of yellow flowers in someone's front yard is just visible.

Buffy hesitates. "Won't it be stealing?"

"Turn off the Mr. Rogers, love. This isn't his neighbourhood. Don't think the owners will notice a few flowers more or less in the general devastation," Spike says.

Buffy looks up and takes in the burnt-out cars, rotting corpses and dropped loot that dot the frontyards and the street as far as she can see. "Right. They're probably dead, don't you think? It would actually be a criminal waste of good flowers not to pick them."

*

Spike waits out the long slow day on the porch of the Summers' house, smoking and watching the Slayer break her back digging up bodies. Harris is lying on the porch already, looking and smelling very unattractive, but it's innate Harris smell and unattractiveness, not rot and decay. Spike knows intimately what a three day old human body smells like; he'd have to go find Dru's secret stashes of dead victims when the stench started to leak out to the neighbors. She used to hide live ones against a rainy day and forget about them like an alcoholic squirrel.

Harris, now, doesn't smell half as bad as he ought to. There's a tiny bit of hope in that, although reason tells him that ripping out someone's heart and eating it ought to put paid to anyone. The mass of Riley flesh keeps stirring faintly, still warm and springy to the touch. The poor sod is somehow still be alive. There must be gallons and gallons of blood in there, but he can't stir up much of an appetite. Maybe later.

It feels good to smoke again, even if it's not his brand. Their trek through the tunnels took longer than the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and was as slow, dragging the unwieldy heavy blob of magical Riley flesh as they were, but he discovered several ex-smokers and relieved them of their no longer needed fags. The Slayer just stood and watched him do it, even her overactive moral sense bludgeoned by the past few days. The packs smell of rotting person, the fags themselves don't. He exhales slowly, sending vibes of calm to the grimly determined Slayer. She's almost indestructible physically, as she's proving every minute she's digging on, but she needs his emotional support over the connection, a virtual hand in the small of her back. She knows he's doing it, and she doesn't thank him for it, but he's gotten distinctly  fewer death-ray looks directed his way. From the perspective of a predator, it's kind of hard to say if this is a good thing or exactly the opposite.

Spike plans to join her as soon as it's dark enough. He prefers his corpses fresher or more accurately, prefers to create them himself, but he has very little choice in the matter. He must join the Slayer in her ill-conceived undertaking or roam the world saddled with stowaway Scoobies. He'd rather not think of the one moment when he could have escaped from the whole sodding business, when they were trying to re-humanize Riley and the Scoobies inadvertently leaked out. That moment, when he was spell-free and could have escaped, is winking its annoying little red light at him from the back of his brain. Fool, it says. You could have been halfway through the population of Barstow by now. There's nothing here for you. Next time you get a chance, run. Don't fixate on this one opportunity, there'll be another Slayer to kill somewhere, someday.

This is never going to end well.

Spike knows that. It's deeply unnatural for a vampire to be helping a Slayer, and the more so because it's kind of voluntary, but he can't help being fascinated by the sheer wrongness and incipient pain of the whole sordid affair. When you're a vampire there aren't many lines you haven't crossed yet, and this one line, between wholeheartedly evil and something else, is just begging him to heave over a dusty boot and to thoroughly scuff it.

His attention sharpens. She's about to pull a muscle.

"Oi, love!" he calls out. "Come up here for a sec!"

Buffy frowns, turns her face to him, but she needs to straighten up to see him properly and he sees her wince and use her hands to support her back. Even Slayers need a little break. Reluctantly she walks up to him. She stops a little distance away from the porch, in smoke-filtered sunlight, keeping away from the shadows where he lurks. Her eyes are sending him a message he can't quite grasp. Could it be gratitude? Not a message he's ever received before, but her words have their usual snippiness.

"Now what, Spike? And don't call me 'love'. It's tacky and besides, not ever gonna go there."

"Don't get all swelled-head about it, Slayer. It's not what I call people I love."

Spike bends forward as far as he can, but there are ate least two yards between him and the Slayer's troubled brow. "Time for a break, rest those tired Slayer muscles."

He thinks with a pang about their cozy cave up Kingman's Bluff, of the weeks of packaged food they scrounged. Not to mention all those lovely weapons.

Buffy opens her mouth to speak, but changes her mind. Her facial muscles stretch and contract, as if she tastes something particularly nasty and is trying to expel it from her mouth.

"Thanks for your concern, Spike," she says.

It's Spike's turn to feel an unwonted sagging of the cheek muscles holding up his jaw, a part of his body he tends to keep tightly sucked in because it makes him look cool.

"You're welcome, Buffy," he says.  The American phrase escapes his lips before his can check it.

"A Slayer and a vampire being polite to each other? The world must really be ending," she says, almost playfully.

Involuntarily Spike checks the sun, but it isn't as black as sackcloth of hair. That's a relief.

Buffy gets back to her digging and Spike gets back to his smoking.

"Help me out, here, Slayer! Give me something to do? There's no telly, no blood, pussy temporarily unavailable, no incipient mayhem in sight." He takes a long drag on his fag and watches the Slayer's back twitch at his mention of pussy. "My left hand could use a little lovin'. Wanna watch?"

She doesn't respond and Spike gives up on needling her for the nonce. It's just talk, and anyway he doesn't feel like putting his dick anywhere but up her tight little snatch, which is beyond weird and into downright unfamiliar territory. Dru would never have grudged him a bit of quality time with his dick and fucking a meal was the understood thing. He eyes the top of Harris's head, the clots of earth in his curly hair, and wonders if those are his feelings. Have to be, Spike thinks. Not his. The Slayer's his enemy, no more and no less.

When's she's dug up Willow the Slayer needs to take a nap. Spike thinks of suggesting another way of getting rid of her tiredness and sore muscles, but he keeps his trap shut. Slayer's only too happy to do something normal, or at least, mundane, something that doesn't require 'icky' sex mojo with the undead to get it done. So he leaves her be when she tiredly slogs up the stairs.

Dusk pads in on sneaky velvet feet like a hungry cat on the prowl. Spike's just about to wake Buffy up when all his senses jump to alert. The hair on his neck and forearms rises, and he looks round wildly to identify the danger. A subsonic whine starts up. He still can't determine where it's coming from and he jerks in uncontrollable vampire reflex when he's bathed in a flare of brilliant light. A chaotic jumble of sounds assaults his ears at the same time and he's in game face, ducking behind the railing before he can make sense of the attack.

The power's back on. The blinding light is just the street lights and the porch light switching on at the same time. The noise is generated by all the lawnmowers, TVs, fridges and hairdryers that were surprised by the power-outage turning back on. Bugger. This means they're running out of time; someone in the outside world has noticed the king is dead, long live the king. Spike briefly toys with the idea of ruling over Sunnydale's nightly aspect, but decides against it. Too much work to get back his ruined reputation here; nobody will ever trust him again, not after working with the Slayer and co-killing their former leader.

He takes the stairs three at a time to wake the Slayer. He finds her in her dusty girlish bedroom, lying face down on her bed fully dressed and even booted. Aw. She looks very small and young like that. Edible. His stomach rumbles. Never mind. He shakes her shoulder gently.

"Slayer."

No reaction. She must be very deeply asleep.

"Slayer!"

A little louder this time. Still nothing.

"Buffy?"

"Huh?" her  sleepy voice mumbles and she stretches luxuriously, curling and uncurling all the major muscle groups by the look of it, serving him up all her luscious little curves and sleep-flushed skin in bite-sized portions. She turns over and looks at him with her eyes dark and soft, only half-awake. She licks her lips, even lusher now that they're completely lipstick-less. "Spike? You wanna...?"

His cock stirs in response but he reminds it sternly that he rules it, not it him.

"Anytime, Slayer, except now. The power's back on. That means that any moment civil busybodies from all over the State, or possibly the real army, are gonna come pouring in."

The Slayer's deeply struck by his words. "The power? The power is back on?"

She jumps off the bed and starts rooting around in her closet, for weapons, Spike assumes at first. She comes up triumphantly, face happy and shining, with clothes and underwear. "I'm gonna take a shower. The power's back on! I can shower again, and wash my hair, and my teeth are just disgusting! "

She dances out of the door.

"Hey! Who do you think I am, Cassandra, predicting the fall of Troy? Have I been ranting, rending my clothes or tearing my hair? We're in a hurry. There is no time for froofy things like showers!" he shouts after her.

The Slayer sticks her head back in. "You should take one too," she says pointedly and disappears again. He smells? He sniffs his armpits. Not really. Mind, his clothes, especially his trousers, are filthy enough to stand up by themselves.

"Spike!" the Slayer hollers over the sound of the shower running.

She's summoning him. Great. One shower and she's Buffy the Hun.

"Yeah?"

"You could go dig up Giles? It is dark out there."

Of course, that's just what he was planning. It's still galling to get orders, and even worse that he's halfway down the stairs before he realizes this. Women. Now he gets why men have lost their edge lately. It's showers and electricity. When the women felt undergroomed and frowsty and stinky all the time, which was most of history, men easily got the better of them, but now they can continuously wash and condition themselves and that gives them the advantage.

The shovel is where the Slayer's left it, the handle cold but still dirty and sweaty from her hands. Right. He ambles over to the third grave and starts digging. It's not that hard, as the ground hasn't had time to set, and it seems like minutes rather than hours that the shovel catches something soft but dense. Oops. He hopes he hasn't hacked of an essential limb. No, the blade has just left a gash in the solid flesh of Giles' upper arm. It doesn't bleed, silly of him to expect it to.

He uncovers half of Giles and then pulls the rest of him out of the ground by the arms. A living body couldn't withstand such treatment, but as Giles is dead, he'll hardly tell tales. He stacks the heavy body neatly onto the porch, next to the other two, and even takes the trouble to brush off a worm or two from Giles's muddy face. There.

The Slayer wafts out of the door wreathed in smiles and fruity girly scents. She glows from her recent shower and her hair still gives off heat from her bout of hair-drying. In her clean jeans and flimsy top she resembles once again the annoying, perfectly groomed Slayer he used to hate instead of the silent, grim and dirty person he's spent the last few days with. Of course, the fucking would also be a clue that things have changed.

"Did you do Giles? Great. Go shower. We have a spell to do, and perfume de grave is so not a turn-on."

She waves a few fingers in his direction and it's as if there are strings attached between those little finger and his groin, because he'd swear his blood starts sizzling and his hair is stiffening on his head from the wave of desire that sweeps over him. The only thing he could say right now would probably sound much like 'guh' so he takes the sensible route and silently exits the porch. As he heads for the shower at a fast clip, shedding coat and shirt on the way up, his mind scouts ahead to what will await him. A clean and happy Slayer, lying in wait for him on her soft girly bed, eager and willing.

It's hard to get his pants off over his throbbing hard-on. When the hot water hits him the heat is overwhelming, making him dizzy with longing for hers. The water sliding down his skin reminds him of her hands. He has to lean his belly against the cold tile of the shower cubicle to calm himself down, so he won't go off with a pop like an untimely firecracker.

He's not calming down, the hot water is sending the sluggish undead blood racing through his veins, making even his fingertips throb. The Slayer. He's gonna shag the Slayer and it's as if he hasn't been there before, the anticipation is almost too much. He dimly remembers boredom and annoyance the first few times and what the hell was he thinking? She's a goddess, a living talking avatar of Venus, Aphrodite, Kwan Yin...

A brusque banging on the door of the shower cubicle rudely interrupts his daydreaming. Spike grins. He's ready and willing for her. He slides the door open and steps out in all his dripping glory.

The Slayer swallows visibly and steps back, but there's not that much space in the small bathroom. Her heart is beating like that of a tiny bird, he can almost feel it trembling against the palms of his hands and in a minute, he will.

"Spike," she squeaks. "You're all, um, clean. Towel now!"

She flings a big fluffy towel in his direction. The Slayer is so thrown by the sight of his big thick manly bits that's she's fluttering around the room like a frightened kolibri, and he's quite content to leave her in that state. Adrenaline is adrenaline, never mind if it's powered by fear or lust, or both. He flicks the towel behind his back and slowly dries himself, his eyes never straying from the Slayer. She trembles under his gaze but doesn't waver.

"See something you like, Slayer?" he drawls.

"As if," her voice quavers gamely. "Showing off those stupid washboard abs. Get your skanky undead body over to the basement, Spike. We have business to get done."

"Basement? I think not. Your bedroom will do just fine."

Spike folds his arms over his chest, aware that it forces her gaze to drop lower. She blushes hotly, unable to look away, unable to acknowledge it. In that wavering moment he gently grasps her hand, pleased that her hand isn't that much hotter than his is for the moment. He slides his hand up her arm and lets it come to rest on her shoulder. His other hand grabs the hand he just released.

"Spike," she says faintly. "Let go of me. You don't get to go there. No hands."

So he can fuck her but he can't hold hands? He's gonna pay that no mind. And she's saying the words, but her body is leaning into him for all it's worth. He tugs her towards the bedroom across the hall. The Slayer's color fluctuates and her breath comes fast and shallow. When Spike steps inside he's overwhelmed by the bedroom in a way he wasn't when he was in here an hour ago. Then it was just a messy dusty girl's room, faintly musty with sleep. Now it's a fragrant bower, filled to the brim with the scent of clean Slayer. It pulses all around him and he has to lean on her shoulder for a fraction of a moment. He pushes her down on her bed and kneels at her feet. He takes of her soft slippers and slides his hand up to the cream of her thighs.

"We don't have to make it harder than it is, do we, Slayer? Might as well reward ourselves for all the effort and heartache this has given us, right?"

Her hand rises slowly to his face and comes to rest on his lower lip. "Soft..." she says, surprised.

"Just like you," Spike says and leans in for a kiss.

Her satiny skin tingles against his cheeks even before he touches her and she tastes like milk and honey, a sun-warmed ripe morsel of living flesh. They land softly in her bed in a tangle of limbs, the sweet feeling of skin sliding against naked skin. The Slayer twists her lush hips and just like that, he's in. He cries out from the shock as he slides into the oven of her cunt and almost feels a sweat break out over his whole body. Instead, he laps up the dew from her brow.

"Spike," she breathes.

"Buffy," he answers. "Slayer, I mean."

"'Buffy's' fine."

She glows at him, shimmying underneath him; her powerful thigh and belly muscles have no problem at all shifting his weight. She doesn't feel like prey, the blood fizzing and bubbling inside her is not to be uncorked like champagne but to warm his cold body until it feels alive.

Once again, the Slayer confounds him. She flips them over as if she's done it countless times before, which he knows to be untrue, and starts to ride him. Her absurdly small hands grip his upper arms and immobilize him. Ooh, dominant, he likes that in a woman. What couldn't she be, if she turned her mind to it, warrior already, but also lover and queen and goddess. Her breasts tremble like little jelly puddings in front of his face and he closes his mouth around an insistent nipple.

"Spike, I'm...you're...."

She stutters, he waits breathlessly for he knows not what.

"You have stupid hair," she blurts out finally.

That's not quite what he expected from her trembling gaze and eager body. It vaguely disturbs him, more than a compliment or her usual jibes. What makes her say this? She's not  thinking this is how you talk rough in bed, can she?

Well, he knows her language skills have always been more Howdy Doody than Henry Miller. She makes art with her body, not with her words, that's clear, but he can play the speaking part to complement her.

"This his how you like it, Slayer, innit, ride me, whip me into a lather, fuck me until I can't speak, fuck me black and blue, I know you can do it, let it go, it's in there, the power to make men tremble and beg, come on, Slayer, show me what you're made of..."

Her cheeks pinken but she slams down on him harder, like he asked, faster, her breath pistoning in and out like the little engine that could. He grabs her ass and angles her body so he hits her even deeper and the tremble that starts in her thighs is making magic, sending shocks through him like lashes of an electric whip. Her hair flies around her head in a golden cloud. It's a lion's mane, she's growling like a lioness, raking her claws over his nipples, drawing blood, blood as red as the tip of tongue between her opened lips. The smell of his own blood makes him wild,  he catches her breasts again, one with his fingers, twisting the nipple hard, one with his teeth, biting the areola until he draws a little blood. He hadn't realized he'd vamped out, and then the taste of Slayer blood and the relentless rhythm on his cock make him thrust through the light barrier into a star-splattered universe of bloody suns going supernova.

