She'd been caught. She couldn't believe she'd been caught. That wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to be in Sunnydale's Second Precinct, locked up in a bare holding cell that smelled like six years worth of stale barf. Dawn huddled on the grimy bench that ran along the back wall, staring down at the loops and splatters of stains decorating the worn linoleum between the toes of her sneakers, and tried very hard not to throw up.
"Pretty," the old woman crooned, shuffling a little closer and reaching out towards Dawn's hair. "Such a pretty green."
Dawn flinched away, and the woman's brown-paper-bag face crumpled into lines of hurt and disappointment. She drew her three layers of tatty sweaters more closely around her and shuffled away again, muttering under her breath. Dawn drew a silent breath of relief and relaxed her guard slightly. She hated the fact that even though her career as a mystical McGuffin was supposed to be over, she still roused unpredictable reactions in people who weren't quite in touch with reality. They feared her or adored her, and there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it but try to avoid them. The two of them had been playing musical chairs around the cell for the last hour, except without music and without chairs. The old woman was probably a harmless kook, in for panhandling or loitering or something, she told herself. Not every street person in Sunnydale is a member of Mystery Man Tanner's gang of Nutcase Commandos, out to suck your brains.
"Looks like you've made a new best friend," the girl on the other end of the bench observed. She was maybe a year or two older than Dawn, with thin, fox-sharp features, and a vaguely Goth-y air--dead black hair, raccoon-mask of mascara, and artfully ragged layers of black skirts over black tights bagging a little at the knees. She'd asked Dawn if she had any cigarettes when she came in, and had ignored her since.
Dawn shrugged, keeping her eyes on her toes.
"This your first time?"
Dawn shrugged again. Shut up. Don't talk to me. I'm not really here. The other girl smiled, a knowing grin that didn't reach her ice-colored eyes. "Yeah, first time. I can tell. You're all twitchy and stiff, like you're too good to be here."
Shut up, shut up, shut up... Dawn chanted to herself. Couldn't the floor swallow her? Where was the Hellmouth when you really needed it? The embarrassment was almost worse than the fear. She'd been in worse places, in far more danger. But this was different. This was no surreal nightmare with demons and magic which would fade in the light of day. This was stupid, boring, real-world trouble which would only get worse when the sun came up.
"You'll get used to it," the Goth chick concluded.
Dawn felt her face growing hot. No, I won't! She let the wave of self-pity wash over her and tried to distract herself with the daydream she'd been constructing ever more elaborate versions of since she'd gotten here. By now it was practically a five-act epic complete with orchestra and hors d'oeuvres during intermission.
It was about Christmas, which imposed a high lameness factor. But Halloween had been a nightmare, what with Buffy's Raising and their dad freaking and everything, and Thanksgiving had been a Family Value Bucket from KFC, so she figured she was due one good holiday this year. She knew just how it would go, and if she scrunched her eyes really tight she could see it all play out.
On Christmas Eve, Willow would be all recovered and she and Tara would be laughing together again. Spike would show up early, dashing from car to porch and trailing smoke in the last rays of the setting sun. Buffy would make some sarcastic remark about the brain-deadness of certain vampires, but she'd be smiling. The witches would curl up in the big overstuffed chair, and Spike and her sister would sit on the couch with her, and they'd have popcorn and Christmas cookies and cocoa.
Down the hall where the men's cells were someone was yelling, a hash of words that didn't make any sense. Dawn clapped her hands over her ears, but it didn't help much. The black-haired girl laughed. Dawn tried to melt into the bench while touching as little of its surface as possible. She added phantom jimmies to the illusory cookies.
"You know, you'll be more comfortable if you take that pole out of your ass," the black-haired girl said.
"Shut up," Dawn muttered. They'd have sandwiches and turn on the TV and watch Ralphie scheme to get the Red Rider air rifle, and toss back eggnog with a splash of rum (or in Spike's case, rum with a splash of eggnog) every time someone said "You'll shoot your eye out!" and everyone would get a little bit silly. Then they'd watch Jimmy Stewart race down Main Street in the snow while Spike complained that the SNL sketch where the townsfolk banded together to beat Mr. Potter to death was a much better ending. When the movies were over she'd go to the record cabinet that still held Mom's collection of LPs, and pull out the scratchy old Bing Crosby album and put it on. And she'd pretend she was too old and sophisticated for carols, and Tara would tease her and she'd let herself be convinced and they'd sing along to "White Christmas."
The old woman shuffled over again and picked up a lock of Dawn's hair, running it through her fingers. "Pretty shiny light..."
Hating the tears of stress that pricked her eyes, Dawn jerked her head away, jumped to her feet and hissed, "Go away!"
The woman stared at her for a long moment and then tears began spilling from her eyes, winter rains flooding the eroded planes of her face. Deep wracking sobs shook her, the sort of unguarded weeping no one over the age of five should be doing in public. Dawn stood in the middle of the cell, thin fingers clasping her arms in an agony of embarrassment. Great. Now on top of everything else, she felt like shit for making a crazy old woman cry.
And everyone would go to bed, and Buffy would get Spike a blanket and a pillow for the couch, but if Dawn stayed awake long enough there'd be footsteps on the stairs. She'd shout them out of bed at six-thirty in the morning, snicker at Buffy's feeble attempts at explaining why Spike was there, and have sisterly blackmail material for the next week. And Tara would put the turkey in the oven, and her sister would put on airs because she remembered what a potato ricer was, and Spike would hang around being male and nuiscancy and try to steal the marshmallows which were supposed to go on the mashed yams.
She craned her neck, staring down the institutional green tunnel of the long hall to catch a glimpse of the clock on the wall down at the end, but the angle was so sharp she couldn't tell where the hands were. How long had she been here? It had to be past midnight. The security guys had pounced on them at nine, just before the mall closed. An hour's worth of humiliating interrogation by store security, and then the cops had showed up. Lisa's parents had come and picked her up hours ago, and dragged her home in a protective fury, declaring that she was not going to be allowed to associate with a bad influence like Dawn Summers any longer.
Buffy was coming. Buffy always came, even when she was sick and tired of dragging her stupid little sister to safety for the seven zillionth time. Didn't she? Dawn swallowed a pathetic little sob. God, what if Buffy'd decided it would teach her a lesson to be left here all night? What if a Zarkroth demon had eaten Tara before Buffy got home and her sister never got the message? What if Spike was nailing Buffy to the mattress in his crypt and--SO not thinking about that one.
Anya and Xander would come over, and Giles, who'd decided not to go back to England after all, and they'd all watch "It's a Charlie Brown Christmas" and Xander would do the Snoopy dance. And then dinner would be ready, and afterwards they'd open presents and everyone would get exactly what they wanted. She'd look at the pictures of her and Buffy and Mom scattered around the living room, and feel kind of achy because Mom wasn't there, but it would be a good ache. And it wouldn't matter that her sister was the Slayer and Spike was a vampire and most of all it wouldn't matter that she had done something as incredibly stupid as get caught stealing an egg-strangler from Williams & Sonoma, because it was Christmas and they were a family now and weird love was way, WAY better than no love.
Voices echoed down the hall from the admitting desk, distorted by distance and the muffling effects of acoustic tile. A second later the screech of unoiled casters pushing away from the desk was followed by the overlapping clack-clack of several pairs of approaching footsteps. Dawn shot to her feet. "Please be Buffy, please be Buffy..."
It was the policewoman from the desk at the end of the hall, and with her was Buffy with her eyes crackling green and her mouth in that thin hard line that meant someone was going to get it but good. Spike loomed behind her, hands thrust into the pockets of his duster, sucking on an unlit cigarette with a scowl. The homeless woman shrank back into the corner of the cell at the sight of him; the people who lived on Sunnydale's underbelly were more willing to admit to the things that walked among them than the town's daylight inhabitants. The Goth chick was either bolder or less experienced than she'd have had Dawn believe; she got up and sauntered over to the bars, eyeing the newcomers speculatively. "Hey. Got a cig?"
Buffy ignored her, and stood with arms folded impatiently as the policewoman searched through her jingling mass of keys. Spike favored Dawn's cellmate with an unfriendly leer. "Might. What's it worth to you?" He grinned a little as Buffy gave them both the Laser Death Glare, and winked at Dawn. She felt a rush of relief; surely Spike's presence would shield her from some of Buffy's wrath--if nothing else, diverting Buffy from being mad at her into being mad at Spike was usually a piece of cake.
The policewoman at last found the key she was looking for. She shooed the older women away from the door, and Dawn rushed over as soon as they vacated. She grabbed the cold steel bars, barely restraining herself from bouncing up and down. At last the door swung open, and Dawn flung herself out into the hallway and broke down in relief. "Oh, God, Buffy, I thought you were never coming, I was so scared--"
Her sister's angry facade slipped for just an instant. Dawn was caught up in a fervent, awkward three-way hug, her face wedged between Buffy's head and Spike's shoulder with the familiar comforting scents of L'Oreal hair conditioner and smoke-impregnated leather filling her nose. She had never felt safer.
