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Take Heart	By : dutchbuffy2305 Category: > Buffy/Spike(William) > Buffy/Spike(William) Views: 2402 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
Take Heart 6, by dutchbuffy2305

Rating: NC-17; horror and squick, smut and fluff.

Timeline: After a different Primeval, BtVS 4.21;

Author's note: First part written for The Deadly Hook, Apocalypse Ficathon. Big hug to the glorious Spikejones for betaing;

Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305;

Feedback: Yes, please, loads of it, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk

The sound of the military helicopter is deafening. Blinding beams sweep the Summers’ quiet Sunnydale suburb. Spike watches it from the shelter of the porch until it’s moved over to Shady Rest, throws down his fag end and puts it out with his boot.

“Let’s get our favorite corpses inside, Summers,” he says. “Don’t wanna be surprised by the Powers that Shoot First, Ask Later doing stuff that’s not in the manual.”

Buffy slips out the possessive hand that was burning in his back pocket.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll take Giles, since he’s the heaviest and I’m the strongest person here.”

“Hey!”

She throws Giles over her shoulder and blows him a kiss from inside the hall. Spike does an eye roll for the benefit of no one in particular the moment’s she’s out of sight. The Slayer is really creeping him out.

Spike throws a last searching look at the silent rubble-strewn street, straining eyes and ears to hear signs of tanks rolling in or soldiers marching. But all’s quiet now that the helicopter has departed. They don’t have many hours left till dawn, thanks to the longer–than-planned gymnastics tournament on the Slayer’s bed. He picks up Harris and lugs him towards the basement. The body isn’t stiff, thank god; rigor mortis must have passed. Another piece of useless knowledge gleaned from reading too many Scarpetta novels down in the crypt. He’s gonna be so happy to forget all that when he gets out of here.

He lays Harris out next to Rupert Giles and trudges back up, stopping halfway up the stairs to let the Slayer pass with the small from of Willow slung over her shoulder. Red’s the smelliest of the lot, for some reason. She’ll just have to use make up of some kind to cover up those bluish patches on her cheek. She also leaves a trail of coppery clumps of fine straight hair on the stairs. He hopes she likes hats.

Buffy steps up to him with that wide smile he’s beginning to be very wary of. It’s almost unnatural, like she’s not real, one of these plastic dolls with hard pointy tits his younger victims have started carrying around these past forty or fifty years. Barbie Buffy.

“Spike! Time to resuscitate my friends!”

She yanks up her top and grabs his hands to position them on her breasts.

The heated, yielding flesh zings through his fingertips and straight on to his groin. He jerks his hands back.

“It’s your little friends we should be touching, not each other. Remember?”

She pouts and snakes her arm around his neck. She has to stand on tiptoe to do that. It is kind of cute that the Slayer is so tiny, makes him feel big and hulking and manly.

Their lips touch with a little shock and a show of sparks.

“Oops! Better be careful. Don’t shake us or the electricity will slop over,” the Slayer mutters as she steps back on wobbly legs.

Spike feels very sober as he stares at the Slayer, who’s taking in the extremely dead and unmoving trio on the basement floor.

“Who’s on first?” he asks.

“Yes,” Buffy says. “What’s on second.” She collapses in giggles.

Figures. The one piece of old-movie trivia in her possession just makes her even more useless.

“Unless you want this to turn out Abbott and Costello Meet the Zombies, Slayer, you’d better get serious,” Spike says.

That shuts down the giggling. The Slayer chews on her lip. “Last in, first out, I guess?”

“Right.”

Spike kneels down at Rupert Giles’ head. He decides to prop the eyes open, to make Giles seem less dead, but when he reaches out to yank up the papery eyelid, he jostles the skull. The upper portion, that he capped like an egg and ate with a spoon, slides off. Some gray pulpy remnants dribble out. Didn’t clean it out completely, he guesses. He carefully repositions the skull, noticing how the skin slithers over the bone under his hands. Maybe he should shove the old man‘s hairline forward a bit; he reckons Rupes would thank him for it. Nah.

He sits back on his heels when the top of the skull is back on and notices the stare of the one eye he opened. A three week-old boiled egg has a friendlier expression, so he pushes it shut again.

