By God, She Would Be An Angel!

Email:  soteria730@yahoo.com

Pairing: W/S

Rating: Pg-13 now, R later

Summary:  What would have happened if Spike were captured by
the Initiative and chipped in season two, soon after the events of
School Hard?

Spoilers: There will be references to pretty much every episode
in season two.

Distribution: Ask and you shall receive.

Disclaimer: Joss owns all.

Author's Note:  The title comes from a line in Henry VIII.  The next
part of Destiny in LA will be coming soon. Thanks to everyone
who sent feedback.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
 

~Prologue: Escape~

He was naked and he crawled.  He'd never crawled before in his
life, not unless it involved some really kinky sex, but he was in
such pain that the lack of dignity of his current predicament was
the farthest thing from his mind.  There didn't seem to be much
left of his mind.  Aside from the barely closed wounds and
gashes inflicted in the name of science, his entire body shook.
He had also never trembled before.  Maybe as a human his lip
had quivered after being rejected by a lady, but never had his
entire body taken to shaking.  He wasn't sure what was going on
inside of him.  It felt like his insides were boiling and there were
currents of pain that flittered from his head down his spine.  It
was, in fact, a miracle that he could crawl.

But, he was in so much pain that he couldn't really consider any
of this.  He was, however, able to register that the sun would
soon rise.  He felt the internal tingle that every vampire feels as
sunrise nears, though in the midst of all of the other, more
debilitating tingles, this sunlight warning bell was barely a blip
on the radar screen of his pain.  Escaping from that white lab pit
of hell had taken all of his inner strength and, once out, he had
run for his life until he collapsed and began to crawl for his life.
He hadn't even noticed when he'd lost the army boys.  He hadn't
been paying attention to where he was headed.  But then he saw
it.  Through his eyes, which were entirely red and aching, this
place looked like a sanctuary when only nights before it had
appeared to be an all-you-can-drink buffet that quickly turned into
the site of the greatest humiliation of his unlife.  Not only had he
been beaten down by a slayer, he'd had his head nearly axed
open by a slayer's mum.  None of that mattered now.  The high
school was a building that he could enter.  The sign in the front
of the school gave him his invitation, and with the last bit of
energy that he had left, he threw himself through the doors of the
main building.
 

~Part One: Public Nudity~

Willow waved to the janitor as she entered the school that
morning.  Willow was almost always the first student to get to
school, often arriving an hour early before even most of the staff
wandered in.  "Jeff the Janitor," as she mentally referred to him,
was a nice guy who, back in Willow's freshman year,  had told
her which entrances to the school buildings were open at that
early hour in the morning.  Most students would consider coming
to school an hour earlier some sort of punishment, or at least
nightmare material.  Willow, however, treasured this peaceful
hour.

Over the past two years, Willow's evenings had become
increasingly more hectic.  At first, this was simply the result of
actually being old enough to go out and do things in the evening.
Then, of course, Buffy came and Willow learned all of the
reasons why she shouldn't go out and do things in the evening.
Soon, her nighttime activities began to include research parties
at the library, study sessions at Buffy's house, mochas at the
Bronze, and fighting evil.  Willow enjoyed most of this because
she was with her friends, but Buffy's arrival, while it added
endless pages to Willow's social schedule, seriously detracted
from her quiet time.  As much as Will loved her friends, she was
an introvert by nature and she absolutely required a little bit of
alone time everyday in order to preserve her sanity.

The hour that she spent in the near-deserted school every
morning was the perfect way to start her day.  It gave Willow an
opportunity to gather her thoughts and finish whatever homework
assignments had been interrupted by the obligatory Hellmouth
disaster.  Still, it was a damn good thing that Willow was so
smart and that Sunnydale High's classes were so easy.  Willow
practically whistled as she waltzed down the hall that morning.
She had already finished her regular class assignments, so this
morning she would be able to get even further ahead in her
classes.  The truth was that Willow was already so far ahead that
she might even end up graduating early, though she wasn't sure
that she really wanted to.  She was becoming attached to high
school.  She had been picked on so much less since Buffy's
arrival.  "So what if being the Slayer's best friend sometimes gets
me attacked by vampires.  I can deal," Willow thought to herself.
"Of course, far worse than the vampire attacks was having to lock
myself in the maintenance closet with Cordelia."  A chill ran
down Willow's spine as she relived that particularly painful
memory from the previous week.

Turning a corner, Willow neared her destination.  There was a
comfy little sofa in a corner at the end of one of the school halls.
That sofa was Willow's special place in the morning.  She felt
like Pooh in his thoughtful spot.  Willow's wistful reverie was
broken by the sight of a strange object.  The object was on the
floor next to her thoughtful spot.  She gasped, and it was a good
thing, because after that gasp, Willow suddenly found herself
having lost the ability to breathe.  The object on the floor was
naked and it was a person.  It was a naked man.  It's funny to
note that this was the exact order of Willow's thoughts: "naked!";
"person!"; "man!"; "naked man!!!!!".  The only completely naked
males Willow had ever seen in her life were babies whose
diapers she was changing and Xander at Bobby Linch's fifth
birthday party.  As hard as Willow had later tried, her recollection
of five-year-old naked Xander was very fuzzy and even if she had
remembered it perfectly, he had been a five year old, not a naked
adult.  But here, only yards in front of Willow, lying on the floor
with his back to her, there was a naked man.

