Buffy Summers and the Spiders from Mars

Spike had seen many strange things at Lovecraft's over the years, but nothing had quite prepared him for the sight of Xander Harris, human, having a suicidal argument with the Hopshtal bouncer. The bouncer had a foot on the boy in height and was easily twice his mass, but it was the fangs and claws that would do the kid in before the demon sat on him.

"Yeah, and my money's not good enough? Genuine American dollars, buddy. Not kittens, not magic beans but In God We Trust Samoleons." Harris moved into the Hopshtal demon's personal space. "You don't serve me and I'm going to get a lawyer and sue your hairy ass for racism. Got it, monkey-boy?"

The Hopshtal demon munched his fangs together and Spike decided he had best step in before Xander was smashed into soup.

“He’s wiv’ me,” Spike said and slung an arm around Xander, trying to avoid actual contact. The boy grimaced, but didn’t flinch away.

“Dark meat for a change, eh?” The bouncer smirked and got out of the way.

Annoyance, and a darker emotion, flashed in Xander’s eyes. “Oh, thanks. Shouldn't you be out screwing other people’s girlfriends somewhere?”

"With you so near? Perish the thought." Spike waved for the bartender and turned his back on Xander.

Satan's knickers, Spike thought, I make two fuckin' mistakes (*recently*) around these Scooby humans and all of a sudden I'm Ted Bloody Bundy. Served him right for trying to do Xander a good turn by keeping the Hopshtal from tearing him limb from limb.

"Eat hot death, deadboy." Xander said and wobbled a bit. "You fuck Anya and I'm supposed to be your fucking friend? Your dead brain must have finally quit working. You know, the brain in your head, not the one in your pants."

"Glass houses. You bugger off and leave her at the altar, so don’t go blamin’ me.” Spike pushed through the throng of Saturday-night demons, snarling and smirking as appropriate, until they were at the bar. The lamia was on duty again and, without a word, poured him a whiskey and A positive.

Xander, pushed against Spike by the crowd, stared at the bar top, stained and so waxy with repeated cleaning that even ichor tended to bead up on it -- and this Spike knew from experience. Xander smelled strongly enough of beer that Spike was fairly certain that any vampire draining him would have a hangover in the morning. Of course, there had been a lot of drinking and sulking around SunnyHell as of late and he figured he had Xander beat in both experience and amount.

“Beer for m’friend here,” he told the lamia, who half-smiled at Xander as she served the drink. Xander did his best not to look at her breasts, even though her Harley Davidson t-shirt looked as if it had been tattooed on.

“Thanks, asshole,” Xander muttered at Spike, and tossed back a good third of his brew.

"There are human bars around here, d'ythink you could off yourself in one of them instead? I'm not likin' the idea of bein' the one to tell your friends that you got polluted in a demon bar and ended up as a late-night snack." Spike took a deep swallow of whiskey and blood and felt the burn slide down his gullet. "Or how 'bout goin' for a dance on the railway tracks before the half eleven goes by. Not as many witnesses and Amtrak has to clean up the mess."

"She won't talk to me," Xander told his beer, obviously having slipped from the belligerent into the morose stage of drunkenness. "She says words, but she doesn't talk. She hates me, Spike. She hates me and I'm never going to be able to fix it."

"Join the club, mate." Spike sighed and pulled out a cigarette. "Join the bloody club."

Xander slumped into his beer with the universal posture of man wronged by woman, and Spike realized that his own body posture was the same as Harris's. If that didn't take the gold-plated biscuit Spike didn't know what did. Sure, there had been moments of camaraderie while Spike had been incarcerated in the Harris family dungeon, but he'd assumed at the time that it was nothing more than Stockholm Syndrome after he'd agreed with Harris that the acting talents of Ah-nuld were sadly underrated. Naturally, Harris had begun nursing a powerful hate for him after the melodramatic revelation that Spike and Buffy had been making the beast with two backs behind Harris' back. A hate that had almost culminated in Spike being on the wrong end of a stake after the mess with Anya and the bigger mess with Buffy.

Apparently, being the only two in the immediate social circle with penises and parallel castration by the women in their lives was a greater bond than Spike had ever imagined.

“Pruebo humano!” At the roar, Spike’s shoulders slumped momentarily, and then he turned to face the Thing of the Week. It was a gray, lizard-like demon, one he couldn’t immediately place.

“Lay off the boy, mate.”

Mouse-breath in his face; Spike put up a hand to wave it away. The thing’s tongue flickered in and out, tasting the air. Its fangs were substantially more impressive than his. He remembered that snakes could dislocate their jaws -- the demon quite possibly could swallow him whole. “Que?”

Oh great. Wetback snake. Weren’t water snakes extremely venomous? Maybe he could turn it in to the INS and watch the Feds go mad.

“Listen Snake-o. He’s practically one a’the family. Comprende?”

“Me vale madre! Humans no belong here.” The tongue flickered out again, near Xander’s face. To the boy’s credit, he didn’t flinch.

“Used to shag a vengeance demon. She let him live after he dumped her. I got no explanation for why, but it’s a fact.”

“No mames!” The lizardy thing looked at Xander with widened vertical pupils. “Bunea,” it said and smacked Xander on the back so hard the boy had to hang on to the bar counter for dear life. “Las chicas ser mas puta que las gallinas.”

“Yeah and she don’t quit talkin about it, ” Spike muttered, but not loud enough to annoy it. Always better to see new folks in action before seriously pissing them off.

Especially when said new folks were about eight feel tall and looked like a minor god had stuck a cobra head atop a professional wrestler’s body and a thick tail to his ass and then spray-painted the whole thing in gray and coffee-brown scales.

“What did he say?” Xander shouted over the music.

“He said you were lucky to escape with your balls intact,” Spike lied, since Xander really didn’t need to know what the snake had said about his former fiancée’s sexual appetites.

Xander downed his shot in a gulp and shuddered. “That's what he thinks,” he said.

Xander was drinking as though he had a fire in his belly that only alcohol could put out. Spike knew the fire, the smoldering burn of heartbreak. Alcohol was an unreliable method for dampening the embers. Spike figured that the boy didn’t quite have it in him to go for the more satisfying mayhem and murder method.

“What happened? You guys were, I don't know, happy maybe? Next thing, you're banging Anya in the Magic Box and then you run off to Vegas right when all Hell broke loose.”

"Not a what, a who, a great big sack of potatoes and his Stepford Wife. The overgrown Prefect shows up and Buffy sees what could have been with a bloke with a pulse. So she chucked me like last year's shoes."

"And you banged Anya, why?" Xander's voice sharpened up again, swinging back from morose to belligerent.

"Because I'm a sad bastard."

Seeing that his glass was empty, Spike waved down the bartender for a refill. Even the carefully edited version of the truth that he was handing over to Xander was no less painful than the far more emotion-laden narrative in his brain. Two dumped and lonely demons, male and female, too much of Giles' private stock and a pity shag. A pitiful pity shag at that, with Buffy's face swimming over Anya's the entire time. He'd been so pathetic and such a big girl's blouse that he hadn't even given Anya a proper seeing to. She hadn’t been Buffy, too fragile and smelling wrong, but her skin was soft and warm, her breasts were about the same size in his hands, and her breath in his ear was hot and human, which was all he had wanted at the moment, just to steal some second-hand warmth.

"A sad bastard who attacks girls in bathrooms."

The lamia passed him another glass of blood and whiskey which Spike made disappear far more quickly and efficiently than David Copperfield could ever do.

"You *bruised* her,” Xander said with the tone of a boy who just saw mommy shagging the delivery man. Like he’d been betrayed, and he didn’t have that right.

“I bruised her? She broke the toilet over my head. I was more than bruised after that!” he pointed out.

“Do you know how much damage you guys did to the bathroom? Broken sink, toilet in the hallway in pieces, a Spike-shaped outline in cracked porcelain tiles, chipped the fuck out of the bathtub and gouged up the floor. It took Tito a month to fix it all.”

“She drives me mad,” Spike admitted and lit a cigarette, fighting back the residual grudge he was still holding against the terminally stubborn Slayer.

"So you hit her.”

“She threw the first punch, Tool-man. That girl hits first and asks questions later. I figured I’d had enough and took off to Vegas,” Spike took a long drag off his smoke and noticed that his fingers were shaking. “Thought I’d just stay the fuck away from SunnyHell after that.”

“But you came back.”

“Yeah,” Spike exhaled smoke and looked down at the shiny bar surface. “Because I love her and I’m a sad bastard.”

"We are so screwed," Xander breathed, finishing his beer and reaching for the replacement the bartender had brought.

“Don't want to close my eyes/I don't want to fall asleep/Cause I'd miss you baby/And I don't want to miss a thing."

There were times that Spike wondered if the jukebox at Lovecraft’s wasn’t possessed by a demon of undue introspection.

“Give me a double, and get a move on!” he snapped at the lamia, who smiled like a bartender who had lubricated too many broken hearts.

“I'm buying. Paycheck man has the power of cash. ” Xander reached into his back pocket for his wallet and his mouth fell open in shock. "Somebody took my wallet."

Spike scanned the room, spotted the snakeman a few feet away at the bar. The look on its face might have qualified as a smirk, in snakeland.

"I'm thinkin' it was our big and scaly buddy." Not that he had any evidence other than the fight-hunger growling in his belly, but it was a start.

Flapping his duster around his legs, Spike made his way over to the scaly asshole.

"Oi, snake-boy. Knick my human's wallet, did you?"

Its tongue lashed out at Spike, testing for fear, probably, and instead got a tonguefull of slightly drunken attitude.

"Su ser humano está viendo cosas. Your human is seeing things,” the snakeman seethed.

“What? Like scaly buggers makin’ off with his wallet?”

“The snake picked his pocket?” a big leathervamp asked, pushing his barrel chest up to snakeman. “Not here, this is neutral territory. None of that shit here.”

“Against house rules.”

“Vete al carajo! The human’s drunk, doesn’t know what he’s saying. Los seres humanos no tienen ningún lugar en aquí!” the snakeman returned, lashing his tail from side to side.

"I asked you a question," Spike tapped the snake in the chest, with an arrogant finger, forgetting that the thing was pretty much twice his size, "Hablo Ingles, puta?"

The snakeman leaned down and glared at Spike, his slitted pupils contracting to knife blades of hate.

"Puta? You call me puta, vampirito?" the thing rumbled.

The back of Spike’s neck crept agreeably.

“Hey,” the lamia bartender interrupted. “Back off, Spike. You know half the things in town want a piece of your ass since you started fucking the Slayer.”

Like they always said, neither love nor a cold could be hid, and certainly not when said love had been outed in front of half the demons in town, back when it was too new to be believed and they were just trying to survive the Wirtschaftsministerium. Those were the days.

Leathervamp snickered.

“Think the Slayer knows that her undead fucktoy’s cheating on her with the fat faggot here?”

From the look on Xander’s face, Spike couldn’t tell if the problematic word was fat or faggot. Either way, it was enough for Xander to whip out his handy-dandy Black and Decker Vamp Wrecker stake and swing. He was fast enough that the vamp had to stumble backwards, in the process knocking a Darth Maul lookalike out of his chair. Darth Maul grabbed a handful of the vampire’s jacket and pulled his fist back for a punch.

“Just give the wallet back and we’ll call it a wash, right?” Spike said in the most reasonable tone he could manage.

Snakeguy tensed and in a flash his tail had whipped out to send Darth Maul sprawling into the nearest table, knocking over a couple of pitchers of beer onto the Calensis demons’ ongoing card game. The Calensis, correctly aiming their anger at the thrower instead of the throwee, rose in a group and pitched themselves onto the snake like a rugby scrum of hairy midgets. The snake bellowed and the tail lashed out some more, sending Xander down under his barstool. Spike stomped on the tail as it whizzed past.

“Chinga tu madre! Mayate vampiro! ” Snakeguy shouted between flinging Calensis bodies across the room.