“All set, Buff.”

Spike puts his hands on the clammy temples. “Slayer?”

She’s grimacing and dithering over where to put her hands. At last, she decides on the upper arms.

Spike sighs. Does he have to tell her everything himself?

“On the heart, Slayer, or the guts or whatever. Upper arms are not a seat of vitality in general.”

“What do you know about vitality, Spike? Long time no have!”

She does as he suggests, however, and the moment both her hands descend on the librarian’s chest a current pricks up. Spike feels like a vintage wine being aired and decanted, and he can only hope there will be no dregs left behind.

The body beneath his palms begins to stir and he jerks back his hands. Buffy reproaches him with a dark-green look.

“Don’t wanna put in the witchlet by accident, do we?” he says defensively, but there really is no sure way to tell where Giles stops and Willow begins.

A loud moan comes from the lips of the body between them. Spike looks on doubtfully. He feels emptier, which is a plus, but Giles’ cheeks are as gray as they were before.

“Slayer? His pulse?”

She takes the limp wrist in her hand and he sees her mimic the gesture they both know from hospital soaps. She shakes her head.

“Can’t feel it. And he’s colder than you are.”

“Cold dead librarian, eh?”

Giles’ eyes snap open. The Slayer recoils from the featureless, marbly orbs and skitters back a few feet.

“Giles?” she says, still hopeful.

Another moan. The body starts levering itself up with jerky movements, reminding Spike of the Night of the Living Dead. He looks around for an axe, just in case. The Summers’ basement seems to be axeless, alas. Where’s the one he killed Giles with? Up on the bluff, probably, in their hideaway cave, like all the really useful stuff.

“Buffy?” a slurred voice says. “I can’t see. Where are you?”

Blue-grey hands reach out blindly to the direction of her voice.

“Buffy?”

The Giles face sniffs disconcertingly and utters an indistinct blurry moan.

Then Giles’ own voice speaks again. “Buffy? I feel rather odd. Can't move.”

“I did eat his brain, Slayer,” Spike says sotto voce. “Sounds like a zombie to me.”

“No, no, no!” Buffy says and slaps her hand on the floor for emphasis. “This is not gonna happen. This was getting my friends back, not making scary monsters that need to be showered in salt.”

She steps up to the waving, tottering figure. “Giles! Snap out of it. This is me. You’re alive again. Make your body work, okay?”

Her voice wavers at the last pitiful ‘okay.’

“Can’t bloody well move,” Giles groans. “It’s so dark in here. My head feels like cotton wool.”

“Did you stuff cotton wool in there, Spike?” the Slayer says accusingly. She pauses, looks sheepish. “What’s cotton wool?”

“Cotton batten to you, love,” Spike says. “And that’s an expression. His head’s just… empty.”

“Why isn’t the body coming back to life? Why isn’t it working?” she says, sounding close to hysterics. “It worked before. When we were doing Riley they were all in there!”

“Your boy was alive, Slayer. S’pose that makes all the difference.”

Giles’ voice sounds, closer than he expected. “I can hear you, you know. You’re talking about me. Another spell gone wrong? Where’s Willow? She really needs to learn responsibility.”

Buffy turns to the shambling creature and puts her hands on its sweatered arm. Her voice is very gentle. “The spell did go wrong, Giles, the enjoining spell. Do you remember? We are trying to put you back into your body again.”

“You mean this isn’t my body? That’s a relief, I must say. It isn’t working properly at all. Really, Buffy, this is most uncomfortable. Can you get on with it? I’m not feeling well.”

The slightly querulous but quite sane-sounding voice contrasts sharply with Giles' body movements. His head is swaying to and fro, his nose is sniffing and he sticks out a spongy tongue to lick at Buffy’s hand.

“Oh. That’s jolly nice. What was that stuff I just tasted? Rather wonderful.”

The Slayer looks utterly revolted, but she doesn't pull her trembling hand away from the questing tongue. She loves the old man, it's all over her face and Spike feels a twisting somewhere inside. It's just a spell, of course, but to be looked at like that would be bloody brilliant.

“Spike?”

Spike shakes his head at the Slayer. “This is no good, Buff. His body is too dead, I reckon. Let’s take him back out and think of something else.”