Willow's first instinct was to cover her eyes.  Part of her was
immensely curious and the other part of her wasn't sure that she
really wanted to see naked man parts yet.  After all, she was only
16 for God's sake!  Think of how embarrassing it would be if she
knew the guy!  Ooh!  God, no!  What if he was one of her
teachers!  "Wait a minute." In the midst of Willow's hysterical
thoughts and indecisive eye-squinting, a rational and highly
disturbing thought emerged.  "Why is there a naked man on the
floor?"  Willow panicked.  Suddenly her embarrassment was
gone and it was replaced by fear and concern.  She rushed
towards the body and bravely looked at the man on the floor,
partially hidden by shadows in the ill-lit hall.  Her blood ran cold.
Hovering over his figure, she took in the array of his injuries that
were apparent to the naked eye.  He had practically been
mutilated.   He was bruised and there were obscene gashes all
over his skin, as if someone had dug tubes into him.  She noted
that in several places along his arms and legs his bones
appeared to be twisted unnaturally.  It was a grotesque sight.
Having only moments earlier been unable to cast her eyes upon
this naked form, Willow could now not seem to will her eyes to
close, no matter how hard she tried.

Willow's sense slowly came back to her.  From the moment that
Willow had first observed the state of the body, she had forced
herself to ignore the face. She really didn't want to know who this
was.  The reality that this body was likely a corpse had finally
impacted her.  Someone was dead and lying on the floor in front
of her.  Willow steeled herself and looked at the person's head.
His face was pointed down into the carpet in a position that
appeared uncomfortable to say the least and all Willow could
see was the back of his head.  He had the blondest hair she had
ever seen.  It occurred to her that his hair was likely bleached.
Strange.  She didn't know any boys or men with bleached blond
hair.  She thought that she would remember, being that it was
kind of distinctive.

She didn't want to touch the body but out of the corner of her eye
Willow thought she saw something that she couldn't possibly
have seen.  She thought she saw one of the corpse's hands
move slightly.  Preparing herself for the touch of her fingers on
cold skin, Willow bent over the body and reached her hand down
to the pulse point on the naked man's neck, checking for some
hint of life that she was sure she wouldn't find.  And she didn't.

Willow didn't realize it but her fingers were trembling.  They were
still pressed on the skin of the dead man's neck.  God, she felt
sick.  She tried to think rationally, but she really wanted to run
away.  Instead, her knees gave out in sudden weakness and
she collapsed on the floor beside the body.  Willow's eyes were
closed and she tried very hard not to vomit.  As involuntary as her
trembling was, it abruptly ceased as something cold collided
with her thigh.  Willow's eyes bolted open and on the floor,
between her stocking legs and her skirt (that in her panic had
risen up far more than was appropriate), there was a hand that
was attached to an arm that was attached to the shoulder of the
naked corpse that had changed its position and was now
sprawled on its back.  Willow was sure that this was a
nightmare.  The corpse had not just moved.  Her eyes traveled
up the torso and landed on the face now opening it's mouth and
releasing a moan.

"Oh, God!"  Suddenly the pieces fell into place and Willow knew
who this man was.  He was indeed a corpse, yet he wasn't
exactly dead.  Less than a week ago, he had been very much
undead when he'd come crashing through the window on
Parent-Teacher Night.  She should have been terrified and she
knew it.  She should have been repulsed.  She should have
runaway, or even crawled if need be.  Instead, Willow found
herself feeling only pity and a twinge of something that would
have startled her if she had not already been so nearly startled to
death: looking down at the naked, mutilated, killer, Willow felt
concern.  And that was when Spike opened his eyes.
 

~Part Two: Of Angels, Demons, and the Faculty Bathroom~

When he opened his eyes, the world was a blur.  He knew
nothing and felt nothing.  Then painful sensations assaulted his
senses and shapes and colors began to form in front of him.  He
saw her.  It was amazing.  Hovering over him was the most
purely beautiful creature he'd ever seen.  He could make out the
unnaturally unblemished ivory of her face, the halo of red that
cascaded about her, and the most unforgettable ocean-like eyes
he'd ever beheld.  They were so deep and green and
penetrating.  And in them, he saw something he had the distinct
feeling that he hadn't seen in lifetimes.  He saw concern.  The
vision hovering above him looked down on him with gentle,
caring eyes.  He saw her and he was certain that she was an
angel.  Then, he remembered what he was, and he knew that no
matter how misleading her appearance was, she was no angel.
Angels did not look at demons like that.  Of this he was certain.
On the tail-end of this memory that he was a vampire came
another sensation- one that was overwhelming in it's
desperation.

He was hungry and as the figure before him came into focus his
senses screamed.  he could hear her blood pulsing beneath
that perfect skin.  He knew that just below the white of her skin,
there were veins of red, calling to him.  When that realization hit
him, the demon took over.  He felt a surge of strength and he
thrust his fangs at the human's throat, only to feel his body
thoroughly assaulted by a mind-numbing shock that coursed
through his nervous system.  He clutched his head and
screamed, falling back in a heap on the floor.  His broken body
continued to involuntarily shake even after he lost
consciousness.

This whole time, Willow had not moved.  Even when she saw his
face take on the features of his demon, she stayed completely
still, transfixed by him starring at her.  His eyes that throbbed with
a redness appearing unnatural even for a vampire, displayed so
much pain that Willow wanted to cry.  She hadn't been able to be
surprised when he attacked her.  He was a vampire.  She knew it
before he tried to bite her, so why would that action surprise her?
It also hadn't surprised her when he fell back on the floor and
passed out.  He looked like he couldn't stand a round with a
mediocre gust of wind.  What did surprise Willow was the jolt
that seemed to pass through him as he attacked her and what
continued to happen after he passed out.  His body (and I mean
all of it) continued to tremble violently even though he was clearly
out cold.

That was when Willow's brain began to function again.  There
was something very wrong here.  She wasn't "yay vampires," but
she still couldn't fathom what creature or creatures had done this
to a very strong vampire who had managed to best and kill two
slayers.  Also, there was the strange phenomenon concerning
the vampire's trembling.  Gently stroking the skin on his arm,
Willow observed that it was warm to the touch, when very clearly
a corpse should be cold.  She noted that the corpse had it fact
been cold before he attacked her.  It was as if he had been
electrocuted from the inside out when he'd attempted to bite her.
As Willow assembled all of these thoughts, she became aware
of distant voices and the sound of feet scuffing linoleum and
lockers being jerked open.