“Go fuck yourself, rat-breath!”

A flying Calensis headed in Spike’s direction, so he grabbed the smaller demon by the mane and flung it back at the snakeman, where it gave a howl of pleasure and dug claws and fangs into the scaly shoulders of the snake. The chaos demon near the dartboard took up the side of the snake demon and began shredding Calensis like dustbunnies. Darth Maul and Leathervamp were engaged in their own argument, which was vigorous enough that the floorboards splintered when Darth Maul missed his target.

Demon innards began to fly and the lines of demarcation in the argument disintegrated. For no good reason other than a sickening joke on Fate's part, Xander's battered leather wallet rolled out of a pile of bodies and landed at Spike's feet. He tossed it to Harris, who was beating a Calensis demon with a barstool. The human caught the wallet with one hand and bashed the Calensis with the other. Apparently, the kid had actually learned something from growing up around the Hellmouth. Leathervamp tackled snakeman into a table like a guest on Jerry Springer. A gremlin latched onto Spike’s head and he had to pry the screaming and spitting creature from his scalp before crushing it underfoot. The lamia, now thoroughly annoyed with her clientele, leapt up onto the bar and screamed for order, firing a shotgun into the ceiling for emphasis. Part of a Calensis bounced off Spike’s chest, leaving an ugly wet stain. Xander took the opportunity to get a double-handful of Spike’s duster.

"Yo! Let’s make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here!" Xander shouted.

“Mula vampiro!”

“Just gettin’ interestin’.”

“Death wish gone now. Let's scram!”

On the way out, Spike punched the chaos demon in the face, since he was never one to forget an old grudge.

They ran across the poorly lit parking lot. The floppymobile was parked discreetly beyond the dumpster, and Spike jumped into the passenger seat. He spared a moment to wonder at Xander’s level of sobriety, but the growling roars from behind made him desirous of taking his chances on the road. Flying through the windshield was unlikely to do as much damage as the snake guy.

The floppymobile gave a consumptive cough, shuddered and died. Xander banged the dashboard, gunned the engine and wove a tapestry of obscenity that impressed Spike.

“Great place, kind of like Mos Eisley,” Xander said and kicked the dashboard.

“A more wretched hive of scum and villainy you will not find.”

“Obi-Wan quoteathon much, Spike?”

A body went crashing through the front door of Lovecraft’s, followed by a wave of irate demons.

"Now would be good, Xander."

"It's not starting! Fuck!" He punched the steering wheel.

"Gotta make a runner, c'mon."

Spike was halfway out of the car and dragging Xander out through the passenger door when the first wave of demons hit the side of the Taurus. A Calensis dove over the roof of the car and landed on Spike like a Velcro medicine ball. Spike flung the demon back into the fray and shoved Xander away from the car.

"Run!" he suggested and took off.

Spike reached the edge of the parking lot and looked over his shoulder, Xander was only about fifteen feet from the car, and the demons were clambering over it. Cursing, Spike turned around and ran back towards the fight. He hit Xander low in the stomach in a classic rugger tackle, and hoisted the human over his shoulder in a sloppy fireman's carry. Xander let out a whoop of surprise and grabbed at Spike's duster. The Darth Maul lookalike - whose makeup was running, revealing himself to be that lowest of creatures, the demon fanboy -- had the same idea and Spike skipped out of his grasp and bolted at a dead run.

A vampire running at top speed, even encumbered by a carpenter, would make a cheetah sit down in the dust and give a wistful sigh. Spike made it well past the center of town and the Magic Shop before he finally stopped and plopped Xander down. Whatever part of his body that hadn't yet accepted the fact that Spike had been a vampire for well over a century was making him pant and gasp for air. He leaned over and propped his hands against his thighs, and when he touched his forehead he found that he'd been sweating.

"You're a fat fuck, Harris," he panted.

"Sheer muscle, scrawny one. Well, sheer and beer." Xander looked over his shoulder and didn't see any sign of pursuit. "You didn't have to do that, you know."

"No, right. Just leave you to be eaten by vampires and demons," Spike made a vague gesture and coughed. "That would go down well wiv me tryin' to get back into the Slayer's good graces."

"Try begging. Used to work with Anya."

"Some of us are too proud to beg."

“Does Buffy know about that place?” Xander worried, pushing his hair back from his forehead only to have it promptly flop back again.

“Not from me she don’t,” Spike said and wiped some demon blood off his shirt. “Figure the weekly fights in there keep the demon population down.”

"What about my car?" Xander asked.

"Utter washout. Whatever the Calensis demons can't eat will be smashed, and whatever can't be smashed will be burned. Got good insurance?"

Under the pale light of the streetlamp, Xander paled.

Spike lit a cigarette and watched some bats fly overhead. Being a bat might have been fun. Stoker had gotten that wrong, too.

"I better swing by Buffy's to tell Dawn I can't take her to school tomorrow." He shot Spike a challenging look. "Wanna come with or are you too much of a pussy?"

"Eat me, Harris."

****“

Spike’s invitation hadn’t been revoked. That shouldn’t have made him feel guilty, but he had to swallow hard before following Xander into the blue-lit living room.

The TV was playing something with lots of lush landscapes and people in elaborate antique costumes. Spike could only narrow the time period to Before His. Willow, Dawn, and Clem were huddled around on the floor, a partially devoured feast of ice cream, popcorn, nachos, cold sesame noodles, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, sushi, assorted Chinese takeaway boxes, and pizza spread out before them like carnage after battle. They ignored Spike and Xander as the valiant warriors took possession of the sofa and the loveseat, helping themselves to food en-route.

“Demons ate my car,” Xander announced.

“Shhhh!” Willow warned.

Spike snuck a glance at the rapt faces staring at the television.

“How could you begin? I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what set you off in the first place?” the dark-haired girl in a yellow dress asked the dark-haired man, who looked a bit like Angel around the protruding brow.

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

“Where’s Buffy?” he asked.

Anya was missing as well, but that was only to be expected.

“Shhhh!” the witch admonished him again.

“Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?”

“For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”

“Did this bloody Jane Austen pap run Buffy off?” Spike asked and reached for another doughnut.

“Shhhh!” hissed the voices, and Dawn punched the top of his foot for emphasis.

“This is where the helicopter comes in with the Delta Force, right? Shoots up everything?” Xander asked.

“Romance is dead,” Dawn sighed as the credits started rolling.

“Why don’t you get Willow to resurrect it?” Spike threw the question into the group like one of those ninja-star things.

“Not funny,” Willow said and began shredding the napkin in her lap.

The air tightened and thinned.

“I hope Romance gets revived before I start dating,” Dawn announced and flicked her shiny, shiny hair over her shoulder. “I mean, what’s the fun without the romance?”

“Sex,” Willow, Spike, and Xander said in a ragged and spontaneous chorus.

“Eew.” Dawn scrunched up her face.

“But only with the person you love,” Xander added, a moment too late to be convincing.

"Companionship," Clem offered, his ears flopping with emotion. "Two people, or demons, of the same mind and matching dreams and goals. That's love. Friendship with a twist of passion. Hormones may fade and sex goes in time, but friendship and companionship are what makes a relationship."

"That's really beautiful, Clem," Willow said with a sad little smile.

“’Scuse me for ruinin’ the morality lesson here, but where’d the Slayer bugger off to?” Spike tried for the third time.

“She said she needed some private time and went upstairs about an hour ago,” Dawn explained and began gathering up the debris of the feast.

"How's she doing?" Xander asked with a quick glance over at Spike.

Spike looked at Willow, who looked at Clem, who reached for the doughnut box.

"She said she was tired," Willow said and pushed the doughnuts over to Clem. "I don't know if that's tired tired or leave me the hell alone tired. You know how she gets."

"What am I going to do without my car? How the hell am I going to get to work tomorrow?" Xander moaned.

“You can borrow Spike's car. It's not like he drives it during daylight hours,” Willow suggested.

If possible, the blood in Spike's body dropped below room temperature.

“No,” Spike informed the universe in general.

“Wills--, a man’s car is his-“ Xander started.

“Penis,” Willow finished from where Clem was helping her close the Chinese food boxes. “It’s well-known that a man’s car is a penis equivalent. It becomes the external manifestation of his masculinity, or how he would like his masculinity to be perceived. Hence the teenaged boy with the big, noisy car which announces his sexual maturity, and the middle-aged man who drives a sports car as an attempt to reestablish his identity as a sexual being as his prowess begins to flag.”

She glared at Spike and Xander.

"And you just need to get over it."

“Not going there!” Xander announced and held up his hands. “I want nothing to do with the penis of Spike!”

“Don’t knock it if you ain’t---“

Dawn spoke up. “Why don’t you take mom’s Jeep? It’s just sitting there and nobody drives it.”

It was all Spike could do not to give her a grateful look. That would have been uncool in the extreme. He didn’t want Floppy boy anywhere near his - car.

“I’ll check with Buffy. She won't mind Xander borrowing the Jeep. ’Night!” Dawn trilled, pausing only to look significantly at Spike. There was much undone between them, he knew, but at least she was talking to him. Possibly just to irritate Buffy, but talking nonetheless.

While the rest began making domestic with glasses and dishes, Spike took the opportunity to look at the stairs that led to the second floor of the house. He supposed he should just be grateful that Buffy let him in the house at all. Maybe it was because she was still tendering a feeling or two for him. On the other hand, maybe she just didn't trust him not to embarrass her if he had been disinvited. One thing was for damn sure, he wouldn't be setting foot upstairs without an engraved invitation.

But if he had to apologize to Buffy one more time, Spike was pretty sure that his tongue was going to dry up like a loofah and drop out of his head. He had lied to Xander, he had begged Buffy to forgive him both Anya and roughing her up in the bathroom. But Lady Disdain had been - disdainful.

"Buffy's gone!" Dawn bawled, clomping down the stairs.

Spike was out of the loveseat in a flash, rounding on her with his face barely controlled into staying human.

"What happened?"

"The window's open and her stuff's everywhere!" Dawn gasped and grabbed at the front of Spike's coat. "Something's gotten into the house and got her. I know it has."

"Oh shit," Willow sighed and there was something in her tone that made Spike turn and look at her.

"And?" he prodded.

"It's Angry Chick Night at the Bronze. She's gone the past four weeks."

"Yeah, Ladies' drinks are half price, the music is all Angry Chick music and all the local bottom feeders show up to see if they can score off girls who are mad at their boyfriends or husbands." Xander looked around the room at the quartet of angry gazes. "Not that I, personally, would know. But I've heard things. Okay, shutting up now."

"Vampires too. Very popular with the vampires,” Clem helpfully added.

"Cellphone?" Xander asked.

"Turned off for non-payment. Again." Willow frowned.

Someone, Spike thought, ought to go over to England and give the Watchers’ Council what-for. America had been better equipped for World War II than the Slayer was for her job. Trouble was, the Slayer couldn’t just raise taxes and run deficits to get the latest weaponry, even if he would have put Willow up against Oppenheimer any day. The Council were self-important blatherers who considered controlling their deadly dolls slightly more important than saving lives, and they were reacting badly to having a Slayer more than ten years past the age of reason. He wasn’t used to the sense of frustrated injustice that filled him.

"She's been goin' to this greet and eat for a month and nobody told me?" Spike asked, wrenching his attention back to the immediate problem.

Willow's expression was a mixture of pity and disgust.

"Maybe it's because you're the reason she's an Angry Chick."

****

”I hate myself for loving you/Can't break free from the the things that you do."

Darrin or Daryl, whatever his name was, Buffy realized, was a pretty good kisser. Just the right amount of teeth and tongue, a gentlemanly way of sleeking his hands down her sides and brushing the sides of her breasts as though by accident. He wasn't mauling her the way Brian - was it Brian? - had the week before. Brian had also been slobbery. With her back to the pillar, she shifted a little so her thighs clamped even more tightly around his leg so she could grind down against him.