The Slayer’s face crumples and he expects another teary session, but her spine straightens and she crosses her arms in her standard defensive posture. “We can do this. We’re going to regroup, not retreat. I will get my friends back.”

She’s more positive about getting back her friends than about Captain Corn-fed, he notices. He likes that, although he doesn’t know why.

“Spike? On three.”

It’s getting routine. They grab the only faintly struggling zombie and suck back out the Giles essence until it slumps down, back to being really dead. Spike’s head is full and tweedy again, filled to bursting with extra grey matter. Not coming out of his ears, is it? Good.

He sits down on the basement stairs due to a sudden and inexplicable wobbliness in his legs. The Slayer sits down next to him, to his surprise, and when she slings her arm around his shoulders, he's gobsmacked.

"What do we do now, Spike? You said you had an idea why this happened?"

He did? He casts his mind back to what he said. Finn was different. There was too much life in him. So yeah, if you extrapolate from that, if there were three different blobs of matter, instead of just the one big one, they'd be set. It was easy to pour the consciousnesses of the Scoobies in there. Maybe the Finn-stuff would take on the physical characteristics of the new inhabitants as well. Because there were all kinds of hair colors and eyes roving around it the first time. He’ll just have to be very neat, and not mix up the essences in his head. Which will be hard, because he's been feeling both stirred and shaken ever since.

No need to pass on his doubts to the Slayer. Spike clears his throat, immediately regrets the stuffy sound, and expounds. "Right. This is what we do. We hack or saw the blob into three pieces, without killing it, and then pour in your pals one by one. That stuff is still alive, and that's what was missing with your surrogate dad here."

Buffy doesn’t look convinced. "’Hack? Saw? You’re majorly wigging me out, Spike. We might kill it, and then zippo chance of ever reversing the spell."

God forbid. If he’s gonna end up stuck to the Slayer, Spike's gonna kill himself. Or he will after he's visited every shaman in the whole wide world to get the spell out of him.

"So you agree to the general principle?"

"Yeah, sounds doable," Buffy nods.

Spike's happy that there's at least one person who trusts his plan. He gets up and has to seek support on a slender yet muscular Slayer shoulder.

"Are you alright, Spike? Do you need more rest? Or should we recharge?"

There's an eagerness in her voice that Spike distrusts. He also distrusts the automatic jump his cock makes. He's nobody’s lapdog.

He shakes off her hand roughly. "Nah, I'm fine. Let's get on with it, Slayer. Sunrise and the US Army won't wait for us."

He staggers up the stairs without looking back at the Slayer and almost keels over in shock when he feels her small warm hand in his back. He doesn't need her help, he's full of vim and vigor and if need be he could raise the bloody Scoobies from the dead all by himself. The supportive railing under his hands doesn’t disagree.

The blob of rampant Riley flesh is still where they left it. That would have been just this luck, if the damn thing had grown a hundred little feet and had gone off into the wilds of Sunnydale.

"There's one thing I will say for your Soldier Boy, Slayer, he's knows to follow orders. If you tell him to stay put, he stays put," Spike says, grinning.

Buffy kicks him sharply in the ankle. "Very funny, dead boy. A little more respect for a fallen soldier."

"Respect? You're a fine one to talk about respect, Slayer! Speaking ill of the dead is your bloody vocation!"

"Shut up and lift on three, Spike."

Maneuvering the heavy fleshy pancake isn’t easy indoors, and when negotiating the basement stairs Spike loses his grip on the heaving shivering object, letting it crash to the floor with a wet thud.

"Spike! Careful, we need that thing. Let's hope we didn’t break it."

"Don’t think it has bones to break, Slayer," Spike says, but it’s hard not to get a bit rattled at the queer stuff, which is like jelly in consistency but opaque. The pale skin puckers in goosebumps occasionally, a painful reminder that it was once a human being.

They stand side by side and survey the task ahead.

"I have no clue how to break this thing up, Spike. Couldn’t we just tear it?"

Spike is doubtful. "We could try. Too elastic to tear, I'd think."

He's right. The lukewarm flesh yields a little bit but springs back into shapelessness the moment they let go.

"Saw it is, then, Slayer."