"Well Mr. Spike," Willow whispered, "we're gonna have to get you
someplace where you'll be a bit less conspicuous".  Hearing the
sound  of her math teacher's voice nearing their location, Willow
knew that she'd have to hurry.  She grabbed Spike by the arms
and dragged him over to the faculty bathroom.  It was the first
place she saw and it seemed like a good idea.  The faculty
bathroom was one tiny room with a single toilette in it.  The door
could be locked and on the outside of the door there was a sign
that you could flip, indicating whether or not the bathroom was
occupied.  Willow actually felt more apprehensive about entering
the faculty bathroom (from which students were strictly
forbidden) than about dragging around a naked vampire.

After a great deal of struggling, Willow managed to get Spike into
the bathroom.  She tried to position his body as comfortably as
she could in the tiny room.  Now that she had a job to do, his
nakedness seemed far less daunting.  Willow left the bathroom,
shut the door, and turned the sign so that it read, "occupied."
She slipped down the hall and around the corner just as her
math teacher came in view.  "Phew," Willow thought, "it would
have really sucked if Mr. Harmon had seen me using the faculty
bathroom."  Willow glanced at the clock on the wall and figured
that SHE would be in.  Willow wasn't sure why, but in her few
moments of cognizant thought since she discovered Spike's
body, she had been formulating the beginnings of a plan and
this plan now dictated that she acquire the alliance of a certain
strong-willed, techno-pagan  computer teacher.
 

~Part Three:  First Step- Speaking; Second Step- Naked Mud
Wrestling~

Ms. Calendar was sorting through her email and sipping her
coffee.  She was enjoying the final few minutes of peace in the
morning before the onslaught of late bells and jocks who'd lost
so many brain cells on the field that they couldn't remember how
to save documents, print files, or send emails.  She loved sports,
but she couldn't stand having most of the athletes who played
them as students in her classes.  Realizing how thoroughly
incapable they were at all things not involving some sort of ball,
soured her experience as she cheered during their games.  It
was like seeing this gorgeous guy and then finding out that he
had the voice of a ten year old girl.  Yes, it was indeed traumatic
to have to teach Sunnydale high jocks Computer 101.  Ms.
Calendar heard the sound of feet shuffling nervously before her
desk and looked up expecting to see an antsy running-back
who'd, yet again, left his disk in another school's locker room
during an away game .  She was therefore very surprised to see
an antsy, but determined-looking, Willow Rosenberg.  "Hmm,"
Ms. Calendar thought, "definitely not a jock."

Willow's feet had come to the computer room practically on
auto-pilot.  She usually would run  to Buffy in every situation
regarding vampires, but this situation was different.  She knew
that Buffy and Xander would stake first and ask questions later
and there were some questions that Willow definitely wanted to
ask.  Yes, there was a scientific curiosity that went into her firmly
intact "resolve face," but there was also something else.  Willow
knew that there was a part of her that was tragically meek.  She
was very well acquainted with that part, or so she thought.  It was
because she was meek that Willow couldn't speak to boys or
stand up to Cordelia.  Willow was used to her meek-voice
sounding like a stuttery, blush-inducing whisper, and that was
how she knew that what she was hearing and feeling inside of
herself was special: Willow could her meek-voice, only now,
there was no whispering.

The voice that Willow was so used to hearing in whispers was
now crying fervent pleas in the recesses of her mind.  Some part
of Willow that she had been so accustomed to writing off as a
hindrance, a near-silent nuisance, was now crying with such
intensity and defensiveness that Willow knew it could not be
ignored.  That is why she shifted anxiously in front of Ms.
Calendar's desk.  She had come to Ms. Calendar to ask for help.
And she was nervous.  She was nervous not because she was
uncertain about the helping part, but because she was uncertain
about the asking part.  She had always liked Ms. Calendar as a
computer teacher.  She was intelligent and confident and
beautiful.  In many ways, Willow wanted to be like her.

Then last year, she discovered that Ms. Calendar knew about all
of the Hellmouthy aspects of Sunnydale and was in fact a
"techno pagan."  Ms. Calendar began to help Giles and the
Scoobies.  That had changed things.  Willow didn't want to be
jealous, she really didn't, but she had a crush on Giles from the
beginning and was used to being the smart chick in their group.
So, initially she had resented Ms. Calendar's presence.  Quietly
reflecting on all that had happened since then, Willow decided
that now was the time to get over it.

Part of what could be so unnerving about Ms. Calendar was her
open-mindedness.  That was what she needed now.  She had
observed Giles as Ms. Calendar spoke of naked mud-wrestling
and body piercings.  She knew that these things, this
open-mindedness, was foreign to Giles.  And Willow was about
to be VERY open-minded.  "So," Willow concluded her brief
mental tirade, "I guess this is the part where I tell you,  the
unsuspecting computer science teacher, about the naked
vampire that I hid in the faculty bathroom and how I want to nurse
him back to health, rather than introduce him to the sharp end of
Buffy's high heals".  Ms. Calendar forgot her coffee, her email,
and the soon-to-be-present jocks and simply said, "Huh?"

~Part Four:  The Unexpected:  Expect It~

Willow and Ms. Calendar crept down the hall.  She'd given her
jocks a mindless assignment that she knew they probably
wouldn't do anyway, and now she and Willow were on their way
to the faculty bathroom.  Ms. Calendar had procured two blankets
from the infirmary.  They were hoping to wrap up Spike's naked
form and get him to the library.  Before she talked to Ms.
Calendar, the library was the last place that Willow wanted to
take Spike.  She was certain that Buffy or Giles would stake him
at once.  Ms. Calendar had convinced her that they needed to
move him into a space where he would be better hidden from
the students and faculty at the high school.  Also, they would
need to tell the rest of the gang about Willow's discovery.  That
was the part that had Willow nervous.