The music battered down the walls around her head and moved through the sluggish blood in her veins. Lights flashed across her eyes, burning into her brain, registering in her nerves as though they were flickering down her bones. Blood thinned with alcohol almost felt normal, almost like she wasn’t wrapped in a thick cotton blanket. Better, with the tequila she didn’t care how normal she felt. Tequila worked like static in her brain, canceling out the memories she didn’t want. She was just a normal girl on a normal night, getting herself off against this helpless guy's leg. Under the velvet of her skirt, beneath the thin silky fabric of her thong, Buffy’s body reacted to the pressure she was creating against his leg. It was easy to forget and just wrap herself up in him and the light and the noise. It didn't take much to get her off these days: a few moments of rubbing herself against the mattress, or a warm body in the Bronze. She just had to think about one thing.

Milk glass skin, cold blue eyes, black leather and blood spilling onto white tiles . . .

She opened her mouth to gasp and he kissed her, lips not right. He tasted like beer, and his mouth was entirely too wet, but by then she was too far gone. Buffy's body obediently responded to the male body pressed up against hers, the planes of his chest, the indefinable man-smell and she came in a sharp glassy burst that was like a single mouthful of water when she was dying of thirst.

"Wow," Darryl or Darren said with the slightly disappointed air of a guy who has just figured out the Kleenex-like nature of his usefulness.

"You’re really sweet," she said, beaming a friendly smile up at him while reaching around for the stake in the back of her skirt. "But that doesn't cut it around here."

The shocked look on Maybe Darren's face disintegrated with the rest of him as he made an ash of himself in the dark corner of the Bronze. Buffy brushed his mortal remains off her hands and blouse, and tucked the stake back in the loop sewn into her waistband.

She heard applause, sarcastic applause at that.

"And the East German judge gives the little girl from California a five point nine," a familiar voice drawled with a double-shot of contempt. "And it looks like Buffy Anne Summers is goin' t' get the gold medal for bein' a sad, fucked up dolly bird."

"Fuck you," Buffy said and pushed past Spike, her shoulder clipping a leather-clad upper arm on her way back to the bar.

"Thought that was the point, luv," he said, spinning slightly from the contact.

“I don’t *fuck* them.” And she didn’t let them bite her, either.

“That’s junkie talk,” Spike said, sounding far too serious. “You don’t fuck ‘em, you don’t let ‘em bite you -“ Buffy winced at hearing her own thoughts aloud. “You don’t use needles, you don’t drink alone. Until the day you do, an’ then there’s something else you don’t do, right up to the end. It’s excuses, pet, and you’re better than excuses.”

"Don't you have anything better to do but stalk me?" she asked since he didn't seem to be getting the hint that his presence wasn't needed.

"Not really, but then I could just go 'round pickin' up little baby fledglings, get my goolies off an' dust 'em."

"You're pathetic." She waved a twenty at the bartender, who obediently lined up another sequence of tequila shots for her.

"Use the mirror much, Slayer? 'Course you may want to be dressin' like a slag and inviting every little bad in town to the all you can eat Buffy."

The bartender, unsurprisingly, automatically poured Spike a scotch. Of course the bartender was a cute girl with a Louise Brooks hairdo and a crooked smile who probably kept track of what evil blonde vampires liked to drink. Buffy wondered: if she bribed the bartender to use holy water ice cubes in Spike's drinks, would the ice burn up Spike's evil tongue? She tossed the tequila, licked the salt, and bit down on the lime, which was as bitter as the rest of her. After all, she was still officially Mad. At. Spike. Big time mad. First there was The Anya Thing, and then there was The Bathroom Thing and she hadn't made up her mind if she was ever going to stop being Mad. At. Spike. What kind of asshole screwed a girl’s friend - acquaintance, okay - after being dumped? And then he trashed her bathroom, which she was still making monthly payments on.

Of course, he vanished when Willow was trying to destroy the world. Typical, she was just starting to trust Spike and he had to go and be a nuclear-powered asshole.

Six weeks of apologizing and offering ill-gotten cash to pay the plumber was far from enough. Six months wasn't going to do it either. Maybe six years, which was kind of silly since she'd probably be dead before she was twenty-five.

"Go back to your crypt, all the rats and other creepy crawlies like you are waiting."

With a Spikey smirk, he sipped at his scotch. "Sub-standard wit, Slayer. It's going to come off your performance points."

"I'm crushed," she snapped and went through another tequila, salt, and lime ritual.

"What you are is ridiculous. You're comin' here, pickin' up nasty little fledglings because you won't admit that you still want the Big Bad."

Despite the fact that she wanted to grab his pretty white throat (not going there, Buffy, stop it) and squeeze until his eyes popped out of his sockets, she let herself laugh.

"Big Ego, not Big Bad."

Quick as a striking snake, Spike grabbed the back of her barstool and whirled it around. She squeaked in surprise and quickly found herself nose to nose with her sometimes-favorite, sometimes least-favorite vampire. Spike was looking steadily into Buffy’s eyes and she could see things moving around in his head behind the frozen denim of his eyes. Strange, she took Spike for granted in so many ways, not the least of which being the gleaming cold lines of his face. It was nice to let her gaze slide down a cheekbone, rebound up over his jawbone and go back to rest on what she knew was an entirely too talented mouth, even if it was set in a thin, hard line. She could sit there on her barstool and feel herself in his orbital pull, which was like one of those dead star things. Maybe she should have paid more attention to science class so she had a better idea of what he made her think of. Bones, stars, ice, glass, something that sucked the light and life out of everything around it, dangerously beautiful. Sharks, snakes, poison, the surface of the moon? It was on the edge of her mind and skittering out of reach every time she grabbed for it.

"You still want me, I can tell," he purred at her, while maintaining his steady gaze. "I can see it in your eyes, I can hear it in your voice even when you spit bile, and I can smell it on you."

Buffy sucked air in through lips that were entirely too dry. It wasn't right that Spike could know she couldn't control the woozy rush she felt whenever he was within arm's reach. It wasn't right to for him to know that when she didn't know that about him.

And she was mad at him, anyway.

It was then that she realized that their little scene was attracting some attention from the Angry Chicks sitting at the bar. It was mostly because Spike attracted women like a 75% off Carlos Santana shoes sale at Nordstrom's, though the fact that she and Spike were fighting didn't help any. Being able to yell at a man who was as fuckable as Spike gave her a little rush of superiority.

“Get lost, William.”

The use of his living name was a deliberate insult, and she flicked her hair over her shoulder in a patented Cordelia Chase move for emphasis.

He shrugged black leather and the ice clinked in his glass. “I am already, terribly.”

There really wasn’t a good come-back for that painfully poetic comment, so Buffy just ignored it, something she was good at.

"You know you miss me." Now he sounded like an abashed little boy, his uncertain tone making the arrogant words almost endearing.

A crumb, all right, she could give him a crumb because she was a Warm, Generous, and Giving Person.

"Sometimes."

Because of the six or so shots of tequila that she'd downed over the course of the evening, Buffy reached into Spike's glass and pulled out a pair of ice cubes, which she popped in her mouth.

"What? You never say somebody eat ice before?" she said to his narrow-eyed glare.

Compared to the ice, his mouth was almost warm. And like the ice, it seemed to melt away under her tongue, giving her the cool liquid thrill she remembered and craved the way she craved chocolate and really great shoes. But it was too scary, raw and bruising. Sex with Spike was like being pulled over broken glass and barbed wire. Unusually, he was behaving himself, just sitting there on his barstool, leaning in a little for the kiss, letting his tongue tease her overdry lips. The asshole was going to put the whole thing on her head, make her be the one to make the first move, because it would be okay then.

“Let’s dance,” she whispered into his breathless mouth. Buffy hopped off of her stool, landing with a grace that would not have impressed Giles, and wriggled her way into the crowd. Warm human bodies, smelling of sweat and beer and perfume, surrounded her. The occasional scrape of jewelry or a piercing reminded her that these girls wanted to be seen, and all she wanted was - not to want.

Spike’s hand, warmed by the ambient heat to human temperature, clamped down on her shoulder. He pressed the length of his body against her, hooking his chin over her shoulder as he gave a few experimental pelvic thrusts against her ass.

God, she'd missed this. She closed her eyes and gave herself to the music.

This was perfect, Buffy thought. She didn’t even have to look at him. Reaching her hands back, she encountered soft cotton under the leather coat. Once she had her hands anchored in his jeans pockets, she began rubbing up and down like a cat in need of a back-scratch. Spike grunted and brought his hands to her waist, sliding upwards on her sweat-slick skin, his fingers edging under the handkerchief top to brush her breasts. Opening her eyes just a bit, Buffy watched the other dancers watching them.

Sliding her hands away, she spun and stepped back, into a fighting stance. Spike’s nostrils were flaring with the hunger of the hunt and his eyes were strobe-bright, like the prickling of her skin where his hands had been. He moved towards her, liquid as mercury and twice as deadly.

“You wanted to dance,” he growled as he reached out.

Buffy felt the crowd shrink away from him, their reptile brains recognizing what their rationality would not admit, that there was something really wrong with the guy in the long black coat. The wrongness ran up her spine like a finger trailing a nail against her skin.

When he pulled their bodies together, one of Buffy’s legs sliding between his thighs, she couldn’t avoid a gasp, but he looked dazed too. They began to move, the pleasure moving through her like ripples on a pond.

“I could take you right here,” Spike said into her ear. “Just push those little panties out of the way. Ever been fucked with an audience?”

Panting, Buffy hiked her free leg higher, almost to his hip, and leaned back to get a little more leverage to shimmy against him. Her body felt as if bubbles were bursting from the points of contact. Spike bent to follow her, one hand on her back to keep them nominally standing, his mouth hard and wet on her throat. Her hands fluttered over his shoulders, his softer-than-usual hair, the vulnerable line of his neck. She could rip his head off right now, she realized as the hand at her back turned into a hand on her ass, scraping her tiny cut velvet skirt up enough to feel his fingertips and the hot Bronze air on places she didn’t normally show to strangers.

Pushing upright by force of will and progressive undulation, Buffy turned her head to nip at Spike’s ear. “Hallway. Now.”

“No need to travel,” Spike complained, but followed.

The back Bronze hallway was traditionally reserved for heavy petting, pot smoking, and makeup repair, but it was empty tonight. She didn’t know if she cared. Spike pressed her up against the wall, lumpy gray industrial paint over concrete, and she felt him fumbling with his jeans, unwilling to pull away for enough to do the job easily. His hand was ripping at her panties - the sting of elastic against her hips made her claw at his back - and without further ado he pushed inside her, lifting her off her feet as her legs rose to wrap around his waist.

"The pretty things are going to hell/They wore it out but they wore it well."

“Every person in the Bronze knows what we’re doin’ right now,” he told her. “All imaginin’ it, imaginin’ how good it feels.”

The orgasm hit like a bullet to the brain, snapping her head back. The pain from hitting the wall only made the pleasure better, pulsing through her body like broken glass. Spike’s eyes, when she could see again, were entirely too knowing, so she concentrated on the graffiti on the far wall as their hips moved like pistons. June Wu sucks dick, she learned. Katelyn Carter takes it up the ass.

“Slayer,” Spike ordered, and she looked back at him. “Stay wiv’ me, it’s only just getting’ interestin’.” His hips swirled against her in slow, lascivious circles as his hands cupped her breasts, pinching her nipples between thumb and index finger. His face was set with the furious concentration of a baby just learning to walk.

“Now touch yourself.”

“Unnh … what?” Buffy managed, feeling herself twitch around his cock.

“M’hands’re a bit occupied, pet, ‘n I wanna see you make yourself come like this.”

Oh, okay. Some tiny part of Buffy’s brain, the part that didn’t believe in Spike one bit, reminded her that sex made her stupid, but she unclenched one hand from Spike’s shoulder - causing a slight shift in position that sent shockwaves up her spine - and reached between them. She avoided her clit directly but stroked the flesh around it, and down to tickle Spike’s slick cock for a moment, then back to kneading herself. Spike was still thrusting in and out of her with the controlled motion of a metronome.