Buffy finds a rusty handsaw in a box full of odds and ends. Spike has a hard time picturing Joyce with it in her hands. Not the DIY-type, was Joyce. Well, even the Slayer must once have had a father, he supposes. Maybe it was his.

The Slayer grimly sets the blade in the flesh and starts sawing. He’s sure she hadn’t counted on the damn thing bleeding and if truth be told, neither had he. There’s a little jet of the wonderful stuff and Spike hangs over it like it was a public water fountain.

Buffy gags and throws away the saw. Spike steps up to the plate in his manly fashion and takes over from her. His clothes are ruined anyway, and this way he can catch the odd drop if it flies his way. He's not making much headway, though. The saw is a little too flexible and keeps getting caught in gristle or something like it. He saws on doggedly, licking his lips clean at intervals and sort of enjoying the idea of having a go at Finn's ex-flesh. Too bad there's no screaming included.

“Come on, Slayer,” he says without looking up. “This isn’t very efficient. Why don’t you go and liberate a saw at one of your neighbors?”

A thought strikes him. Again. He’s never had so many brilliant ideas as in the past few days. If that's the effect Rupert and Willow's brains have, maybe he should turn Rupert when he’s got a body again, make him his planner minion.

“Buffy? If you’re going to scout out your neighbors’ tool sheds, why not get a power saw? We could use a mite more speed here.”

The Slayer is halfway up the stairs before the protest comes. “That’s stealing.”

“Borrowing,” he says, keeping his eyes away from hers. “You can put it back, can’t you? No harm done.”

“Kay.”

Takes her half the time he expects. She shows up with a brand new orange thing of heroic dimensions.

Spike laughs. “Chrissake Slayer, didn’t know you could buy a plus size power saw. We could denude all the forests of California if we wanted to.”

“I think someone’s been there before you, Spike,” she snips, but he sees her fascinated stare at the giant prick. He’s gonna go through the blob like butter. Spike stands there with the vibrating object in his hand, ready to plunge in and winks at the Slayer. She gets his meaning all right. The education he’s been giving her is paying off already.

Spike shouts a battle cry and attacks with the saw. Blood spatters the basement ceiling in a pretty arc, like a rainbow made of red paint alone. It rains blood on his face and drenches his clothes with its coppery, energizing scent.

“Brilliant, innit?” he yells over the saw’s roaring at the Slayer, whose standing in the farthest comer of the room, trying to cover her face and clothes with her hands.

It’s over far too soon. Spike lowers the saw and shuts off the power. The silence rings with the memory of the buzzing, screeching sound and it’s been almost as much fun as skinning a living victim.

He grins at the Slayer, generously sharing the pleasure, but her face is taut and unforgiving. Oh. He’s gone and reminded her of what he really is, an evil creature, a predator. Stupid bint. Good enough to share her bed when he’s been behaving like a human being for a bit, or close enough, but when she sees what he’s really like she changes her mind. All the same to him, not like he wants anything but to get out of here, back to his rewarding career of bloodshed and mayhem.

The unwieldy blob has been divided into three neat parts, like Gallia, and the next step in their many-bungled operation ought to be a piece of cake. Even Zombie Giles already had the distinct flavor of his own personality.

“Let’s get going, Slayer! Where’s your spirit? Not getting put out because of a little gore, are you? Nasty cruel killer like you has seen worse, I wager.”

“I don’t kill, I slay,” she says in a low voice, and gingerly approaches the bloody shapes. There’s so much blood on the floor that her boots make little splashes. “You look like the monster you are, Spike. You’re gross. There’s blood on your eyeballs.”

“Aw, poor Slayer. As if they were lily-white before. Dead, remember? Bloody evil and bloody useless we are, eh?”

"Way to go with the self-knowledge, Spike,” she bites back. "We were getting to be a good team. You could be a better man if you tried.”

“Oh, please, Slayer. Let’s get down on our knees and pray, or were you thinking of singing? The only thing I worship is my freedom.”

She looks at him strangely. “Won’t the chip be a problem?”

He shrugs elaborately. “Worked around it well enough here, didn’t I? Won’t be different somewhere else. And I won’t have to suffer you and your band of merry fools.”