"Spike, oh god Spike, you make me... you're so...make me go I..."

The Slayer clenches around him so hard and so long that he recovers enough to open his eyes and gazes into hers as she subsides, glowing and sweaty and tousle-haired on top of him, frozen still in shock and panic.

Spike's still rock hard inside her. His name in her voice penetrates his brain, an arrow of pain and longing.

Buffy's quivering around him hard enough to rattle her teeth and he reaches out and gives her clit a tiny tap. She goes off into the stratosphere again, crying big fat tears and calling out his name once more.

She collapses on his chest, crying in earnest now. Spike would console her but he really needs to come again and he turns them over so he can pound her into the bed. She's limp, pliable as putty and he pushes up her knees as far as they go so he can get in deeper.

The Slayer's moaning through her tears, spurring him on with her sniffled words of "Spike, Spike, you're Spike, you're so wrong, harder, Spike!"

She shrieks out the last word, slapping his ass in an orgy of release, almost bucking him off the bed. Spike manages to hold on until she's done, balls his fists into the bedding, and shoots his brains out in her depths. Fuck, Slayer, who knew? The caterwauling and the spanking, the sheer stamina. He lies splayed out like a starfish over her slack panting body. She's emptied him out, blood and guts, there's nothing left. He forces one hand to come up and clamps it on one heavily marked breast. His.

Buffy moans against his cheek and he rolls them over so she's on top. She climbs up to him and starts kissing him feverishly, sticking her tongue down his throat deeper than he thought he'd like. She grabs his ears like they're pot handles and maneuvers herself on his cock again. She grinds herself against him, shuddering every few moments or so in a small shiver of ecstasy.

"Spike," she pants, "I need more, go on, more power, we need more, fuck me, harder!"

Christ. Spike wishes this glorious moment could be videotaped so he could spend the rest of his immortal life wanking off on the memory of it. She's a gorgeous mess as she works furiously on top of him, hair all over the place, flushed and blotched, covered in scratches and bite marks. He doesn't even remember scratching. She's losing the rhythm, finally getting tired, and Spike rises to the occasion by throwing her off. He positions her body flat on her back on the edge of the bed, ass flush with the edge, legs pushed up. He kneels on the floor between her legs.

"Spike!" She whimpers, and tries to impale herself on him again. "Need more. Spike!"

Spike readies himself and thrusts in. She holds on to the edge of the bed and this is a perfect position to play with her, he has his hands free. He slides his finger over her clit. It's hard to find because she's so sopping wet. Her flushed nipples beckon to his mouth and he nibbles on them.

"Harder," Buffy moans deliriously "Bite me, Spike, bite me."

Not an invitation he's likely to refuse. He licks her neck until she screams and dissolves in orgasm and then just before he actually pierces the skin he realizes that it would give everything away and shifts out of game face. The Slayer doesn't seem to notice; she keeps on convulsing around him and he loses himself in his own orgasm.

When he opens his eyes, he stares straight into the Slayer's green gaze. She's silent and he feels a heartbeat drumming slowly and heavily in his chest, hers, he hopes. He buries his hands in her hair and brings his face close to hers.

"Buffy," he whispers.

Her breath hitches and he notices he's still inside her. He moves infinitesimally to reposition and she shudders and comes. She's incredible.

Her eyes are big and shining. "Spike, you're...we...that was... disturbing. Is this what it's supposed to be really like?"

"What?"

"Love?"

Spike screeches like a girl and is out of her with his back to her bedroom door before he can think.

"What? No. No! Not love. Of course not. Are you out of your mind? I'm a vampire, you're a Slayer. Never. I'm going to kill you when this is over, you understand?"

Buffy crawls over to him like a panther, all limpid eyes and glowing golden skin. She puts a finger on his lips. It smells of sperm and her own come. "Ssh, Spike. I didn't know it could be like this. The spell must have given you a temporary soul or I wouldn't feel like this."

Spike tries to merge with the door. "No soul. Not love. Let's keep this professional, Slayer. No time for play. Don't torture the nice vampire, we have work to do. Remember? Willow Rosenberg, cute little witch in dead Muppet skin? Xander Harris, puppy eyes and stumbly feet? Slayer! Rupert Giles, the man with the biggest British brain in California?"

She coos at him and strokes his hair. "Your eyes are blue, Spike. I hadn't noticed before. You are my mission, Spike. I know now. I was chosen to lead you to your redemption."

This is what vampire's victims feel like, Spike remembers it well. Utter hopelessness, that trapped sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. He's doomed. Nothing like the words 'soul' and 'redemption' to cool a man's ardor.

He thinks hard, steels himself and leans in for a kiss. "Righty, Slayer. I have to help your friends to be redeemed. Like food for my soul, soul food. Like blood, only different. See? Let's get dressed and do the mojo on your friends. They deserve to be rescued too, just like me."

Buffy nods. "I'm your savior." She cranes her neck to check out her shoulder blades. "I might grow wings. Downy white wings."

"Yeah, right. Might spoil the cut of your clothes, don't you think? Get dressed and get to work. We're in a hurry. The real cavalry might come galloping in any moment now."

Bugger, he might be more right than he thought. What time is it? How long have they been at it? He perfunctorily wipes himself with the towel and hops into his cold, repulsive jeans, struggling to get his still hard cock in without skinning himself on the teeth of the zipper. Buffy just stands there, pouting, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"Yeah? What are you waiting for, Slayer? Get a move on, will you?"

She holds out the towel to him with the widest smile he's ever seen in his direction, except that one time, with the daft witch's spell. Spells. They always go wrong. He hasn't dreamed getting the chip out, has he? No, he drank her blood. He wants to touch the chip to make extra sure but it's in his duster, somewhere downstairs.

"Spi-ike...."

Right. Buffy, towel.

"I'm so dirty here, Spike," she says coyly and points to her crotch. "It's all ooky and stuff."

"Ooky" from the woman who shrieked at him like a demented banshee ordering him to go harder, faster, and deeper? Spike shivers involuntarily at the memory, but at the same time, he's relieved. She's reverting, thank god. Any moment now she'll frown and stamp her foot and call him a disgusting pig. That would be normal and comforting.

"You could lick me clean?" she says and parts her legs to show him sweet pink folds pearled with dewy come.

Spike's knees hit the floor as if his legs have been chopped off, and he has his hands on the Slayers silky thighs before he can decide not to.

"Slayer..." he says hoarsely. "Don't."

She mewls like a hungry kitten and thrusts her fragrant cunny in his face. Spike hungrily sucks her clit. He can't not. He hates being this helpless. It's the spell. Damn spell. His fingers dig deep in yielding Slayerly thighs, his tongue laps up her salty come with alacrity, but inside he's howling like a trapped dog. What part of himself will he have to gnaw off to get away?

The sound of the military helicopter is deafening. Blinding beams sweep the Summers' quiet Sunnydale suburb. Spike watches it from the shelter of the porch until it's moved over to Shady Rest, throws down his fag end and puts it out with his boot.

"Let's get our favorite corpses inside, Summers," he says. "Don't wanna be surprised by the Powers that Shoot First, Ask Later doing stuff that's not in the manual."

Buffy slips out the possessive hand that was burning in his back pocket.

"Okay," she says. "I'll take Giles, since he's the heaviest and I'm the strongest person here."

"Hey!"

She throws Giles over her shoulder and blows him a kiss from inside the hall. Spike does an eye roll for the benefit of no one in particular the moment's she's out of sight. The Slayer is really creeping him out.

Spike throws a last searching look at the silent rubble-strewn street, straining eyes and ears to hear signs of tanks rolling in or soldiers marching. But all's quiet now that the helicopter has departed. They don't have many hours left till dawn, thanks to the longer–than-planned gymnastics tournament on the Slayer's bed. He picks up Harris and lugs him towards the basement. The body isn't stiff, thank god; rigor mortis must have passed. Another piece of useless knowledge gleaned from reading too many Scarpetta novels down in the crypt. He's gonna be so happy to forget all that when he gets out of here.

He lays Harris out next to Rupert Giles and trudges back up, stopping halfway up the stairs to let the Slayer pass with the small from of Willow slung over her shoulder. Red's the smelliest of the lot, for some reason. She'll just have to use make up of some kind to cover up those bluish patches on her cheek. She also leaves a trail of coppery clumps of fine straight hair on the stairs. He hopes she likes hats.

Buffy steps up to him with that wide smile he's beginning to be very wary of. It's almost unnatural, like she's not real, one of these plastic dolls with hard pointy tits his younger victims have started carrying around these past forty or fifty years. Barbie Buffy.

"Spike! Time to resuscitate my friends!"

She yanks up her top and grabs his hands to position them on her breasts.

The heated, yielding flesh zings through his fingertips and straight on to his groin. He jerks his hands back.

"It's your little friends we should be touching, not each other. Remember?"

She pouts and snakes her arm around his neck. She has to stand on tiptoe to do that. It is kind of cute that the Slayer is so tiny, makes him feel big and hulking and manly.

Their lips touch with a little shock and a show of sparks.

"Oops! Better be careful. Don't shake us or the electricity will slop over," the Slayer mutters as she steps back on wobbly legs.

Spike feels very sober as he stares at the Slayer, who's taking in the extremely dead and unmoving trio on the basement floor.

"Who's on first?" he asks.

"Yes," Buffy says. "What's on second." She collapses in giggles.

Figures. The one piece of old-movie trivia in her possession just makes her even more useless.

"Unless you want this to turn out Abbott and Costello Meet the Zombies, Slayer, you'd better get serious," Spike says.

That shuts down the giggling. The Slayer chews on her lip. "Last in, first out, I guess?"

"Right."

Spike kneels down at Rupert Giles' head. He decides to prop the eyes open, to make Giles seem less dead, but when he reaches out to yank up the papery eyelid, he jostles the skull. The upper portion, that he capped like an egg and ate with a spoon, slides off. Some gray pulpy remnants dribble out. Didn't clean it out completely, he guesses. He carefully repositions the skull, noticing how the skin slithers over the bone under his hands. Maybe he should shove the old man's hairline forward a bit; he reckons Rupes would thank him for it. Nah.

He sits back on his heels when the top of the skull is back on and notices the stare of the one eye he opened. A three week-old boiled egg has a friendlier expression, so he pushes it shut again.

"All set, Buff."

Spike puts his hands on the clammy temples. "Slayer?"

She's grimacing and dithering over where to put her hands. At last, she decides on the upper arms.

Spike sighs. Does he have to tell her everything himself?

"On the heart, Slayer, or the guts or whatever. Upper arms are not a seat of vitality in general."

"What do you know about vitality, Spike? Long time no have!"

She does as he suggests, however, and the moment both her hands descend on the librarian's chest a current pricks up. Spike feels like a vintage wine being aired and decanted, and he can only hope there will be no dregs left behind.

The body beneath his palms begins to stir and he jerks back his hands. Buffy reproaches him with a dark-green look.

"Don't wanna put in the witchlet by accident, do we?" he says defensively, but there really is no sure way to tell where Giles stops and Willow begins.

A loud moan comes from the lips of the body between them. Spike looks on doubtfully. He feels emptier, which is a plus, but Giles' cheeks are as gray as they were before.

"Slayer? His pulse?"

She takes the limp wrist in her hand and he sees her mimic the gesture they both know from hospital soaps. She shakes her head.

"Can't feel it. And he's colder than you are."

"Cold dead librarian, eh?"

Giles' eyes snap open. The Slayer recoils from the featureless, marbly orbs and skitters back a few feet.

"Giles?" she says, still hopeful.

Another moan. The body starts levering itself up with jerky movements, reminding Spike of the Night of the Living Dead. He looks around for an axe, just in case. The Summers' basement seems to be axeless, alas. Where's the one he killed Giles with? Up on the bluff, probably, in their hideaway cave, like all the really useful stuff.

"Buffy?" a slurred voice says. "I can't see. Where are you?"

Blue-grey hands reach out blindly to the direction of her voice.

"Buffy?"

The Giles face sniffs disconcertingly and utters an indistinct blurry moan.

Then Giles' own voice speaks again. "Buffy? I feel rather odd. Can't move."

"I did eat his brain, Slayer," Spike says sotto voce. "Sounds like a zombie to me."

"No, no, no!" Buffy says and slaps her hand on the floor for emphasis. "This is not gonna happen. This was getting my friends back, not making scary monsters that need to be showered in salt."

She steps up to the waving, tottering figure. "Giles! Snap out of it. This is me. You're alive again. Make your body work, okay?"

Her voice wavers at the last pitiful 'okay.'

"Can't bloody well move," Giles groans. "It's so dark in here. My head feels like cotton wool."

"Did you stuff cotton wool in there, Spike?" the Slayer says accusingly. She pauses, looks sheepish. "What's cotton wool?"

"Cotton batten to you, love," Spike says. "And that's an expression. His head's just... empty."

"Why isn't the body coming back to life? Why isn't it working?" she says, sounding close to hysterics. "It worked before. When we were doing Riley they were all in there!"

"Your boy was alive, Slayer. S'pose that makes all the difference."

Giles' voice sounds, closer than he expected. "I can hear you, you know. You're talking about me. Another spell gone wrong? Where's Willow? She really needs to learn responsibility."

Buffy turns to the shambling creature and puts her hands on its sweatered arm. Her voice is very gentle. "The spell did go wrong, Giles, the enjoining spell. Do you remember? We are trying to put you back into your body again."

"You mean this isn't my body? That's a relief, I must say. It isn't working properly at all. Really, Buffy, this is most uncomfortable. Can you get on with it? I'm not feeling well."

The slightly querulous but quite sane-sounding voice contrasts sharply with Giles' body movements. His head is swaying to and fro, his nose is sniffing and he sticks out a spongy tongue to lick at Buffy's hand.

"Oh. That's jolly nice. What was that stuff I just tasted? Rather wonderful."

The Slayer looks utterly revolted, but she doesn't pull her trembling hand away from the questing tongue. She loves the old man, it's all over her face and Spike feels a twisting somewhere inside. It's just a spell, of course, but to be looked at like that would be bloody brilliant.

"Spike?"

Spike shakes his head at the Slayer. "This is no good, Buff. His body is too dead, I reckon. Let's take him back out and think of something else."

The Slayer's face crumples and he expects another teary session, but her spine straightens and she crosses her arms in her standard defensive posture. "We can do this. We're going to regroup, not retreat. I will get my friends back."

She's more positive about getting back her friends than about Captain Corn-fed, he notices. He likes that, although he doesn't know why.

"Spike? On three."

It's getting routine. They grab the only faintly struggling zombie and suck back out the Giles essence until it slumps down, back to being really dead. Spike's head is full and tweedy again, filled to bursting with extra grey matter. Not coming out of his ears, is it? Good.

He sits down on the basement stairs due to a sudden and inexplicable wobbliness in his legs. The Slayer sits down next to him, to his surprise, and when she slings her arm around his shoulders, he's gobsmacked.

"What do we do now, Spike? You said you had an idea why this happened?"

He did? He casts his mind back to what he said. Finn was different. There was too much life in him. So yeah, if you extrapolate from that, if there were three different blobs of matter, instead of just the one big one, they'd be set. It was easy to pour the consciousnesses of the Scoobies in there. Maybe the Finn-stuff would take on the physical characteristics of the new inhabitants as well. Because there were all kinds of hair colors and eyes roving around it the first time. He'll just have to be very neat, and not mix up the essences in his head. Which will be hard, because he's been feeling both stirred and shaken ever since.

No need to pass on his doubts to the Slayer. Spike clears his throat, immediately regrets the stuffy sound, and expounds. "Right. This is what we do. We hack or saw the blob into three pieces, without killing it, and then pour in your pals one by one. That stuff is still alive, and that's what was missing with your surrogate dad here."

Buffy doesn't look convinced. "'Hack? Saw? You're majorly wigging me out, Spike. We might kill it, and then zippo chance of ever reversing the spell."

God forbid. If he's gonna end up stuck to the Slayer, Spike's gonna kill himself. Or he will after he's visited every shaman in the whole wide world to get the spell out of him.

"So you agree to the general principle?"

"Yeah, sounds doable," Buffy nods.

