Title: The Bereaved
Author: Bluebell
Email: kristen1@utkux.utcc.utk.edu
Disclaimer: Joss and co own all.
Notes: Willow and Spike get into a bitching contest. Fluff to the core, baby!

"You brought me all the way out here just to look at a crypt?"

Spike rolled his eyes, wishing for one, just one vampire friend who could appreciate this. "It's not just a crypt," he explained patiently, "it's my new digs. What do you think? Some potted plants, a few throw pillows..."

"Spike." Willow shook her head and gave the tall blonde a crooked smile. "It's a place where dead people are laying in tombs. There's not much you could do that would make it look homey to me."

"You're being narrow-minded." Now he was getting irritated. He'd been so caught up in the idea of finally getting out of Xander's basement that he hadn't really considered the asthetics of his new habitat, simply that it would be big enough for him to sleep in. "Use your imagination, Red. Think evil, like me. It's dark, it's cold, it's forbidding..."

"It's a big marble block." Willow cocked an eyebrow. "I thought you were looking into places with electricity and stuff so that you could refrigerate your...food."

Spike smirked as the young woman tripped over the mention of his feeding habits, then promptly returned to his regularly scheduled annoyance. "I don't even know why I'm asking you," he gave her a disgusted roll of his dark eyes, "you're just a silly slayer wanna-be with no boyfriend and an oddly layered haircut."

For a moment, Willow was taken aback, stung. Then she remembered who was doing the talking. "And you're so much better off?" she asked, eyes wide with incredulity. "Mr. I Can't Bite Any Living Creature So I Sulk All Day and Watch Soap Operas?"

Spike opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.

"May I remind you that I'm the one who's always sticking up for you, always taking your side, always sneaking you cookies? If it wasn't for me, the others would have let you stake yourself by now, you big baby."

"Ha!" Spike stiffened and gave the witch his most haughty stare. "You'd like to think that you're my savior, wouldn't you, Red? Well, in case you failed to notice, I have tried several times to bite you. Several times in a row, in fact. If it weren't for those Army assholes, you'd be calling me Master by now, you little twit!"

"Twit?" Willow was now well and truly seething. "At least I do some good around here. You're entirely worthless. All you can do is wail on demons and bitch about not being able to kill people! I'm the one who convinced Buffy not to stake you, you know." Actually, that wasn't quite true, but she'd be damned if she'd let him get the better of her.

"Well, thank you so much, Saint Willow." Spike's pulse was nearing normal, which in vampire terms was somewhere close to cardiac arrest. For the first time in months, he was feeling something besides suicidal. What he was feeling he couldn't exactly put his finger on, but whatever it was, he was enjoying it. "You know, Buffy's G.I. boyfriend and his little cronies almost unloaded a submachine gun into your sorry ass, but I stopped them. What have you got to say to that, Oh Immaculate One?"

"Immaculate?" Willow's fists were curled into tight balls at her sides. "I'm not some simpering little girl, you know. I may not be the Slayer, but I go up against rampaging demons and vampire armies too. I don't even want to think about how many times I've come close to dying."

"Well, alert the media." Spike spread his arms wide and addressed the empty cemetary. "Everybody rejoice, Willow's still alive! She's fucking indestructible, ladies and gentleman! She certainly doesn't need me to help her out of near-fatal situations, because she's got it all figured out!"

"You'd think," Willow hissed, "that someone as old as you would be just a little more mature."

"Ouch." Spike put a hand to his chest, as though he'd been shot. "That one went right for the heart, didn't it? Buffy should just let you at the baddies with your razor-sharp wit. That'd teach 'em to mess with the forces of good!"

"I can't believe that I went out of my way to be nice to you!" Willow wailed. "This whole semester has been torture for me, what with Oz leaving and everyone else finding their true love, and yet you stand here and make fun of me like...like it's high school all over again." Willow's lower lip began to tremble and she bit it, hard. There was no way she was going to cry in front of Spike. No way. She was all cried out, by God.

Spike hesitated. Usually he delighted in getting in a few good hits against the Slayer and her little friends, but if Red started bawling all over the place, he had the horrible feeling that he wouldn't enjoy it at all. What had happened to him? Whatever the Initiative had implanted in him was obviously affecting his mental functions as well as his physical ones.

"Look," he shifted awkwardly and shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his duster. "I know that the others gave you shit about the whole wolf thing." He kept his eyes fixed on his boots. Maybe it would be better if he had at least one of the Slayer's brats on his side. "I know...ugh. I know how it feels to be bereaved of your love. When Dru wouldn't come back to me I thought I was going to cave in, you know? Just crumble to the ground and never be able to stand up again. And then I took Harm, because I thought that if I had someone, 'lighter' I guess is the word, then I wouldn't have to be alone, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting in so deep. But it sucked anyway. She drove me absolutely batty. And then I get neutered and can't even bite anyone, and I'm suddenly hanging around my sworn enemies, and everybody loathes me..." he looked up at her, surprised to see that she wasn't laughing at him, but rather watching him silently, brow furrowed in thought.

"You were the only one who treated me like I wasn't some burden. When I went looking for the Slayer and found you...well, I offered you a choice, but truth be told, Red, I wasn't going to give you one. Killing you was never in the plan. I always kind of liked you. You're an odd one...but in an interesting way. After nearly two centuries, most people just blend into one big oblivious human machine, bumbling around like a merry idiot. But you always seem to know exactly what's happening. And when I couldn't bite you, couldn't turn you...I was so fucking angry I thought I was going to breathe fire. Not just because I couldn't drain you, but because I couldn't...have you."

She said nothing, but her luminous eyes were huge.

"And now I feel like the biggest goddamned pansy that ever walked the earth."

Willow smiled and stifled a giggle, but Spike didn't find anything about it humorous. In fact, this was quickly becoming revelatory in a way he wasn't prepared to deal with. She wasn't his type at all, for Christ's sake. "Sure," he grumbled, "laugh at me. You should. I'm just a bloody clown at this point, anyway. If any other vampires were around to see this, they'd stake me on the spot."

Willow didn't know how to process any of what he'd just said to her, but she was sure now that it wasn't just her soft heart that had always been willing to support Spike. "You don't...", her own voice, thick with emotion, surprised her. "You can't know how what you said makes me feel. I don't know how it makes me feel. You're a vampire and you're, you know, handsome and sexy and all black leathery. You could have anyone. The thought that you even considered making me a vampire is unbelieveable. I always thought I was so lucky to have Oz, but in the back of my mind I always thought that the reason he liked me was because he was strange, and I was strange. We fit. But no normal person...or non-person...would ever want me. So thank you. And...I kind of like you too. Even though you're a total jackass."

Spike smiled widely, suddenly dazzlingly happy and only slightly alarmed at his dazzling happiness. "So you...think I'm handsome do you?"

Willow blushed from neck to hairline. "I'm leaving." She turned and began walking away.

"The leather does it for you, does it?" He called after her. "I knew it all along!"

"Screw you," she retorted, but to his ears it sounded like a gentle melody. Dru had left him, Oz had left her...and no one gave a second thought to either of them. He had a feeling that everything was changing, that the stars were aligning his way again.

"So," he hollered as her form began to dissolve into the distance. "Pick you up at eight?"

~finis~