“Faster. Harder.” The words could have been French as far as she was concerned, but they seemed to work. Spike redoubled his efforts and she could swear he was going to get too far in to come out.

One last wriggle of her fingers and she was off again. Electrocution, thermonuclear meltdown, turning her brain into a fizzing puddle of goo. Spike hurriedly freed a hand to cut off her shout of ecstasy and outrage, not that screams were notable in the Bronze but it was a nice thought anyway.

"You're still breathing but you don't know why/You're still breathing but you just can't tell," the music boomed.

As her shudders subsided, Spike pulled away from and out of her. After staring at his cock for a few befuddled seconds, Buffy managed to bring her eyes to his face.

“On your hands and knees,” he said, still using gravelly Danger Voice.

Buffy couldn’t quite process that yet.

“I want to have you on your hands and knees in this hallway,” he repeated, each word distinct and falling on her ears like heavy silk.

She began to bend down.

“No. The other way, so you’ll see if anyone finds us.”

God. Her shoulders twitched once, convulsively, and then her palms were pressed against the dirty floor. Under her right knee there was a raised patch, someone’s old gum probably, and she could see people’s feet as they walked past the blackout curtain that hid the hallway from the Bronze proper.

“Yeah, you like that,” Spike said, his voice dripping with filthy satisfaction, and dropped over and into her like a sudden storm. This was all about Spike, his hands clenched around her wrists, his thrusts threatening to move her skidding across the floor. Spike covering her like his duster covered him, hiding not a multitude of evils but at least some.

“I could drain you right now and you would love it,” he continued, making her grind back against him. “I could sell tickets to watch Buffy Summers get fucked and drained, and you’d just ask me for more.” Was he vamped? She couldn’t tell from the brushes of his mouth against her shoulder; all her nerves had migrated between her legs. The third orgasm was building, nowhere near the strength of the others, coaxed by his voice and the feeling of his hips slamming into her ass. She was grunting the way she did in a serious battle, and her fingernails scraped harmlessly across the floor.

“I love how you love it. You won’t say it, but it don’t matter ‘cause it’s in your eyes. You’d spread for me in front of all your little friends, on your kitchen table. You’d -“ Spike’s voice ended in a choke and his thrusts sped up to vamp-speed. And oh she was close, and he was going to come and leave her hanging, the bastard.

“Touch me,” she ground out, since she couldn’t move her own hands. Somehow he heard her and released her right wrist to run his fingers across the general area of her clit. And then he groaned like an overstressed bridge and bit down on her shoulder as he came. Buffy arched into the bite, a wide human bite and not the twin suns of a vampire bite, but it was enough and she shuddered out her orgasm while Spike was still hard inside her. She could feel his chest heaving, whether from sensation or habit, against her back.

Her senses returned to her and the music made the floor shake. "Don’t hold your breath but the pretty things are going to hell."

“My hands are filthy,” she said quickly. “Meet you outside in ten?”

Spike shifted away, settling on his heels without apparent care that his dick was still hanging out. “Soon as m'limbs work,” he said. “Not gonna run out on me again, are you?”

She chose to ignore the “me.” “Don’t worry,” she said and almost did a hair flip before she remembered her dirty hands. “The night’s just getting started.”

Spike might have muttered “That’s what I’m afraid of” as she left, but she wasn’t sure.

The girls in the bathroom, some of which had been at the bar, all stared, even after Buffy splashed her face and combed wet hands through her hair. “What’s the matter?” she snapped. “Never seen a girl comfortable in her own sexuality?” The glances dropped away.

****

Buffy was silent the ride home from the Bronze and Spike was grateful. Whatever evil spirit had provoked her to lay her hot little hands on his cold body that night deserved a thank-you note, even if it was only Jose Cuervo.

Only the lamppost at the sidewalk was burning at Casa Summers. Spike pulled up in front, carefully avoiding the now brick-encased Lightfoot mailbox, and killed the DeSoto’s engine. Doing a quick check to make sure his shirt was tucked in and his fly closed, he cast an eye over Buffy to make sure that she wasn’t gaping in any obvious places. Other than the fact that she was holding her high-heeled sandals in her lap, she was decently covered as her clothes would allow, and nursing a pout of brick and mortar strength. This didn’t bode well for slipping her into the house under watchful eyes.

“Right then, home again home again, jiggity jig,” he said and slid out of the car.

“And we’re home, why? It’s only one,” Buffy whined and began to pick her barefooted way up the front path. Apparently his 9 _ Weeks strategy had not provided a sufficient shock to her system to eradicate Lady Disdain.

“’Cause the Niblet is waitin’ up for you, an’ she’s got school in the mornin’.”

“Big Bad becomes Big Dad. How friggin’ cute.”

“Suppose a good shag was not the cure for what’s ailing you.”

"One shag isn't going to cut it."

Lamprey-like she attached herself to his mouth, which was a bit of all right even though she was pulling his shirt out of his pants and rubbing hot hands over his skin. Spike had his back to the door as Buffy commenced rubbing herself against his pelvis. It was just about all he could do to keep from shoving her skirt up right there and then. He'd been too long without the intoxication of her touch and his body was screaming "more, more, more!" even if his brain, unusually, was suggesting caution.

The porch light flicked on like a klieg light at a movie premiere and the front door popped open, sending Spike staggering backwards into the entryway with Buffy still attached to his front. Dawn and Willow trained tired expressions on the both of them.

"Who picked the twenty-fourth?" Willow sighed.

"I think it was Anya, damnit," Dawn groaned, darting for the kitchen. "I should know better."

"What?!" Buffy demanded, finally detaching herself from Spike.

Pajama clad and superior, Willow folded her arms over her chest. "There was a betting pool. Money was bet, days were picked, the winner was whoever picked the day you got back together."

"We're not 'together'," Buffy huffed, pulling her skirt down enough to cover her naughty bits. "We never were 'together'. And Dawn's too young to bet."

"It's after midnight, so this makes it the twenty-fifth." Dawn came back into the hallway with a sheet of paper in her hand. "Which means that Giles wins the pool."

"Giles?" Buffy glared at Spike as though the whole thing had been his idea, which it hadn't, and he would have bet earlier, which just fucked him off to no end.

Sniffing, Buffy flicked her hair over her shoulder and started upstairs. Dawn was staring ice picks into Spike and he fought the urge to fidget.

"Don't send Giles his money yet, right?" he advised.

"Spike!" Buffy shouted from upstairs.

He was so whipped.

Shrugging, he headed up the steps, breaking his vow to wait for an explicit invitation upstairs. Good thing he hadn’t told anyone who might have been disappointed in him.

Buffy's voice wasn't coming from her room, but the one that had been occupied by Willow and Tara, and before that Joyce. It only made sense that Willow wouldn't want to sleep in the room where her love had been killed. Carefully, he pushed the door opened and stepped into utter chaos. The bedroom had been tossed as though clumsy burglars had searched the place, only with an un-burglar like plan. There were clothes trailed in a clear path from the closet to the mirror, lying in configurations that suggested discarded outfits. Make up, hair things, and bits of jewelry were strewn all over the dresser, and there was a shoe hanging from the headboard, as if thrown in a fit of disgust.

The window was open, the curtains shuddering in the breeze. The escape route, no doubt.

The bare wood floor, stripped of the carpet that had soaked up Tara's blood, was white with scrubbing but Spike could still smell blood under the layers of disinfectant and perfume. Buffy's clothes were piled in heaps on the floor, as if she hadn't yet put them away from the move, and a half-dozen boxes from the liquor store sat half-open and vomiting their contents on the floorboards.

Unexpectedly, something tightened in Spike's chest, thinking of Buffy moving her things into the room of death so Willow wouldn't have to face the memories of Tara dying there in her arms. How utterly like her. Buffy stood at the mirror, propped precariously against the dresser and the wall, looking at her reflection as though she couldn't quite recognize it, and the tightness in Spike's chest drew even tighter.

“Y'know, the whole back together thing don't mean nothin' if you don't want.”

She stripped away her jewelry and flung it in the general direction of the jewelry box. He watched the muscles move in her arms and wondered if he was the only one who’d noticed she’d gotten too thin. Maybe he could convince the others to tie her down and force-feed her Twinkies for a month.

“I got fired today. World savage doesn't go with the DoubleMeat team plan. Too many absences,” she said, with her back still to him.

"Ah, shit," Spike said and leaned against the door and felt the catch click into place.

He knew that the stupid job had been important to her, something that kept her tied to the normal world and at least gave the impression that she could take care of herself and the Niblet. She was too good to be flipping burgers for the fat asses of SunnyHell.

She came creeping across the floor to him, her lavender-tipped toenails flashing like gems.

Shutting his eyes, he felt her fingers run over his forehead, down over his cheekbones to his neck, leaving trails of human-heat trailing behind. This close, he could smell himself on her, the sticky, musky mess that coated her thighs, combined on his own skin as well. Buffy’s heart banged frantically, trapped in skin and bone. He wanted to close her heart in his hand and squeeze it, so it would only beat at his pleasure.

“Come to bed,” she hissed into his ear.

This just cemented that Spike was dealing with Dirty Girl Buffy. She'd tied him up and dribbled half a candle's worth of wax over his bare skin before. This was one of his favorite versions of the Slayer, even though she didn't tend to stick around very long. A nagging at the back of his brain reminded him that Dirty Girl wasn't necessarily the one he wanted that night.

"I think you missed me," she said from somewhere deep in her throat before she dragged the flat of her tongue along the skin just behind his ear.

"You missed me," he corrected.

Never one to look a gift horse in any orifice, Spike grabbed at her shoulders and pulled her in for a vicious kiss. She pressed her whole body up against his, her tongue like snakeman's and her stomach grinding lasciviously against his once-again awake cock. He couldn't keep the smug chuckle back. This was all because of him. The pouf may have gotten her virginity and Captain Cardboard may have given her a workout from time to time, but neither of them had ever shagged this Buffy. Not the one who was rubbing her stone-hard nipples against his chest while her breath was hitching in his mouth. Her hands danced down his body, trailing fire, pushing his hipbones away and working the buttons on his fly open. With a little smirk on her lips, she pulled his cock out of his pants and gave it a squeeze.

"Go on then," he said and gave her a meaningful push on the shoulder.

For a moment she hesitated. Her tongue wet her lips as she looked from his cock in her hand to his face.

"Won't bite," he said and gave her one of his better leers.

Buffy rolled her eyes but sank to her knees anyway. For a moment, Spike was in pure heaven, or at least as close as he was ever going to get, with her hot mouth around his tool, her little tongue flicking away like ---

“Uh oh-“ she mumbled and made for her feet like an avalanche in reverse.

In a flash, Spike had stuffed his dick back into his jeans, had Buffy by the scruff of the neck like a mama cat with a kitten, and was propelling her into the en suite master bathroom, where she was sick, Exorcist sick. The Gods were with them that night and the majority of what looked like Krispy Kreme donuts and whatever booze she’d gulped down didn’t get on his duster.

There was no point in running through his head what had happened the last time they'd been alone in a bathroom together, but Spike hoped that if Buffy retained any memory of nearly throwing up on his dick that she'd be a bit more forgiving of other bathroom encounters.

Sighing, Spike shucked his duster, tossed it into the bedroom, grabbed a washcloth, and ran it under the tap of the sink.

“Oh God,” Buffy groaned and hung onto the toilet seat as though it were a life preserver cut loose from the Titanic.

“Bacchus. It’s Bacchus you want to be prayin’ to, pet,” Spike said and settled on his knees next to her. ”Or maybe Dionysus. Dependin’ on whether you’re bein’ Greek or Roman.”

Her face was suffused with blood, and he swabbed at her face and neck, reflecting that it was not half as nasty as the time Dru had drunk a headwaiter and a magnum of champagne and gotten sick in their hotel room in Venice. Blood all over the white sheets, without even a body to show for it.