Spike's happy that there's at least one person who trusts his plan. He gets up and has to seek support on a slender yet muscular Slayer shoulder.

"Are you alright, Spike? Do you need more rest? Or should we recharge?"

There's an eagerness in her voice that Spike distrusts. He also distrusts the automatic jump his cock makes. He's nobody's lapdog.

He shakes off her hand roughly. "Nah, I'm fine. Let's get on with it, Slayer. Sunrise and the US Army won't wait for us."

He staggers up the stairs without looking back at the Slayer and almost keels over in shock when he feels her small warm hand in his back. He doesn't need her help, he's full of vim and vigor and if need be he could raise the bloody Scoobies from the dead all by himself. The supportive railing under his hands doesn't disagree.

The blob of rampant Riley flesh is still where they left it. That would have been just this luck, if the damn thing had grown a hundred little feet and had gone off into the wilds of Sunnydale.

"There's one thing I will say for your Soldier Boy, Slayer, he's knows to follow orders. If you tell him to stay put, he stays put," Spike says, grinning.

Buffy kicks him sharply in the ankle. "Very funny, dead boy. A little more respect for a fallen soldier."

"Respect? You're a fine one to talk about respect, Slayer! Speaking ill of the dead is your bloody vocation!"

"Shut up and lift on three, Spike."

Maneuvering the heavy fleshy pancake isn't easy indoors, and when negotiating the basement stairs Spike loses his grip on the heaving shivering object, letting it crash to the floor with a wet thud.

"Spike! Careful, we need that thing. Let's hope we didn't break it."

"Don't think it has bones to break, Slayer," Spike says, but it's hard not to get a bit rattled at the queer stuff, which is like jelly in consistency but opaque. The pale skin puckers in goosebumps occasionally, a painful reminder that it was once a human being.

They stand side by side and survey the task ahead.

"I have no clue how to break this thing up, Spike. Couldn't we just tear it?"

Spike is doubtful. "We could try. Too elastic to tear, I'd think."

He's right. The lukewarm flesh yields a little bit but springs back into shapelessness the moment they let go.

"Saw it is, then, Slayer."

Buffy finds a rusty handsaw in a box full of odds and ends. Spike has a hard time picturing Joyce with it in her hands. Not the DIY-type, was Joyce. Well, even the Slayer must once have had a father, he supposes. Maybe it was his.

The Slayer grimly sets the blade in the flesh and starts sawing. He's sure she hadn't counted on the damn thing bleeding and if truth be told, neither had he. There's a little jet of the wonderful stuff and Spike hangs over it like it was a public water fountain.

Buffy gags and throws away the saw. Spike steps up to the plate in his manly fashion and takes over from her. His clothes are ruined anyway, and this way he can catch the odd drop if it flies his way. He's not making much headway, though. The saw is a little too flexible and keeps getting caught in gristle or something like it. He saws on doggedly, licking his lips clean at intervals and sort of enjoying the idea of having a go at Finn's ex-flesh. Too bad there's no screaming included.

"Come on, Slayer," he says without looking up. "This isn't very efficient. Why don't you go and liberate a saw at one of your neighbors?"

A thought strikes him. Again. He's never had so many brilliant ideas as in the past few days. If that's the effect Rupert and Willow's brains have, maybe he should turn Rupert when he's got a body again, make him his planner minion.

"Buffy? If you're going to scout out your neighbors' tool sheds, why not get a power saw? We could use a mite more speed here."

The Slayer is halfway up the stairs before the protest comes. "That's stealing."

"Borrowing," he says, keeping his eyes away from hers. "You can put it back, can't you? No harm done."

"Kay."

Takes her half the time he expects. She shows up with a brand new orange thing of heroic dimensions.

Spike laughs. "Chrissake Slayer, didn't know you could buy a plus size power saw. We could denude all the forests of California if we wanted to."

"I think someone's been there before you, Spike," she snips, but he sees her fascinated stare at the giant prick. He's gonna go through the blob like butter. Spike stands there with the vibrating object in his hand, ready to plunge in and winks at the Slayer. She gets his meaning all right. The education he's been giving her is paying off already.

Spike shouts a battle cry and attacks with the saw. Blood spatters the basement ceiling in a pretty arc, like a rainbow made of red paint alone. It rains blood on his face and drenches his clothes with its coppery, energizing scent.

"Brilliant, innit?" he yells over the saw's roaring at the Slayer, whose standing in the farthest comer of the room, trying to cover her face and clothes with her hands.

It's over far too soon. Spike lowers the saw and shuts off the power. The silence rings with the memory of the buzzing, screeching sound and it's been almost as much fun as skinning a living victim.

He grins at the Slayer, generously sharing the pleasure, but her face is taut and unforgiving. Oh. He's gone and reminded her of what he really is, an evil creature, a predator. Stupid bint. Good enough to share her bed when he's been behaving like a human being for a bit, or close enough, but when she sees what he's really like she changes her mind. All the same to him, not like he wants anything but to get out of here, back to his rewarding career of bloodshed and mayhem.

The unwieldy blob has been divided into three neat parts, like Gallia, and the next step in their many-bungled operation ought to be a piece of cake. Even Zombie Giles already had the distinct flavor of his own personality.

"Let's get going, Slayer! Where's your spirit? Not getting put out because of a little gore, are you? Nasty cruel killer like you has seen worse, I wager."

"I don't kill, I slay," she says in a low voice, and gingerly approaches the bloody shapes. There's so much blood on the floor that her boots make little splashes. "You look like the monster you are, Spike. You're gross. There's blood on your eyeballs."

"Aw, poor Slayer. As if they were lily-white before. Dead, remember? Bloody evil and bloody useless we are, eh?"

"Way to go with the self-knowledge, Spike," she bites back. "We were getting to be a good team. You could be a better man if you tried."

"Oh, please, Slayer. Let's get down on our knees and pray, or were you thinking of singing? The only thing I worship is my freedom."

She looks at him strangely. "Won't the chip be a problem?"

He shrugs elaborately. "Worked around it well enough here, didn't I? Won't be different somewhere else. And I won't have to suffer you and your band of merry fools."

She nods and diverts her attention to the biggest of the bloody heaps on the floor. Phew. That was close. Rule one of villainy: gloating never works out for you.

"Ready, Spike?"

"Tally-ho, Slayer. Let's get those space invaders out of me. Third time's the charm."

The Slayer crouches down, balancing on the heels of her boots, but Spike shrugs and kneels. His jeans are ruined anyway.

The Slayer rolls up her sleeves and puts her hands in the middle of the body-shaped mass, on a spot that seems marginally less bloody and mangled than the rest. Spike scoots closer to her and puts his hands on her hips. Oops. Now her jeans will have bloody handprints. William the Bloody's handprints. There's a rightness in that.

She doesn't notice. Spike waits until she reaches the level of concentration she needs, pleasantly close to warm Slayer bum, swathed in Slayer scent. Nice. This way he doesn't mind the waiting at all, patience not being his strongest point.

A strong and disconcerting sucking sensation starts up in his brain and Giles is out of there in three seconds flat. Good. The blob's still a blob though.

Spike concentrates hard to keep Willow and Harris inside. "Try to make him look right, Slayer," he says between clenched teeth.

The flesh wavers and wobbles, now appearing in the shape of a naked middle-aged man, then hastily covering up with translucent tweeds and woolen sweaters. The head forms, then the face, complete with glasses and frown.

Spike pulls the Slayer away from the now Giles-shaped body. She falls against him heavily for a moment and rests her forehead against his arm. Spike successfully quashes the urge to stroke her hair.

"Get his vital signs, Slayer. Or, no, don't bother. If it's failed, it's failed; I've had it with regurgitating essence of Librarian. Gah."

Giles coughs and his hands flutter. That would be a good sign, Spike guesses. He can hear the heart beat, anyway, and the blood pumping round.

"He's alive, Buff. Let's get on to Rosenberg. This one's the smallest."

"Yeah."

The Slayer stands a bit forlornly, her arms dangling, staring at Giles like he's the Messiah. Well, he would be a favorite minion of hers, he supposes. One that's been well-trained and hard to replace.

"Spike?"

"What?"

"We should get the old body out of sight. That would really upset him when he wakes up."

"Yeah, but not right now. We should get a move on before our luck goes south," Spike says. He's done enough lugging around undrinkable dead bodies for the moment.

"Give me hand here, Spike," the Slayer goes on, ignoring his less than enthusiastic response. "Just in the corner here with an old blanket over him. We can bury him later."

"Yeah, and that won't wrinkle his starched arse? Seeing his name on a grave? You could just put them all out on the lawn. Give the carrion demons a Scooby snack."

"Ew, Spike. And besides, who says there are any left? Adam might have used them all up, for all we know."

All right, all right. He's not sticking around for the burials round two, though. No business of his what she does with her free time once he's his own man again, anyway.

They do Rosenberg. The Slayer's imagination conjures up an orange fluffy sweater and purple cords, but he glimpses just a hint of pink check underwear. How revoltingly cute. He's kind of sorry that her magic's gone; it colored the world with more vividness than even vampire sight gives, and the undercurrent of burnt sugar in the marshmallowy sweetness of her feelings makes him think there's hidden depths there. She might make a good vampire.

Harris seems reluctant to leave his cozy nook in Spike's brain, and he has to go through it with the mental equivalent of a scraping tool to get out the last bits that cling stubbornly to Spike's thought routines. Taste of greasy pancakes and shame. Out you go, Harris, back to your own body.

It's done. The three Scoobies lie flat on their backs like the corpses they were just a minute ago, but those are stacked and covered in the corner of the basement, to be decently buried at the first convenient moment. The three of them are definitely alive, although they remain stubbornly unconscious.

The Slayer tries to get up sufficient energy to berate him but she's looks utterly drained. Tears and snot mingle on her face while she makes frustrated hand gestures, trying to get herself under control.

"Spike, if they're not ...if they're not...I will!"

She tries to hide her exhausted and relieved sobbing but he draws her against him and pats her back. If she's not sure, it means he can't leave yet. He could take off without waiting for her declaration of success, but the sun has inconveniently risen yet again in the midst of their busy beavering, and he's stuck in the house until nightfall.

"I get it, Slayer. Let's get you up to bed, eh? You're worn out?"

"Do I look tired?" she asks childishly.

"Not at all," Spike answers automatically. This is the kind of mood he's familiar with. "I just sense it, is all."

She nods, satisfied, and allows him to lead her up the stairs. In her bedroom he strips off her clothes, less blood-spattered than his but still unfit for anything ever again. She tumbles into bed and seems to fall in a deep sleep. Now would be the perfect moment to make himself scarce. He covers her and wants to tippy toe out of there, but her hand shoots out and grasps him firmly by the knees of his trousers.

"Not going anywhere until I say so. Come to bed."

In spite of himself, the idea of crawling into bed with a couple of handfuls of warm fragrant Slayer is more appealing to Spike than running through the harsh light of day, eluding the National Guard under a smoking blanket. His filthy, stiffening clothes fall off him on the floor and he slides in against the Slayer-warmed sheets with a sigh of contentment. She shifts languidly against him until she's perfectly comfortable, her satiny ass in his crotch. Spike thinks heaven would smell like this, sunlight on golden hair, skin so soft and smooth it's insubstantial as clouds.

His last thought tries to wake him back up with the alarming realization that he's getting into the Slayer's bed again. Wasn't sleeping with her spell-induced? Wasn't it supposed to be over?

The same thought paralyzes Spike instantly upon waking at the crack of dusk. Bloody hell. Instead of being two states away in his blackout car he's lying with his prick up his archenemy's arse. He has to be out of here like now.

He slides away from the Slayer carefully, but the friction this creates between her legs wakes her up and the first thing she does is grasp him firmly and shove him in the hot pussy that's been waiting for him.

He smothers his shout in her neck, curling his toes and tensing up from there to his crown to keep some grip on his own body.

"Fuck, Slayer, you're the..."

He keeps in what his mouth wants to spill and grabs her hard by the upper arms.

"On your knees, Slayer, gonna make you scream," he growls, trying to get the shaking of his thighs under control.

She twists away from him, all slippery smooth limbs glistening with life and youth, and the fire in her eyes pierces him, shockingly happy and carefree.

"I think not, Spike," she giggles, and flips him over, immobilized and stunned as he is by the loss of the velvet heat clamping his cock only a second ago.

Before he can speak or protest or grab her he's on his back and she mounts him, holding the horse steady in her strong hand. She descends on him like the mouth of a hurricane onto the earth, sucking up everything she touches, shaking it around good and proper and flinging it away again when she's done with it. He's helpless in the maw of her passion, awed before the force of nature that is Buffy.

"God, Slayer."

Spike bites his lips before the words can slide out and stoppers up the dangerous leak with her breast. He hears her gasping, feels the muscles in her back and sides work a deep hard rhythm, and mostly he just holds on for the ride and hopes he can make it to the finish-line. He's so engrossed in what they're doing that he doesn't hear the door open.

"Buffy? Are you awake? I heard you talk and I thought...Oh. Buffy, you're. Spike. Oh!" Willow's voice stutters and shrieks and fades away again.

Spike opens his eyes and sees Buffy's frozen caught-out look and the way her head lowers. She looks at him. He sees the world crashing back on her shoulders and the realization hit that the spell is reversed. They're back to normal and she's still fucking him.

She utters a strangled little cry and bloody red washes over her, dipping her in shame from her crown to the tips of her breasts.

"Oh God. Spike. I'm f..." she claps her hands over her mouth and scrambles off for the bathroom.

Spike lies motionless in her bed, not sure of what to feel just yet. There's no puking from the bathroom, just silence and after a bit the shower starts up. He gets up, scratching and stretching and takes a peek outside. He could just take off now. Leave Sunnydale. No need to say goodbye to anyone, is there. He can hear the Scoobies moving around downstairs. Willow sounded like her normal self. He's free to go.

He decides to play along for a bit and have a brief chat with them, and then go off. He has to make them think he's still a neutered puppy, or he'll never leave this house. They'll convince the Slayer to stake him, even if she might not want to.

He pokes his clothes with his toe. The blood has dried up and he's not exactly squeamish, but the though of getting back into the stiff nastiness of them makes him hesitate for a second or two. The Slayer stomps back in, throws some wadded op cloth at him and glowers at him.

"Get showered and dressed, Spike," she says. "And hurry up. We're having a Scooby meeting in five minutes."

So he's not completely in her black books. Spike's beginning to suspect he doesn't know her at all. He gets into the gray T and baggy gray sweats she's provided him with. They don't fit badly at all; beneath the scent of fabric softener he detects a faint whiff of Joyce. In that case, he'll wear them with pride.

When he gets down, uncomfortable in his loose soft clothes and his hair smoothed down with something that doesn't feel as solid as he'd like it to, the four of them are seated around the dining room table. There's a heavy silence in the room, like it's been there for a while. As if they've not stopped talking because he comes in, which is what he's used to, but haven't started yet.

"Spike," Rupert says neutrally.

"Rupert! Back to your friendly, exuberant self, I see. Willow, Harris," Spike says, ignoring the uncomfortable vibes.

"Now can we start, Buffster? Now that our newest pal is here?" Harris says with a snide look at him. "Love the threads, Spike. An even better look on you than my shirts."

"Shall I tell him what happened to him a couple of days ago, Slayer?" Spike says, and he opens his mouth to go on.

Buffy's hand comes down on his forearm. He hadn't noticed she sat down next to him.

"In the right order, please, Spike. We don't want to confuse them."

Willow is looking wan and ill, but she's also throwing him scared but fascinated rabbit looks from her big brown eyes. She tries to hide them behind a curtain of scarlet hair, which is looking a little patchy, just like on her corpse, but he's caught her at it. He winks at her and she blushes fiercely. He's still got it, obviously. He liked her thoughts, in fact he used to think of her neck quite a lot, but now his thoughts dwell more on a golden instead of a white throat.

"The last thing I remember is telling you to kill us, Buffy," Giles says. "I see you found a way to save us after all?"

Spike can see the cogs and gears clanking and shrieking in the Slayer's tiny brain, wired for fighting rather than subterfuge and decides to throw in his bit. It's only after he's opened his mouth that he realizes it's oil and not a wooden clog like he planned.