Ms. Calendar promised that between the two of them, they would
be able to protect Spike from being staked by Buffy before they
had a chance to explain the situation to her.  "Well, okay.  Yeah,
that is logical," Willow thought, "but what about keeping him safe
from Buffy after we explain the situation."  Willow had never
thought of Buffy as a predator before and it was a disconcerting
thought.  But she realized that to vampires, that's exactly what the
slayer was.  She was conditioned to kill their kind, and yeah,
there was the whole Angel exception, but after the incident at
Parent-Teacher Night, Willow doubted that Buffy would be willing
to be lenient with Spike.

"And why do I care?" Willow questioned.  She didn't know why,
but she really did care.  To her, Spike was like a beautiful, wild
bird who had been injured and couldn't fly.  Sure, if he could fly,
he'd peck all of their eyeballs out, but still, he was a magnificent
creature rendered helpless.  The part in Willow that had always
been perceived as helpless would not lot her simply classify the
bleached blond as a "bad guy" and be done with him.  Even if he
was a bad guy, he was her bad guy to care for.  He was her
responsibility.

While Willow was wondering why she cared, Ms. Calendar was
wondering what would come of all this.  She understood that
Willow was an empathetic girl and would naturally feel for any
creature as injured as the vampire she had described.  But there
was something else going on here.  Sure, there was empathetic
Willow, but there was also resolve-face, take no prisoners
Willow.  Ms.  Calendar could tell that Willow's decision to nurse
Spike would not be wavered by any tactics employed by Rupert
or the slayer.  And that would make things very interesting.  But
she was getting the feeling that Willow could handle the situation
and that she was just there as back-up for the sixteen year old.
And she was fine with that.

She had actually been flattered and even touched that out of
everyone at the school, Willow had chosen to come to her for
help.  She had previously sensed some hostility from the girl,
early in their relationship.  But she had always respected Willow,
first for her mind-boggling computer skills and then for how well
she handled the supernatural situations into which she was
continually thrust.  Now there were new reasons to respect
Willow and, between the two of them, Ms. Calendar felt an
unexpected, but not at all unpleasant bond.  She'd always been a
popular teacher, but no student had ever come to her in need of
personal help before.  She hadn't gotten that close to any of her
students.  Now, she and Willow were coconspirators and more.

Willow had explained the strange need she felt to take care of
the injured vampire.  It had actually been quite a beautiful
statement:  "It's like he's everything that's helpless right now.
And I think that no matter who or what you are, when you're
helpless and somebody actually helps you the way that you need
to be helped, doesn't it just mean the world to you?  Why
shouldn't he feel that way and why shouldn't I be the one to make
him feel it?"

The sincere little speech had sent chills down Jenny's spine.
After hearing it, she knew she'd help Willow do whatever she
wanted.  She'd help Willow because, even though in this
situation, Spike was weak and Willow was strong, on another
level, they were both really just helpless.  Spike was helpless
because of his injuries and Willow was helpless because of her
empathy.  Willow wanted to make Spike feel nurtured and Ms.
Calendar wanted to make Willow feel the same thing.

These were her thoughts as they neared the faculty bathroom.
The door was still closed and the sign still read, "occupied."
Willow breathed a sigh of relief.  She opened the door with Ms.
Calendar looking over her shoulder.

"Ah!!!"

"Ah!!!"

"Ah!!!"

The second and third screams belonged to Willow and Ms.
Calendar.  The first belonged to a man who was definitely not
naked Spike.  Mr. Harmon, Willow's math teacher, was sitting on
the toilet, his pants and underwear around his ankles on the
floor.  Willow nearly passed out.  Ms. Calendar had to shut the
door for her.  Somehow, seeing Mr. Harmon sitting on the toilet -
seeing Mr. Harmon's man-parts! - was ten times more traumatic
than finding Spike's naked body in the hall only hours earlier.
Willow paled and then blushed.  Ms. Calendar's complexion
went straight to the blushing and she tried really hard not to
laugh out loud.

"Uhh," Willow croaked out, the image of parts of Mr. Harmon, that
a sixteen year old girl should never have seen, burned into her
brain.  She felt nauseous.  It was so "Ugh!" She needed to get rid
of that image and replace it with something else.  Maybe if she
thought about other man-parts.  Five-year-old Xander was too
fuzzy, so that didn't work.  Then she thought of Spike.  She hadn't
at first allowed herself to think of the mutilated vampire that way,
but the truth was that, underneath the bruises and gashes, the
vampire had a breathtakingly beautiful body. "Mmm.  Spike
parts," she thought, glad to finally get the thought of Mr. Harmon
parts out of her head.

"Spike!" she exclaimed, finally coming back to reality.  "Oh God,
where is he?" she asked, turning to Ms. Calendar.  "Well, I think
it's safe to say that he's not in the faculty bathroom.  I mean, I
think Mr. Harmon would have noticed a naked man."  "Yeah,"
Willow said without thinking, momentarily allowing her mind to
wonder back to Spike-parts thoughts, "especially THAT naked
man."  Ms. Calendar had a bemused expression on her face
when Willow emerged from her mental wanderings again.
"We've got to find him," Willow spoke urgently.

"Agreed," Ms. Calendar responded, "but there isn't much need to
worry.  I mean, from what you've described, he can't do much
more than provide an unsolicited peep show.  Plus, it's daylight,
so he has to stay inside."  These words were meant to be
comforting, but in the back of Willow's mind, a scene unfolded
involving naked Spike, Buffy Summers, and a dust buster.  It was
definitely time to start looking.