“Of course, those bloody clever Romans invented the Vomitorium, which has the same Latin root for what you’re doin’ now.”

“I hate you!” Buffy choked and was sick again.

Spike laughed and hit the handle on the toilet so the mess was flushed away.

“I’m just expandin’ your sad education. You can call it vomitos, eructo or evomo. But my favorite is ‘technicolor yawn.’”

“Garfrg,” Buffy sighed and sagged limply against the toilet.

Sensing that the worst was over, Spike sprawled comfortably against the wall and wished that he could smoke. Besides the Summers house’s designated non-smoking status, he imagined that the smell would just make her sick again. Buffy’s hair was plastered straight to her scalp with nauseous sweat, and she was trembling fit to shake herself apart. He smoothed her hair back from her face and noticed that she was still a pale shade of olive, which didn’t coordinate with her tiny blouse.

“Y’know, I was thinkin’ tonight that you were the most sublimely beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” He patted her shoulder, as gently as he could. “Thanks for the reality check.”

“I hate you,” she repeated and opened one baleful green-brown eye to glare her patented Buffy glare at him. “This is all your fault.”

“How so? I wasn’t the one pourin’ drinks down your throat, love.”

“Who you are, what you are, what you do. All your fault.”

“Right, evil undead fiend who just held your head out of the loo. Go on, abuse me more.” He couldn’t help but smile at her. “Can you stand?”

“Maybe.”

It looked as though Joyce Summers had bought the house on Revello Drive for the master bathroom. Some intelligent soul had enlarged the room to palatial standards and installed an oversized Jacuzzi tub and a tiled shower stall big enough to dance in. It was entirely too easy to imagine Joyce in the tub with a glass of wine in her hand, trying not to think about the trouble that her eldest daughter was getting into even as she soaked. Poor Joyce, Spike thought with an unusual pain. She would have never gotten out of the tub if she'd seen the state Buffy had gotten herself into.

After making Buffy brush her teeth, forcing her to take aspirin, and waiting while she drank an entire Super Slushy plastic cup of water, he helped her to her feet and aimed her tottery steps over to the shower stall where he turned the shower taps on full and lukewarm. While the water ran, he stripped her out of her clubbing clothes and undressed himself while she hung onto the tile wall. This wasn’t quite how he planned on getting her starkers that night, but a part of him was reveling in the fact that she was helpless and needed him. Decades of practice dealing with a catatonic or distracted Dru served him well as he hoisted her into the shower stall. She giggled and pushed her face into the spray. Apparently, she was enough over her nausea to put her hands up into the water and hum with pleasure. Spinning her around, Spike made sure that she was uniformly wet all over. He grabbed a washcloth and a bottle of flowery shower gel and made a stiff lather, which he began using to scrub the sweat and cosmetics from her body and face. She sighed happily and leaned into her body. Between the sweet soapiness of her skin and the warm water, Spike’s cock began to harden of its own will.

So many times they had been like this, skin to skin, face to face, and Spike found himself wanting to crush her body against his and re-memorize every inch of her flesh. She burned her head between his neck and his shoulders and her hot little hands began roaming over his back and drifted town to his ass. With his cock rubbing against the softness of her belly, Spike let her pull his head down and into a heated kiss. Her mouth tasted almost entirely of toothpaste. She pushed in back into the corner of the shower stall and bit at the long tendons of his neck. He slid his hands over her body, spreading the soap over her and feeling her heart pounding against his fingers. Her tongue worked its way through his mouth, slowly and languorously as the soap that dripped between them. Her hands roved over his hip bones, fingers combing through the wet mat of his pubic hair until her string fingers closed around the base of his cock. He could hear himself groaning into her mouth.

Spike hadn’t had actual scruples since before Queen Victoria died, and gaining his soul as a side effect of helping out a Keshonte demon a few years earlier hadn’t done much to revive his atrophied sense of scruple, so the idea of taking advantage of a drunken Buffy didn’t even make him pause. Instead, he let allowed her to tug away at his cock, jerking him off with practiced strokes. Under his hands, she was terribly thin, the knobs of her spine were as sharp as stones, her ribs has sharp as glass, and her collarbones fit to cut paper. But her breasts were still hot and soft in his hands as he rubbed soapy thumbs over her nipples in time with the stroking of his cock. He kissed her harder, feeling the pressure starting to fill his balls. Even though he’d come inside her in the Bronze, he wanted her again, wanted to feel her hot, living flesh around him, wanted to inhale her.

With a barely contained shout of surprise, Spike climaxed like a teenager all over her hand, shooting spunk over her fingers and splattering the fine skin of her belly and breasts.

"Missed me?” she murmured even as his cock throbbed and twisted in her hands.

"Oh, every moment," he mumbled and leaned up the cool and forgiving tile of the shower stall.

Swallowing in a dry throat, Spike let his eyes run down her body, watching the jism slide down her wet skin, mixing with the soapsuds, pearly white mixed with frothy white. He reached out and dragged his fingers through the pearly splatter of his spunk, running into the peach gold of her skin. With a wicked look, she swirled her index finger through the jism as well, her finger brushing his, before she brought the finger up to her mouth and licked it clean like a child with melted chocolate.

The sight of that went right straight to his cock again with a sharp pain. He wanted to split her open and sink himself into the hilt in her sublime pussy. He shut off the water and dragged her to the bed. They were kissing, stuck together at mouth, chest and belly, as they stumbled backwards to the mattresses. Still entwined, they fell onto the unmade sheets, Buffy pressing Spike into the mattress, rubbing her bone-hard nipples up against his chest, She devoured his mouth, nibbling on his lower lip and sucking it between her own. Her fingers raked his scalp, tangling in the messy curls even as she ground her burning pussy into his pelvis.

Grunting into his mouth, Buffy reached between their bodies and stroked his once-again-hard cock, running her sharp little nails over his balls and the inner sides of his thighs, making him gasp. He shoved his own hand between her legs and pushed her fingers away and used the opportunity to guide his cock into her. The moment he slid into her, filled her, Buffy’s head snapped back and she let loose a groan that should have roused the whole house. Spike reached up and clamped a hand over her mouth, but she twisted her head aside and sucked his thumb into her mouth.

With her hot little tongue working away on his thumb, Her hot cunt clamped down around his cock, and her breasts swaying seductively just out of reach, Buffy gave Spike such a watnton, lascivious look over his fingers that he bucked up into her. It was enough to make Spike’s jaded vampire nervous system overload. Rocking and grinding against him, Buffy looked like every teenage boy’s fantasy come to life. Grabbing her hair, Spike pulled Buffy down so he could kiss her again, locking his hand on the base of her neck, and using the other hand to press the small of her back. She gasped as her clit slammed into his pubic bone. Then she gave a feline yowl and dug her fingers into his arms, their skin sliding against each other, slick with her sweat and his spunk.

Finally, her cunt tightened around him like a mousetrap and he could feel the muscles inside her throb with the power of her climax. He fell headlong into the pit with her; shuddering and watching the sliver sparks explode behind his eyelids.

Moments laqter, Buffy was sleeping the sleep of the drunk and well fucked. Spike pulled the coverlet over their bodies and stared at the ceiling, determined not to think about it. After a bit Spike heard a faint knock, so he pulled his jeans back on and opened the bedroom door to find Dawn big-eyed and shaking in her nightshirt.

Spike supposed that the logo shirt was the closest she was going to get to sleeping with NSYNC.

“Is she okay?”

Running a hand through his hair, Spike glanced over his shoulder to where Buffy was curled in a ball on the bed.

“Your sis just had too much to drink. Not to worry.”

The Niblet’s big blues got bigger and filled with tears. Quick as a rat, she wrapped her arms around Spike’s waist and sniffled into his shoulder. Normally, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but Dawn was pressing her rapidly ripening body against his and there was only a blasted NSYNC nightshirt and a pair of jeans between the two of them. Part of Spike’s brain registered that Dawn was now taller than Buffy.

“Hey,” he said and gave her a businesslike shove away. “None of that. She’ll be cryin’ tomorrow when she wakes up with the mater and pater of all hangovers. Now go to bed. School in th’mornin’.”

Nodding like a tragic mute, Dawn made her way back to her bedroom. Spike headed back to the bed, nearly breaking an ankle tripping over a high-heeled sandal. The Slayer was curled in a protective ball at the edge of the bed but stirred when he slid in next to her.

“You all right, then?” he asked.

“Why are you so good to me? And then so mean?” she said, her voice slurred and tremulous.

Spike didn't have a really good answer for that, but he did reach out and pull her to him, her face hot against his skin, while her wet hair was cold on his face.