"Slayer decided to ally herself with me, Watcher. Together we not only defeated Adam, but half the demon army as well. Didn't need you lot at all."

"Yeah," the Slayer adds, "we used magic to become stronger and more focused and we tore out his heart, like you said, Giles. His power station."

"And all this while we were lying unconscious in the basement? For how many hours?"

"Hours?" Spike guffaws. "The power's been out for days, mate, the clocks are running all wrong. You were dead the better part of a week."

"Spike!"

"Dead to the world, I meant."

They pass right over it. The human mind is not equipped to think of itself as dead, Spike supposes. He doesn't either, not really.

"Buffy," Willow says hesitantly, "I understand if you don't want to talk about it, and I'll shut up if you want, but I couldn't help wondering, especially after, well you know, but what about Riley? Where is he?"

Buffy bites her lip.

Spike jumps in. "Finn's dead. Died defending Slayer here against Soylent Green."

The Slayer turns a little pale about the gills and Spike reflexively rubs his stomach. Long since digested, or whatever a vampire stomach does with its contents. Still. There's three bodies rotting away in the basement, no longer protected by any kind of magic, and the Slayer's gonna have a heap of trouble getting rid of them unobtrusively. Their eyes meet in perfect understanding. She wants him to take care of it. Too bad he's not gonna oblige.

"Willow," the Slayer begins hesitantly. "I have to tell you something. I should have done that earlier, but..."

Bugger. Spike clean forgot about Willow's sweet little friend, she of the Sapphic persuasion.

Willow gets it. She doesn't say anything or move, but thick tears slide like glycerine down her waxy cheeks.

"Riley and Tara," Harris says.

He looks more affected than the Slayer, swallowing and blinking, which would be unspeakably sad if you were into that kind of thing. He catches Spike's look at his quivering chin and jump-starts right into aggressiveness.

"Hey. What I'd like to know is how and when and why Captain Clorox here changed his mind and changed sides. It's because of you that we almost split apart. Did you forget about that, Buffy? What's he doing here?"

Buffy draws herself up. "Spike's our - my ally. Without him you'd be dead, I'd be dead and Adam would still rule over Sunnydale. We owe him, guys. I don't wanna hear any more about it."

Spike can't believe how easy it is to leave out information. It's a thing he should definitely remember in the future when lying. He gets up from the table. This seems to be the signal for a general sense that the meeting is over.

Harris isn't that easily convinced. Spike can tell he's jealous at the thought that his secure place as sidekick might be threatened. He needn't worry. William the Bloody's nobody's sidekick.

"How do we know he won't change his mind again? What guarantee do we have that Spike is gonna stay on our side, huh?" Harris says.

"Xander's right, Buffy. I don't want to minimize Spike's contribution, but he's never been a reliable resource. Spike? What do you say?" Rupert says.

"Remember telling me all about a higher purpose, 'how the chip was my chance to come over all good-guy? Haven't been able to put that talk out of my mind, Rupert." Spike accompanies his insincere words by a hearty clap on Giles' shoulder, making the man stagger. "Lost actual sleep over it. So, me 'n Buffy had a talk and she seemed the right person to lead me to salvation."

"Redemption," Buffy cuts in sharply.

"Yeah, what she said."

"Really," the Watcher says and looks him over with what Spike can only describe as a 'Dad' kind of look. Next he's gonna ask him how he expects to maintain his daughter in the manner she's accustomed to.

Giles folds his arms before his stomach and looks askance at the ceiling, as if seeking inspiration there. "And would said, um, redemption, include atoning for past misdeeds?"

"Absolutely," Buffy says.

"Up to a point," Spike says at the same time. "Couldn't begin to make good for all the horrible things I did, people I killed." His stomach rumbles. "Stuff I did to you guys, certainly. Let me begin by telling you I'm really, really sorry for thinking for a brief, deluded moment I should chuck in my lot with that terrible monster Adam. Biggest mistake I ever made. I'm so happy I looked up Buffy and offered her my services. Right, Buff?"

Buffy turns delightfully puce and mumbles a vague agreement.

"I know of something you could do for me," Giles says with false cheer. "How about the vintage car you wrecked?

Spike takes a step away from the table. "I'd have no way of ever offering recompense for a priceless car like that. Couldn't put a price to a great design classic like that, eh?"

"I could," Giles growls, just as Spike wants to sidle by, and grabs the lapels of his duster. Why the bleeding hell are all and sundry so partial to grabbing his duster? It's been his good friend these past twenty-five years and he resents the greasy paws desecrating it.

"Listen up, you nasty little punk!" the Watcher says in something closer to a serious threat than Spike has ever heard from him. "If you stray an inch from the straight and narrow with Buffy I will kill you, make no mistake."

Spike actually believes him. What's come over the mild-mannered stuttering Librarian? He sounds like someone Spike could respect.

"Word of honor, Rupes," he says and tries to look sincere. He wishes he could practice the effect in a mirror. He's gonna need it.

Spike sprints to the door but is met by the Harris boy, who's trying to look as tough and uncompromising as the Watcher.

"I don't know what your plan is Spike, but I know you're up to no good. I know where to find you!"

Spike steps closer to Harris, hitches up his jeans and repositions his package. This never fails to reduce Harris to a nervous wreck, clueless as to the cause of his own knee-jerk reaction to the remotest suggestion of Spike's sexuality. Spike has no problem shouldering past him.

In the hallway before the mirror is the last obstacle to freedom. Willow's trying on Joyce's hats, which mostly are too big for her, and Spike has to say that Joyce, however much he may have liked her, had awful taste in hats. An eighty-year-old would have been ashamed to wear them to church.

"What do you think, Spike? Is this a good look for me?"

"Perfect for a funeral, Red.," Spike says thoughtlessly.

Willow pulls the hat over her face and blunders off. He feels one of these strange twinges he's been having, like indigestion. Finn's magically enhanced blood doesn't sit too well in the stomach, apparently.

The front door. The rest of his life. It's that close, but he might have known it wasn't gonna go that easy. Faster than he's ever seen her move, the tiny figure of the Slayer stands between him and the coveted exit, with the crossed arms and the tapping foot of a brassed-off Slayer.

"Do you want to step aside, Slayer, or do you want me to go through you and the front door? Hard to replace, what with the town in an uproar."

"We have to talk, Spike," she says.

"No, we haven't. Kindly move away now, Buff- Slayer."

"Spike, If you're thinking about leaving Sunnydale, don't. One toe away from the line and you're dead."

"What are you talking about, you daft bint? I've got a chip, remember, not going anywhere or doing anything."

The Slayer looks at him with a small smile playing on her lips, and while he's staring at her mouth her fist comes up out of nowhere and punches him in the nose. Spike's control flies away from him and he clobbers her right back.

Buffy staggers back and through the blood trickling from her nose he sees her triumphant smile.

"Gotcha! I knew there was something wrong with the chip, I just knew! Do you really think I wouldn't notice you biting  me?"

A prickling washes over his whole body. Bugger. She knows. What raised her suspicions? Gee, what would it be, a jeering voice in his brain says. Would it be some colossally stupid prat who forgot himself and bit the Slayer while his brain was up her twat?

"When somebody invites a vampire to bite her, like when she says, "ooh, Spike, bite me, harder", the chip recognizes my intention is not to harm," he tries, but he knows it won't wash.

"Yeah, right," Buffy snorts. "The chip can tell you're going for a hickey. Please come up with a more likely story. Or, actually, don't. Won't help."

His hand involuntarily checks if the chip is still in his pocket, and faster than a rattlesnake, Buffy's hand shoots out and wrestles the tiny prickly thing from him.

"So that's what you've been fondling? You've got a chip in your pocket? And all this time I thought you were happy to see me."

Spike can't fathom her attitude. She knows the chip is out, and she's still sort of flirting with him?

Spike swallows and keeps his face impassive. He hopes. "I meant what I said to Giles, Buffy. I promise not to harm anybody."

He doesn't mean it, of course; all that it means is that he has to get out tonight. If the DeSoto won't run, he'll hitch a ride. He doesn't know why he feels panic at the thought of leaving Sunnydale, but he resolutely quashes it. Immortality is not for wusses.

"Goodbye, Slayer. Let's not meet again."

"Hey! Don't walk away like that! I'm not done!"

Spike strides off as fast as he can, ignoring her voice and the tight feeling in his chest. Indigestion. Or maybe he should stop smoking.

His only chance at a normal life is to get the hell away from her, and that's what he will do.

Spike peers deeper into the recesses of the engine, hindered more than assisted by the inadequate shine of the Restfield Avenue street lighting. Damn car still won't start. This is the second night he's spent furiously tinkering and cleaning and he's no closer to getting away than before. The first civilians, humans and demons both, are trickling back into Sunnydale, but he hasn't found a car shop open for business yet. Fuckity fuckity fuck. A litany he could keep repeating, especially when a dark oblong package lands near his feet with a soft thud. He's been so preoccupied he hasn't even noticed the Slayer sneaking up on him.

"Shove off, Slayer, dispose of your own corpses," he says crankily, and makes a point of not looking at the defunct Scooby body she dumped. Then a smaller lighter package lands next to the first one. His clothes. Laundered, softened and dried, by the smell of them. What the hell has she gone and done that for? Is he supposed to thank her now? Damned if he will.

"You're welcome, Spike," the Slayer says pissily. "Too bad you didn't extend me the same courtesy. Where are my mom's clothes?"

Spike looks involuntarily down to his jeans. He ripped them off the first likely corpse he met on his way to the DeSoto last night. Presumably, Joyce's sweat pants are still lying where he stepped out of them.

"Launderette wasn't open yet, love," he says. "But hey, I still got the T-shirt!"

The Slayer comes closer and squints at it in the inadequate lamplight. She has to come very near him to do that and Spike's nose quivers like a hound's when he encounters her unique scent of sunlight and shampoo and just Buffy.

"Are those grease spots?"

Considering he's black from engine grease from his fingertips to his elbows, very likely. He shrugs.

"Humph."

What's she standing about for? Not as if they usually go in for a nice chat. And it's kind of unfair to wear a short skirt like that, and that much perfume. What vampire could resist getting in a good snootful and then get a stake for his trouble? He bends deeper over the balky engine and attempts to tighten an already tight screw. It's the wrong size wrench and he mutters a curse under his breath. Before he's even turned around, a small hand is holding out the right size wrench for him. The tool is warm from her hand and he's so unnerved by it that he drops it.

"What do you bleeding want, Slayer?" he grinds out. "Not a good plan to come between a man and his car."

"Man? That's rich. It's been a long time since you were a man, Spike. And, um, car? No wonder you haven't managed to run away from here yet in that. More rust than car by now." Her taunts are of the usual variety but there's a quality to her voice he can't pinpoint.

"That car got me to Brazil and back twice, Slayer. It's a classic, won't fall apart like everything built after 19...." he checks her out carefully...76."

"Seventy six? I look twenty-four?" She takes few deep breaths. "Well, even if I did, it's nothing compared to you, mister trying-to-stay-twenty-five-forever!"

The toe of her boot traces patterns on the pavement. Spike stares in the engine, paralyzed by her nearness. Do not think of kissing her. Do not think of throwing her over the hood and fucking her blind. For one thing, the bulge in his jeans will prevent him from running or fighting if he thinks about her too hard, and two...he can't think of two. Actually encountering her is worse than just thinking of her or wanking off to the pictures in his mind.

"Thought you were gonna stake me when you found me?"

"Why?" she asks. "Have you been feeding?" There's a sharp but brittle edge to her voice. She's not so sure of him as she pretends.

His stomach rumbles. "Wanted to, but the town's still fucking deserted at night. National Guard prowling and poking their noses in everywhere doesn't help," he admits.

"So, that would be a no?" she says, twirling a golden lock, gleaming in the soft Hopperesque fall of lamplight.

"Well, yeah."

"Good."

"Huh. Temporary setbacks, is all. You didn't think I meant what I said to Rupert, did you? All that blather about salvation and doing good?" Spike snorts.

"Redemption. Dammit, Spike, I'm a Slayer, not the Salvation Army."

He looks at her suspiciously. He'd never have pegged her as a Star Trek connoisseur.

"Vampire Slayer, if I recall correctly. Why don't you go slaying some instead of bothering me?"

He's gripping the edge of the engine casing so hard it's forming dents. He should take the opportunity to kill her now, seeing as she's off in some dream about him becoming her goody goody pal or something. As if. He doesn't do good.

"The only vampire for the next fifty miles is you, Spike. D'you want me to slay you? I could oblige, you know. I have my weapons ready, while you look ready to be staked from behind."

In less than an eyeblink Spike's got her bent backwards over the open engine, black greasy hands on her arms, teeth on her neck.

"I always have my weapons ready," he growls, having vamped out so fast his head hurts. Feels just like an ice-cream headache.

She lies completely still under his taut angry chest, staring up at him with her eyes big and dark. "You're not gonna do it, Spike. I trust you."

Spike thinks she almost means it. He hurls her away from him violently, shaken to the core. "How dare you!" Where does she get the gall to taunt him like that! Does she want to be his third Slayer? Well, this is the right way to go about it. "You planning on getting me so fucking mad I'll forget about a fair fight and all and just kill you?"

She picks herself up calmly. "Just when is a fight a fair fight, Spike? Meeting at dawn, seconds shaking hands? You know that's not how it works for vampires and Slayers. We're enemies anywhere, anytime. No reason the time for a good fight wouldn't be now."

"Don't like doing it when you're not at your best," he mutters. "What with Joyce dying 'n all."

"Did you ask your other Slayers if they were at their peak? If they wanted to wait until next week, when they wouldn't be so PMS'y? Huh?"

She's stepped up to him again, chest to chest. He's not looking down, definitely not, but her nipples must be inches away from his own, thrust forward by her ridiculously high heels. Her body glows at him like a little heater churning away for his benefit. So close. So sweet. Her blood rushes deafeningly in his ears and he can hardly hear his own reply.

"Course I did. Took them at their peak. Wouldn't be fun otherwise, wouldn't be worth the fight."

"Yeah, sure," she says, skepticism in every nuance of her voice.

Spike keeps his eyes away from her face, doesn't want to drown in those dangerously deep eyes. It's not clear why, but she's a risk to him. He burns in his need to get away from her as fast as he can, he can almost taste the freedom on the wind, doesn't want to be dragged down in a murk of feelings and obligations.

"Don't leave Sunnydale, Spike. I like you right where I can keep an eye on you. I'll know it if you start feeding again."

"Bugger off," he says. "Mind your own business, I'm not your little charity project. I'm an evil vampire and I'll do as I please. When and where I please."

He lifts his head and meets her eyes defiantly. That's a mistake, because the way she looks at him makes him dizzy, with fear maybe, he can't tell exactly. The whites of her eyes so pure and clear in the inadequate lighting, the sheen of her cheeks and the inviting shape of her soft wide mouth beckon him and he almost falls towards her. What does she want? She shouldn't look at him like that, it's wrong; an enemy shouldn't look at you with such terrible compassion. He hates her, that's what it is, she's just taunting him with her bare neck and her soft scent of pussy beyond his reach. Bitch.

"Have fun playing with your car, Spike. Should I ask Xander to give you hand with that? Anyway, I'll be by to check up on you from time to time."

He should keep his eyes on his car, but she won't know it if he looks after her. There she goes, walking alone and unafraid through the shadows, from pooled streetlight to streetlight. Her lush bum jiggles under the short skirt. Her legs seem impossible long for such a tiny girl, gleaming and tanned between skirt hem and boot tops. There's two big black imprints of his greasy hands on her soft upper arms; he's marked her. It makes him strain in his pants, hard as a rock, the way he gets every time he thinks of her now. Maybe she doesn't rate a fair fight. Maybe he should just fuck her and drain her to death. That might make him forget the sleepy joy of waking up in her arms, or seeing the mischievous smile on her face when she reaches for his prick first thing. Her breasts, just enough to fill a champagne glass. Her hair, that smells even better unwashed.

Does she think of the days they spent in each other's company? The banter, the fighting, the fucking? The incredible closeness, knowing each other so completely? Even being one creature for a few brief moments, intangible, half-remembered but burning unbearably bright in the dank grottoes of his mind.