~Part Five:  What The Bugger!~

When Spike opened his eyes, he wasn't at first sure if he had
somehow ended up back in that underground lab.  The room
that he was in was tiny and had the sterile feel of a laboratory,
but there were a few things that seemed out of place for a
laboratory or a cage.  First of all, there was this disturbingly
strong lemony scent that probably would have made him vomit if
he had anything in his stomach.  Second, he became aware that
his neck rested on a soft object- a pillow?  He slowly reached
back, despite the pain that his body was in, and pulled the object
out from under his head.  It wasn't a pillow.  It was a roll of paper
towels.  That's when he saw the toilette.  "I'm in a sodding
bathroom!" he exclaimed, though his voice was so rough from
physical strain that it came out as a whisper.  "How the bloody
hell did I get in here?" Spike wondered.  Then he remembered
the girl, the redhead that would have been an angel, were he not
a demon.  He had tried to bite her but he'd passed out because
of the pain.  As thoughts of her beautiful pale skin and elegant
neck being punctured by his fangs crept into his mind, a small
surge shot through him.

"What the Bugger!  What did those bastards do to me!"  Now,
Spike was upset, but he wasn't stupid.  He could see the pattern.
Bite, think about biting- get hurt.  He wasn't a dog, but taking
notes from Pavlov didn't seem like an entirely bad idea in this
case.  Still recovering from the mini blast that shook his body,
Spike tried to think calm, non-violent thoughts.  The only problem
was that he was a vampire, one who was particularly well-known
for his lack of restraint.  Vampires are violent by nature and it was
extremely difficult for Spike to go a minute without having a
violent thought.  Still, he tried very hard to avoid such trains of
thought because he was not yet sure what had been done to him
and he really couldn't take another jolt right now.

He also didn't know what to do next.  He was fairly certain that he
was in the school, and judging from the noises he could hear
outside of the bathroom door, it was daylight and school was in
session . . . and he was stark naked.  It wasn't like he could just
walk out into the hall like this.  And if he did, where would he go?
He was certain that the redhead had put him in here.  He had no
idea what her intentions were, but she had placed that roll of
paper towels under his neck in an obvious attempt to make him
more comfortable.  Maybe he should just wait for her to return.  . .
.  "Bugger that!"  Spike was rarely in the mood to wait.  And
certainly he wasn't feeling inclined to do so now . . . being naked,
aching, and nauseated by that lemony smell.

Sounds outside of the bathroom door brought a whole new set
of options to naked Spike.  "Is someone in there?  This sign has
said occupied for a long time," a nervous and agitated voice
questioned.  Spike could now do two things.  He could tell the
ponce outside to sod off, that the bathroom was bloody
occupied, but then he'd still be stuck in the bathroom.  Or, he
could  . . . Hmm.  "Well, what do we have here," Spike thought.
By the toilette there was a sink, one of the ones that had a
cabinet underneath.  Spike quickly propped himself up and
opened the cabinet door.  "Perfect," he thought.  The cabinet had
only one bottle of air freshener and it was just the right size.

"Hello!" the voice outside of the door called, "Is someone in
there?" the voice now held a tinge of annoyance.  Spike dragged
his body into the cabinet space.  It hurt like hell to move and he
had to bite his lip to keep from uttering curses out loud, but he
managed to curl up in the cabinet and ease the door shut.  Just
then, Mr. Harmon opened the bathroom door.  There was no one
inside.  "Strange," the math teacher thought.  Some smart aleck
kid had undoubtedly been fooling with the sign.  Clearly, there
had been no one in the bathroom, though Mr. Harmon had
thought he'd heard something.  Must have been his imagination.
Mr. Harmon entered the bathroom and shut the door.

Spike leaned his head against the pipes coming down from the
sink and gathered his strength.  He realized that the horrific
lemony scent was emanating from the air freshener bottle, now
only a foot away from his nose.  "Fuck."  He was uncomfortable
to say the least.  He felt like a small child locked in a coal bin.
Hmm, wonder where that analogy came from . . . "No!" he
thought, "don't think about the bloody girl in the coal bin!" He tried
to think of calm, non-violent thoughts.  He was the Big Bad and
he had a plan to execute.  He'd get this done, get back to his
Dark Princess, and together, they'd fix everything. "Non-violent,
nancy-boy thoughts" he chanted in his head, "Oh! Come on!".
How the hell was he gonna do this?  How do you commit a
violent act while thinking about having a tea party with Dru.
Bugger all!  It was bloody next to impossible.  "Come on," he
thought, "all I gotta do is think happy thoughts like bleedin' Peter
Pan, and take a spoon full of sugar, soddin' Mary Poppins".
Spike braced himself.  He was ready to move.  He was a killer
who had a hundred years of experience at killing without giving
the slightest thought to what he was doing.  Surely he could pull
this off.

He was ready to make his move when the screaming started:

"Ah!"

"Ah!"

"Ah!"

Spike jumped a little out of surprise and hit his head on the top
of the cabinet.  And, if the other three screamers had been
listening instead of staring, they would have heard yet another
"Ah!" followed by a "What the bugger!" coming from the behind
cabinet under the sink.  Fortunately for Spike, the three
screamers eyes overrode their ears.  Then, the door shut and
Spike could practically feel the anxiety pouring off of the poor git
on the toilette.  Hmm.  Maybe this would work to his advantage.  If
the nervous ponce was at sixes and sevens then it might make it
easier to do "that thing" he thought with intentional vagueness.

The fellow on the toilette had barely recovered from
hyperventilation when, with incredible force, the cabinet door
under the sink flew open, off of the hinges and up, directly toward
him, where he sat on the toilette.  Poor Mr. Harmon.  The cabinet
door struck him in the face, breaking his nose and knocking him
on the noggin.  It hurt but it didn't, to Spike's dismay, knock the
thoroughly traumatized math teacher unconscious.  "Bugger,"
Spike whispered.  Well, he'd just have to be diplomatic about
this.  Spike stuck his head out of the cabinet and peered at the
man on the toilette with a broken nose and a cabinet door on his
lap.

