Title: The Spike Experience
Author: Blue Zen
Email: i.love.spike@bloodyhell.co.uk
Distribution: Any archives that want it, take it! I’d love an e-mail with your site address though…
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Willow casts a spell, Spike has to suffer
Notes: Thanks to everyone who’s responded to this fic. Like every fanfic writer, I live off feedback so drop me a line.

Sixteen:


As she peeled herself away from Spike, Willow couldn’t meet his eyes.

“So it’s over,” she said, at length. “I feel normal - do you feel normal?”

“As normal as it gets,” he sighed in resignation. “And I was just starting to enjoy myself.”

Willow blushed and stepped out of the bath. She looked at the chains for a second before starting to pull at them, ineffectively at first.

“Key to the padlock’s in your left hand pocket,” Spike ventured.

“Thanks,” she muttered, pulling a key from her jeans and shakily inserting it in the large, metal lock. It clicked open easily and she started unwinding the steel chains from Spike’s hands.

He rubbed at his wrists, watching as she struggled with the manacles which kept his ankles together.

“I take it you have no… you know,” he said, as she freed his legs. “Urge to continue, at all?”

She glared at him with one of her patented Willow looks.

“It was worth a try,” he shrugged, hoisting himself out of the bath. His legs were sore and one of them threatened to cramp. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” Willow said, trying her best calm voice. She wandered over to the faucet and, her hands shaking slightly, turned the cold water on.

“Why the bath? I mean, you thought about the radiator,” he reasoned, starting to button his shirt.

She splashed water on her face. “I don’t know, Spike. Okay? I have no idea what ‘evil’ me was thinking.” She looked at herself in the mirror. “I don’t know what I was thinking at all.”

He nodded, trying to keep his face void of the hurt he was feeling. “I just thought that, perhaps, somewhere deep inside, she was still there.”

“Nope,” she answered flippantly, drying her face on one of the hand towels.

He knew she was lying but who to? There had been something so sad about her self-deception that he reeled from the memory.

“Well, I for one need to get out of here,” he strode past her into the hallway, hoping she wouldn’t see the pain he felt so plainly.

She stared at herself in the mirror, shaking her head.

“See you around, Red,” he called from the porch, letting the door bang shut behind him.




Next Chapter