She'd have lied about them to her friends; he's sure of that. He would. Nobody in his right mind would own up to spending time with a creature that is everything you despise and hate. Right? He has to get out of here, get the bloody car running, start forgetting, burying the memories under a layer of killings, fuck his way through a bevy of willing vamps so he can forget about doing her. She was so wanton, once she resigned herself to the inevitable, screaming and clawing like a wildcat.

Spike groans and stares at the dirty recesses of the engine, trying to fucking remember what he was fucking doing before she fucking came along. He turns around to get another tool and stumbles over the whiffy corpse she left. Oh, great. Spike's no longer evil enough to fight, he might as well become garbage disposal guy in one fell swoop of humiliation.

He sighs and picks up the body. The carrion demons aren't back yet, but he'll leave the body at the entrance to their cave. They'll like it even more if it ages another few days. Bloody Slayer. And the thing is, here he is, doing what she asked for. No, worse. What she didn't even bother asking for, blithely assuming he would do it. For that, she deserves to suffer.

*

Last night went by without so much as an anemic cough from the DeSoto. Sheer stubbornness has so far prevented Spike from ditching it but if he can't find someone tonight to fix it, he's gonna steal a new car, paint the windows black and never look back. He's taking a little stroll through Sunnydale's still empty neighborhoods, going the roundabout route to Willy's. He's on the prowl for victims, but the pickings so far have been nonexistent, if you don't count the humiliating encounters with a dog, a cat and a frightened horse. At those moments, he was very thankful there was nobody to see him, and at least his belly is full.

Hey, he's accidentally turned onto Revello. He debates retracing his footsteps, but there could be returning citizens on Revello as well as any other residential avenue, couldn't there? Dads clearing corpses and demon parts off their yards, mowing the lawn...And yes, he can check up on the Slayer. Know thine enemy, that kind of thing. If he knows his enemy is holed up in her cutesy little pajamas with her mean little eyes firmly shut he can walk freer and kill at will. Good. These are sound reasons, and he picks up his pace a little, no longer strolling but striding like a man with purpose.

All the houses are still dark, except number 1630. A lone little light is burning in the Slayer's bedroom. So, she's home, in bed, no reason to loiter. He should be off at a smart clip, catching some nibbles before she susses him out. He leans against the big tree in front of the house and smokes a fag or two, simultaneously trying to catch a sniff of Slayer scent. The smell of burnt tobacco from the growing heap of butts is a hindrance, and that's the only reason he's moving closer to her window. Make sure she's really asleep. He listens to her quiet heartbeat, imagining the soft curves her heart is hidden behind, the taste of her perky nipple in his mouth.... Only so he can rip her heart out all the better, right?

A sudden acceleration in the slow beat shakes him out of his reverie and he takes off quickly. He wonders if he could stop himself from fucking her if he incapacitates her in a fight. He left the body of his last Slayer intact, honoring it with his abstinence, but the mere thought of Buffy's neck under his fangs makes him hard, makes him shift into game face and play the tape of their encounters in his head once again.

He's walking away rapidly, so deep in thought that he fails to hear the quick footsteps behind him until they're almost on him. He turns quickly, ready for the stake aimed at his back, but she closes the distance between them with empty hands. She's jogging, panting form her hurry to catch up with him.

"Hey! I wasn't asleep! I'm totally ready to go on patrol with you!" she says, hastily putting up her hair in a sloppy knot. Her breasts in the flimsy top dance a little shimmy and he closes his mouth with a snap. No bra, he can tell. The heart encased in that soft gleaming flesh beats faster than it should and her voice has a little catch in it. What is she afraid of?

And, patrol? Last thing on his mind. He has to lose the Slayer, fast, or forego another chance at a good meal. He strides faster, but her little legs in their shiny white boots keep up easily. Again with the short skirts, he sees. Must have been a fashion change he's missed, as usual.

She draws level with him and tucks her arm in his. Spike's too surprised to react.

"So, I really hope there's some action tonight. The town's been deader than the dodo, I'm itching for a good slay."

Spike opens his mouth with a witty rhyming quip on the nature of her itch and an offer to scratch it, but he shuts it again. His mouth is not to be trusted. He'll say things to the Slayer that will be completely different form his inimical thoughts and firm decision to be out of here. So. He won't talk. He'll just nod and march along in manly silence.

"Some people are so weird, you know. You'll never guess how Willow's parents reacted when she called them! They never even realized Sunnydale was under martial law and had been evacuated! They were cruising in the Caribbean, completely oblivious. How's that for parenting, huh? Were your parents the holding-on-tight or the letting-go kind?"

Like he's gonna answer that. He couldn't care less about the witch or her parental units. None of his business. Her gay chatter has a febrile quality to it; it feels forced and desperate.

Buffy's not be silenced to death. "And Xander's parents kinda forgot to pick him up when they evacuated. I guess, you know, I'm better off with my Mom. At least I know she loved me. I mean, Willow's and Xander's parents aren't dead, but if they had been, their last words to remember them by? 'Gee, you cut your hair six months ago or 'Hey, you forgot to put in the fabric softener again.'"

Spike grits his teeth and thrusts his hands deeper into his pockets. She doesn't mean anything by it, she can't. It's just chatter, although he's at a loss as to the reason why. What do they have to talk about? They're enemies, not best friends.

"What do you think, should I sell the house to pay for college? I don't know about money stuff , but it must cost a lot to keep it going.  I guess your crypt is rent-free?

"Comfy enough for me, Slayer. 's Got a bed, running water, electricity."

"Really? I would never have guessed. You should show me around some time."

Buffy skips and trips on happily on his arm, chatting and leaning into him confidentially. Occasionally Spike grunts to keep her going. Why? This must be her way of torturing him, it must be. She's cottoned on to his weak spots about mothers and his cluelessness about the ordinary world she lives in. If push comes to shove, she's only part-timing the whole creature of the night gig, and he's not. She's skillfully drawing the maximum amount of pain from him. His respect for her grows. She really know how to taunt an enemy, he has to give her that.

A warm wriggling thing enters his pockets. His first thought is 'rat' and he clamps down firmly. His second thought tells him it's the Slayer's hand, and he orders his fingers to unclench. They refuse adamantly and hang on to the hand, still soft with baby fat and incredibly tiny.

The Slayer's cheeks are tinted with rose now, and she looks up to him with a look in her eyes he can't read. The extra heat in her cheeks perfumes the air with her heady scent of blood and woman, and the color is so close to red that he could almost lick it off her like blood. His hand stubbornly clings to the Slayer's and Spike stops in the middle of the street, too dumbfounded to go on.

"What the hell's going on, Slayer?" he finally manages to get out.

"I don't know, Spike," she says, and comes closer to play with a loose button on his duster. "I'm just playing it by ear, here. Don't you wanna find out?"

He can't breathe. No, bugger it, he doesn't have to. There's some signal going from a tight spot on his chest to his brains and he can't figure it out. He can't think if she's standing so close, all blood warm flesh, faintly throbbing from her own pulse. His hands are on her arse, for some reason, finding out thoroughly and earnestly just how high and firm it is.

"Spike..." Buffy says.

"Unh," Spike retorts, unable to get sensible words past his teeth and choosing to keep his mouth clamped firmly shut.

She giggles artfully, touches his lips with her finger and with one of these mysterious feminine moves she's detached his hand form her bum and they are walking again, their joined hands swinging between them. The heat from her hand is creeping insidiously into his skin, warming him from top to toe, making him tingle and glow. This can't go well.

He jerks his hands loose. "Don't think we're that close."

Buffy shrugs and hooks her arm through his again. "It's a nice night, isn't it? The sky is clear again now Adam has stopped his smelly goings-on."

"Hadn't noticed."

Spike looks around furtively. This is one compromising position he's in, and it would be the death blow to his already frayed reputation if anyone saw him. Thank God, most demons haven't returned to their caves and basements yet.

Willy's around the next corner. He has to shake the Slayer now or he'll never live it down. He picks off her hand from his elbow and steps back.

"Off you go, now, Slayer. Enough of the mind games already. You go your way, I'll go mine."

She stands in front of him and folds her arms in that way she has. It fluffs up her breasts and Spike loses the thread of what's she's saying for a moment.

"I'm not gonna let you out of my sight, Spike. Not until I have your word you won't kill again."

"Have you completely lost it? Me give you my word I will be killing again? I'm evil, that's what I do. End of discussion."

"That's not the answer I'm looking for, Spike."

"Yeah, so? What are you gonna do? Stalk me twenty-four seven?"

Buffy scowls but lets him go without a word. Spike stalks off, feeling like there's a giant target painted on his back, and he's gonna get an airborne stake in there any minute now. He reaches the corner safely and can't resist a quick look backwards. The Slayer's trudging off, shoulders bowed and arms folded in front of her chest, no longer challenging but protecting her hunched body. One arm reaches after her, yearning; he almost calls out and is rescued by a gruff greeting.

"Hey, Spike. Mighta known you'd be my first customer. Help me get these boards off and I'll stand you a drink."

Spike looks down on Willy, poised on the cusp of two possible actions. He decides and turns away, but the Slayer's no longer in sight. Bugger. Well, all right. Saved by the bell, or Willy, or whatever. Annoyed and rattled he silently wrenches off the boards that have been haphazardly nailed across the front of Willy's Bar.

"So, Spike, how come you're back so early? Word was Adam's boys were on the lookout for ya."

"Adam? Double crossing bastard. Said he'd get the chip out for me. Never delivered on it. I killed him."

"You? Tell that to your grandmother. You couldn't harm a..."

Spike lets fly some of the inchoate frustrations riding him as anger and pushes Willy to the wall. "News flash, Little Italy. Spike's back and he's bad. Don't fuck with me and I won't make two nasty holes in your neck, capice?"

Willy gibbers at the sight of his game face but remembers enough of former empty threats to taunt him back. "You're bluffing, Spike. Prove it to me and you can drink for free all night long."

Spike growls and tears a ragged hole in the side of Willy's neck. A painful, impressively bleeding wound, but nowhere near the artery, not enough to incapacitate his useful bartending qualitites.

Willy sinks to the ground in shock and pain.

"Fuck it, Spike, you didn't have to bite me. Couldn't ya just have twisted my arm or something?"

Spike kicks him in the ribs fairly gently. "Stop whining and get up. You asked for it and you got it. Now get me some JD and pronto."

Willy scrabbles up and hurries behind the tap in a pathetic littlie sideways scurry.

Spike pulls down a barstool from where they're neatly stacked on top of the counter and hoists himself up. This is the life. Terrorizing the local merchants, exacting tribute from the demon community, getting nicely drunk with a belly full of blood. Well, the last bit is still lacking, but life's well on its way to become bearable again. Willy plunks down a glass and a fresh bottle in front of him and he pours his first triple. The strobe lighting turns on and the jukebox kicks in, smack in the midst of 'New York, New York.' Better, but not good enough.

"Willy! Turn on some proper music instead of this pap," he commands and enjoys Willy's servile scuttle. Much better.

Willy's clientele trickles in, not yet at full strength. Naturally, the demons are first ones back in town, while the human community is still skulking in cheap motels and dossing in gyms, no doubt.

About halfway through the bottle a familiar face swims into his field of vision.

"Jake!" Spike shouts.

"What d'you want, Spike?" the Ano-movic demon says, not particularly friendly.

The news that he's back to his old self isn't getting around fast enough, so much is clear.

"I need you to tow my car from the north entrance to Restfield cemetery. It won't start."

"That junked old DeSoto you used to drive? I'd scrap it, if I were you," Jake advises and makes as if to turn away.

He changes his mind when Spike dangles him by the ears. Ano-Movic demons have delicate ears and they don't like to tear them.

"I need the money up-front, Spike," he says. "Because it's you."

"Yeah, sure, mate," Spike says, and peels off some bills of his respectable roll; looting has been extremely productive. Jake eyes it askance. Spike wasn't formerly known for his solvency. Too bad. Those lily-livered wankers should have stayed in town if they wanted to profit form Adam's little caper.

"Okay, buddy," Jake says, much more amenable now. "I'll tow your little old rust heap into the shop and see if I can round up my mechanics. Tomorrow night at dusk suit you?"

"Couldn't you do it sooner, mate?" Spike asks, "I gotta get out of this dump."

"Sorry, no can do," Jake shrugs. "These old cars take time, you ought to know that."

Spike growls in his scotch but he needs Jake willing and able. Violence would be counterproductive at this stage.

He surfaces from the amber blur of scotch and tequila shots Willy keeps standing him in the middle of a sentence.

"...and then the bastard...."

Spike falters and looks around. A semi-mellow crowd of assorted demons is gathered around him. He's holding court on his barstool, one hand voluble gesturing in mid-air, the other firmly clasped around the silk-clad waist of the Slayer, whose shapely bum is nicely warming his right leg.

He's fairly sure the night didn't start out like this. He checks out the crowd, the gleaming top of Buffy's head, wedged firmly against his shoulder. Right. No more thinking about how he got into this, because alcohol is sure to play a large role in it; better get on with his tale. Drunk crowd like this could turn nasty faster than you can say 'tough room'.

He nudges Buffy. "Where was I, Slayer?"

"And then Adam tried to crush me in this bear hug, me kicking his iron balls all the time. Spike jumps his back..."

She pauses to hand the tale neatly back to him. Smooth, Slayer, really smooth. It's like being in a fight with her, or fucking her for that matter, each parry and thrust perfectly in sync with his. She's a dream to work with.

Spike swallows back a maudlin lump and picks up the telling.

"I knew I had to get out his unbeating heart, his unnatural un-magical plutonium power source. One by one, I ripped out all the lines connecting the damn heart to the other shiny bits and then I tore out the heart itself. Fellow went down, like... -- do you guys ever watch those brilliant movies of humans blowing up apartment buildings?"

"Ain't humans, Spike, 's really N'tro Glycrin demons who do that!"

"Shush! Let Spike go on!"

"Right, he toppled over just like of those buildings, slow like, falling in on himself, sinking to his knees at first, and then he crashed to the turf. Made the earth shake, know what I mean?" Spike continues.

There's laughter, and a toast to Spike and the Slayer, Adam's killers. Buffy leans into him. He looks down on her flushed, happy face, and then she beams up to him with a wide, sweet smile, as sweet and wide as slitting someone's throat. It pierces him to the quick and lays him open for what comes next. Their eyes meet and Spike gets an electric shock to his dead heart, starting it up for a beat or two. It's bloody scary. He looks away hastily.

He allows the crowd to drift away and clasps the Slayer to his side even tighter, making her squeal a little.

"What the hell are you playing at now, Slayer?" he hisses into her ear. "Could get me killed, being seen with the likes of you!"

She looks at him darkly at first but then takes on her flirty stance again. "Work with me, here, Spike. If I can pretend to be attracted to you, the least you can do is pretend back."

Pretend? There's no pretending with a vampire. She's drunk and she's horny and it wasn't the floppy eared demon on the right made her so. He can't fathom what her game is, saying one thing, doing the opposite.

She tosses a stray strand of her hair, still in that attractive sloppy bun. The movements make her breasts jiggle and Spike exerts all his willpower to look away from them. Meanwhile his hand sneaks up unseen and is grasping a soft globe, the thumb rubbing the nipple to stiffness.

He jerks his hand away and rolls his eyes. "See what you make me do? Unnatural acts between vampire and slayer, in public no less. Let's get out of here before the mood turns ugly. Don't plan to leave my dust in a bar brawl in the grottiest town in California."

He drags the Slayer out of there, tottering on her high heels. She's wearing a thin slip of silk, hardly more than three handkerchiefs, and rhinestone studded slippers. What's more, she's two sheets to the wind. What shall he do with a drunken Slayer? If he were a wiser man, he'd give her a knee trembler against yonder wall, drain her dry while she was too drunk and happy to notice and toss her body in the nearest dumpster, like he did to so many of her sex.

"What's wrong with you, you stupid bint? Not gonna hang out with you, we're not friends, we're not lovers, we never will anything but foes! We worked together for a bit and now we're back to being archenemies. Can't you get that through your thick little skull? Go find your little friends to play with. Now scoot!"

Buffy sways and lunges after his arm when he moves off after having his say. "But Spike, nobody's home and I was all alone with nobody to slay and nobody to ..." Her voice wavers on the brink of maudlin tears. Then she regroups. "I mean, I have to watch you. See to it that you don't kill anyone."