Buffy pulled away first. "Let's get out of here. Dawn, you've got a lot of explaining to do."
Gah. That was the tight, calm Buffy-voice. She'd been hoping for the outraged yelling Buffy-voice. Worse, her sister was breaking out the Mom phrases. Dawn nodded meekly as the warder closed the cell door behind her. Its ominous clang followed them down the hall as they left the cellblock and made their way through the precinct room. Buffy was pissed. Really pissed. She glanced up at Spike, who shrugged elaborately and made a 'better you than me' face. She shivered. Much less safe-feeling, now.
The ride home wasn't any better. Buffy drove with both hands locked to the SUV's steering wheel, looking neither right nor left and daring any lesser traffic to challenge her. Luckily the bar rush hadn't started yet and the streets were relatively empty. Spike slouched in the passenger seat, playing with his lighter and occasionally looking sideways at Buffy. The wind, which had been just a playful breeze earlier in the evening, had picked up, and was slapping the car with fitful little sprays of raindrops, just enough to get the windshield dirty.
Dawn had intended to stay cool and calm, but the oppressive silence expanded by the minute, filling the car's interior and finally squeezing words out of her. "It's not like I took anything important!"
"That's not the point," Buffy snapped.
"Point is, you got caught," Spike said, in tones of deep disappointment.
"That's not the point either!" Buffy took out her fury on an innocent paper cup blowing across the lane, swerving to crush it. Dawn and Spike unobtrusively grabbed their respective door handles. "The point is, stealing is wrong!"
Dawn glared sullenly at the back of her sister's head. Now that she was no longer in immediate danger of becoming someone's prison bitch, Buffy's attitude was beginning to grate. "Oh, right. I remember all those calls Mom and Dad got from Bullock's when we lived in L.A., Miss Oh-I-Meant-To-Pay-For-That."
"Slayer!" Spike exclaimed in delight. "And here I thought nicking that rocket launcher was your first time! I knew you were a girl after my own heart!"
Buffy's eyes narrowed dangerously, and Dawn saw her opportunity and seized it. Sorry, Spike, you're going down. "Besides, Spike steals all the time and you never rag on him! Half the stuff he owns is stolen!"
"Yeh, but I don't get caught," Spike countered. "There's a big difference here."
One didn't need vampire hearing to pick up the sound of Buffy's teeth grinding. "We're not talking about me, and we're not talking about Spike, and hello, the using of someone who spent the last century eating people as your model for good behavior? Not ideal! And I didn't steal the rocket launcher, Xander did!" She returned her attention to the road in time to avoid a close encounter with the palm trees along the median. "Are we agreed that stealing is wrong?" She shot a look at Spike, who jerked to attention in his seat.
"Wrong," he agreed, sounding more nostalgic than disapproving. "Vile, wicked, evil..."
Dawn transferred the sullen glare to Spike. "All right, I get it.”
Her sister's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. "You’d better get it--both of you. This isn’t a joke. While you're out auditioning for Second Punk on the Left, have you thought about the fact that the moment this gets back to Social Services you will be shipped off to Dad Fed-Ex? Is that what you want?"
Spike looked somewhat chastened and Dawn bit her lip. "No."
"Good. I--” Buffy's shoulders slumped. “I can’t do this right now. I’m tired, Dawn. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

The crypt door was, as usual, unlocked. When Buffy slammed it open into the stone wall the clang reverberated through the crypt, and the echoes hadn't entirely died away by the time she'd clambered down the stairs to the lower chamber, and stormed into the bedchamber to glare at the still-slumbering occupant. Spike was the picture of repose in a nest of feather pillows and hunter-green quilting, one arm folded over the coverlet and the other curled under his cheek. His chest rose and fell just often enough to startle you into realizing it was still most of the time. Exactly when had Spike gone all hedonistic? When she’d come barging into the crypt last year at this time, she’d usually found him stretched out corpse-fashion on the top of the bare stone sarcophagus upstairs, hands crossed over his chest--playing vampire, she’d thought to herself scornfully at the time, talking the talk while the chip prevented him from walking the walk.
Unnatural creature that he was, he looked far more at home in the bed.
Well, we’ll just have to do something about that. Buffy bent down, grabbed a handful of blankets and yanked them ruthlessly into the air.
Spike's eyes flew open. Half-way into game face, he spun over with a yip of surprise and a futile grab at the bedclothes. "Grraahr--oh, it's you."
"How long has this been going on?" Buffy demanded.
The vampire’s eyebrows took a tour upwards. He ran a hand through his sleep-tousled hair, then leaned back into the pillows and laced his fingers across his stomach, displaying a great deal of muscular and distracting ivory flesh. "How long's what been going on? Me getting some well-deserved shut-eye, or you rudely interrupting it? Not long enough and too long, respectively." Without warning he jackknifed forward, grabbed the trailing edge of the blankets and hauled back.
Buffy teetered, lost her balance and toppled onto the bed in a tangle of coverlet and Spike's overly cold and boney shins. She scrambled to her hands and knees, determined to hold onto her outrage despite the awkwardness of her position. Spike was leering at her, and she realized that from this angle he could see all the way down her shirt. Not that there was anything down there he hadn't already seen, but it was the principle of the thing. Flushing, she sat upright and tugged her blouse into place. "You know what I'm talking about--Dawn stealing! And you teaching her how!"
Spike went wary. He rubbed the back of his head. "Haven't the foggiest, love. She was doing the Artful Dodger routine well before yours truly entered the picture. We got chummy over her nicking Giles's journal, remember?" He rearranged his feet under the covers to take advantage of the warm spot where she was sitting.
Buffy folded her arms and resolutely avoided looking down to where the toes of his right foot were stroking her thigh. With some effort she kept her voice as cold as said toes. "She said you showed her how to shoplift over the summer."
"I never!"
Buffy kept looking at him; Spike was pathetically easy to crack if you did the little skeptical eyebrow thing. A trace of guilt crept into his eyes. "All right, I might have given her a pointer or two. More a demonstration, like, of how I do it. But I never gave her the nudge to use 'em. I knew you wouldn’t want that, and you know I'd never do anything to hurt Dawn, Buffy!" He leaned forward and caught her hands in his own, looking so genuinely distressed that had the matter been any less important she would have been tempted to forgive him immediately.
But this was serious. Buffy remained adamant. "But you knew she was stealing things, and you didn't stop her."
Spike sighed. "I guessed. Didn't exactly know for certain. She gave me a little something once or twice, aftershave for my birthday, that sort of thing. I never asked where it came from--wouldn't've been polite--and she never told. Didn't seem to matter then. You were gone, and Dawn was going to your Dad..."
“It matters a whole heaping lot now!”
He leaned over the side of the bed and rummaged around until he came up with his jeans, got up and began pulling them on. "Look, I'll talk to her if you think it'll help--give her any load of righteous bollocks you like."
Buffy flopped backwards onto the bed and stared up at the cobwebby ceiling. Spike has a birthday? "Because the gospel of virtue is ever so convincing coming from you?"
His dark brows angled downwards, accents on a frown. "I mean it, Buffy. I..." He stalked over to the dresser, pulled a drawer out and studied the half-dozen identical black t-shirts intently for a moment before pacing away again. "...am getting shagged out on basic black. Look, it's hard, this not being evil," he said, low-voiced. "Like I said. But I've got to try, don't I? Especially if I've buggered things up for the Bit. At least let me try."
There was a pleading note in his voice, and Buffy felt her resolve crumbling. "I guess it couldn't hurt." She rolled over onto her stomach and traced the thin gold curlicues on the coverlet with one dispirited finger. "I called the store this morning and they're willing to drop the charges since it's her first time, but she's banned from the mall for six months. She's already going through withdrawal.” She buried her face in the sheets; they smelled of smoke and Spike, and she didn’t want the combination to be so comforting when she was mad at him. “This morning she hit me with that camper we stole last spring. I’ve got to be a better example. You’ve got to--”
“Establish a legal identity, get a nine to five job, and become a fine upstanding undead American? Not happening, pet.”
She turned her head enough to give him the evil eye from behind a fold of blanket. “I was going to say, stop stealing things in front of Dawn, but watching a vampire with a fake green card dodging La Migra would make up for a lot of sucky days.”
“Ah?” Spike pulled open the wardrobe door and rooted through the tangle of coat hangers, finally emerging with a charcoal grey turtleneck which, Buffy couldn’t help thinking, would look absolutely gorgeous with his eyes and go very nicely with her own taupe-and-silver outfit. Color coordination, always a plus. “And what happens the next time you lot need me for a spot of breaking and entering or grand theft auto? You’re not the most law-abiding little group yourselves, you know--I’m just better at it.”