She nods and diverts her attention to the biggest of the bloody heaps on the floor. Phew. That was close. Rule one of villainy: gloating never works out for you.

“Ready, Spike?”

“Tally-ho, Slayer. Let’s get those space invaders out of me. Third time’s the charm.”

The Slayer crouches down, balancing on the heels of her boots, but Spike shrugs and kneels. His jeans are ruined anyway.

The Slayer rolls up her sleeves and puts her hands in the middle of the body-shaped mass, on a spot that seems marginally less bloody and mangled than the rest. Spike scoots closer to her and puts his hands on her hips. Oops. Now her jeans will have bloody handprints. William the Bloody's handprints. There’s a rightness in that.

She doesn’t notice. Spike waits until she reaches the level of concentration she needs, pleasantly close to warm Slayer bum, swathed in Slayer scent. Nice. This way he doesn’t mind the waiting at all, patience not being his strongest point.

A strong and disconcerting sucking sensation starts up in his brain and Giles is out of there in three seconds flat. Good. The blob’s still a blob though.

Spike concentrates hard to keep Willow and Harris inside. “Try to make him look right, Slayer,” he says between clenched teeth.

The flesh wavers and wobbles, now appearing in the shape of a naked middle-aged man, then hastily covering up with translucent tweeds and woolen sweaters. The head forms, then the face, complete with glasses and frown.

Spike pulls the Slayer away from the now Giles-shaped body. She falls against him heavily for a moment and rests her forehead against his arm. Spike successfully quashes the urge to stroke her hair.

“Get his vital signs, Slayer. Or, no, don’t bother. If it’s failed, it’s failed; I've had it with regurgitating essence of Librarian. Gah.”

Giles coughs and his hands flutter. That would be a good sign, Spike guesses. He can hear the heart beat, anyway, and the blood pumping round.

“He’s alive, Buff. Let’s get on to Rosenberg. This one’s the smallest.”

“Yeah.”

The Slayer stands a bit forlornly, her arms dangling, staring at Giles like he’s the Messiah. Well, he would be a favorite minion of hers, he supposes. One that’s been well-trained and hard to replace.

“Spike?”

“What?”

“We should get the old body out of sight. That would really upset him when he wakes up.”

“Yeah, but not right now. We should get a move on before our luck goes south,” Spike says. He’s done enough lugging around undrinkable dead bodies for the moment.

“Give me hand here, Spike,” the Slayer goes on, ignoring his less than enthusiastic response. “Just in the corner here with an old blanket over him. We can bury him later.”

“Yeah, and that won’t wrinkle his starched arse? Seeing his name on a grave? You could just put them all out on the lawn. Give the carrion demons a Scooby snack.”

“Ew, Spike. And besides, who says there are any left? Adam might have used them all up, for all we know.”

All right, all right. He’s not sticking around for the burials round two, though. No business of his what she does with her free time once he’s his own man again, anyway.

They do Rosenberg. The Slayer’s imagination conjures up an orange fluffy sweater and purple cords, but he glimpses just a hint of pink check underwear. How revoltingly cute. He’s kind of sorry that her magic’s gone; it colored the world with more vividness than even vampire sight gives, and the undercurrent of burnt sugar in the marshmallowy sweetness of her feelings makes him think there’s hidden depths there. She might make a good vampire.

Harris seems reluctant to leave his cozy nook in Spike’s brain, and he has to go through it with the mental equivalent of a scraping tool to get out the last bits that cling stubbornly to Spike’s thought routines. Taste of greasy pancakes and shame. Out you go, Harris, back to your own body.

It’s done. The three Scoobies lie flat on their backs like the corpses they were just a minute ago, but those are stacked and covered in the corner of the basement, to be decently buried at the first convenient moment. The three of them are definitely alive, although they remain stubbornly unconscious.

The Slayer tries to get up sufficient energy to berate him but she’s looks utterly drained. Tears and snot mingle on her face while she makes frustrated hand gestures, trying to get herself under control.

“Spike, if they’re not …if they’re not…I will!”

She tries to hide her exhausted and relieved sobbing but he draws her against him and pats her back. If she’s not sure, it means he can’t leave yet. He could take off without waiting for her declaration of success, but the sun has inconveniently risen yet again in the midst of their busy beavering, and he’s stuck in the house until nightfall.