Spike tries to shake her off but she climbs him like a tree, the move almost toppling him by its unexpectedness. He ends up with his back to the wall and Buffy's mouth closes over his. Spike is so flummoxed that he's paralyzed for precious seconds, allowing his body's natural arousal systems to kick in full force. He's kind of pissed himself, he realizes, when he's still sucking face with her, minutes later, while he can see the exit of Willy's in plain sight, meaning everyone who comes out of there will be able to see them, too. A brace of top-heavy Fyarls comes out, rowdy and belligerent with drink and spot the two of them. He lifts up the Slayer, whose legs are scissored around his waist like a clingy crab's and walks her into the darker alley around the corner.

He's now in such a state that he puts the Fyarls out of his mind and proceeds to pursue his short term goal, namely banging the Slayer into the wall until something gives. The Fyarls have better use of their brain capacity then he does at this moment and apparently still remember him disappearing into the alley. They're too stupid to surround them, so when the dozen of them darken the already dark entryway to the alley, Spike knows something's up.

"Come on, lads; move along now, nothing to see here. Give a bloke some privacy, will you?" Spike tries, but they shake their heads and mutter nasty things in Fyarl about Slayer-lovers and vampire trash.

Spike peels the Slayer off his chest and dick with a sucking sound and puts her on her stilettoed feet.

One of the Fyarls cackles and points. "Lookit Spike's little needle dick! No bigger than my pinkie!"

This is an insult Spike cannot pass up, no matter that Fyarl pinkies are a more than respectable size. He puts it away and suits up.

The Slayer reacts with bafflement to the Fyarl's statement. "Are you blind? Spike's got a dick this big!"

She holds out her hands, with at least twelve inches between them.

"Very kind, Slayer, but you better get your weapons out," Spike says curtly.

"Silver. They can be killed with silver," the Slayer says and takes off one spiky shoe, holding on to him for support.

"I doubt that's real silver. Besides, wrenching off their heads will probably work as well."

This is pure bluff; the Fyarls are seven or eight feet tall and he probably won't be able to reach their necks, but uttering manly bluster and taunts is all in the game,.

"Oi, Slayer," the one Fyarls who speaks some English says, "when we've killed the little vampire we'll show you what a real demon can do to you!"

"Is he gonna eat me?" the Slayer asks, taking up position beside Spike.

Spike sighs. "No, love, he's just gonna rape you and then kill you. Nothing as bad as eating you."

"That's like, ew? We're not even the same size."

"Well, that's part of the fun for him, innit, splitting open a tiny human being."

The Slayer sways on her bare feet while she digests this, shoes at the ready. "That is so deviant. I mean, vampires, kind of takes getting used to, but ate least we're the same size and you were human once."

The return of 'we', he notes. The Fyarls finally get enough of blustering and bragging, most of which the Slayer can't understand at all, and attack. They are pretty bloody big, and he leaps high to get in a good kick in the goolies for the first one. He strikes true, but the demons aren't as sensitive as human males in that area and his opponent gets in a swipe at Spike's back that lands him ten feet away in a crumpled heap. Bugger. He claws back up and tries to get onto a scaly back, do that head-ripping thing he mentioned, but their necks are so big and his arms so short. He gnaws at the leathery hide, rooting for an artery, but their anatomy is not human and he doesn't find one right away. The Slayer is holding her owns with her aluminum heels, keeping the big lugs at bay with sharp jabs.

"Are you feeling it yet, you size-challenged idiots? The poisonous feel of silver, eating away at your flesh. Any moment now you're gonna keel over and die!"

She jumps up and drives one heel deep into the Fyarl's eye. It bellows in pain and staggers back, slowly falling to the ground.

"Okay," the Slayer yells, "that's one down. You've heard of shoes to die for? Well these are shoes to die by. Who wants to be next?"

The two remaining Fyarls look at each other, shrug and amble off. The one with Spike on his back shivers him off like a mere fly and follows them. Spike and the Slayer stare after them, unsure of how the fight suddenly seems to have ended. All at once, the Fyarls turn tail and storm back at them. The silver ruse discovered?

"Run, Slayer, now, or by God I'll leave you to the likely lads here. Move!"

The danger sobers her up, apparently, because she latches on to his hand and they fly off at a fairly respectable speed, that is for two people completely sodden with drink. Fyarls aren't nimble runners, but Spike hears one of them ordering to get the car pronto, so he chooses a flight path that takes them away from roads. They crash through abandoned yards, fight off attacks from swings and tricycles and finally end up at his crypt.

"Right, I think we're safe, Bu- Slayer."

He turns her bodily in the direction of Revello Drive and gives her a little push. He's mostly sober now. Faced with the choice between self-preservation and continuing their tryst, it's easy to pick what to do.

He enters his crypt and drops to the lower level. Through everything, he's managed to hold on to his bottle of JD, a small miracle in itself. He plops down on the bare springs of his bed and contemplates his life with a sigh. The evening was a resounding failure. Booze, check; getting the car towed, good; but bragging about killing Adam with the Slayer perched on his lap in all her nubile glory is just about a death sentence in this town. He must have been so bloody plastered to allow it to happen...damn Willy and his tequila chasers. Shouldn't mix it with scotch, he guesses. And then to top it all off, having to give up a fight.

Something tumbles giggling down the chute to his lower cave. Spike groans. Not again.

"Hey, Spike, wait up! We weren't done," the Slayer says and wrestles him down with surprising strength when he wants to manhandle her out of his bedroom. She bends his arms backwards and has a couple of handcuffs around his wrists before he can react. His stupid prick still hasn't gotten the memo not to boff the Slayer under any circumstances, which he can understand in the face of his frequent backsliding, but it's no help at all when the Slayer simply lifts her dress and takes a seat. She doesn't even bother undressing him. She just rips his T-shirt off and yanks his pants down far enough to fish out his dick, all standing up proudly and eager to go.

Spike groans embarrassingly loud when the powerful muscles in her hot slick pussy clasp him. Hard enough to makes his eyes roll back in his head.

"Fuck, Slayer, you got a snatch on you that's tight and strong enough to emasculate a lesser man. You must have held back so much when you were doing the late and unlamented Captain Corndog."

She freezes. How could he have forgotten such a perfect way to piss her off? He goes on with renewed confidence.

"Got a powerful bit of demon in you, don't you Slayer? No wonder you need some monster in your man."

Wait, this is not the right tack. He needs to set her to rights regarding him, not flog his manly monster charms.

"Show me your demon, Slayer, and I'll show you mine," he says, tongue against his teeth.

Her ardor is cooling rapidly. "I'm not a monster, Spike!"

She accompanies her words with slaps on his ribs.

"Yeah, right. You think an ordinary girl could have withstood all that raw power being flung about last week? And I don't just mean the spell, I mean what we took out on each other. Sheer fucking power. Sex, yeah, but a little more than that. The pounding you can take is amazing, Slayer, but the bollocking you give back is even better."

Her mouth hangs open and her face is scrunched up in agony. "I'm not a demon," she repeats desperately.

Spike shrugs. "Sure. Whatever. Now give me that ride you were planning on giving, darlin'."

Yep, he's done it. She scrambles off him double quick; doesn't want him to show her wobbling lip and teary eyes, he bets. She's sporting enough to unlock his manacles first, which gives him one of these strange pangs he's been having. If only she were evil, what a partner in crime she'd make. Good as gold, this girl, even when shaken to the core of her big brave heart. He again considers turning for a second, but that would pretty much put paid to these sterling qualitites. She's fine as she is, an enemy to die for.

Spike waits until he can't hear the Slayer's footsteps trudging off anymore before releasing his pent-up breath. That wasn't as pleasant and rewarding as he'd imagined. Telling off the Slayer used to be a major ambition. Chipped ambition, he rephrases. That must be it. He's outta here tomorrow night, or tonight, probably, so why bother pissing off the queen of the pissant town when you're leaving anyway?

Still. She might break her ankle on those stilettos. Serve her right. Or get mobbed by vamps, because she had no room for her stake in tonight's outfit, he's ninety percent sure. As would be fine, wouldn't it? The only good Slayer is a dead Slayer. By his hand preferably, true, but why grudge the new generations a scalp to hand on their empty belts? He's got plenty of those.

He's up the ladder and out of his door before he can formulate the next thought. She hasn't gotten far. She's walking on the grass beside the road, shoes in hand. He knew they'd be too uncomfortable to walk on. She's very small and vulnerable without shoes.

He keeps as far away from her as he can without losing her. He can still sense her at this distance, though. Scent the trace of her through the cool empty night air; hear her heart beat slowly, exhausted ahead of him. He's about to close in on her when a military car careens onto the street with screaming tires and drives straight up to her. She stands quietly, unafraid. Spike gets as close as he can without leaving the safety of the shadows, but close enough too overhear the conversation.

"Miss, what are you doing on the streets at this hour? On your own?"

"I'm walking back home," Buffy says calmly.

"Alone? You know, this town isn't safe for a young woman after hours."

Buffy shrugs. "I had no choice. My date wouldn't take me home."

Hey! Spike balls his fists. That is misrepresentation of the facts.

"You had a date? Where? There's nothing open here yet. We haven't allowed civilians to return yet. How did you get through the road blocks?"

Buffy shrugs again. Her voice is soft and girlish, her eyes downcast. "I never left. I hid in the basement and waited until you guys came in and rescued us."

The soldier doesn't know how to answer this, Spike supposes. "Well, get in, we'll drive you home."

Buffy turns her head and seems to look straight at Spike. He draws deeper into the shadows, taken aback. Can she sense him as he senses her? Buffy climbs into the vehicle, showing inordinate amounts of gleaming golden leg and décolleté while clambering in. Suddenly Spike's not so sure that it's a good idea for her to do that. A girl alone, horny soldiers? Laying their great big hands on her? She's his Slayer and they'd better behave, or he'll rip their heads off. He feels a little sparkly shower of joy when he realizes he could if he wanted to. No more chip, no more Spike uttering empty threats.

Spike lopes along the road as fast as he can. His vampire speed is not enough to keep up with a normal car, so when it disappears from sight he decides to take a shortcut through to Revello, across another cemetery and a housing development.

He's just in time to see the soldiers hand Buffy out of the car. He's all set to start ripping heads off, but when he sees the tired slope of her shoulders he relents and returns to his shadowed lookout. It hits him, whacking the soldier-boys would have been a solo act, not a duet. Soldiers are human. Yeah, there's not gonna be a Bonnie and Spike joyfully killing ever after. Their goals in life are miles apart, continents apart, and never the twain shall meet.

A soldier talks to Buffy and then she walks up the path to the front door alone. It's a pity they know her address now. Are there still bodies hidden in the basement? He hopes not. And the graves on the front lawn? Will they want to investigate those? He grits his teeth, helpless to protect her against the powers of the daylight world.

The military vehicle idles for some moments; two soldiers step out and take up positions in front and back of the house. It drives off slowly. Bugger. Now there's no way to sneak up to the house and make off with another corpse. If that still needs doing. Buffy didn't ask for his help, Spike tells himself. Okay, he should in fact be grateful to the US military or the National Guard or whatever, for protecting him against himself. Because to be totally honest the temptation to climb into her bedroom window and sneak into bed with her is pretty bleeding huge.

He can follow Buffy's progress through the house by the lights being flicked on and off. The one in her bedroom window glows up. Buffy herself comes to the window and throws another one of these longing looks into the night. She does sense him, he's almost convinced of it, and something pulses slowly in his chest, an unused breath that needs to come out. Did she mean it after all? Did she really feel lonely and in need of his company? Bollocks to that, then. She's a big girl and she'll just have to do without him.

He turns and walks off. When he enters his crypt it occurs to him that he's gonna leave after sundown and that this will have been his last look at Buffy ever. There are more of these annoying sensations in his midriff, like hunger pangs but a bit higher up. It's a good thing he's leaving. All this dangling after Slayers is bad for his health and unnatural. Time to go.

 Take Heart 9 by dutchbuffy2305

 Rating: R

Timeline: blurb to come. Think of Spuffy, sex, etcetera, you know the drill;

 Author's note: Thanks to Spikejones, aka jonesiexxx for the beta and the blurbing;

 Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305

 Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk</i>

 “I love you so much."

 >The words hang in the air like a cloud of moths, soft dark wings beating against his face, stifling, frightening, even if he knows he doesn’t need air. Buffy's face looks frozen, and she doesn’t move from where she's fallen, seated flat on her ass with her back against the mausoleum wall. Spike supposes his face looks like that too, shocked out of knowing what to do or feel, leaving just blankness.

<p>Spike sees the pulse in Buffy’s throat tick the moments away, inexorably, telling him you can’t turn back time, or swallow words you said. If he lets her live, she’ll always be witness to what he just blurted out. If he kills her, he’ll always regret not having had enough confidence to let her live. Didn't she say something about love, when they were still under the influence of the spell? He'd discounted it then, and he realizes he still can't believe in it.

<p>The moment of decision has long passed. They stare at one another across the chasm of dry turf. It’s a gap much too big to cross, Spike knows that. He wishes he could think of a way to leap across and take her in his arms, love her properly, as he's sure nobody has done yet. Even more, he wishes they were still best enemies, in a comfortable limbo of not quite working together, with all kinds of futures still in the offing. No, scrap both options. He wishes most of all that he could be himself, and that he had killed her just now. He knows how to be that bloke, and it seems best for everyone.

<p>All those possibilities are going nowhere. There’s only one future for him. Buffy's face abandons blankness and starts trying out emotions. They're not good ones and Spike's hearts sinks into the Sunnydale earth and further. He’s never felt this old and hopeless. He pushes himself off the ground and turns away from her. He aches all over from where she hit him; the heart she’s gonna trample on aches even more.

<p>He takes a few steps in the direction of his crypt, but he can’t let go that easily.

<p>“Buffy, I…”

<p>He catches a last glimpse of her as she runs off faster than he's ever seen her go. Of course. What was he thinking? That she would wait patiently until her despised enemy, the disgusting undead creature of the night, was ready to air out the hateful contents of his heart?

<p>His first thought after he’d blurted out those damning words had been that things could get no worse, that he was feeling shittier even than when he’d been first chipped, but he’d been wrong. The look on her face. Such a weird mixture of repulsion fascination and sheer gobsmackedness.

<p>He’s such a fool. What fucking idiot would fall in love with his enemy? Bloody definition of “pathetic.” He’s too bludgeoned by his newly discovered feelings to want to gauge the exact width and breath of them. He wanders dejectedly back to his crypt, but then stands there staring blindly at the sarcophagus.

<p>What’s he doing here? This is not his home. This is just a temporary dwelling, good enough while he was planning on leaving as soon as he could. Good for reminding him he wanted to leave, that he shouldn’t get too comfy or homey. It’s cold and dusty, no amenities, nothing. It doesn’t feel like home. It looks as if no one has been living there for a long long time. Right. How can he ‘live‘ somewhere when he's dead? He’s less than nothing, he’s a demon without talents. He can’t impress her by bringing home a still-warm heart, or a nice dress with a girl in it. His money’s stolen, his affection suspect.

<p>Is the crypt supposed to be good enough for him now? He's not gonna leave Sunnydale anytime soon, he knows himself well enough to see that. When he loves, however hopelessly, he loves thoroughly and persistently, and he doesn't leave the ones the loves easily or lightly. And Buffy didn’t kill him when he was lying there stunned into paralysis. So there’s hope. Well, it’s not like hope-hope. More like an absence of actual refusal. There’s even been absence of actually asking her anything on his part, so that means negotiations haven’t even begun.

<p>These tiny glimmers of not quite utter dejection fail to make him leave the spot where’s he’s rooted. Leave, why would he leave the cemetery? Where can he go? There’s nothing and no one here for him, no friend on whose shoulder he can sob. He didn’t bother with all that, since he was only passing through.

<p>He does have one advantage he didn’t have when he left. He's got wads and wads of cash, so that means he can get properly rat-arsed tonight without giving the wrong people IOUs he can never deliver on. Spike brightens infinitesimally and trudges back out to the graveyard. Booze. The booze calls from the southwest and he goes thither.