Buffy lifted her head and groaned. “I know, I know! God, Spike, I can't do this! When I was fifteen I was doing the exact same thing, except for me it was all about Mom and Dad's divorce. How can I lecture her on Thou Shalt Not Steal when my whole life is Thou Shalt Not Steal Unless It's Necessary For The Slaying or You're The Slayer's Vampire Boyfriend In Which Case We'll Overlook It?"
Spike stopped in the middle of pulling the sweater over his head, looking down at her with an incongruously sweet, tender little smile.
What? She ran the last few sentences backwards. I used the B word. Tactical error. Maybe he won't notice. Right. This is Spike, owner and proprietor buffyobsession.com. I'm so doomed.
Spike tossed his shirt on the bed and sat down beside her. She felt a firm hand on her back, cool fingers working along the tense lines of her muscles. "You do what every mum and dad in the history of the universe has done, love. You lie so hard that you forget you ever had a misspent youth, and if that doesn't work, you pull out the classic 'Do as I say, not as I do' line of shite. I'll help, if I can--if you want me to."
She summoned up a wan smile and laid her cheek on his thigh. Astonishing how quickly that cool body soaked up heat. "I don't want to be the grown-up," she said, hating the sulky note in her own voice. Her hand crept up to rest on his knee, and she scrunched a little closer. There was some magnetism between them, that flesh called to flesh the instant an invisible line was crossed. "But I guess I've got to break out the sensible shoes and PTA notes. I may be off the hook with Social Services if they're not pressing charges, but if the police called them already--"
"Best defense is a good offense, right?" Spike had that glint in his eyes that meant trouble. "Don't wait for someone to tell tales, go runnin' to 'em right off and bleat for counseling and pamphlets and sodding educational filmstrips. Dawn'll bloody well hate you, but you'll look all responsible-like."
Buffy raised her head and looked at him oddly. "That's... a halfway decent plan. Who are you, and what have you done with Spike?"
He chuckled. "I know a thing or two about strategy, Slayer. It's sticking to it where I cock up. Give me a day or two and I'll chuck the whole thing for whaling on the bastards with a tire iron." He glanced at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed, and his hand wandered down to caress the curve of her hip as his voice dropped to a sultry growl. "'Sides, I think I can make bein' grown up worth your while."
She shivered under his touch and looked longingly at the clock. She had an hour before she had to get to Giles's place... She slid her hand further up his thigh and felt him shiver in return. "Well... As long as we're on overlapping schedules, I guess we might as well..." Spike twitched violently. Ooh, he's ticklish. She smiled, feeling very wicked and decadent and... grown up. "Overlap."

Crisp black letters on heavy, cream-colored paper blazoned with the Council of Watchers' arms on one corner, signed by Quentin Travers in ink which had undoubtedly come from a fountain pen or perhaps even a quill--a weighty letter, full of weighty news. Giles wondered if he was supposed to be grateful that they'd rated the bother of a real letter, not some smudged fax or ephemeral scatter of phosphors on a monitor. "It's not good news, I'm afraid."
Buffy, sitting at attention on the couch, tucked a strand of honey-blonde hair back into her ponytail--she had arrived somewhat disheveled, for reasons Giles felt it better not to inquire into very closely, and was still effecting repairs. She studied the results in her compact, granted them provisional approval, and tucked it back into her purse. "My brilliant powers of deduction told me as much when you said you wanted to talk to me in person." She clasped her hands in her lap, poised against the backdrop of half-packed boxes and half-sorted piles of books. His house, like his life, was stuck in transition. "My hatches are battened. Fire away."
Giles folded the letter back on its creases and glanced it over once more, in the futile hope that the words would have changed since his last look. In the lull of his momentary hesitation, Spike stuck his head out of the kitchen and held up a box of Weetabix. "You're scarpering off soon, so you won't be needing this, right?"
Giles's face went stony. He really hadn't expected Spike to be here for this, if for no other reason than that it was the middle of the day. When he'd opened the door to Buffy's knock, there Spike’d been on the porch behind her, looking as if he'd had a day at the beach sans sunscreen. Last night's rain showers had evolved into a sullen grey overcast. Exactly what was needed; more excuse for Spike to lark about in the daytime. More irritation crept into his voice than he intended. "If you can tear your attention away from the larder for five minutes, Spike... sit."
Spike's brows twitched, but he stuffed the box back into the kitchen cupboard and prowled back into the living room. He collapsed into a boneless sprawl beside Buffy on the couch, near arm flung over the back of the couch behind her, thumb and forefinger brushing the nape of her neck, playing with the wisps of fine tawny hair. It was a gesture unselfconsciously intimate, as was Buffy's slight list backwards into his hand. You should want to kill him for that, the cool, analytical part of Giles's mind reminded him. You should have killed him years ago, really. If you could doom Ben for the crime of having been born Glory's vessel, how much more does this creature deserve execution?
He couldn’t call up the old certainty where Spike was concerned any longer. He had always questioned Buffy’s insistence upon sparing Spike's life in exchange for the assistance, willing or unwilling, he'd given them over the years. One killed vampires, one did not associate with them. Foolish, dangerous sentiment sprang from such familiarity, of succumbing to the fallacy that a vampire was a person with human loyalties, human loves, rather than a thing bred of chaos which would, sooner or later, be driven by its nature to destroy one. To his chagrin, it was a fallacy he found himself increasingly prone to. There was no way this liaison between the living and the dead could end well. It was his duty to protect his Slayer from less tangible dangers than the ones she faced nightly. But he watched Spike's thumb move along her hairline, and the slight curve of her lips, and knew in his bones the reason he would not object to Spike's presence.
He cleared his throat. "I'll spare you Travers's overview of the last five centuries of precedent regarding Council support of Slayers. Here we are. '...in short, it has always been the responsibility of the Watcher to ensure that his Slayer is adequately fed, clothed, and housed. After reviewing the terms of your salary and making inquiries into the cost of living in your area, we have determined that your current financial arrangements with us are sufficient to the task, assuming of course that due economy is practiced--'" Giles held up another sheet of paper. "How thoughtful--he's included a budget. 'Therefore we must regretfully decline your request to issue a separate living allowance to Buffy Summers--'"
"'Cordially yours, Quentin Travers, enormous git,'" Spike growled. He scratched his nose, which was beginning to peel.
Giles set the letter down on the coffee table and began polishing his glasses. "Excellent summation."
Buffy forced a chipper look. "It's not as if we expected them to go along quietly. We'll just have to--I mean, we can have Anya do accountanty stuff, can't we, and show them that their figures are all wrong?"
Giles shook his head. "I've already gone over them twice, and Travers is quite correct--I could support you if put to it. I cannot, however, support your sister, your house, and yours and Dawn's future education, as such frivolous items are not included in Travers's idea of due economy." He sat back in the chair and rubbed his eyes, deciding not to mention Travers's implication that if he returned to England as planned, he'd be taking a cut in salary as he'd no longer be Buffy's active Watcher. That felt almost just, a fit penance for his desertion.
Over on the couch Buffy glanced at Spike, her lower lip caught in her teeth. The vampire's arm dropped from the back of the couch to her shoulders and she straightened a little. Spike cocked an eyebrow at her and she shook her head ever so slightly. Nonverbal communication concluded, Buffy turned back to Giles. "All right," she said, determination coming back into her eyes. "If they want to play hardball... can I use your phone? I need to call L.A."
"Yes, of course." Giles waved her towards the phone. L.A.? The only people Buffy might be calling there were her father or Angel, and neither of them seemed likely to hold any solutions to the current dilemma. Buffy shoved one of the ubiquitous piles of reference books to one side and pulled the phone free. She tucked the receiver between her shoulder and her ear and tapped out the number quickly. Spike shot Giles an inquiring look behind her back, apparently just as much in the dark as he was.
Buffy stood tapping one foot impatiently, waiting for the phone to pick up and twirling the cord around her free hand. "Hi, Cordy? Yes, still alive again. No, I'm not--that's really none of your--Cordy! Focus! Slayer business! Angel's still in touch with Faith, right?"
Spike made a soft derisive noise at the sound of his grand-sire's name and Buffy made a shushing motion at him. “Shut up, Spike.” Spike complied, but listened to the rest of the conversation with a tense attention to every nuance of Buffy’s words and body language. “Not you, Cordy. I just need to get a message to Faith. The sooner the better. The Council's probably going to be contacting her soon with an offer she can't refuse, and I need her to refuse it." She rolled her eyes at whatever Cordelia's response was. "I know. I admit I wasn't Miss Junior Impulse Control. But this is vitally important."
She grabbed the letter off the coffee table before Giles could stop her, and began reading it, her eyes darting back and forth across the page. They froze on one passage and Giles saw her stiffen, an angry light joining the determination. She covered the receiver with one hand and hissed, "You didn't tell me they were trying to blackmail you too!" She handed the letter to Spike, who took it from her and squinted at it at arm's length for some minutes before looking up to regard Giles with an uncomfortable intensity.