“I get it, Slayer. Let’s get you up to bed, eh? You’re worn out?”

“Do I look tired?” she asks childishly.

“Not at all,” Spike answers automatically. This is the kind of mood he's familiar with. “I just sense it, is all.”

She nods, satisfied, and allows him to lead her up the stairs. In her bedroom he strips off her clothes, less blood-spattered than his but still unfit for anything ever again. She tumbles into bed and seems to fall in a deep sleep. Now would be the perfect moment to make himself scarce. He covers her and wants to tippy toe out of there, but her hand shoots out and grasps him firmly by the knees of his trousers.

“Not going anywhere until I say so. Come to bed.”

In spite of himself, the idea of crawling into bed with a couple of handfuls of warm fragrant Slayer is more appealing to Spike than running through the harsh light of day, eluding the National Guard under a smoking blanket. His filthy, stiffening clothes fall off him on the floor and he slides in against the Slayer-warmed sheets with a sigh of contentment. She shifts languidly against him until she's perfectly comfortable, her satiny ass in his crotch. Spike thinks heaven would smell like this, sunlight on golden hair, skin so soft and smooth it's insubstantial as clouds.

His last thought tries to wake him back up with the alarming realization that he’s getting into the Slayer’s bed again. Wasn’t sleeping with her spell-induced? Wasn’t it supposed to be over?

The same thought paralyzes Spike instantly upon waking at the crack of dusk. Bloody hell. Instead of being two states away in his blackout car he’s lying with his prick up his archenemy’s arse. He has to be out of here like now.

He slides away from the Slayer carefully, but the friction this creates between her legs wakes her up and the first thing she does is grasp him firmly and shove him in the hot pussy that's been waiting for him.

He smothers his shout in her neck, curling his toes and tensing up from there to his crown to keep some grip on his own body.

"Fuck, Slayer, you're the…"

He keeps in what his mouth wants to spill and grabs her hard by the upper arms.

"On your knees, Slayer, gonna make you scream," he growls, trying to get the shaking of his thighs under control.

She twists away from him, all slippery smooth limbs glistening with life and youth, and the fire in her eyes pierces him, shockingly happy and carefree.

"I think not, Spike," she giggles, and flips him over, immobilized and stunned as he is by the loss of the velvet heat clamping his cock only a second ago.

Before he can speak or protest or grab her he's on his back and she mounts him, holding the horse steady in her strong hand. She descends on him like the mouth of a hurricane onto the earth, sucking up everything she touches, shaking it around good and proper and flinging it away again when she's done with it. He's helpless in the maw of her passion, awed before the force of nature that is Buffy.

"God, Slayer."

Spike bites his lips before the words can slide out and stoppers up the dangerous leak with her breast. He hears her gasping, feels the muscles in her back and sides work a deep hard rhythm, and mostly he just holds on for the ride and hopes he can make it to the finish-line. He's so engrossed in what they're doing that he doesn't hear the door open.

"Buffy? Are you awake? I heard you talk and I thought…Oh. Buffy, you're. Spike. Oh!" Willow's voice stutters and shrieks and fades away again.

Spike opens his eyes and sees Buffy's frozen caught-out look and the way her head lowers. She looks at him. He sees the world crashing back on her shoulders and the realization hit that the spell is reversed. They're back to normal and she's still fucking him.

She utters a strangled little cry and bloody red washes over her, dipping her in shame from her crown to the tips of her breasts.

"Oh God. Spike. I'm f…" she claps her hands over her mouth and scrambles off for the bathroom.

Spike lies motionless in her bed, not sure of what to feel just yet. There's no puking from the bathroom, just silence and after a bit the shower starts up. He gets up, scratching and stretching and takes a peek outside. He could just take off now. Leave Sunnydale. No need to say goodbye to anyone, is there. He can hear the Scoobies moving around downstairs. Willow sounded like her normal self. He's free to go.

He decides to play along for a bit and have a brief chat with them, and then go off. He has to make them think he’s still a neutered puppy, or he'll never leave this house. They'll convince the Slayer to stake him, even if she might not want to.