<p>Spike spots the girl one block before Willy's Bar and Grill. He melts into the shadows without a second thought and waits for her. His stomach burbles and his cock twitches. He can smell her all the way from over here, rich, heady girl smell, leaking blood all over the place. She walks on fast clicking heels, a little fearful and hasty all alone in the dark. Yummy spice of fear. That'll chase those terrible moments with the Slayer from his head.

<p>But he knows it won't. That it’ll be the same as yesterday, standing there with the prey ready and quivering before him, waiting for his teeth, and that he won’t want to go through with it. Not with a woman. Not with anyone, if he wants to retain that scrap of hope he has to get at the Slayer.

<p>Spike sags against the brick wall and leans his head back. This is ridiculous. What scrap of hope? He’s got no, he repeats to himself, no fucking chance with the Slayer. Ever. No matter what she said in a moment of delirium. But he can try squashing it for all he's worth, that damn fool part of himself still perks up and insists on reminding him of her ecstatic screams, her odd looks, and most importantly, her noticeable lack of staking. She knows he has no chip anymore. She thinks he's promised not to kill people. Yeah, right.

<p>He looks up, just in time to see the fat arse of his intended victim disappear around the corner. It doesn’t matter, plenty of other women in Sunnydale, or men if he can’t bring himself to kill girls anymore. Hunger threatens him with its sharp claws, but it's not strong enough yet to force him to go seriously trolling for dinner.

<p>Spike shuffles into Willy’s and sags against the bar. After taking one look at him, Willy shoves a bottle his way.

<p>"I guess the chip started working again, Spike?"

<p>Spike only growls in response. The chip is a better excuse than the real answer. No mate, I'm in love with the Slayer and she wants me to stop killing. He can just hear the Homeric laughter that will rise up from the whole of Sunnydale’s demon population. He's fucked, utterly and completely fucked.

<p>Three bottles later, he staggers back to his crypt and passes the spot where he and Buffy fought. He presses his body against the crypt wall he slammed her into, his arms spread wide, rough stone scraping the palms of his hands. His nose picks up the faintest trace of her scent. The stone is cold against his cheek, hard and unyielding against his cock. He should have fucked her when he had her pinned there, forced her to love him, made her look at him again as she did when they were under the influence of the spell.

<p>She did want him, he's sure. Even after the spell wore off, she didn’t look like she always did before the spell, annoyed and disgusted. He didn’t hear her spit and wipe off her mouth. There's opportunity there.

<p>He won’t go up to her house and woo her like a human being would. It's too fucking humiliating. He can just see himself, bunch of flowers in his hand, asking her out to dinner. Yeah, like that will work. The shame of falling for an enemy like that is unbearable and a tear creeps out of his left eye.

<p>Spike groans and rubs his cheeks against the stone again. He needs pain, or a good fight, or best of all, a shag to get him out of this despondent mood. The sad thing is there’s only one person he wants to fuck and she's pretty much unavailable, ever. Imagine the shame of the whole demon community not only knowing he was chipped, but actually dating the Slayer? Even if it could become true, that would be so embarrassing.

<p>His legs give out and he slides down the crypt wall like a slug. Halfway down his nose passes the spot where the Slayers’ arse was pressed against and the scent is stronger there.

<p>“Oh, Buffy,” Spike moans.

<p>When he hears the words whisper along the stone wall in an eerie sibilance he sobers up a little and checks quickly if no one’s looking. That was close.

<p>He pushes himself off from the wall with a sigh. Back to the delightfully decorated crypt it is, then. Almost dawn. The faint light picks up the white rectangle that's lying on the grass at his feet. Hasn’t he seen Buffy carrying it? He picks it up, almost toppling himself with his drunken lack of balance, and gets it at the third try. It’s an envelope, only a little soggy from lying on the ground for hours. Well, maybe it's a good excuse to drop by her house and return it to her.

<p>The crypt is just as dank and unwelcoming as when he left but he has no choice, he has to hide from the daylight. Isn’t life great.

<p>*

<p>The hangover wakes him up, pounding nails of pain in his head. Ow. Hair of the dog would be a good idea, but the bottle next to the sarcophagus is empty. He must have drunk it when he got back, although he has no memory of it. Daylight is still leaking through the crypt’s windows; late afternoon by the angle of it.

<p>Something beneath his body rustles when he sits up. He fishes for it and it's Buffy’s envelope. He almost chucks it in petty revenge when he catches a glimpse of what’s written on it. He stares at it stupidly. "Spike' it says, in a girlish round handwriting with a circle for the dot. Buffy’s writing him a note? Dear Spike, I hate you. Please leave town immediately. Well, no. She’s never felt shy before about simply voicing sentiments like that. He turns the envelope over and over in his hands. Good quality white paper, a narrow grey edging. What could she possibly be writing to him? Odd, this.

<p>He shakes his head and tears the envelope open. It's been a while since he did that and he also tears the thick, doubled up piece of paper inside. He untangles the torn bits of letter from the torn envelope with clumsy hung-over fingers and holds the two pieces together to read it.

<p>His jaw hinges open with an audible click. He's invited to attend Joyce Marilyn Summers' funeral, 19:00 hours, May 19th. He has no clue what the date is, but it can't have been yesterday because it was later than that when he fought Buffy. Buffy's inviting him to her Mum’s funeral. An evening funeral, especially geared to the sunlight-sensitive? Of all the weird things he never expected, this is a major one. So what's he supposed to do, write back? Rent a suit?

<p>Now he knows how Buffy’s has been spending her time. Dealing with authorities, having old Joyce dug up. Tara too, presumably. He's not invited to Tara's funeral, he notes.

<p>The shock of receiving the invitation has made him appallingly sober. Things aren't exactly looking more hopeful in the harsh light of day, as is their wont. He sinks down on the crypt floor and leans his head against the sarcophagus. She's managed to stump him, all right. He's not going, of course. Who ever heard of a vampire going to a funeral, if not to bury his newest get? He can just see the faces of Giles and the bloody stupid Scoobies if he were to show up. That'll go down well.

<p>He rolls his neck muscles. Still. He can’t deny the invitation has made him feel different. Right hopeful, in fact. He wants to flatten that feeling, scrunch it up and throw it away, but it’s pretty resistant. It can’t do harm to show up. If he doesn’t expect anything, he won’t get his heart stomped on too hard. He's gonna show up out of respect for Joyce, ignore the Scoobies, nod politely to the Slayer and thank her for the invitation. And then leave immediately afterwards, his dignity intact.

<p>Spike snorts. Dignity. Who gives a rat's arse about dignity? He wants the Slayer and he’s damn well gonna get her. He'll lie, cheat and steal to get her. At least all his clothes are black. Oh, what the hell is he thinking. Of course he's not bloody going.

<p>

<p>*

<p>He has no trouble at all locating the funeral party. All the parking spaces for hundreds of yards have been taken and it’s a coming and going of cars and people, hearses driving on and off. Right. Someone’s making a bundle out of Adam's yen for destruction. He spots the Slayer and her friends waiting at a freshly dug grave, all dressed up in unfamiliar dark clothing. Buffy's bright hair makes her coat seem even duller and darker. He joins them silently, expecting to remain unnoticed at the rear.

<p>However, Buffy whips her head around as soon as she comes within range of his senses. This tells him something about her sensitivity for vampires. Her pale set face digs soft fingers into his heart and yanks him forward to where she's standing.

<p>"Spike! Thanks for coming," she says softly. "I wasn’t sure you would."

<p>Is it imagination or is there a faint pink in her cheeks now?

<p>"Course I came,” he says, as if he never had doubts.

<p>He wants to slip back to the rear of the small group but her hand sneaks out and grabs his. The heat of it touches him everywhere at once and he stands stock still, afraid of doing something really weird if he moves, like gibbering or dancing or singing. His thoughts stutter and start, stop and start. I'm not ready! he wants to scream. His whole being yearns to be in his hand, to flow towards her and to touch her. If he weren't so conscious of people watching he'd sink to his knees right here and now and worship her.

<p>He's doomed, utterly and completely doomed.

<p>He forces himself not to look back, but he can feel the Scoobies' beady eyes bore holes in his back. They’re mentally staking him over and over and over, he just knows it. Ungrateful sods. He’s saved their stupid little lives, hasn’t he? Might have been under duress, but they don’t need to know that. He should have prepared for this instead of telling himself he wasn’t going to go to the funeral at all.

<p>The ceremony takes forever. He doesn’t really hear the words, but he can sense every pulse of blood in Buffy's hand, which seems to be growing warmer and warmer in his. He's gonna go up in flames if it lasts much longer. Her hair stirs softly around her face, her eyes hidden in shadowed hollows cast by the lights that have been set up in the cemetery. She stares straight ahead and doesn't give him one look the whole time, but her hand clings grimly to his and he can measure her desperation by the strength of her grip. He remembers what it's like to lose a mother and strives to give her the support she needs through his fingertips.

<p>Buffy steps forward to put a flower on the coffin. She doesn’t let go of his hand, which is pretty damn awkward. Stroke of good luck that he pinched a rose from another fresh grave just now. It’s the wrong message in the flower language, at least for Joyce, but none of these hatchlings here will know that.

<p>At last, the service ends. Spike tries to slip his hand from Buffy’s, to melt away into the darkness like a proper creature of the night, but she tugs him mercilessly toward the brightly lit parking lot. He really doesn’t want to go. He’s no good at stuff that can stand the daylight.

<p>“You’re coming with us, right Spike?” she says.

<p>Spike wants to say no, but Xander saves him from that mistake.

<p>“What? Spike? What for? And what's with the handholding, Buffy?” Xander asks.

<p>Spike sees Buffy stiffen and feels her hand get a degree or so hotter. Bloody tosser, badgering Buffy about who she wants around after her Mum’s funeral. Doesn’t he see she’s this close to falling apart?

<p>“Spike’s my…ally and he’s gonna be with us in the Scooby meeting!” she says.

<p>“Buffy, unless there’s some compelling reason, I’d really prefer not to have him in my home,” Giles complains.

<p>Xander practically skips closer to Giles and favors Spike with a triumphant smile. “That clear enough, bleach boy? Nobody wants you.”

<p>Spike stands taller and walks up to Xander. “Buffy wants me.” He deliberately drawls out the word “want” and Harris nearly implodes. “Buffy invited me. That means I’m coming, don’t it? Buffy ’n’ me are mates.”

<p>“Okay. ’Buffy,’ you and ‘mate’ in the same sentence? Major squick,” Xander says.

<p>Spike rolls his eyes, and checks out Buffy's face, to see if she notices his admirable restraint

<p>“Really, Buffy, Spike in my car!” Giles says. “It’s new. He wrecked the old one, if you recall.” He polishes his glasses and mumbles, “Although why anyone should pay attention to my needs now when they never have in the past….”

<p>“Get over it already,” Buffy says. “That old thing made us late for an apocalypse, if I remember correctly.”

<p>Her glance strays back towards her mother’s grave. “Less talk. More getting away from this place.”

<p>Her face is pale and tight and there’s a faint wobble in her chin. In retrospect, Spike is appalled the Scoobies are her only support at this time. Doesn’t she have any family? Where’s her Dad? He grasps her hand firmly. He has a lot of experience causing grief. That should be a big help in consoling and supporting her.

<p>*

<p>In the car, Spike gets to be squashed in between Willow and Buffy, since both Giles and Xander refuse to sit next to him.

<p>“Grow up!” Buffy tells them sharply. “He's on a mission of redemption. Cut the man some slack.”

<p>“Man? Man?” Xander starts, his voice taking on that higher pitch and faster rhythm he gets when he’s going to spew vitriol.

<p>“Leave him be, Xander,” Giles says warily. “We owe him the opportunity to try and reform, just as much as anyone else, I suppose.”

<p>Spike reckons Giles is shutting Xander up for Buffy’s sake, not because he believes in vampire redemption. But as long as it muffles Harris, he doesn’t much care.

<p>It’s full and toasty in Giles’ little red car, two warm girls cushioning him from Giles’ abrupt and angular driving style. Buffy squeezes his hand and he squeezes back before he can check himself. Events are going faster than he can track. He wasn’t prepared for handholding and Scooby-inclusion, and Harris’ taunts glide off his skin as they always did. He gets distracted by the scent rising from Buffy’s hair. He buries his face in it and sniffs appreciatively. Willow turns a reproving eye on him.

<p>“Hey. Funeral, not ten minutes ago. No big deal to you, maybe, but for Buffy …”

<p>Ta ever so for the buzzkill, witch, Spike thinks, but then Buffy catches his eye. She looks pinched and miserable. She’d never ask, but she needs something from him and he bends over to kiss her. The taste of her mouth makes him forget the dull service, the strange scariness of pretending to be a good guy, the bumpy ride. When he touches her, he knows the world through her senses, and he doesn’t think sitting in a car with human beings is strange, or the prelude to an orgy of blood.

<p>Buffy’s heart patters with faint nervousness under his hands and he burrows under her clothes to get closer to its fascinating rhythm, seeking her warmth like a small blind animal, but just then it skips and starts thumping loudly, as do the hearts of everyone else in the car.

<p>Spike reluctantly disentangles from her lips and looks up. The cause of the Scoobies alarm is easy to spot. A big gray-and-blue splotched hand is splayed against the side window, the body attached to the hand looming up, tall in the dark shadows below the traffic light. The rotting face that descends to peer into the car is clearly not that of a law-abiding citizen of Sunnydale, or even a vagrant offering to wash the windshield. Its milk-white eyes, the only thing they can see of its face, glow eerily in the darkness. Xander is whimpering and trying to climb into Giles. A stench creeps into the car even with the windows closed.

<p>Giles’s hands grip the steering wheel until his knuckles go white but he doesn’t step on the gas to speed off for some reason. His right foot stutters and sends the engine revving pointlessly in a nerve-wracking rhythm.

<p>“Stop flooding the engine and drive!” Spike yells to Giles over the loud whining of the car, but the lights are red and is it that Giles can't make himself break the law, even if self-preservation dictates it?.

<p>The big sloppy shape taps the window and makes sounds at them. It looks as if he taps the window but he only squishes, and one finger falls off.

<p>“Giles!” Harris squeaks.

<p>Giles is finally released from his insane law-abidingness when the light turns green and he shifts to drive. The car bucks and jumps ahead, leaving the zombie standing on the curb. Spike cranes his neck to see it better as they drive off, but the tall portly figure lifts his hands in a frantic, hopeful wave, not threatening at all but rather saying, hey, you forgot to pick me up!

<p>The figure dwindles quickly in the patchy glow of the street lights. Is he imagining it or is it joined by one or two others at the last moment before it disappears from sight?

<p>“What was that?” Xander asks. “Did you see what it was, guys?”

<p>“You were the closest,” Buffy says practically. “Looked like a zombie to me.”

<p>“Hey, I know from zombies,” Xander says, scrabbling back to normalcy. “Scary, scary guys. Giles, do you know if Adam drafted zombies in his demon army?”

<p>It beats Spike why Xander is asking Giles and not him or Buffy. He wasn’t there, after all. The drive sinks back into the unremarkable, only punctuated by the white flashes of uneasy Scooby eyes swiveling over to check him and Buffy out. He can’t say he’s feeing perfectly unconcerned himself, actually. It feels bloody strange to have his arm slung around Buffy. What does it mean? Does she think he's her boyfriend now? Christ, they will have to talk. He dreads that talk even more than the upcoming Scooby meeting, for which he mostly anticipates boredom and ineffectual sallies from Buffy’s not so sweet little friends. He can’t do this, he’s fairly sure. It was easy to become a bad guy, long ago, because everybody knows about wrong, even if they’re a little shaky on what’s right. Going the opposite direction is a whole different vibe. He hasn’t the slightest clue how to do just about anything.

<p>Giles’ apartment is untouched, if dusty and smelling of garbage that should have been thrown away a week ago. The surroundings are disturbingly familiar to Spike. It’s not that long ago that he was lying here chained in the bathtub, being fed blood through a straw by a far less sympathetic Buffy. Her neck, though, looked pretty good to him even then. He remembers the red top she wore, mocking his hunger with its very color.

<p>Buffy’s tugging at his arm, looking at him strangely. "Spike, what's with the game face?" Her voice is businesslike, the vulnerability of a moment ago gone, no trace of it in her set mouth and sharp look.