Buffy's attention was back on the phone. "Look, just tell her the Council is out to screw us again, and don't believe a word they say, and I'll explain when I can talk to her in person. Have Angel call me with the number of the prison, and tell him not to freak if Spike answers the phone." More eye-rolling. "Yes, he does. No, I'm--just have him call me, okay? Thanks. No. No! This is me hanging up on you, Cordy... right. Later." She set the phone down and heaved an exasperated sigh. "She is so protective of him these days! I swear, if I didn't know better... urgh."
"Faith?" Giles asked. "What exactly do you have in mind, Buffy?"
"Strategy,” she said with a look that might have been mischievous had it not been so deadly serious. "As president and fifty percent of the membership of Slayer's Local 101, I'm calling a strike for higher wages. Or wages period."
Giles gave her a hard look over the top of his glasses. "And you want to ensure that they don't pull strings to--"
"--break the potential scab out of stir," Spike finished.
"Exactly. Even if she still hates my guts--and big love on my part for her, believe me, not in the program--I'm betting she'll see that we're better off hanging together on this one. If I can break them she'll get bennies too."
"Surely you can't seriously intend to stop patrolling."
Buffy gave the eye-roll another workout. "Yes, Giles, Spike's corrupted me hopelessly, I care nothing for the lives of those I formerly worked tirelessly to protect--of course I'm not going to stop patrolling! I just have to make the Council think I have." She met his skeptical look with a defiant jut of her chin. "Somehow. I'm working on it! I'm new to this strategy thing. You two are both older and sneakier than I am--some help here!"
Spike leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. "Right. Old Niccolo hasn’t a patch on us. So how does the Council of Wankers get the skinny on happenings in dear old Sunnyhell?"
"I send regular reports--which I could doctor, naturally." Giles stroked his chin, thoughtful. How long had it been now, since the Council had been trusted allies rather than polite adversaries? Long before Spike had started his erratic journey in the opposite direction. "But they'll have other channels as well--anything from local informants to bound demon servitors to something as prosaic as subscribing to the Sunnydale Press. Deceiving them will be no small task."
Buffy flashed Spike a little grin and elbowed him in the ribs. "Ooh, cool. Deception, fraud, and chicanery--right up your alley. Get to work." She stuck her lower lip out and shook Travers's letter in Giles's direction. "Now what's this about them going all Ebeneezer Scrooge with your salary?"
Giles snatched the letter back. "They're cutting out the field duty bonus, which is only fair as I shan't be on field duty--but since this didn't come up when I applied to come back the first time, I'm assuming that their true purpose is to coerce me into staying here to keep an eye on you. They will, of course, send someone to replace me if I leave, but I’m fairly certain it will be an observer rather than a... er... mentor." He added drily, "You have a reputation for being difficult to work with."
"They have yet to comprehend the difficulty that is me." Buffy tucked another loose strand of hair behind her ear, eyes sparking. "Giles, I hate the idea of you leaving. I think you're completely wrong about us not needing you. I'd give anything if you'd stay. But I swear I'll wear nothing but Blue Light Specials for the rest of the millennium if I let them force you into it." She stood up and pulled the scrunchy off her hair. "And now I'm going to borrow your bathroom. I'm all Night Of The Living Buffy and serious renovations are in order."
She got up and headed for the hall; Giles watched her go with anxious eyes. In actuality she looked better than he'd seen her since her return; there was almost a bounce in her step as she disappeared down the hall. Across the room Spike propped one boot on top of the coffee table, his eyes following her retreating form appreciatively. Buffy Summers, dragged into the land of the living by a dead man's hand... God, but he was sick of irony. Spike’s pale eyes slid back to Giles, full of sardonic challenge--and Giles looked away. He knows.
Spike's expression was victorious, but his words lacked bite, perhaps because he was wise enough to realize that he didn't know what kind of battle he'd won, nor why his opponent had chosen to abandon the field. "Never thanked you for the other day, Watcher," Spike said, voice pitched not to carry down the hall. "Not for me--I don't need your blessing, but it meant a lot to her, you not telling her she was barmy to be seen with me."
"Yes, well, if you cock up I'll make you beg me to kill you," Giles replied with a tight smile.
Spike tilted his head to one side and matched it with something that was a little too self-mocking to be a smirk. "If I cock up she'll beat you to it." He ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth and arched a brow. "Part of the appeal."
And that was probably the truth, Giles reflected with mild disgust. Spike didn't give him a chance to use the admission against him. "I've always thought this business of going home because you're useless was bollocks, and now I'm sure of it. So you're getting a bit long in the tooth to be out fighting nasties first-hand--you're a bloody walking library, and you've forgotten more about front-line demon fighting than the rest of those Council tossers ever knew. Useless my lily-white arse." His boot hit the floor with a thump and he leaned forward, the aspect of the demon a burning shadow behind every plane and angle of his face. "You see it, don't you, Watcher? The rest of them, they don't look, but you see it. 'A traveler betwixt life and death;/The reason firm, the temperate will,/Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;/A perfect woman, nobly planned,/to warn, to comfort, and command...'"
Giles looked down; his knuckles were white against the dark upholstery. He forced himself to unclench his fingers from the arm of the chair. "'And yet a spirit still, and bright,/with something of an angel light.' I wouldn't have thought Wordsworth your style."
Spike made an impatient gesture. "You get bored enough in a hundred and twenty years, you'll read anything. But you see it, damn your eyes, and you're leaving her anyway--why?"
What truth did he owe Spike, and why? All he can bear, because he is staying. He kept his voice clipped and precise. "Because I've seen her die twice now, and I cannot bear it again. Cannot. You... can. You are a braver man than I am, William the sodding Bloody, and I hate you for it."
Spike looked taken aback--had he expected something else? The vampire sat back slightly, resting his wrists on his knees. "There's fitter things you could hate me for, Rupert."
Giles took off his glasses and ran a hand through his hair--how much of the receding hairline was due to Buffy? he asked himself wryly. "Undoubtedly so. But I can't think of any of them at the moment."
"I'll wager the lapse of memory clears up right quick. Look, Watcher, you chew on this: she'll die sooner or later no matter where on the globe you've parked your arse. If it's here, it's got a better chance of being later. In fact--"
He cut himself off, looking over his shoulder at the front door. A moment later Willow knocked as she swung it open and stuck her head inside. "Hello? Giles? I thought I could get on those transcripts 'cause I'm all with the catching up--umm, Spike? You look kinda toasty. Zinc oxide. It's your friend. You guys aren't busy making me more work, are you, 'cause I thought Fridays were interview days." She came inside, edging around several boxes labeled 'MISC RECORDS' and set her laptop on the dining table. "I downloaded this trial version of some voice-recognition software from Tucows this morning, so I thought we'd see how that works--though with the accent, maybe it won't. Work. But if it does than I can take the tapes and do them at home, you know, telecommuting without the commuting--" She plugged in the laptop's adapter and flipped the lid up. "--and I hear there was a big Dawn crisis last night." A slight edge entered her voice. "I must have slept through it, as so often happens when no one wakes me up."
Buffy emerged from the hallway, looking subtlety better groomed without there being any one difference that one could point to as the reason for the improvement. She adjusted one earring. "It’s no biggie, Will. Dawn's gone all West Side Story on us again. Tara was asleep when you got home, and then there didn't seem much point in waking you up for the big angst-fest."
"Of course not." Willow hit enter as if it were her worst enemy. "It's not like I could have done anything useful in my current not-useful state. Might as well let me get my beauty sleep."
"Will, it's not--"
"It's OK, Buffy. I get the logic. Needs of the many. Don't worry about it." She looked up with a bright and genuine smile. "Where's one of those tapes?"
Giles got up and went over to the tape case, and Spike rose to his feet. "Enthralling as I find the sound of my own voice, I'd best get on, see if I can find anything needs killing--not that often I can take a midday stroll in this climate. The Bit's still at home, Will?"
Willow, distracted by her struggles with the audio settings, nodded.
Buffy snorted. "She'll be at home for a long, looong time. She is more grounded than dirt."
"Right. I'll push off, then. Later, love." He kissed the top of Buffy's head, brushed his knuckles across her cheek, and headed for the door.
"Don't forget your blanket, it might clear up!" Buffy shouted after him. She turned away from the door and walked over to the table to examine Willow's setup. She hitched herself up on the table and swung her legs back and forth. "Do you think I should get him one of those big black umbrellas for Christmas, or would that just encourage him to more extra-crispy adventures? Is there any kind of anti-vamp-combustion spell, Wills?"
"If there were, vamps would be beating a path to our door and we'd be rolling in cash. Or dead. Give me a minute or so of tape to test this, Giles," Willow said.