“'Could ask you the same thing, I expect.”

~~~~

It was a demon with a voice like a chain saw cutting through her brain. The sound was making the fillings in her teeth vibrate and the roots of her hair hurt. Blindly, Buffy reached out for the Demon Masquerading as an Alarm Clock and slew it with a quick swipe of her hand. Silence returned, and she snuggled back down in her warm bedclothes and sighed. Sleep was pulling her back into his arms again where she was warm and safe and happy as she’d been in Heaven and the bad headache wasn’t there anymore.

Time passed.

“Shift your shapely ass."

“Oh God,” Buffy whined and pulled the pillow over her head. “I died, I'm in Hell.”

The mattress compressed under Spikeweight.

“How you feelin’?”

“Like I sent my mouth out to be dry-cleaned.”

“Worked just fine last night, luv.”

Opening one eye, Buffy was sorry to see that the blinds blocked enough light to keep Spike from burnage, but let in enough light to let her enjoy the sight of Shirtless Spike. So pretty! Eyelashes too long and dark, all rumple-haired and sleek-muscled like a sportscar. But he was leering, which detracted from the whole picture and made her feel icky besides. It also looked like he was wearing her sweatpants. Either that or he'd recently gotten a pair of UC Sunnydale sweats of his own. She stretched, feeling the usual muscle groups in her arms and legs whine while the muscles between her legs screamed. He was looking at her with bright intensity which made her drop her gaze to the rumpled quilt and sigh.

“Can you pass me my bathrobe?” she asked and sat up, pinning the covers up over her chest with her arms like somebody on TV.

“Luv, there’s no one here but you an’ me. Not like I haven’t seen you starkers. An’ you did just about puke on m’boots last night.”

“Bathrobe,” she insisted and waved her hand at the garment bundled on the vanity chair.

This earned her a look of Maximum Spike Disdain, but he did grab her ratty chenille robe and toss it at her from the other side of the bedroom. She felt vaguely guilty, but bumbling around naked in daylight where he could see her was a little more comfortable than she really felt.

“Did Dawn go to school?” she asked.

“No, I drained her dry and stuffed her body in the deep-freeze in the basement,” he said with an ‘are you fucking stupid’ tone and face to match.

Her sinuses burned, her throat tightened, and the world swam in front of her eyes. Swallowing hard, she fought back the urge to cry and rubbed her hands through her hair. Across the room, she saw Spike’s entire body tighten and that just made her feel worse.

“I had to much to drink last night,” she said as though it explained everything. “I shouldn’t have -- you know - with you last night.”

“Coffee’s downstairs if you want it," he said and his words dropped onto the floor like tacks.

The door closed behind him and Buffy found herself looking at the blurry painted wood.

She had let him take her in the Bronze like he was the only thing in the world, after everything that had happened. Of course he would catch her in the middle of the action with the fledgling.

Like she should have felt bad? After what he had done with Anya? It wasn't like she was having sex with the fledglings, she'd just found an easier way of getting rid of them than hunting around graveyards all night. The local boys usually ended up at the Bronze because it was the familiar meat market, and all she had to do was feign a little interest and poof! No more fledgling.

Okay, getting off on it was a whole bunch of no good, and verging on seriously unhealthy, but all it meant was that she probably should apologize to Riley the next time he was in town.

It was all Riley's fault, anyway. If he hadn't come back to town with Wonder Woman, showing Buffy what life could be like with an equal partner who actually kept a normal body temperature and didn't have sunlight issues, she wouldn't have had to break up with Spike, blow up the bottom of his crypt and send him into Anya's jilted arms. Of course, Spike didn't have to run to Anya and then he didn't have to make everything worse by trying to force Buffy into having sex with him again when she'd made it clear that it was over.

Yeah, so over that she'd boinked him in near-public in the Bronze.

It was the tequila. Tequila and Riley. They had much to answer for. So did Spike.

And now she had to find another job!

Buffy flopped back onto the bed and groaned.

Somewhere, a girl was having the simple, normal life that should have been hers, and Buffy hated this girl with a passion.

Showered and dressed in a comfortable pair of jeans and a soothing sweater, Buffy went into the kitchen for coffee and found Spike reading the newspaper at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him and an unlit cigarette in his mouth, looking so normal and human that she almost dropped the coffee mug. He looked, she realized, tired. Tired wasn't a look she was used to seeing on Spike, but as usual, he carried it off well. There were dark smudges under his eyes and his hair was an unruly morning mess, and Buffy wasn't sure if she was actually seeing dark roots or if it was a trick of the light.

“They’re hirin’ dancers at Delilah’s Den, if you were thinkin’ about changin’ careers,” he said without looking up.

“Covered with grease or covered with greasy guys? I’ll stick to the fryer, thanks.”

“Might cut into your evenin’ patrollin’ too, I expect.” He turned the page. “Oh look, the stock market’s gone tits-up again.”

“Anya’s going to be upset,” Buffy agreed and sat down at the opposite side of the table. “Wherever she is. I guess I can just do the rebuilding and restocking full time until she and Giles figure out what they want to do and I get another job. A job with medical benefits.”

This finally made Spike look up from the newspaper with annoyance sharpening up his already sharp face.

“That’s fuckin’ unbelievable. Those fuckin’ tossers at the Council ought to be payin’ you and payin’ to have you fixed up if you get hurt. You’re only savin’ the world! I’ve got half a mind to go over there and set the lot of them straight!”

“You against the Council of Watchers? Right. The only reason they haven't sent one of their death squads after you is because you were chipped and impotent, and now because you have a soul and are supposedly redeemable.”

He blinked at her the same way he blinked when she punched him in the face.

“Right,” he said and the brief flash of hurt in his eyes evaporated, replaced with an icy cool she’d seen too often in his ‘I’m going to rip off your head and drink your fountaining blood’ phase. “My mistake.”

If he was going to be snotty, Buffy could return the snot in kind. She got up from the table and flounced over to the sink.

“I guess you expect me to thank you for last night,” she said and dropped her coffee cup in the dishpan. “To thank you for protecting me from myself and the dangerous fledglings. And to thank you for the pity fuck.”

Standing with her hands on her hips, Buffy waited for the inevitable Spike!Explosion, but he just went back to looking at the remainder of the newspaper.

"Did you hear me?" she asked.

"Heard you just fine, pet. What I'm doin' is ignorin' you," he said and turned a page.

It was a fight Buffy wanted and it was a fight she was going to get even if she had to smash the kitchen table over his head. She snatched the newspaper out of his hands and violently crumpled it into a ball. Spike merely gazed up at her with a familiar burning in the back of his pretty blue eyes.

"It's not all okay, Spike. You haven't wormed your way back into my life with one measly little good deed and some sex."

"Didn't think that I had." His voice was low and even but he'd tightened his jaw enough for Buffy to see the actual muscles holding his face together.

"Right, which is why you're sitting there all calm and normal like nothing happened. I was starting to trust you, I was starting to like you and you go and try to sell killer demon eggs. I mean, the eggs were downstairs in your crypt and we were upstairs. That's not cool. That's bad. That's evil stuff. Evil action."

"Yeah, I fucked that up good an proper didn't I? And?" he prodded.

"And then you have to go and have sex with Anya. Which not only hurt me but Xander as well. As if we didn't have enough to deal with at that point with the Nerds of Doom."

"Done smarter things than that," he agreed.

"What the fuck was that in the bathroom? Did you think in that twisted dead brain of yours that forcing me to have sex with you when I clearly wasn't interested was going to make me finally fall in love with you?" Buffy could tell that her voice was getting shrill and bitchy, but she couldn't control it any more than she could control the fact that she was shaking like a cement mixer and her eyes were burning from unshed tears of frustration, "Like that was going to make the Anya thing go away? Like it was going to make the demon eggs go away? As if it was going to make me trust you again."

"We've been over this before, Slayer. I lost my temper. I said and did things that night that I don't have any excuse for. I shouldn't have done it, and I wish that I hadn't." Again with the cool voice, only this time he crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking her posture, glaring back at her with an unnatural vampire stillness.

"Just to really make things better, you run off to Las Vegas, leaving me to deal with Willow freaking out and trying to nuke the whole world. I could have used your help. Between the two of us I think you and I could have brought her down in the Magic Shop before things got really bad."

"Ashamed and embarrassed, exit Spike down Route 15, leaving you in the lurch to deal with yet another apocalypse. Buggered that up too."

Reasonable acceptance was not acceptable as far as Buffy was concerned. She threw the wadded up newspaper at him, only to have it bounce weakly off his folded arms and fall to the floor, where it rolled under the table. As an angry gesture, this lacked drama.

"You have a soul, Spike, you're supposed to be doing the right thing now. You're supposed to do not-evil things and that's a long list of evilness right there. You're supposed to know better!"

Clearly, she had now become possessed by the spirit of her mother, and Buffy could hear the 'I've had it and I'm sending you to reform school' note in her own voice. She could really feel for her Mom, that combination of anger and frustration at not being able to get through to somebody why something they had done was wrong. Buffy had been on the receiving end of this often enough but being the giver of the 'I'm disappointed in you' speech was new. It was like moving from the passenger seat and into the driver's seat without really knowing how to work the car. At least that was a feeling with which she was intensely familiar.

"And where, exactly is the list of actions and reactions suitable for the soul-owning vampire?" Spike was out of the chair and padding towards her on bare feet, all lean muscle and seductive menace. It was enough to make her breath stutter in her throat.

"I'd like to make the acquaintance of the person responsible for compiling such a list. Who is that arbiter of all things right and good? You? Let she who is without sin cast the first stake, Slayer."

Oh that was great, he was getting all fancy and quote-y with her, and he'd even gotten out the Giles voice to boot. Did he think he was a Watcher or something?

"If you can possibly look beyond the realm of your own narrow experience, you should consider the following. For whatever perverse reason, I happen to be in love with you. Although I wish on an almost daily basis that I weren't. I sat with your sister for a hundred and forty seven nights while you were dead. When you came back I was your confessor, your whipping boy and your whore. I was certainly good enough for you to beat bloody the night I hid Katrina's body for you."

Spike stopped and took a deep breath, which Buffy knew was more to plan what he was going to say rather than any need for oxygen.

"When dear Riley came back, I wasn't good enough for you anymore. I was a bad and evil thing again, and sneaking off to shag me was a guilty little pleasure you saw fit to end, as though you were somehow going to be absolved of that particular sin by cessation and penance. I suppose I should have just kept a stiff upper lip over that rejection, but it wasn't the case. Almost immediately thereafter I embarked on a series of actions which were ill-conceived and foolish in the extreme. I've apologized for these actions and I'll be even more damned if I'm going to apologize again."

Prowling a little closer, Spike was only inches away, close enough to touch, close enough for her to run her fingers over the gleaming white muscles of his chest. All the time his eyes were sparkling with blue fury. Self-righteousness made a squeaking noise and ran away because Lust was bigger and badder. Buffy sucked in a few panicky breaths and forced herself to look into his eyes even though it meant that her brain was going to be sucked dry with need.

"Now if you want me gone, out of your life, just tell me. I'll go. Just say it like you mean it, Slayer."

Okay, that was just about enough. Her legs were shaking and she was leaning back against the sink for support. Nerves jangling, and not from Slayer senses, but from Girl senses, Buffy bolted away from him, dashing over to the kitchen island to grab her purse.

"Going to the Magic Shop now. Unemployment means more time for reconstructiony goodness. Lock the door on your way out."

Babbling, she fled into the bright morning, leaving Spike, creature of darkness, trapped in the house.

~~~~

It was dark in the Magic Shop, with the windows hung with sheets so passers-by couldn’t see the damage and only two of the light fixtures fully operational. “I can’t believe we’re wrapping orders,” Buffy complained. “I had to pick broken glass out of the rosehips yesterday. Isn’t, like, ‘store closed for rehabilitation’ an excuse on eBay?”

“Anya’s very worried about her seller reputation,” Willow said softly, with the same gingerness she brought to any discussion related to the events of several months back. “She says that if we don’t fulfill online orders, she’ll lose ground she’ll never get back. Once your reputation is gone, it doesn’t ever come back the same way.”

Silently, they contemplated the implications of that, for both of them, as Willow efficiently identified and weighed various occult ingredients and Buffy wrapped them in paper, bubble wrap, and/or styrofoam peanuts as required. Since Anya wasn’t around, she didn’t worry too much about wasting packing material. Once they were packaged, Willow finished the labeling and generated proper postage from the metering machine.

“That’s the last of them,” Willow said at last, handing over a fertility icon. Peanuts, Buffy decided, looking at its rather distorted curves. With a few movements, she assembled a properly-sized box, dumped an initial layer of styrofoam in, added the icon, and finished filling the box. Actually, for all her complaints, working at the Magic Box was a much better job than DoubleMeat. Anya was paying her non-union wages for the reconstruction, and Buffy had the sneaking suspicion that Xander’s crew would have made more, but Anya had threatened to subcontract out to the Mexican demons who hung out on the corner by Lovecraft’s and she’d caved.

She really ought to be nicer to Willow, who was trying so hard. Look at Spike, who’d been doing so well until she decided just not to believe in him. She wasn’t going to lose Willow through mistrust. “Okay,” Buffy said, handing the sealed package to Willow with a you’re-forgiven smile, “so today we’re going to put the second floor back together, right?”

It wasn’t really a full second floor, more like a runway on one side of the store, reached by way of a flimsy ladder, but Anya liked having a sign at the front of the shop explaining that grimoires etc. were on the second floor. “Like Borders, only occult!” she’d chirped and Buffy had wished that transatlantic rates had stayed high enough that Anya wouldn’t call so often. Also, she’d heard a really disturbing noise from Giles in the background during one of those update conversations, and although she knew that Anya would eventually Tell All, every day she remained ignorant was a good day.

Willow pulled out the blueprints, because it was her job to understand them, and nodded. “Then we can maybe put all the new books there and you can have your training room back.”

Buffy walked over to the pile of lumber that would form the new supports and hoisted the first beam. She thought that, if Willow was really serious about atonement, she ought to put things in the Magic Box magically aright, but apparently the coven in Devon believed that physical labor was more atone-y. And it wasn’t as if Buffy had better things to do with her time.

****

"We've missed our true calling, I think," Willow announced from where she was re-shelving some paperbacks in the "Magic for Dummies" section.

"How's that?" Buffy asked and gave the carriage bolt that anchored the bookshelf to the wall a final Slayer-powered twist.

"Two woman demolition team. We could get t-shirts with a logo or something, tool belts, and maybe even hard hats."

"Not doing the protective headgear thing ever again, Wills. But what would a hat with a cow on it protect you from anyway?"

"Unwanted sexual advances. And wanted ones to boot."

"Never stopped Spike," Buffy muttered and started on the next bolt.

"Speaking of Spike--"

"Let's not. I'm at maximum Spikeage for the week already."

"I think you're not getting your Recommended Daily Allotment of Spikeage these days."

Okay, so Willow went to the Coven in Devon for magic rehab and had been replaced with Doctor Phil.

"Hey, Buffy good, Spike evil. Remember?"