"Uh, hello mate," Spike began, trying to make his vocal cords
produce calm and even sounds. "Would you mind lendin' a
fellow some clothes?  Um, maybe just the pants?" he politely
inquired.

>From the toilette, the distraught math teacher saw two heads
peaking out from the cabinet under the sink.  Then the heads
asked for his pants.  That's when Mr. Harmon passed out.
"Well," Spike thought, "worked out anyway."  He pulled his body
out from under the sink and began to take off Mr. Harmon's
shoes, so that he could get to the man's pants.  "Bloody hell!
Maybe that lemon smell wasn't so bad," Spike thought as he slid
a pant leg down over one of Mr. Harmon's sweaty feet.

And then the worst possible thing happened.  As Spike knelt on
the floor, with his back to the door, pulling Mr. Harmon's pants
off, he heard the bathroom doorknob turning.  "Bloody hell!
Doesn't anybody pay head to the bleedin' sign!" he whispered
under his breath.  From behind him, a gasp was heard and
Spike turned his head to look upon the face of the person who'd
caught him.  "Damn!" he thought, "It couldn't have just been the
soddin' lunch lady or some bloke's secretary!"

Spike shakily forced himself to stand and face the man looking
at him with wide eyes and dropped open jaw.  Spike gathered
his strength and tapped into his frustration at his situation.  He
spoke in his most menacing tone:  "You should have look at the
bleedin' sign.  The bathroom's bloody occupied, Watcher!"

And with that he rushed past an utterly shocked Rupert Giles and
into the main hall of Sunnydale high, in incredible physical pain,
and still naked as the day he was born.

~Part Six:  A Classroom Where They Teach Nudity~
 

With every movement of his muscles, he was reminded that he
was not in the best condition to be running down the halls of the
slayer's high school naked, with a watcher on his heels.  Well,
not really on his heels.  He'd clearly shocked the living daylights
out of the ponce and if Spike hadn't been in such horrible
condition, he could have left the watcher in his dust in the time
that it took the pillock to recover from the scene in the bathroom.

But Spike was in horrid condition and Giles was gaining on him.
Spike was nearing the end of the hall, where there were two
large double doors.  Trying not too lose too much speed and
thanking the devil that he didn't need to breathe, Spike barreled
through the double doors.  What greeted him was so very grim
that Spike wished he were alive, just so that he could die  . . .
right then . . . for good.

Two halls away, Willow was frantically looking behind the door of
every broom closet and bathroom stall.  She had scared the hell
out of more than a few students frequenting the men's bathroom,
but she figured now was not the time to become peckish about
waltzing into bathrooms.  She couldn't possibly see any nude
body parts that would affect her more than the ones she'd
already seen that morning.  After the incident with Mr. Harmon,
Willow and Ms. Calendar had immediately split up to more
effectively search for the missing vampire.  Willow was peering
into the empty music room when she heard the first few
screams.  She ran.

Now on the other side of those double doors, Spike found
himself in a large room with a lethal quantity of  unshaded
windows.  Now, that in and of itself might only solicit a peeved,
"Bugger!" from a vampire such as Spike, but there was more.
The room, the cafeteria, that Spike was in was full of humans.
"Fuck!  Why do these bloody Americans eat bleedin' lunch at
soddin' 10:30 am!" Yeah, this was a bad situation, but it was
about to get a whole lot worse.  After the first girl who saw Spike
fainted and another chit took to screaming, from the jumble of
students sitting at round lunch tables, the head of a certain blond
girl shot up.  "Bloody Fuckin' Hell!"

Spike didn't normally have dreams.  He always figured that Dru
had enough zany adventures in her sleep for the two of them.
But he was now absolutely positive that this was a nightmare.
"Could this get any soddin worse!" Spike spit out from between
painfully clenched jaws.  Behind him, the cafeteria doors swung
open yet again and a frantic and out of breath librarian barreled
into Spike, knocking the shaky vampire face first to the floor.

Before Spike entered the cafeteria, Buffy had been having a
sucky day.  She hadn't been able to find Willow all morning, she
hadn't done her history homework, and she was sure that she'd
failed her chemistry quiz.  The worst part was that she didn't have
any good reason to be so thoroughly unprepared for school.  Her
mom had been so pleased with her after Parent-Teacher Night
that she'd been allowed to spend the entirety of her weekend
hanging out, never once touching her school books.   Buffy
figured that she deserved at least a little break after having to
deal with that Spike guy.  One nice unexpected thing, like pizza
instead of icky spam at lunch, was all she wanted on this
aggravating Monday.   Was that too much to ask for?  A little slack
from a higher power?

Then she heard the screaming and she looked up from her
spam and jello to find one very naked man.  Buffy gasped, "Oh
my God!  That guy's Spike!"  Xander's eyes narrowed and he
replied, "Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with it, Buff.
Though, he doesn't appear to be circumcised.  More importantly,
*why* is there a naked man in the cafeteria?"  By the time Xander
had finished speaking, Buffy had crossed the cafeteria, Giles
had barged through the cafeteria doors, Spike was sprawled on
the floor, and the students who had been peacefully eating their
lunch had fallen into utter chaos.  Some students were
screaming, others laughing hysterically, a food fight had begun,
and several of the lunch ladies had fainted.

As Buffy speedily approached the vampire's prone form she
didn't care how or why he was here, in daylight, in the school
cafeteria, absolutely naked.  All she knew was that she had just
been cut a really big break.  She threw herself at Spike with the
only nearby object of wood that she could find gripped tightly in
her hand.  However, when her make-shift stake was only
moments away from intersecting with Spike's back, she found
herself being grabbed from behind.  She flipped her attacker
over her head, expecting another, perhaps naked, vampire.  Her
jaw dropped when instead she found an irate Willow looking up
at her from the floor tiles.