Giles slipped the tape into the recorder and Willow plugged it into the laptop's incoming audio. He pressed the 'play' button and Spike's raspy North London accent filled the air: "...so by this time I was off my nut with boredom--you try living in a coal mine for a month and see how you like it--so I waited till Angelus had Darla's heels about her ears one night, and I took Drusilla topside for some entertainment. We'd been living off the miners, and I wanted someone who didn't taste of coal dust for a change. So we come across this bloke, the local preacher, it looked like. He’s a shrunk-up little pissant 'thout enough blood in him to get your mouth wet enough to spit, but he's not caked solid with anthracite and that's all that matters to me at this point. He asks us if we're saved--thought Dru was a tart, I reckon--and Dru, bless her mad black heart, she starts rattling off the Pater Noster, and the pruny little chap sodding near explodes yelling about us being a couple of Papists. Which is both inaccurate and annoying, as I'm C of E myself, or was when--anyway, I snap his neck, and this is the really funny part--"
Giles hit the pause button, looking up at Buffy, who stood listening to the narration with an unreadable expression. Willow grimaced. "Um. Guess you don't want to hear that, all things considered."
Buffy shook her head. "No. But I need to hear it. I need to remember--" She took a deep breath, and her fingertips brushed her cheek. "Everything about Spike. Everything."

Revello Drive on a Sunday afternoon was rife with humanity--kids on skateboards, fathers out trimming hedges and seeding lawns with winter rye, old women with armloads of groceries gossiping on the corner. Spike strode down the sidewalk, a wolf in sheep's clothing--or at least, a wolf with a woolen blanket tucked underneath one arm. A few heads turned to watch him go by, but it was curiosity, not fear, that made them look. Odds were that half of them had seen him before, coming down the street of an evening or lurking about the Summers' front yard. In fact, he was certain of it, since someone had called the police on him once.
He glanced up at the sky overhead. Nothing compared to a good London pea-souper. He'd lived too long in sunny California when a few clouds were as good as a slaughter. The sky was still grey enough that he cast no shadow, but the clouds were thinning, and here and there the grey was backlit with luminous silver. Just as well that he was close to his destination. Diffuse as the sunlight was, he could feel the burn across his cheeks, a raw tingle that was just short of being actively painful, but for the moment, the only smoke he was trailing came from the butt of his cigarette. He was going to pay for this tonight, but how many vampires could say they'd gotten a sunburn?
Spike ignored the speculative looks of the neighbors and forged straight for the Summers' door, crossing the lawn with soundless feral grace and taking the porch steps two at a time. He turned before knocking, looking back over his shoulder. A boy on a beat-up dirt bike had paused in the street and was staring at him. Thirteen maybe, curly red hair and freckles. Spike smiled at him, and then growled--short, sharp and hungry. The kid's eyes bugged out of his head and his sneakered feet pawed the bike's pedals into a wild spin in his haste to be away. Still got it.
And dealing with Dawn was going to take every ounce of it--though he couldn’t quite see himself scaring her straight, anyway. He tossed his cigarette into the bushes and, after a moment's thought, tossed the blanket in after it. He rapped sharply on the door.
Dawn opened it a moment later, looking rebelliously grungy and unbrushed. She was wearing a Power Puff Girls t-shirt and headphones from which the faint, tinny sound of a studio-enhanced quartet of Leonardo DiCaprio look-alikes wailing about luuuuuuve could be heard. At the sight of him she managed to look at once pleased, disgusted, and indifferent. "Oh. It's Spike." 'The Buffy-siding-with traitor' remained unspoken but strongly implied. She started to shut the door again, but Spike grabbed the edge and held on.
"Ah, ah, ah, not unless you want to be sweeping yours truly into the rose bushes." He pointed towards the rapidly brightening sky. "Sun's coming out."
Dawn made a show of thinking about it, but finally stepped back with a perfunctory lift of her thin shoulders, as if the work of sweeping the porch outweighed the delightful prospect of Spike's becoming rose food. "Come on in." Spike made a rude gesture at the sky and dodged inside--he was all for pushing the limits till they snapped, but the actual catching on fire bits still weren't particularly enjoyable. Dawn flopped down on the couch, picked up the mixing bowl full of chocolate-coated sugar bombs she was munching her way through, and eyed him briefly before returning her attention to the Cartoon Network. "You look like a lobster with mange."
Spike prodded his cheek gingerly, wishing he had an Instamatic handy. He sat down beside Dawn on the couch, imitating her spine-contorting pose. "Yeh, well, it's that delicate English complexion. Tara about?"
"In her room." Dawn scowled at the TV screen. "You don't think anyone would actually trust me to take care of myself for five minutes straight, do you?" She oozed further down on her tailbone and looked, for a moment, poised to throw a handful of cereal at the television, or possibly at him.
"Not after last night, no.”
Dawn’s scowl petrified into the Wall Of Teen-Age Hostility, and she turned the volume on her Walkman up to earsplitting levels. Spike ignored it. “Just as well the wicca girl’s upstairs. Rather we had a bit of privacy for this.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, proof positive she was made from Buffy. “Whatever,” she muttered. Spike appraised her for a moment, then snatched her earphones from her head. She shrieked and grabbed for his wrists. "Hey! Give those back!"
He held them just out of reach overhead--he wasn't going to be able to do that in another year or so, best take advantage of superior height while he still had it--and made a threatening crunching motion with one hand. "Chip doesn't give a toss about electronics, Pigeon. I told your sis I'd talk to you, so give us a listen, and then we'll both have done our duty, right?"
"Fine." Dawn went rigid against the sofa cushions, arms folded across her chest and teeth clenched, refusing to look at him. "Come on, give me the lecture." Her lips pressed hard together to still their trembling. "Tell me how stupid I've been, tell me I'm ruining my life, tell me how lucky I am Social Services isn't beating our door down right now, tell me how it's different when you do it, tell me--"
He'd promised Buffy, that night last spring, to protect Dawn until the end of the world, and he'd done his best, feeble as that best sometimes was. Now and again, over the summer, it had been a tossup as to who was taking care of whom. Some things were easier to guard against than others. Spike held an arm out. "Come here." Dawn looked at him, blinking a little too hard. He crooked a finger at her. "Come here, you little nit, or I'll rip your ears off and use 'em for coasters."
"L-Like you could!" The dam broke, and Dawn fell against him sobbing, burying her head in his shoulder and tipping the bowl of Cocoa Puffs all over the couch and his lap. Spike held her, stroking her hair and murmuring meaningless broken things as she wept into his chest, and silently thanked whoever was in charge of such things that Dawn hadn't poured any milk over her cereal. He wanted, as much as he'd he'd ever desired anything an a long and passionate existence, to make this right for her....
It wasn't right, this. Even less right than loving the Slayer. He could justify that to himself if he tried hard enough--he'd always been love's bitch and Buffy's was simply the latest hand on his choke-chain. Whatever good he'd done for her sake didn't count in the eternal balance; his motives were all proper selfish vampiric ones, and it never would have happened without the chip anyway, so he was still all right, wasn't he? This thing with Dawn, though... It had started out innocently enough, just an attempt to get in good with her sister, but now--now an ache in Dawn's voice stirred anxious pain within his own chest, and her laughter buoyed him up as though his dead heart were anchored in her living one, to rise and fall and beat in time with her joy and her anguish.
Sitting here with her warm slim body curled against his side, her jerky sobs slowing and her breathing gradually evening out, he tried to pinpoint the moment when normal healthy bloodlust had drained away, to be replaced by this unnatural empathy. Sitting in the Magic Box, sharing the battered box of chocolates he'd been idiot enough to think he could give her sister? No longer ago than that, surely? He could have eaten her then, if the chip hadn't prevented it, if she hadn't been Buffy's sister, if he hadn't had a fond sneaking memory of big blue eyes staring defiantly at him through the bannisters three years past, as he and Buffy plotted Angelus's downfall. Why Slayer, I didn't know you were serving hors d'oeuvres!
She'd never been afraid of him, his Dawn. Took after her mum, and ah, what he wouldn't give to have a long talk with Joyce Summers right about now. He ran the pad of his thumb across Dawn's cheek, wiping away the tears. "It's all right, Dawn-love." Passing strange that she could find comfort in a dead man's cold embrace, in the whiskey-roughened cadences of a killer's voice. But she did; he could feel it in the set of her shoulders beneath his arm, the little hitching sigh as she scrubbed the heel of her own hand across her eyes. He smoothed a strand of long brown hair away from her eyes. "You bollocksed it up, I won't tell you you didn't, but Christ, I came this close to killing a bloke last night. I've still got you beat for villainy."
A shudder ran through her, half-sob, half laughter. "No way. Actual robbery beats attempted murder. I'm still badder than you."
He laughed outright. God, he loved this girl. "You're sorry, aren't you, love?"
Dawn snuffled, groping blindly over the arm of the couch for the box of Kleenex on the side table. "Of course I'm sorry!"
"See, there's what a soul will do for you, pet--I'm not." Spike brushed a layer of half-crushed cereal off his jeans and gave her a squeeze. "At least not for that." He pulled a crumpled linen handkerchief out of one of the duster's inside pockets and handed it to her. "Here, you may as well get some good of it. I haven't used the bloody thing since 1948."