Amazingly, Willow laughed, laughed hard enough that she had to hold onto the ladder to keep from falling off. Buffy didn't find this amusing in the least and stopped messing with the bolts long enough to give her a dirty look.

"Guess I brought the funny, huh?" she asked.

"No, it's just - Spike evil? Spike would like to be evil. He's been with the soul for about two years now. Killed how many people? Done how many dastardly deeds? Buff, he's reduced to misdemeanors and traffic violations." Willow's nose crinkled in merriment, "What the chip didn't take away from him wayback, the soul's pretty much wiped out."

"Grand Theft Auto, attempted molestation of a Slayer. That's not evil lite."

Willow waved her hands in the air with annoyance and the ladder wobbled. "No that's just Spike screwing up again. Yet again. Spike's the king of bad ideas. St. Vigeous, the gem of Amara, dating Harmony, getting himself captured by the Initiative and chipped, and that creepy robot? Since he got to Sunnydale Spike's been of the stupid rather than the evil."

Falling in love with a Slayer wasn't the smartest thing in the world either, Buffy admitted to herself, but decided that she wasn't going to share that with Willow.

"Can you pass me that box of books?" Willow asked and pointed.

"Okay, dumb Spike," Buffy agreed and hefted the box of beginners’ magic books and brought them over to where Willow was wobbling on the ladder, "But still with the bathroom ambush. Not happy about that, Willow. That was all kinds of bad."

"Worse than trying to destroy the world?" Willow reached down and fished a few books out of the box. "You're willing to forgive me for doing a colossally dumb thing and you can't forgive Spike?"

"You're my friend, Willow, and you were mega-wigged. Everybody takes a ride on the freakout bus from time to time."

"Even hundred and fifty year old vampire can take a ride or three on that bus. The freakout bus is a common carrier. Losing the only person you love --" she trailed off and then shook her head, bringing up a brave smile.

All Buffy could do was narrow her eyes at Willow. "You're the Spike fan club today. Is he bribing you with chocolate?"

"I wish." Willow shook her head. "I'm in the Buffy fan club, and I thought you were happier when you guys were together."

"We were never together. We were just kind of in the same place at the same time. Like beds and floors and--" Buffy cut herself off. "Is it time for lunch yet?"

"Good lack of segue. Xander would be proud."

~~~~

Spike didn’t remember falling asleep, which made being shaken awake that much more disturbing. He managed to fight back the reflex game-face and settled for growling at Xander, who clearly had no idea how dangerous waking a sleeping vampire was.

“Hey, dead boy, get up. I need you to come and look at a car with me,” Xander said and thrust a newspaper at Spike.

The Sunnydale Press, a local newspaper with an amateur style so hideous that Spike cringed away as though from a cross.

“You found a car already?”

“Yeah, ad in the paper, got to go check it out. Need a second opinion. I’ve only got a grand to play with.”

“A thousand dollars? Don’t expect a lot for that.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I want you to look at it.”

“The only thing I know about cars is how to steal ‘em.”

“Liar. I’ve seen you with that De Soto. It’s the only thing you love more than the sound of your own voice. Come on. Sun’s going down.”

A short few moments later, Spike was hunched under a flowered bedspread in the passenger seat of the late Joyce Summers’ Jeep. At a stop light, Xander smirked at him.

“New look for you, Evil Dead, kind of gay hairdresser thing.”

Of course, Spike had slept through the end of the washer cycle and his clothes were still wet. He’d cursed for five minutes, and thrown them in the dryer, which meant that he was venturing out in Buffy’s clothes - sweatpants, pastel flannel shirt, and T-shirt. The T-shirt, in better light, had turned out to be pink. He hoped that nothing he knew saw him. He’d be laughed out of Lovecraft’s for the next millennia.

“What’s the matter, carpenter-boy, am I turning you on?”

“Yeah right,” Xander huffed and turned a shade of red that was somewhere between chilli and tomato.

“Just warnin’ you,” Spike twisted the knife a little further into Harris’ machismo, “the Slayer might be inclined to kick your ass if you make an attempt on my virtue. Although she’s been acting a bit queer these days.”

The look on Xander’s face showed that he’d clearly misinterpreted.

“Not Willow queer, odd, strange. Not herself.”

“I don’t know if you noticed or not, but Buffy’s a girl. Which means she is one with her mood swings.” Xander let out his breath in a gusty sigh.

~~~~

Just as Buffy slid a box into place on top of its basement stack, Willow’s head appeared in the doorway, with a halo of light from upstairs.

“Buffy! Telephone. It’s a woman calling about Dawn.”

“Dawn?!” Buffy blurted and began charging upstairs.

“She isn’t hurt or anything. I asked. But-“

Buffy grabbed the phone out of Willow’s hand.

“Is Dawn all right?” she blurted.

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

“Yeah, she’s fine. She just made a series of bad decisions.” The voice was female, sounded fairly calm and slightly annoyed. “Look, why don’t you come down to the café and all three of us can talk? It’s Rick’s American Café? Other end of the street.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Buffy stammered. “I’ll be right there. Which one is Rick’s American Café?” she asked Willow.

“What’s wrong?” Willow asked from where she had been hovering over Buffy’s shoulder.

“She didn’t say, just that I should go there. What is it?”

“Bookstore turned coffee place turned sandwich and coffee place. Rick is the woman who owns it. She’s nice, she brought a plate of brownies over last week while Xander and I were working on the storefront. I think she opened while we were - uh- busy last spring.”

“God, I missed the terrorist attacks, Survivor and a new coffee shop opening. Why didn't anybody tell me about these things?” Buffy muttered and stormed out the door.

The afternoon sun was bright but cold, making her squint. Buffy couldn’t remember the last time she’d been outside in bright daylight. It seemed like the sky had been overcast for months. Or maybe it was her. The sun must have been out; it had faded all the American flags, and now the brightest reds were the sale signs. Rick’s American Café was on the corner next to the used record and CD store, which Buffy was pretty sure was run by demons, but couldn’t prove, and the lettering across the café’s front window was so new and fresh that it made her eyes hurt. Stores and restaurants had a short life cycle in Sunnydale, right along with their owners.

A jangle of bells rang when Buffy walked into the café. The place was small: only ten mismatched four-seat tables and a counter with complicated coffee equipment behind it. The walls were varying shades of butter yellow, papered with funny posters and comics clipped from the newspaper. Plants hung or sat on any free surface that wasn’t associated with food. Dawn was slumped at the table in the far corner with a sullen look on her face, nothing new there, and across from her was a blonde woman with funny dark-framed glasses wearing jeans and a tie-dyed shirt. Other than that, there were a couple of old ladies sitting near the window, drinking what looked like tea, with their shopping bags clustered around their feet. The woman with Dawn stood up and looked over at Buffy.

“Buffy Summers? I’m Rick Petersen. Wanna come join us? Can I get you coffee or something?”

“What did she do?” Buffy asked and sat at the table, which pinned Dawn up against the wall and made the sulky face change into something angrier.

“Well, I was out here waiting on those ladies over there, and when I went back into the back room to check on the pies I had cooling, there were some kids in there. About five of them.” Rick ran a hand through her hair that was shorter, blonder and shaggier than Buffy’s. “The rest of them got away, but your sister didn’t move fast enough. Now I’m down six pies, three dozen scones, and an entire sheet of biscotti.”

“You stole? You stole from here?” Buffy demanded.

“I didn’t steal,” Dawn said and frowned. “If I’d stolen I’d have the stuff, wouldn’t I?”

“Well, you could be hiding stolen merchandise in your stomach,” Rick said. “Biscotti don’t go for much at pawn shops.”

Rick, as far as Buffy was concerned, was way too cool and too calm about all this. Most people would have been freaking out over that much stuff being stolen. Anya would have needed sedatives. But then, Rick seemed to know what she was doing - and she was old. She had to be at least thirty.

“You can’t do things like this!” Buffy’s ears were buzzing with the embarrassment of this latest Dawn Trauma. “You know stealing is wrong, you know helping your friends steal is wrong. Mom’s spinning in her grave right now, you know that? And what are you wearing?”

Scrunching her face up into pure evil teenagerness, Dawn glared at her sister.

“Mom was spinning in her grave last night when you came home all drunk with your boyfriend.”

If Buffy had been wearing a blood pressure cuff, it would have blown off right there and then.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she hissed between her teeth.

“Then you shouldn’t be fucking him,” Dawn snarled back.

The two old ladies by the window looked up.

Rubbing her nose, Buffy fought down the burny-throat feeling of crying, again. This was just FUBAR’d to infinity. Dawn was stealing again, had gotten caught, and had to mention The Spike Thing in front of a complete, and possibly sane, stranger.

“Hey, hey, TMI, guys. Really,” Rick said and tapped the table between the sisters. “Above and Beyond the Call of Pies. Look, Dawn, you screwed up, you screwed up big time. Your friends are a bunch of losers who were willing to let you hold the bag here, which means they’re crappy friends. What are you going to do for me that will make up for those pies?”

“I don’t have any money,” Dawn said and scuffed her feet under the table. “I had some from babysitting but I spent it.”

The check was coming at the end of the week from her last hours of burger-flipping, but all the funds were earmarked for groceries and utilities. If she paid Rick for the pies, there would be a food shortage. If Rick decided to call the police, Dawn would have a juvenile record and Buffy would lose her to foster care, which didn’t seem that bad for the moment, but she’d promised to take care of Dawn and that was it.

It must have shown on her face. “Okay,” Rick pulled a pen out of her back pocket and grabbed a napkin from the shiny dispenser on the table, and began scribbling numbers. “We have six pies at ten dollars each, thirty-six scones at two dollars each, and twelve biscotti at a dollar each.”

“A hundred and forty-four dollars,” Dawn said just as Rick finished speaking.

Buffy gaped at her sister. “Since when are you Math Girl?”

“A hundred and forty four dollars. Divide that by minimum wage, which is six dollars and seventy five cents an hour and you get--”

“Twenty one point three three hours,” Dawn finished.

“Good. So you come in here on Saturdays and help out for twenty one and a half hours and we’ll call it even on what you and your friends stole.” Rick looked up from her napkin. “You weasel out on me once without producing an actual dead grandmother or a note from your doctor that you have the plague, and I call the cops. Understand?”

“And you are completely grounded for the next two months,” Buffy added, “and if you have to be at the Magic Shop you have to do your homework. Willow, and Xander will not talk to you. Go over to the store now.”

Flipping her hair over her shoulder, Dawn stalked out. She stalked a little too well. She’d picked it up from Spike. Next thing she’d be smoking.

“I am so sorry about my sister. She didn’t used to be like this.” Buffy worried the edge of the table with her fingertips. “I drove my mom crazy. But Dawn’s like the master of bad teenageness.”