He pokes his clothes with his toe. The blood has dried up and he's not exactly squeamish, but the though of getting back into the stiff nastiness of them makes him hesitate for a second or two. The Slayer stomps back in, throws some wadded op cloth at him and glowers at him.

"Get showered and dressed, Spike," she says. "And hurry up. We're having a Scooby meeting in five minutes."

So he's not completely in her black books. Spike's beginning to suspect he doesn't know her at all. He gets into the gray T and baggy gray sweats she's provided him with. They don't fit badly at all; beneath the scent of fabric softener he detects a faint whiff of Joyce. In that case, he'll wear them with pride.

When he gets down, uncomfortable in his loose soft clothes and his hair smoothed down with something that doesn't feel as solid as he'd like it to, the four of them are seated around the dining room table. There's a heavy silence in the room, like it's been there for a while. As if they've not stopped talking because he comes in, which is what he's used to, but haven't started yet.

"Spike," Rupert says neutrally.

"Rupert! Back to your friendly, exuberant self, I see. Willow, Harris," Spike says, ignoring the uncomfortable vibes.

"Now can we start, Buffster? Now that our newest pal is here?" Harris says with a snide look at him. "Love the threads, Spike. An even better look on you than my shirts."

"Shall I tell him what happened to him a couple of days ago, Slayer?" Spike says, and he opens his mouth to go on.

Buffy's hand comes down on his forearm. He hadn't noticed she sat down next to him.

"In the right order, please, Spike. We don't want to confuse them."

Willow is looking wan and ill, but she’s also throwing him scared but fascinated rabbit looks from her big brown eyes. She tries to hide them behind a curtain of scarlet hair, which is looking a little patchy, just like on her corpse, but he's caught her at it. He winks at her and she blushes fiercely. He's still got it, obviously. He liked her thoughts, in fact he used to think of her neck quite a lot, but now his thoughts dwell more on a golden instead of a white throat.

"The last thing I remember is telling you to kill us, Buffy," Giles says. "I see you found a way to save us after all?"

Spike can see the cogs and gears clanking and shrieking in the Slayer's tiny brain, wired for fighting rather than subterfuge and decides to throw in his bit. It's only after he's opened his mouth that he realizes it's oil and not a wooden clog like he planned.

"Slayer decided to ally herself with me, Watcher. Together we not only defeated Adam, but half the demon army as well. Didn't need you lot at all."

"Yeah," the Slayer adds, "we used magic to become stronger and more focused and we tore out his heart, like you said, Giles. His power station."

"And all this while we were lying unconscious in the basement? For how many hours?"

"Hours?" Spike guffaws. "The power's been out for days, mate, the clocks are running all wrong. You were dead the better part of a week."

"Spike!"

"Dead to the world, I meant."

They pass right over it. The human mind is not equipped to think of itself as dead, Spike supposes. He doesn't either, not really.

"Buffy," Willow says hesitantly, "I understand if you don't want to talk about it, and I'll shut up if you want, but I couldn't help wondering, especially after, well you know, but what about Riley? Where is he?"

Buffy bites her lip.

Spike jumps in. "Finn's dead. Died defending Slayer here against Soylent Green."

The Slayer turns a little pale about the gills and Spike reflexively rubs his stomach. Long since digested, or whatever a vampire stomach does with its contents. Still. There's three bodies rotting away in the basement, no longer protected by any kind of magic, and the Slayer's gonna have a heap of trouble getting rid of them unobtrusively. Their eyes meet in perfect understanding. She wants him to take care of it. Too bad he's not gonna oblige.

“Willow,” the Slayer begins hesitantly. “I have to tell you something. I should have done that earlier, but…”

Bugger. Spike clean forgot about Willow’s sweet little friend, she of the Sapphic persuasion.

Willow gets it. She doesn’t say anything or move, but thick tears slide like glycerine down her waxy cheeks.

"Riley and Tara," Harris says.

He looks more affected than the Slayer, swallowing and blinking, which would be unspeakably sad if you were into that kind of thing. He catches Spike's look at his quivering chin and jump-starts right into aggressiveness.

"Hey. What I'd like to know is how and when and why Captain Clorox here changed his mind and changed sides. It's because of you that we almost split apart. Did you forget about that, Buffy? What's he doing here?"