Dawn took the handkerchief and examined it as if it were some bizarre antique device--which to her, Spike conceded, it probably was. "There's not, like, fifty-year-old vampire snot on it, is there?"
"Blow your damned nose."
She complied, folding the handkerchief carefully and tucking it into her jeans pocket when she was done. "I wish I had a chip sometimes. It's easy for you--if you try to do something bad, it zaps you before you do it. All a soul does is make you feel like crap afterwards." Dawn picked up the mixing bowl and made a half-hearted attempt to scrape the scattered flecks of chocolate into it, but gave up as it became obvious that her efforts were doing more to spread the cereal around than to consolidate it. She set the bowl on the coffee table, slumped back into the crook of his arm and sighed. "Have you ever been going along doing something that seems to be a fantastic idea, and then all of a sudden you realize it's the dumbest thing you've ever done in your life?"
Spike rested his head against the back of the couch, lips pursed, and contemplated the ceiling. "Let me think. Let Dru play Lego blocks with the Judge, because all that destroy-the-world stuff's never serious? Hire some arsewipe to torture Angel for the Gem of Amarra and then let him run off with it? Chain your sis to a wall to show her we were meant to be, because manacles are a girl's best friend? Order a robot look-alike of Buffy? Nah, I've led a life of sober restraint."
Dawn giggled weakly. "You sure have. You know what bites? I never took any of this stuff because I wanted it. I mean, sometimes I did. I know we're not starving and we've got a roof over our heads and all that crap, but there's no extra money for anything fun, ever! And every time I hint about hitting up Dad, Buffy gets this pinchy look around her eyes and it's like I'm stabbing her in the back or something."
He knew the look; it was the same one Buffy got every time he hinted that there was blunt to be had in demon-killing. Ethics were a sodding pain in the arse. Spike picked a cocoa flake off his knee and ate it. "I think it galls her she can't keep you happy on her own, pet."
"That's not it at all!" Tears started welling up in Dawn's eyes again. "She's not Mom, she can't be Mom, I don't want her to be Mom! I just want her to be my sister! She hates me, doesn't she, Spike? For helping bring her back. She just can't show it because I'm her stupid sister. She died when it should have been me, and then I--I--"
Spike grabbed her shoulders hard enough to get a warning twinge from the chip and gave her a little shake. "Stop that! Buffy loves you, Bit. She's the only person who might love you more'n I--anyone else does. If anyone's to blame for bringing her back, it's Will and me, and mostly me--Will was about to drop the idea when I cozened her into going ahead. And if I hadn't fucked up royally on the tower neither one of you'd have needed to take a header off it. So no more of this." He held her eyes until she nodded, then let his hands drop. "Look, pet, tell you what, if you really want something, I'll nick it for you. Except for any girly bits you fancy--I'm not going to perv about in the Junior Miss section pocketing unmentionables. Or boy band CDs. Or--never mind, there's nothing you'd want I'd be caught dead stealing."
She punched him in the ribs. "Oh, yeah, Buffy will go for that. I meant it when I said it wasn't the stuff. It was just... doing it. It was... cool. And a little dangerous. It made me feel like... like I was in charge of my life. Like I could do anything. Until I got caught."
Spike cocked his head and regarded her gravely. "Yeh, that's the feeling, all right. You know, Niblet, when you do something for the thrill of it, you've got to take the rough with the smooth. If I fancy getting my rocks off killing other vampires, I've got to take the chance of getting the shit beat out of me every other Tuesday, and waking up starkers in the middle of the UCS quad with five minutes till sunrise. Laugh all you like, it’s happened. It's worth it; I'd bloody well shrivel up and die if I couldn't kill something." Almost did. He shivered a little, recalling the black pit of despair he'd slogged through before discovering that the chip only worked on humans. "Guess you've got to decide if the feeling you get from nicking stuff's worth the dodgy patches that come with."
"No." Dawn's reply was instant, and Spike marveled slightly. He could remember, through a glass darkly, something of what it felt like to have a conscience, but the thing itself was gone, vanished along with his pulse. Dawn looked a little wistful. "But it did feel good."
Spike laced his fingers behind his head and crossed one boot over the other, heels making little crunching noises in the spilled cereal on the table. "Well, give us a bit, pet. Maybe we can do summat about that." He glanced around. "Here--do we clean this crud up or sneak off to the kitchen and pretend Tara's walking hairball did it?"
"Blame Miss Kitty," Dawn said decisively, getting to her feet.
Spike grinned up at her. "See, not being good's got its points."


Buffy concentrated on the rhythm of her feet on the pavement, step, step, step, each foot planted safely in the middle of the concrete squares. Step on a crack, break a vampire's back. And she had, once--dropped an organ on him, smash, and left him and Dru for really truly dead in the burning wreckage. More than once over the years she'd wavered between blessing or cursing the Sunnydale Fire Department for being far more competent than their colleagues in the police force.
Funny. She'd probably caused him more lingering pain than he'd caused any of his victims. And then I killed them, right quick. The story of Spike's unlife, Reader's Digest Condensed version. Drusilla, mad broken thing, played with her food. Angelus and Darla had raised torture to a fine art. And Spike just... killed people. Necks snapped in a trice, throats ripped out with one quick savage flash of fangs. Preferably after a good fight, but he wasn't a fussy eater. Not exactly new information, Buffy. We've been over this before. Spike was a monster. Her monster. Her responsibility. People had attack dogs that they were... fond of. Safe as long as they were kept under proper restraint, and put down if they attacked out of turn, and that--that was what her relationship with Spike had to be. No more accidental slippage of the B word except it's already out and he's probably got it framed on his mantlepiece no admission of that other word she wouldn't even let herself think. She was in deep enough already without breaking out the shovels and heading for China.
She stopped at the foot of the walk leading up to her house, looking across the lawn through the windows. She could see figures moving behind the drawn curtains, silhouettes painted on the cloth by the living room lights. An electric thrill ran along her nerves--Spike, right here. Her feet brought her closer of their own accord, up the porch steps to peer through the gap in the curtains. Inside, the muted roar of the vacuum cleaner drowned out any conversation; she could see Tara shaking the wand irately at the couch, where Spike was sitting meekly while Dawn dabbed aloe vera over his sunburnt nose.
Compared to her first vampire love, Spike had always been third-rate evil, and nowadays he was practically channeling Mahatma Gandhi. Sort of. If Gandhi had been really into kicking demon ass and possessed of a not-so-secret hankering for a nice glass of O-neg after a hard night's killing. But Angel and Angelus still occupied separate corners of her mind, man and demon insuperably divided by Angel's possession of a soul. Dawn pooh-poohed the gap between soul and chip, but there was one vital difference: however much his ill-won conscience pained him, Angel wanted to keep it, and if someone offered Spike a chance to be rid of the chip... that didn't bear thinking of. The soul made it easy to love Angel, forgive Angel, place all his sins on Angelus's head. Spike, damn him, defied such compartmentalization. Man and demon were one; the Spike who traded jibes about musical taste or lack thereof with Xander, guarded Dawn like a pit bull, and set her own body on fire with a touch was the same Spike who tore through Sunnydale High turning Parent-Teacher Night into a bloodbath, the same Spike who but for the chip would have killed Ramon with equal abandon, and regret only that he'd upset her thereby.
The same Spike who knew she was watching him. He looked up and smiled, his eyes locked onto hers, ice blue meeting grey-green through the veil of glass and gauze between them. The shock ran through her anew like wintergreen and lightning. Buffy tore herself away from the window and leaned for a moment against the door, forehead pressed to the frame, fingers locked around the cold brass of the handle. Nothing supernatural about it--or no more supernatural than any other vampire ability, anyway. He could catch her scent, sense her heartbeat, something. It was a predator thing. Nothing special about the fact that the two of them arrowed in on one another like Lassie coming home. It didn't mean anything. She wouldn't let it.
She opened the door. "I'm home!" As usual when she was mired in angst, there was a spectacular lack of noticing on the part of the populace at large. Dawn ignored her entirely, intent on her patient. Tara gave her a little smile and a wave of the vacuum cleaner wand. "Has Angel called yet?" Buffy asked as she left the foyer, shouting over the roar of the Hoover.
Tara toed the off switch on the vacuum cleaner and the noise died away. "Not yet. Unless the phone rang while I was vacuuming up the cereal that Miss Kitty somehow managed to pour into a bowl, carry into the living room, and spill all over the couch." She kept a perfectly straight face, and Dawn and Spike had the grace to look sheepish.
Buffy tossed her purse onto the nearest chair. My psych project, Dr. Walsh, is a study in guilt transference in vampires from cereal to people. I'm borrowing Hostile 17. She looked askance at Spike--he really did look awful, as though he'd gotten a faceful of red spray-paint. With his accelerated healing, skin was already sloughing off the worst of the burnt places, which didn’t improve matters any. "So--did we finally discover whether or not you freckle?"