“I don’t know about you, but I need weapons-grade chocolate,” Rick said.

~~~~

The car owner was waiting for them outside her apartment complex, the art deco monstrosity where Glory had hidden her skanky self and her crusty minions. The last time Spike had been in this particular building, he’d had a near-lethal ass kicking. Of course, there weren’t a lot of vampires who’d escaped being beaten into jam by a god, so there was some brag-value in having a tramp with a bad perm smack him bloody.

“Oh wow!” Xander breathed.

At the curb sat a car that gleamed black in the setting sun, highlights swimming over the high-gloss and aerodynamic surface. Spike tried to hide his interest. How could someone be asking less than a thousand dollars for a car that looked that good? Of course, there probably wasn’t an engine inside it. It was a good-looking vehicle, though Spike hadn’t genuinely liked an American car since the muscle cars of the early 1970s. Standing alongside the car was a trashy-looking blonde in painted-on jeans, who was infinitely more interesting than the car.

“You the one who called about the car?” she asked as they got out of the Jeep.

“Yeah, I did. Xander Harris. This is Spike.”

“Yvonne Nocturno. This is the car. 2000 Pontiac Trans Am. I don’t know a lot about it. It was my husband’s car,” she said in a voice that was more Brooklyn than Santa Barbara.

“He took off and you’re selling his car?” Spike asked.

“He died.”

“Not in the car?” Xander asked and a brief bit of panic hardened his soft face.

“Outside a bar in town. The cops said a wild animal attacked him. Ripped his throat out. I just want to get rid of the car and get the fuck back East.”

Less than five feet from the woman Spike could smell Poison and gin. He wasn’t sure which she’d drunk and which she’d slathered on herself. The combination was nauseating and he retreated to the other side of Xander.

“Wolves. Come into town sometimes,” Spike drawled.

“Kind of a lot of wolves. The detective told me that they get up to three unexplained deaths a week around here, lots of people missing. All those graveyards. And the teenage gangs on PCP. Sunnydale gives me the fucking creeps.” She shuddered and it did strange things to the mass of her well-sprayed hair. “I’m going back to New York where it’s safe.”

“So what’s wrong with it?” Spike asked. “You’re sellin’ it awful cheap.”

Xander, pulled in by the mesmerizing shine of well-polished automotive paint, was circling the car with a look Spike usually saw on a vamp sizing up prey. It was disgusting to see such naked car lust.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. Michael loved that car. It was his hobby. He’d come home from work and go straight to the garage and work on the car. Spent all his weekends working on it.”

Spike could understand why.

“I just want to get rid of it. It’s too expensive to ship it home. God, I would have fuckin’ buried him in it, he loved that car so much.”

“There’s all kinds of weird stuff in the dashboard,” Xander announced.

“He liked to tinker, you know, with computers and stuff.”

“Is it street-legal?” Spike asked.

“Guess so,” she said and shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know a lot about it. It was his car. Passed the California inspection so I guess it’s okay. You wanna test drive it?”

“Yeah!” Xander enthused so she threw him the keys.

Floppy-boy missed the key-toss and had to scoop them up off the ground before piling into the car with a blissful expression. The engine started with a healthy roar and Xander pulled away from the curb looking like a man struck by Cupid’s lightning.

Turning on her heel, Yvonne gave Spike a blatant and analytical once-over.

“So, you two been together long?” she asked.

Acutely aware of the fact that he was wearing Buffy’s clothes and looked an utter pouf, all Spike could do was shrug his shoulders.

“Feels like forever.”

~~~~

Just to add another secret to Buffy’s growing list of Things Not To Tell, Rick’s brownies were a million times better than Willow’s. Between the four brownies and the glass of whole milk, Buffy nearly had an orgasm. Of course a brownie orgasm and a Spike Sex orgasm had two completely different guilt values. Calories versus conscience. Hips or hypocrites?

There were dark chocolate chips in the brownies, which seemed to make the difference.

“These are so good,” Buffy said and bit into brownie #5.

“Linnaeus, the guy who decided that everything had to be classified, called the cocoa plant Theobroma cacao. In Greek theobroma means food of the gods. The Aztecs discovered chocolate and made hot chocolate that they gave to warriors, kings, and priests. They also fermented it into chocolate liquor and used that in their religious ceremonies where it was associated with Xochiquetzal, the goddess of fertility.” Rick ran her finger over the plate and caught the last crumbs from the brownies. “Those ol’Aztecs got that one right, because the key chemical ingredient in chocolate is phenylethylamine, a naturally occurring trace amine in the brain. It releases mesolimbic dopamine in the pleasure centers and peaks during orgasm.”

Buffy enjoyed it when science agreed with her.

Rick flashed Buffy a grin. “Which means that when your not-boyfriend gives you a ration of shit, you can tell him he can be replaced with a couple of bars of Hershey’s. So what do you do when you’re not riding herd on Dawn? Are you still in school?”

“No.” Buffy shook her head and took a swig of milk. “I had to drop out when mom died. I have – I had a lame job at Doublemeat Palace. The hours were good, even if most of the minutes sucked. I got to work while Dawn’s in school, and I got my nights free. You know, to make sure Dawn does her homework and stuff.”

Only the last part was an actual lie, but telling a complete stranger that you were the Chosen One and had a cosmic calling to slay vampires and other evil supernatural creatures was a real conversation stopper.

“Doublemeat?” Rick shuddered. “I wouldn’t feed my dog Doublemeat. That stuff’s just nasty.”

“And you never get the smell out of your hair. Still, it’s better than living in a cardboard box. In a cardboard box there’s nowhere to plug in the hair dryer. Now that Doublemeat kicked me out, I guess I’ll try and transfer my skills to McDonald’s or something.”

“Buffy, you seem like a nice kid with a run of bad luck, and I can always use the good karma. So why don’t you come and work here for me daytime during the week. I pay eight and a half-dollars an hour because the tips are lousy.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Right now I only have Rachel working with me weeknights and I need somebody for the lunch and breakfast crowd.” Rick made a wry face. “If only to keep the high school kids from robbing me blind.”

Straightening up, Buffy gave the other woman a look that Spike would have recognized as her ‘too proud for charity’ face.

“You don’t have to do this. I’m - we’re - not that pathetic.”

“Yes you are,” Rick said with another flash of her grin. “I need help, you need a break, and Dawn needs the fear of God put into her. Seems like a perfect solution to me. I’ll even give you Saturdays off while your sister’s serving her term here. Give you some Dawnless time with your not-boyfriend.”

In Sunnydale, things were just not this easy. With her luck, Rick would turn out to be another flesh-eating demon and both she and Dawn would end up in the brownie mix. But Rick was offering more than Doublemeat.

Coffee and brownies would make a nice change from vegetable matter mixed with rendered beef fat and from dried toads and sawdust.

“When do you want me to start?”

****

“Is this a great car or what?” Xander enthused.

“Yeah, brilliant. Slayer’s house? My clothes? Remember?”

“Totally smooth ride. Like ice.”

Spike yawned. It was just a car, for fuck’s sake. No need to get a hard-on over it. Harris was obviously suffering from jiz build up in the brain.

The sleek black machine purred at the stoplight, and Xander’s face was frozen in a mask of bliss. Once the light had gone green, Xander peeled out in a haze of exhaust and headed out to the freeways outside Sunnydale proper. The rush-hour traffic was mostly gone. Xander put the pedal down and the car zoomed well above the posted speed limit.

“Hoowah!” Xander yelped and Spike yawned again.

“Good evening, Xander,” the car said.

“Gaah!” Xander ripped his hands from the wheel as if it had turned molten. To Spike’s surprise (but not significant relief), the car simply pulled onto the shoulder and the stick shift went into park. His urge to yawn had fled like the rest of him wanted to do.

“What … what do you want?” Xander asked as Spike took a gander at the locks out of the corner of his eye. Yes, the locks were flush with the door, and he didn’t see a release mechanism or any way of opening the windows.

“To champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless in a world of criminals who operate above the law,” the car replied. Its voice was feminine, a cross between Tori Amos and Dana Scully. Attractive, as demon-car voices went.

“Oh good, a righteous demon,” Spike snarked, figuring that bluster was likely to go further than panic.

“I am not a demon.” The car sounded offended.

“Right, you’re just one a’ them interactive cars. Let’s take a poll. I say you’re a demon. Xander?”

“Demon.”

“I am not a demon.” It - she? - was beginning to sound annoyed.

“Seein’ as how all the other non-talkin’ cars don’t get a vote, seems you are a demon. Accordin’ to the democratic way ‘n all.”

“I am the Knight Industries Two Thousand Enhanced. You may call me KITTE.”

“Kitty?” Man and vampire exchanged incredulous glances.

“I have been searching for an appropriate human companion with whom to fulfill my mission. You, Xander Harris, qualify, based on your school and work records and your Internet postings.”

“School records?” Xander said, horrified.

“Internet postings?” Spike waggled his eyebrows at Xander.

“I like Spiderman,” Xander said as if that were some sort of explanation.

The car soldiered on. “I have not been able to identify your companion, however. Fingerprints and voiceprints show no match. Please identify yourself.”

A talking car with a hard-on (or whatever the girl car equivalent was) for truth, justice and the American way might not like “vampire,” especially one without proper INS paperwork.

“Name’s Spike.”

“Wait a second.” Xander’s eyes were practically glowing. This was his chance to be the Great American Hero. “You want me to help you go around righting wrongs, dispensing justice, stuff like that?”

“Yes.” The car practically purred the word.

“Are you privy to the details of what happened to your last ‘human companion,’ eh?” Spike didn’t know exactly why he was looking out for the boy’s best interests.

There was a pause. “Michael Nocturno was killed by wild animals. I was waiting in the parking lot at MacMillan’s at the time. I will make sure that the same thing does not happen to Xander Harris.”

The determination in the car’s voice made the short hairs stand up on the back of Spike’s neck. Xander licked nervous lips.

“Doing right can be dangerous. But inaction means complicity.”

“Hunh?”

“She means, d’ya wanna be a hero? Kitty-cat, we’re heroes already, an’ we don’t need a new sheriff in town.”

“Shut up, Spike.” Silence descended in the car.

“We’re gonna continue this conversation further,” Xander finally offered. “I’m thinking that the whole talking car thing is something that we don’t share with the rest of the class. KITTE, you can, you know, not talk, right?”

“Pretty big thing to ask of a girl car,” Spike said over KITTE’s Spock-like “I will wait until you identify trustworthy individuals.”

“Your so-called friends are gonna go spare if they hear you’ve got a girl car and you’re keepin’ it quiet,” he continued. “This car’s gonna be nothin’ but trouble.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when it gives way underneath me.”

“Your bloody funeral, mate.”

It was a matter of time before the shit hit Xander’s fan. Spike hoped he would be able to watch the fallout. There was precious little in Sunnydale to give a vamp a laugh.

“Can we get my clothes now?”

~~~~

There were sodas and the remains of a pizza surrounded by books on the plywood and sawhorses that had replaced the Spike and Anya sex-sullied research table. Buffy sipped at her Diet Coke and looked around at the circle of heads bent down over the dusty old books. Too bad that Giles was gone again. Having him there would have made it entirely normal. For a moment, she was almost able to forget that she’d spent a summer dead and the year after that wishing she were.

“Explain to me again what we’re doing?”

“Seasonal anomalies,” Willow said and looked up. “Sunnydale is historically calm over the summer, you might even say placid, supernatural-wise. But we’re well into fall now and there’s still nothing.”

“Yes, and the lack of problems is a problem because?”

Willow pushed a strand of hair behind her ears. Her expression, enthusiastic and determined, reminded Buffy of how things had been, back in high school. “Might not be. But it might be something worse than normal coming, like the water drawing back from the beach for a big wave. I have a theory -“

“No song, right?” Dawn asked hastily.

“Just a theory,” Willow said snippily. “You know how global warming is disrupting weather worldwide, changing the seasons and altering things like the ice shelves of Antarctica and the currents of El Nino.”

Buffy, who didn’t know, nodded.

“None of that harm to the earth is supernatural, but it doesn’t have to be to have supernatural effects. Lots of powers, like the Hellmouth itself, are tied to the natural world. Deforestation in the Amazon, killing the tree and animal spirits and so on. My hypothesis is that the magical weather is changing too.”

“Bullet point summary, Will, what does it mean for slayage?”

“The result in the natural world is more extremes. Longer droughts, bigger storms.”

“This is so unfair,” Buffy complained. “I didn’t even use hairspray that destroyed the ozone layer.”

“I got the car and it is way cool!” Xander blurted as he and Spike came through the bell-ringing door of the Magic Shop.

Buffy tried to look casually at Spike, which was impossible because he was giving her his cat outside a mouse hole look and Willow was watching Spike give his look. Giving up, Buffy reached for another piece of pizza. Spike prowled nearby, making most of Buffy’s skin feel dry and hot.

“The car is completely awesome, it’s all black and shiny, and-“

“Let’s go see!” Dawn said and leapt up from her chair.

“I’ll catch the car later. I need to swing by the Pilgrim’s Rest Cemetery tonight. Ms. Burdock, the Algebra teacher, was buried today, and if anybody’s going to