Before Buffy had a chance to respond to this new development,
Willow had thrown herself at Spike who was now lying on his
back and not his stomach.  "Willow!"  Buffy fearfully screamed,
"Do you know who that is!?!  That naked man is a naked
vampire!"  Willow kept her body defensively pinned about Spike
but turned her head so that Buffy could see the side of her face,
"He's <I>my</I> naked vampire.  And no one is going to touch
him but me!"

"Oh, shoot!" Willow thought, as possible interpretations of that
statement sunk in.

Xander approached the spectacle, now recognizing the naked
man beneath Willow as the vampire Spike who had nearly killed
him less than a week ago.  "Oh, I know this," Xander exclaimed,
"Our worst nightmares are coming true.  This Spike guy's worst
nightmare was showing up for class in his underwear, which I
totally get, only he doesn't wear underwear because he's a bass
ass vampire. And someone's worst nightmare, possibly mine
now that I'm confronted with the visual, is Willow getting pelvic
with one of the undead in the school cafeteria."

As Xander concluded his rapidly delivered monologue, for the
first time since Spike entered the room, not all eyes were on him.
At least several sets of eyes were incredulously burning into
Xander's now red face.  "Or not," he amended sheepishly.  Buffy
would have rolled her eyes if she hadn't been so entirely
confused.  As insane as Xander's exposition sounded, she
couldn't come up with anything that made more sense.

Willow huffed and turned her face back to the vampire she was
now draped on top of.  Her large green eyes, made tempestuous
by her fit of anger, met with shocked eyes that were usually cold
as ice.  Only now, they weren't icy.  To Willow, right then, they
were baby blue and begging.  For what?  Willow could only
wonder.

~Part Seven:  Begging~

Her hair was twisted in unkept knots.  Spike always brushed the
knots out.  Her body lay limp on the canopy bed.  Too weak to
hunt, too hopeless to order that food be brought, she was a
picture of wild distress.  Her eyes were open but empty and every
now and then her lips would tremble and a quiet moan would
escape her mouth.  Sometimes, that moan would escalate into a
shriek.  Still, no one neared her door.  No one dared to.  Maybe
he was dust, but it was too soon for anyone to take liberties with
what was his.

Under the canopy of the bed, she knew better.  Her Spike- he
wasn't dust. He was something almost worse.  He was
vulnerable.  He wasn't supposed to be like that.  Not vulnerable
to anyone but her, and even then his vulnerability was never what
she would call weak.  He was hers.  He worshipped her.  He
loved her.  So he submitted not to her will, as she had been
accustomed to submitting to her sire, but to her every whim.
Was Princess cold?  Was Princess hungry?  Did Princess want
to be tickled?  Held?  Beaten?  Did Princess want to paint the
walls with babies' blood?  He was the one to whom her insanity
would always be sane.  And Drusilla did not need her wits about
her to tell her that something was terribly wrong in the balance of
things.

She felt the wrongness beneath her breast.  It was a dull ache
that hadn't ceased since that night he'd disappeared.  It was a
maddening ache, that she couldn't quash.  So, she stayed in her
bed and uttered foolish prayers, like she did as a child every
night before sleep.  She prayed vainly that her Spike would
appear any minute, carrying an armful of dolls, or a basket of
puppies for her to play with.  Maybe even some pretty things to
put in her hair, after he'd brushed out the tangles.  Only, she
knew, because she was so much more than a maddened ninny,
that none of these things would happen.  She saw where her
Spike was and it was a painfully bright place, with all kinds of
colors in front of his eyes and all kinds of disturbing pulses of
energy beneath his skin.  It was all so wrong.  So unnatural.  He
wouldn't come bounding through that door with a branding iron
and that look that was only for her.  He wouldn't.

"Oh God, Oh God, Oh God . . ." Jenny Calendar surveyed the
scene before her, eyes wide with alarm.  The vampire Spike was
lying naked on his back on the cafeteria floor.  Willow Anne
Rosenberg, researcher and hacker extraordinaire, was lying on
top of him, looking into his eyes with an expression that could
only for certain be called sincere.  Rupert Giles was a few feet
away with a cross now in his hands.  "Where the hell did that
cross come from," Jenny wondered, "Does he keep one in his
pants, just in case?"  The slayer was standing right next to her
watcher, ready to dust the vampire, but stunned into stillness by
her best friend's fury.  Across from Buffy, on the other side of the
spectacle that was the naked vampire and the hacker, stood
Xander Harris.  The boy's facial expressions alternated between
surprise, concern, intrigue, and amusement every few seconds.
It was like watching a slide show.  The cafeteria was in a state of
chaos, students and faculty running amuck.  In the distance, Ms.
Calendar could hear Principal Snyder's perpetually nervous
monotone voice declaring, "This is simply unacceptable!"

"Oh, yes," Jenny thought, "I wanted to know where this situation
was heading.  Well, guess I got my wish.  Here I am in the midst
of a food fight, a ton of inappropriate sexual innuendo, a naked
vampire, a traumatized slayer, and a watcher whose eyes
couldn't possibly be opened any wider.  Just like his mouth.
Maybe I should warn Rupert about the flies that frequent the
cafeteria."  Just then Xander made a startled expression of
realization (you could practically see the light bulb going off over
his head) and his face turned bright red as he spoke to Buffy:
"Oh, right.  That guy's Spike.  Spike is that guy.  So when you
said, 'That guy's spike' you probably weren't talking about his . . ."

"Xander!" Buffy cut him off, startled out of her frozen state by
Xander's remarks.  The brunette boy crimsoned even deeper
and ordinarily Jenny would have savored the embarrassment of
any student who got a "C" in her class, but now was definitely not
the time for savoring.  Buffy, regaining a bit of her slayer
composure, looked like she was about to re-approach the
situation with Willow and the vampire.  "Okay, Janna," Ms.
Calendar said to herself, "now would be a great time to come up
with a plan."