Spike gave her a sour look and jerked away from Dawn's hand. "Steady on, you're getting it in my eyes!"
Exasperated, Dawn squeezed another dollop of lotion onto her fingers. "If you'd quit twitching it wouldn't go in your eyes, and it's your own fault for being mirror-challenged anyway, so suck it up."
Buffy sauntered over to the couch for a ringside seat. "Will's probably going to be staying over at Giles's place for dinner. They're still playing with those tapes." She sat down and hugged a sofa pillow. "I think she's really hurt that we didn't wake her up last night. I don't know what good it would have done, but..."
Spike grunted and made another futile effort to escape Dawn's ministrations. "She thinks you don't need her now that she can't sling the mojo."
"But that's--what good would magic have done?" Buffy kicked off her shoes and absently slung a foot across Spike's lap. Just as absently he began massaging her toes. Too boyfriendy. Must move foot. Move, foot, move! Her foot informed her that it was just fine where it was, thanks, and invited the other foot to join it. After a bit she began kneading Spike's thigh with her free set of toes. Well, he did it to me. Turnabout is fair play. No, this is major badness. Ooh, behold the wonder of Buffy-logic. Letting him screw you bowlegged is fine, but a foot rub? Cobblestone on the road to hell!
"Let's just say," Spike began doing absolutely sinful things to her instep with both thumbs, "That if yours truly were a charter member of the Geek Squad who'd become a big gun in this our demonic world through supernatural means, I'd be feeling bloody inadequate around now if those means were kicked out from under me. Doesn't matter why we didn't wake her, fact is we didn't."
"I should have thought of that." Tara wheeled the vacuum back over to the utility closet and maneuvered it in among the clutter of brooms and dustpans and half-empty tins of shoe polish. "She's told me she was shy back in high school, but it's just so hard for me to imagine Willow being insecure about anything..."
"When I first met her, Wills was the insecurity poster child. But it's been a long time," Buffy agreed. "She's changed a lot."
"It's never long enough," Spike muttered darkly. "Or, er, so I've heard. Wouldn't know myself."
"Because you've always been bad." Buffy reached over and tweaked his ear. "You know, if you're really into this I could try you out with a cucumber facial once Dawn's through with you."
Spike collapsed backwards with a groan. "Bugger off, woman, and let me suffer the fruits of my hubris in peace."
Buffy scooched closer, lips teasingly close to his ear, voice a husky whisper. "Ooh, words of more than one syllable. You know how hot that gets me?" She squealed as Spike's arm snaked round her waist and pulled her onto his lap. She wrapped her own arm around his shoulders and made herself comfortable, eliciting one of those yummy subterranean growls. Oh, yeah, squirming around in Spike's lap still gets a reaction, all right.
"Reeeeally, pet?" How the hell did he manage to look and sound that sexy with aloe vera all over his nose? "Antidisestablishmentarianism."
She flung her head back, exposing her throat. "Take me now!"
"Just in case you're wondering, all Buffy's previous boyfriends used to offer me cold hard cash to go away at this point," Dawn pointed out from her end of the couch, where she was watching the proceedings with mildly revolted interest. "Boy, if Mrs. Kroger walked in right now..." The phone rang. Buffy jumped and Spike went tense as an overwound guitar string. Dawn snickered. "Saved by the bell."
"Not funny, Bit." The phone rang a second time. Spike cocked an eyebrow at Buffy, who tried without success to break the nervous freeze which had gripped all her voluntary motor functions. "You really want me to get that and astonish the poof, love, you'll have to move." He glanced at Dawn and reconsidered. "On second thought, don't. You're covering a multitude of sins."
"Uh," Buffy croaked. An entire scenario where Spike answered the phone flashed through her mind, complete with dramatic rising music at the part where Angel drove down from L.A. in a rage and crashed through the front door. Goody. Forget temp work, I have a future in scriptwriting.
Tara shut the closet door and picked up the phone on the third ring. "Summers residence. Yes, she's here. Uh... yes, he is too. Um...no...I really d-don't know... do you want to t-talk to Buffy?"
Buffy felt that little irritated line forming between her brows--what had he said to get Tara nervous enough to stutter? Tara picked the phone up and brought it closer, handing Buffy the receiver over the back the couch. She took it, panic fighting arousal in her gut. "Hello? Angel?"
"Buffy." The voice was warm, deep, familiar. Once it had been the one she compared all other voices to. Spike's eyes had gone gold and he was running the fingers of one hand lightly up and down her arm, inscribing possessive hieroglyphs on her skin. "Cordelia said you wanted to get hold of Faith?"
"Um. Want, no, need, yes." She tried swatting Spike's hand away; he captured hers instead and began kissing her palm. Slow. Soft. Tongue-tip tracing lazy circles. She swallowed a gasp. "It's a Council thing. So... you've got the number?"
"Yeah. It's right here. Let me get the Rolodex."
She listened to the muffled noises on the other end of the line and bit her tongue against the muffled noises she wanted to make herself. Was this all there was left between them? Awkward silences? It had been like that at their meeting, a week after her return. Sitting in the coffee shop, toying with their cups, staring at one another across an expanse of wood-grain Formica. Exchanging meaningless pleasantries: Why yes, I am alive again. So kind of you to notice. Dawn's fine (she still can't stand you) Willow's fine (she dragged me back to fight a war I'll never win for a world that doesn't care) no, I can't remember much about being dead (stole that from me too) and how are you? Two people who'd changed each other's lives, and now all they were to one another was an uncomfortable lunch date. She'd found herself willing the hands on the clock to move. He hadn't ordered anything. Why hadn't he ordered anything? Was he trying to make their rendezvous go faster too? But no, she'd forgotten--Angel didn't eat; the coffee was a major concession.
What else could they say? I love you? What point? There was no expressing that love--passion was too dangerous, friendship too painful. Can I help? But it had been clear last year, after her mother's funeral, that there were limits and bounds to that help--"As long as you need me" could not be forever. So they said nothing worth saying, and the minutes dragged by. She had grown unused to fraught silences; Spike filled them up with words. Angel dug the silences deeper.
Angel didn't eat. And she couldn't remember if he breathed in his sleep. And she had wanted very badly to go home.
"Here it is. Got a pencil?"
She started at the sound of his voice--expecting it to be lighter, harsher, tinged with the accents of other shores. "And paper, even." Tara handed her a pad of yellow Post-Its and she wrote down the number on the top sheet, underlining it twice and putting *Faith!* above it. "I'm going to call and make an appointment to see her as soon as I can--can you come along if I give you a few days' warning? I don't think there's a trusting, friendly vibe there since she stole my body."
Angel sighed. "Buffy--"
She was shot through with a bolt of pure hatred for that tone of voice--oh, so reasonable, oh, so adult. He'd defend Faith. Of course. "Love, give, forgive, I know the drill." Had it been too much to ask, after Faith had stolen her body, stolen Riley, stolen her life, that Angel take her side for once, without getting all noble and redeemy? She wasn't stupid. She knew that saving Faith was all about saving himself. I wanted you to be about saving me. She could feel herself getting tense and quivery, and the rhythm of Spike's hand stroking her arm shifted suddenly from erotic to sexless comfort. She took a deep breath. Maybe she should hang out with Anya more--someone who knew the value of a spectacular act of vengeance.
Doubt and worry threaded Angel's distant voice. "Buffy, is Spike causing problems? Because if he is, we can come up and take care of him for you--"
"No!" Was that squeaky silly-sounding thing her own voice? Shoot me now. "I can take care of Spike myself! And take care of? What is that? What is he, Old Yeller? You don't just 'take care' of someone--" Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn... Stupid blinding insight. "Sorry. Sorry. This thing with the Council's got me all nervy. Look, I'll let you know when I can get into the city to see Faith. I'll probably be driving up with Spike, just so you know." She didn't give him a chance to reply. "Talk to you later. Bye." She slammed the phone down in its cradle and let her head fall back against Spike's shoulder, feeling as if she'd just run a marathon. After a moment the tension in his body got to her, and she slitted her eyes open. Spike was watching her with eyes like the heart of a flame, radiating a simmering heat suggesting that had a minor not been present, he would have been staking his claim to her right then and there. "What's with the phone sex?" she snapped. "Were you trying to make me--"
"You didn't tell him," he said, half growling.
Without a word, Tara grabbed Dawn's wrist, pulled her to her feet and started for the stairs. "You still have homework, don't you?"
Dawn curled her lip. "Don't I always when anything interesting happens?"
As her sister's reluctant footsteps faded, Buffy aimed a tight-lipped glare at Spike. "And why should I tell him? It's none of his business. I didn't send him a memo when I started dating Riley, did I?"
"It's different. You know it's different." Citrine sparks flared in his eyes as his fingers closed round her wrists. Astonishing how very different the angry growl sounded from the happy growl or the horny growl or... Buffy felt a buried thrum of excitement at the thought that she'd actually have to exert some effort to break his grip. Spike shoved her roughly to one side, flinching slightly as the chip reacted, and flung himself off the couch and into a round of tigerish pacing.