<p>Oh. He realizes he's vamped out and growling low in his throat. For a moment, he can’t quite remember what he's doing here and why he's not tearing these people’s throats out, but the warm little hand on his sleeve brings him back to reality. The things a man does for love. Gut-wrenching, stomach-heaving, migraine-inducing madness it is. Can love possibly be worth all this? Will he look back on these moments and regret them? He can’t see any other outcome, yet he's unable not to go through with his. Love has him by the short and crinklies all right. The present incarnation of Love tugs at them hard enough to make him wince and indicates a chair.

<p>He sighs and swaggers over to it, pointedly taking a different chair to the one she indicated. He's not anyone’s lapdog, not even hers. Yet, a nasty little voice whispers, you’ll be sorry. Yeah, yeah, he knows this. Of course he’ll be sorry. This can never end well. Doesn’t mean he can walk away from it.

<p>Giles begins with his usual waffling and polishing of spectacles. “Well then, Spike,” he says and coughs genteelly. “Buffy tells me you’re willing to throw in your lot with us. Become a warrior for the good, as it were.” Giles looks at Spike over his spectacles. “You expect us to take you at your word? Explain to me why we should.”

<p>As Spike has, in fact, been troweling on the lies, he doesn’t immediately have an explanation ready. He does mean some of it, as he can’t see a way to eat people without the Slayer knowing about it.

<p>Buffy intervenes for him. “Giles, being good is new to him. He’ll get used to it.” She beams like a schoolteacher whose delinquent student racked up an unexpected A. “You would have been proud of him; you should have seen the way we worked together. It was awesome. He had my back all the way, and it was so great to have someone working with me who can take care of himself.”

<p>She sees the looks on the Scoobies’ faces. “Not that I didn’t always… Coz, you’re all totally behind my back.” Her eyes pop. “Not behind my back in the sense of … you’re all also taker carers. You’re caretakers! … Oh…” She glances at Spike for help.

<p>Spike doesn’t bother to hide his guffaw. The Slayer and him have so much in common that he didn’t know about before, lack of tact being a grand example.

<p>The Scoobies exhibit unease each in their own way. Willow wiggles her whole body, readying herself for a speech, but Xander attacks without thinking.

<p>“Buffy. Stop. Think! So Spike has superpowers, big whoop. He doesn’t have a soul.”

<p>“Of course I don’t have a sodding soul,” Spike snaps. “Don’t want the bloody thing. Had one once, didn’t do me a damn bit of good. I saved your sorry arse without the benefit of a so-called soul, and I didn’t hear you complain when I brought you back to life.”

<p>“What? Back to life? I’m not dead. Buffy, say I haven’t been dead!” Xander yells.

<p>Buffy makes an apologetic face. ”Um, actually, yeah, you were. It’s a long story. Spike and I carried your spirits, or stuff, around for days, and then we brought you back to life.”

<p>Giles forgets to worry his glasses for once. “Buffy, why haven’t you told us this before? Was I dead too?”

<p>Giles pats his sweater, as if to test the solidity of his flesh and then actually takes hold of his wrist to check his pulse. After a stunned pause, Willow and Xander follow suit. Giles falls back into his chair and rakes his hand through his sparse hair. “Buffy. From the beginning. We were dead?”

<p>Buffy makes anxious eye contact with Spike. He knows exactly what she means, namely, shut your great big gob and let me tell the story, but he's not sure he's going to mind her. Depends on her tale, doesn’t it? He wants his rightful share of glory, is all.

<p>“What’s the last thing you remember, Giles? You remember getting weak and sick because I was all powered up and we couldn’t find Adam?”

<p>Giles nods.

<p>“Then I started having weak spells. You thought it was because you three were draining my energies now to stay alive, because being super-Buffy had used up yours. I put you up here in the basement to keep you safe. The last thing you told me was to kill you,” Buffy says.

<p>Willow and Xander gabble and squeak, but Buffy pays them only cursory attention. Spike supposes there is no way to soften this.

<p>“Then I went to find Spike,” Buffy continues. “He was the only person who I knew would help me.”

<p>“What? Help you?” Spike blurts out. “Were you insane? I hate you! You’re my enemy!”

<p>Her wounded stare and a triumphant snigger from Xander bring him back to the present and he subsides. “Well, yeah, I mean, that was what I thought then. Go on, Buff.”

<p>“’Buff,’” Xander mumbles. “’Buff.’ We’re all nick-namey, now huh? What next – ID bracelets?”

<p>It hasn’t gotten through to Harris what Buffy and him have been up to, Spike reckons. He looks forward to rubbing his nose in it at some future date.

<p>Buffy takes a deep breath. “Then Spike, um, we killed you and the spell didn’t end but got stuck in Spike. And me. Then…”

<p>There’s a loud banging on the door. The Scoobies freeze. Spike jumps up and strides to the door, glad to be moving again. Sitting about and keeping track of those half-truths makes him twitchy. Before he can open the door a key clicks in the lock and the zombie they saw on the way over falls over the lintel. He makes a burbly, incoherent sound and points at Giles.

<p>“Whine!” the zombie bellows. “Allowis! Whine!”

<p>He stumbles more than he walks, at each step barely regaining balance on his uneven legs. He's dressed in what looks like to have been tweed once, but he doesn't have shoes on. Leg bones protrude thorough the grayish blue of his big long-toed feet. The zombie approaches Giles, stretching out his slimy hands as if to throttle him. He changes course at the last moment and lunges for Giles' glasses. The zombie shoves the glasses haphazardly on his owns head, puncturing an eyeball in the process and then grabs Giles in a bear hug.

<p>While they all stare at the zombie’s floundering, the door is still open and Spike is the first who whips his head around to the source of new shuffling sounds. Two more zombies scramble in, accompanied by a sickeningly sweet marshy stench. By now Spike has a pretty good idea what they are and it’s confirmed by the tatters of red hair on the head of the smallest zombie. Oops. Magic has consequences even on dead bodies, it seems.

<p>Buffy meets his eyes in complete understanding. “Spike! What do you do with a zombie? Salt?” Spike nods and takes a leap at the kitchen counter.

<p>“Chop off their heads!“ he shouts and rolls over the counter into the kitchen, destroying Giles’s drinks tray and teapot in the process. He opens alls the cupboards in a frantic search for salt. What does a salt container look like? He has no clue and it takes longer to read all the tins and bins in Giles’ messy kitchen. He takes quick look over his shoulder and sees Buffy tearing off an arm from zombie Willow.

<p>At last there’s a rectangular box telling him ‘Salt’ in bright red letters and he rolls back the same way he came, over the counter, to avoid Giles and the zombie who block the entry to the kitchen. He runs for Xander and his zombie, who seems to be giving Harris a French kiss. Talk about auto-eroticism… Harris’ eye movements are frantic and his face is taking on an unusual pallor. It’s not an erotic kiss; there must be some kind of sucking of life force going on.

<p>He slides the last few feet on his knees and almost tosses a handful of salt over the zombie’s head, but then changes his mind and wrenches at the thing's legs first. It's too much fun to see Harris writhe in fear and disgust under the besotted thing's onslaught. He takes his time about pulling off the rest of its limbs and only uses the salt when he finally gets bored. The zombie dissolves into smelly lumpy goo.

<p>"Looked like you were having fun, Harris. Good kisser, was he?” Xander shoots upright with a gasp and immediately starts throwing up, trying to dislodge the zombie soup from his shirt at the same time. He only ends up smearing his hands with the sticky ooze.

<p>“Great, Harris, just great. Vampires have really sensitive noses, you know.”

<p>"Spike, shut it, unless you want me to ralph on you!"

<p>Spike checks out Willow.

<p>"You okay, Buff?"

<p>Buffy is holding her own. She has methodically removed every limb from the zombie, and is now wrenching at the head. He expected no less. Giles then.

<p>Giles and his zombie are lurching around near the kitchen entrance, mouths locked together, reeling dreamily in a circle as if they’re slow dancing. Spike looks on for a few moments before upending the salt container over the zombie's head. It’s tougher than Xander’s zombie, or it’s become stronger through its frantic kissing of the new Giles, and it breaks apart in big chunks. The head lands on the floor with a wet thunk; the eyes look up at him with reproof behind Giles’s glasses. A good thing the mouth has already dissolved, or it would no doubt start preaching at him.

<p>Spike lifts a boot to stomp it into jelly. Giles grabs his arm and wheezes out, "My glasses, stop, don't damage my glasses."

<p>Spike bends over and fishes the slimy glasses out of the softening head. One eyeball is speared on the tip of the ear piece. He hands it to Giles and then stomps down hard. The skull dissolves with a satisfying splat. Giles gingerly peels off the soft gooey eyeball and gets out the inevitable hanky. Spike wonders if he’s happy to finally have good reason to clean the damn things.

<p>Over at Willow's body, Buffy's still having trouble with the Willow-zombie. It's now just a head, but it stubbornly clings to Willow's mouth and Buffy can't exert a lot of violence without either squashing or slicing Willow in the process. Spike offers Buffy his remnants of salt and she accepts it gratefully. The bodiless Willow-zombie turns to a translucent jelly and Buffy peels it off Willow's face with a wet plop. Willow is deathly white, with a red ring around her mouth where the zombie has been sucking her life away.

<p>Buffy helps Willow up and they stagger back to their respective seats. Spike gets a brilliant notion and goes to find Giles's secret stash of good Scotch. He returns triumphantly with the bottle and five glasses.

<p>"Here, people, to rinse away the taste of rotting flesh."

<p>Buffy makes a face. "Don't say that, Spike. Seeing it was bad enough."

<p>Giles throws his back in one gulp. "Thanks, Spike. Just what I needed."

<p>Buffy refuses with a heartfelt 'ew', but Xander takes a glass with alacrity and drinks until his eyes water. "I didn’t think I was ever gonna say this without gagging, Spike, but you saved my life. Thank you."

<p>Willow gargles and spits with hers, which is a damn waste of good booze.

<p>Buffy looks at him with more feeling than he's gotten all evening, in spite of her grimly clinging on to him. An actual slow smile dawns on her face and Spike feels an answering smile tug at the corners of his mouth willy-nilly. He goes away to another place for a bit until he regains a sense of self and realizes he must have been sitting motionless with a silly grin on his face for minutes on end. He puts his careless face of cool back on hastily and hopes the Scoobies were too relieved and shaken to notice.

<p>"Buffy, I hope you can tell me what those creatures were and why they were after us?" Giles asks.

<p>“I don’t have a good feeling about that, Buffy," Willow says worriedly. "My zombie was kinda wearing my hair and my clothes. Did that outfit look as bad on me as it did on her?"

<p>"Well, yeah, I guess those would be your old bodies," Buffy says hesitantly. "I was just about to tell you that we killed you?"

<p>Spike is deeply grateful for her skating over his role in that. He suspects the Scoobies would never forgive him for that, even if they were meant as acts of mercy.

<p>"You guys died. We buried your old bodies. We tried to save Riley, but it didn’t work. Adam turned him into a cyberdemon and he couldn’t take our magic."

<p>"That was the body previously known as Xander? And this is some new body? Oh man, Buffy, I really didn't need to hear that," moans Xander.

<p>"What magic was that, Buffy? I'm confused now," Giles says.

<p>"Spike and me were still sort of bound together by the enjoining spell," Buffy says. " And, I don’t know why… Maybe because Spike’s a vampire, but we could do magic. Together we were stronger, we had powers like Willow, we could think like Giles and feelings like Xander.”

<p>“My feelings are having a major wiggins as off now. Coz being inside Spike’s head? There might be Spike-cooties inside me now. Essence of dead vampire," Xander says.

<p>"Trust me, Harris, your disgust can’t be bigger than mine at the thought of you lot cavorting around in my noggin," says Spike.

<p>Giles leans forward with a new glint in his eye. The three glasses of Scotch might have something to do with it too, of course. "You know, Spike, perhaps I’ve been discounting your change of heart too abruptly. You’ve been carrying three souls around for days. We might have been, in fact, we probably were, the influence that turned you towards good. Or, well, stopped you doing evil."

<p>Spike snarls. "No sodding way. I don’t have a soul. I have not been contaminated in any way. I regurgitated you lot and that's it. Nothing left, no magic, no soul, no nothing."

<p>He grabs a pencil from the coffee table and puts in on his palms trying to levitate it. "See? Doesn’t work. No magic left."

<p>He doesn’t mention how he gets a flash of uncomfortable shyness and frustration. It’s how he remembers Willow feeling.

<p>Willow grabs it and makes it do somersaults. "Mine’s still working. Whew."

<p>"New jewelry, Spike?" Buffy says, in a very calm voice, spelling danger to Spike.

<p>He checks out the thick gold chain around his wrist, which is plainly in view on his wrist because he had to show off his lack of magic. Trust a woman to remember he didn’t have it before. He falls into her big green eyes, staring at him with incipient doubt and he can’t find the right lie to explain how he got it.

<p>"Buffy,” Giles rescues him unknowingly. “I'm still concerned about our former bodies. It's a bit of a pity you and Spike destroyed the zombies just now. I'd have preferred to study them to see if they could be revived. I don't feel quite at ease in this flesh."

<p>"Exactly!" Willow chimes in. "How can we be sure we're really us? We could be like completely different people and how would we ever know? What about our DNA? And my fingerprints? My dental records? We could be total mismatches with each and every one of them. Our whole lives could be taking different courses from here on!"

<p>Yeah, well, so what?

<p>"Nothing we can do about it, or any of you. Things went pear-shaped and you’re bloody lucky we could save you at all," Spike says.

<p>Giles gives him a subzero glance. "Buffy?" he asks.

<p>Spike glowers and tries to remover his hand from Buffy's. No way is he going to suffer this kind of indignity, not even for her. Buffy gives him a raised eyebrow and his thorns turn into quivering bramble jelly. He sinks back into the couch, speechless, paralyzed with lust and love. He's so whipped. When did that a happen?

<p>"Spike's right," Buffy says, and Spike glows. He catches Xander’s surprised, cynical glance on his face and he tries to remember if dismembering was in or out. Out, he thinks. Pity.

<p>Buffy gestures to the rotting heap of zombie assorted on the tile floor. "By all means go research the gross pile of zombie goo. I don't know why there were three of them, We tried to bring back your old body, Giles, but you weren't yourself. Well, maybe your personality was but you were still a dead, rotting icky body. We put you back in Spike's head and we used the Riley leftovers to make new bodies for you all."

<p>"I’m leftovers? I was just getting used to liking the me I was. Good old Willow. Now I’m sloppy seconds Willow.”

<p>"I hate it when these nasty little factoids keep coming out. The ones you forgot to mention the first time you told the story? Or the second time?" Xander says.

<p>"I just…I just didn’t want to hurt you guys, " Buffy says sharply. "You didn’t really need to know you were made of one third of the Riley blob, or that Spike…."

<p>"You were right, Buffy," Xander says, "I really didn’t need to hear that."

<p>Xander bolts for the bathroom again and Willow's face is tinged with green, which goes really well with her hair and eyes.

<p>"Buffy, what if we fall apart? What if we start to rot away, like the zombies, only not like them because we'd be conscious the whole time?"

<p>"Really, Buffy what were you thinking?"

<p>"You'd rather be dead?" Buffy says. "Too bad I didn’t get the memo in time. Feel free to kill yourselves, don’t mind me. I'm just a girl who tried to save her friends. And gee, I even thought I succeeded. How totally dumb of me not to get that I really failed. "

<p>She stands up, quivering with anger, but Spike knows that tears are hard on its heels. He stands up too and slides his hands around her elbows, supporting her unobtrusively.

<p>"Spike? Outside, now.”

<p>Spike follows Buffy, but before he exits, he slides his eyes over the stricken faces of the Scoobies. Xander, just emerging from the bathroom, still pale and sweaty, Willow on the verge of tears, Giles flushed and feverishly trying to alter the strength of his prescription glasses. They enter the cool lamp-lit courtyard but Buffy doesn’t stop. She strides off angrily, only the energy she expends in keeping the furious pace preventing her form sobbing.

<p>TBC

 Return to Bloodshedverse Home
 Use scroll bars to see reviews