On the floor, Spike had long since been oblivious to the activities
going on around him.  When he had entered the cafeteria and
realized where he was and who was in there with him, never had
he been so certain that he was in hell.  He had practically been
dust the minute he entered the room and then some pillock,
probably the soddin' watcher, had shoved him in the back,
knocking him face-first to the floor.  He was history.

"I'm sorry Dru," Spike had whispered as he waited for the blow
from the slayer that would end his unlife.  But it didn't come.
Instead he heard signs of a struggle above him.  He rolled his
body over.  The sight that had awaited him was breathtaking.  It
rendered a gasp from a creature that had no need for the intake
of oxygen.  Spike's mysterious redhead was latched onto the
slayer's back, pulling her away from him. Then, with supernatural
slayer speed, the blonde flipped his rescuer over her head.  The
little redhead landed on her back.

The slayer seemed surprised and stilled for a moment but then
looked at Spike with predator's eyes and tightly gripped her . . .
stake?  "Bloody hell!" Spike thought,  "That isn't even a soddin'
stake!"  Spike had no great love for stakes but this was simply
too much to be borne.  He, William the Bloody, killer of two
slayer,  was about to be dusted by a pink pencil with a large,
white, cat-shaped eraser on the top of it.  "She'd gonna dust me
with fuckin' Hello Kitty!"  This was hell.  This really was hell.  He
was gonna be dusted in the nude by a bitchy bird of a slayer
wearing a leopard print top and using a pink Hello Kitty Aloha
pencil to puncture his heart and end his glorious undead
existence.  Yeah.  Hell.

What happened next suddenly left Spike contemplating the
possibility that he'd been beamed via Star Trek-like transporter
directly from hell to heaven.  It was as if he'd just switched places
with some poor saintly sod who was actually supposed to be in
heaven.  Spike's advocate with the red hair, her skin now rosy
from running, threw herself on top of him, shielding him from the
slayer with her body.  Spike endured the impact of her slight form
on his beaten body without as much as a wince.  There was no
pain in that moment.

As the redhead turned her face to give the slayer a sideways
glance that would melt steel, Spike was certain that he had been
accidentally stuck in heaven, swapped with some kind soul.
Why did he feel so favored?  This mysterious angel of a creature
was guarding his existence as if it were a precious crystal.  She
was putting herself between his vulnerability and his demise.
She was protecting him.  To Spike, though whipped, weary,
battered, and bloodied, that level of acceptance of his disrobed
self equaled bliss. "Soddin' sad for the vicar savin' my seat in
hell," he mumbled to himself, his mind still partially weighted
with disbelief.

Spike's eyes narrowed and he took in every aspect of his savior.
Eyes, nose, mouth, freckles, skin, weight against his flesh,
pulse, warmth against his cold.  He was surprised.  He had
been right though.  She was no angel.  She was only a little girl.
"This chit," Spike thought, "must be off her trolley to try to protect a
vampire from a bleedin' vampire slayer."  Suddenly, Spike felt far
less blissful, realizing that his mysterious protector was only a
mad little girl.  What was it with him and batty women?

But the next words that this likely mad little girl spoke blew away
all thoughts from Spike's typically sardonic mind.  "He's *my*
naked vampire" is all that Spike heard.  In truth, the only thing that
registered in his shell-shocked mind was the vehement,
decisive, unwavering message beneath the words:  He's mine.

There was a certain vein in the creature that was Spike which the
vampire liked to believe was almost always untapped.  There
was an element of who he was that he liked to believe was
buried so deep that it could not be touched.  And in truth, it was
buried deep.  It was covered with deliberate intent to conceal.

Who had done this burying?  The demon perhaps, who
inhabited the human's form?  No.  The demon felt no need to
distort, only to corrupt.  The need to distort came from the man
himself.  His memories, his disposition, everything that had
been this William, screamed for merciful distortion.  And, as is
always the case with vampires, the demon could deny the man
no desire strong enough to reduce him to begging:  "I am a
shameful creature!  Fix me!"  After all, the admission of shame,
of inherent fault,  was really all that the demon wanted.  Well, that
and the begging.

So, there was compromise and compliance and a shitload of
character construction that transformed a bloody awful poet into
a creature whose poetry was the shedding of blood.  All in all, for
demon and remnants of man, it was a decent deal.  Only, there
were times when this man, who was willingly buried beneath the
performance that was Spike, would poke his head out and above
that well-constructed facade.  And, that alone, Spike could deal
with, mostly because the one to draw the man out of the monster
was always his Dark Princess.  But now, here, wherever he was
(he found himself forgetting), this little girl had reached the
person - that pathetic poet, that meek man - who had been
William.  With the tone of her voice and the meaning beneath her
words, with her claim to him, she tapped that buried vein with
such an acute edge that Spike believed he might bleed to death.

Only, he was already dead.  And blood didn't course through his
veins, pushed onward by a beating heart, it sat stagnant .  And
this wisp of a woman who, when he had first opened his eyes
that morning, would have been an angel, was simply a little girl.
Reality came rushing back and Spike was exposed.  He was
naked.  He was vulnerable.  He was silent.  But he was begging.

Looking into his eyes with unveiled concern, Willow was aware
of this desperation.  She was also aware of other things, such
as the feel of his bare skin beneath her fingers, his sculpted
muscles against her clothes, and the cool of his flesh that
elicited a not unpleasant shiver from her body which had been
heated from exertion.  This awareness was an awakening.  All of
the accompanying sensations were new and somewhat
devastating in their intensity.  Yes, in their current position,
Willow found herself alarmingly aware of Spike.

"Willow," Buffy bit out in a tone that was far too sweet , "Please
get off of the naked man so that I can *DUST* the floor!"

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