"I told the people who matter," she shot back, and because she knew he was right and hated it, some small mean part of her was prompted to add, "and you were lucky to get that."
That struck deep, maybe deeper than she'd intended, and the raw pain in his eyes made her weak-kneed. "Think I don't know that?" His voice was bitter. "I'm properly grateful. You told the people you couldn't hide it from. The people who can pretend I'm human when it suits them. He knows exactly what I'm missing. He'll never forget what I am, and never forgive--cos it's what he is, too." He whirled round and pinned her against the couch with the sheer force of leashed rage--and it was leashed this time, no doubt there. "And you can't bloody well take the heat when it comes to Soul Boy's disapproval, can you?"
She stiffened. "You don't know anything about it."
"Oh, I know everything about it." Spike made a savage slashing gesture with one hand. "I know the Irish git walked out on you, out of the goodness of his bloody soul. I know you threw yourself at that Parker bastard--to forget him, to follow his bloody orders. Be normal." He spoke the word like a curse, his voice gone mocking. "Didn't work very well, did it?"
Buffy rose slowly to her feet, eyes glittering. "My God. You're jealous. Of Angel? Of Parker? That's pathetic, Spike."
"Shell of a loser, wasn't it? Of course I'm fucking jealous!" he roared. "I was so jealous then I couldn't see straight! Didn't know I loved you yet, but I knew you were mine! My Slayer, mine to kill--or not." He was in her face now, eyes blazing as the two of them circled one another, wolflike. "How d'you think it felt, watching you chase after a tosser not fit to clean your boots on, trying to drown the hurt he gave you, and knowing you'd take sodding Angel back in a sodding second if he lifted a soulful finger in your direction? I'd rather've put you in the bloody ground than see you crawling like that!" The muscles in his jaw clenched. "And nothing's changed, has it? You'll cross up your Watcher and your friends, give 'em the news that you're shagging the undead again--but you won't tell him. You'll still jump through hoops to be his bleeding normal girl. Well, you started this, Slayer--it was your idea to jump the vampire's bones. You bloody well know what I am, and if you can't handle it then what the hell are we doing here?"
Buffy hooked her fingers into the lapels of the duster, bringing him to a halt. Things have changed. Lots of things have changed. "Good question," she hissed. "So what are you, Spike? Who are you? Just a vampire? You ought to know if that were true we wouldn't be having this conversation!"
"Just a vampire? I'm William the fucking Bloody, baby. I pound railroad spikes through the heads of gits who annoy me, remember?"
"Do you, Spike? You know what I am. And you know who I am. It's not like I can put you down like a rabid dog if the chip goes bad--you know that!" Didn't he?
Maybe not. Those beautiful heavy-lidded eyes bored into hers, and she could see the flare of his nostrils, feel the quick, shallow rise and fall of his muscled chest beneath her hands-- He breathes for me. His lips curved in an ironic smile. "Can't you? Bloody hell, Slayer, what else did you tell the rest of 'em not three days ago? I told you last year I could give up the whole evil thing for you, and I meant it. I can change what I do. I have, and I'll keep it up--chip or no chip. But I don't have a sodding soul. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death I shall fear no evil, because yours truly is the meanest son of a bitch in the Valley. I am a vampire, I will always be a vampire, I will always get off on death and pain and destruction. That's what I am, forever and sodding ever, amen. I'll do the right thing for you, for the Bit, hell, even for Harris--I'll do it because I'm fond of this world of ours and I don't want to see the dozy old bint go smash. But I will never do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. I haven't got the wiring for it."
She was trembling violently, anger and fear and desire braided together. Three days? Hadn't a lifetime passed since then? "You said--that night--you said you were mine."
Blue eyes, drilling through her soul--not fair, when he had none. "And I am, Slayer. Yours to kill--or not."
She could not, could not bear any more space between them. "Mine." She pulled him down, first crushing him close, then flinging him to the couch and following fast after. Her mouth, starved for him, wrested frantic greedy kisses from his lips. Her hands cupped his face, feverishly tracing the planes of his cheeks, heedless of his burnt skin. A sound half agonized, half ecstatic, ripped from his throat and he returned her caresses with equal passion. She sank her teeth into the muscle of his shoulder and he howled, bucking beneath her as she ripped open his jeans and skinned out of her own--and didn't he have a pretty cock, rising all rose and ivory from the brown curls so startlingly dark against his pale skin. The whole lovely thick length of him sprang up against his flat hard belly as soon as she freed him, foreskin slipping back from the dark glistening head. He was hard for her, so hard, and oh, that glorious right-to-the-center fullness when he entered her was like nothing on earth or beyond it.
He was talking, still, as she began to move--of course he was talking, you couldn't pay Spike to shut up, ever--a steady stream of joyful profanity as her nails raked his sides and his hands dug into her ass with bruising strength, forcing her closer, forcing himself deeper: Oh God, oh fuck, right there, that's heaven, right in that tight little cunt, that's my Slayer, that's my sweet hot bitch, ride me baby, ride me hard, oh fuck, so good, make it hurt, make it hurt just like that, come on, say it, say my name, say my name when you come, come for me come for me oh Christ oh fuck fuck fuck fuck me Buffy fuck me Buffy FUCK ME OH GOD BUFFY! and together they lit up the night like a Beirut Fourth of July. Mine. Mine. My monster. No one else's, mine, mine, mine, thou shalt have no other Slayers before me. And they were falling, falling, raptured, transfixed, Lucifer flung from heaven and she burning in his arms. Before they struck earth she bit him again and he was instantly rock-hard within her non-existent vampire refractory period, hurray! and they were rocketing out of control again, comet-bright in the darkness, and she could swear that the delirious explosions of pleasure that rocked her never ever really stopped...


"You realize," Dawn said to Tara, sprawled out on the bed in he mother's old room and doodling in the margin of her geometry textbook, "That I'm scarred for life. This means guilt presents. Lots of guilt presents."


"Mine," she whispered, too exhausted to stop the tears.
"Yours," he breathed. "Forever. Don't cry, love. I'm here."
She curled against him, shaking. "It's not that. It's not... oh, God, Spike, I'm--you were right. You were right."
Cool hands cradled her face, cool lips--not so cool now, warmed with her warmth--brushed her shoulder, tender, infinitely gentle. "Ah, sweet, be still, be still... Dunno what you're getting at, love."
"When you said--at Willy’s, when you said I didn't care. About--about--I'm so fucking sick of saving the world! I was going to let the whole world die to save Dawn. I was. Because it was wrong to kill her, but--but mostly--because I couldn't bear to lose her. I killed myself fighting the Master. I killed Angel. I lost Riley, I lost Mom, I--Dawn was more important than the whole world, Spike!"
A long pause. "Sounds about right to me."
"But it's not." A broken sob. "How can I be the Slayer when I don't care about saving the world anymore? I got lucky. What if my blood won't work next time? When--" When the fact that you love me, love Dawn, to the exclusion of all else is more important to me than all you've done, all you may do?
“But you’re out there every night doing it still, love.”
“Right. Just like you. And you don’t care, do you?”
He jerked his head up and away, trembling, but he wasn't quite strong enough to break her grip without a struggle. We can't escape one another that easily. Something in him broke; she could almost hear the snap. "I don't know. I don't know anything anymore." He looked down at her. "There are--bloody hell, dozens!--of people I wouldn't feel good about killing. There's half a dozen I'd feel bad about killing!" His voice was barely audible. "It's not like I'm going all brooding and poof-like--I could kill 'em, you know, sans bloody chip, and I don't think I'd weep for it afterwards. But... it wouldn't be fun. I'm starting not to care how fucking wrong it is. What if it doesn't stop there? What if some day I do start--” His voice cut off, half choked. There were some things he couldn’t bring himself to say yet, either.
She reached up and smoothed the riot of sweat-soaked platinum curls away from his forehead. "Caring? Sounds about right to me." She sighed. "We're messed up."
He echoed the sigh. "We are that." He stretched, drawing her closer. "Could be worse, though. On the bright side, the shagging is bloody brilliant."
Buffy gave in to a little hiccuping laugh. Somehow he could always do that much for her. "Yeah." She tucked her head into his shoulder. Springs creaked dangerously beneath them, and something went spung. Buffy grimaced. Damn. We really can't afford a new couch. Note to self: have wild passionate vampire sex only on concrete surfaces until the bloom is off the rose. Say, twenty or thirty years from now. "I guess if you have to be messed up, you may as well be messed up with someone you love."
It took a minute, and then he drew a gasping breath as if she'd staked him. "Buffy..."
What the hell. She’d always liked going for Chinese. She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. "You heard me."
Wow, she thought as he dove on her and the last intact spring in the sofa noisily bit the dust, I finally managed to shut Spike up.

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