Buffy draws herself up. "Spike's our - my ally. Without him you'd be dead, I’d be dead and Adam would still rule over Sunnydale. We owe him, guys. I don't wanna hear any more about it."

Spike can't believe how easy it is to leave out information. It's a thing he should definitely remember in the future when lying. He gets up from the table. This seems to be the signal for a general sense that the meeting is over.

Harris isn't that easily convinced. Spike can tell he's jealous at the thought that his secure place as sidekick might be threatened. He needn't worry. William the Bloody's nobody's sidekick.

"How do we know he won't change his mind again? What guarantee do we have that Spike is gonna stay on our side, huh?" Harris says.

"Xander's right, Buffy. I don't want to minimize Spike's contribution, but he's never been a reliable resource. Spike? What do you say?" Rupert says.

“Remember telling me all about a higher purpose, 'how the chip was my chance to come over all good-guy? Haven’t been able to put that talk out of my mind, Rupert.” Spike accompanies his insincere words by a hearty clap on Giles’ shoulder, making the man stagger. “Lost actual sleep over it. So, me ‘n Buffy had a talk and she seemed the right person to lead me to salvation.”

“Redemption,” Buffy cuts in sharply.

“Yeah, what she said.”

“Really,” the Watcher says and looks him over with what Spike can only describe as a 'Dad’ kind of look. Next he’s gonna ask him how he expects to maintain his daughter in the manner she’s accustomed to.

Giles folds his arms before his stomach and looks askance at the ceiling, as if seeking inspiration there. “And would said, um, redemption, include atoning for past misdeeds?”

“Absolutely,” Buffy says.

“Up to a point,” Spike says at the same time. “Couldn’t begin to make good for all the horrible things I did, people I killed.“ His stomach rumbles. “Stuff I did to you guys, certainly. Let me begin by telling you I’m really, really sorry for thinking for a brief, deluded moment I should chuck in my lot with that terrible monster Adam. Biggest mistake I ever made. I’m so happy I looked up Buffy and offered her my services. Right, Buff?”

Buffy turns delightfully puce and mumbles a vague agreement.

“I know of something you could do for me,“ Giles says with false cheer. “How about the vintage car you wrecked?

Spike takes a step away from the table. “I’d have no way of ever offering recompense for a priceless car like that. Couldn’t put a price to a great design classic like that, eh?”

“I could,” Giles growls, just as Spike wants to sidle by, and grabs the lapels of his duster. Why the bleeding hell are all and sundry so partial to grabbing his duster? It’s been his good friend these past twenty-five years and he resents the greasy paws desecrating it.

“Listen up, you nasty little punk!” the Watcher says in something closer to a serious threat than Spike has ever heard from him. “If you stray an inch from the straight and narrow with Buffy I will kill you, make no mistake.”

Spike actually believes him. What’s come over the mild-mannered stuttering Librarian? He sounds like someone Spike could respect.

“Word of honor, Rupes,” he says and tries to look sincere. He wishes he could practice the effect in a mirror. He’s gonna need it.

Spike sprints to the door but is met by the Harris boy, who’s trying to look as tough and uncompromising as the Watcher.

“I don’t know what your plan is Spike, but I know you’re up to no good. I know where to find you!”

Spike steps closer to Harris, hitches up his jeans and repositions his package. This never fails to reduce Harris to a nervous wreck, clueless as to the cause of his own knee-jerk reaction to the remotest suggestion of Spike’s sexuality. Spike has no problem shouldering past him.

In the hallway before the mirror is the last obstacle to freedom. Willow’s trying on Joyce’s hats, which mostly are too big for her, and Spike has to say that Joyce, however much he may have liked her, had awful taste in hats. An eighty-year-old would have been ashamed to wear them to church.

“What do you think, Spike? Is this a good look for me?”

“Perfect for a funeral, Red.,” Spike says thoughtlessly.

Willow pulls the hat over her face and blunders off. He feels one of these strange twinges he’s been having, like indigestion. Finn’s magically enhanced blood doesn’t sit too well in the stomach, apparently.

The front door. The rest of his life. It’s that close, but he might have known it wasn’t gonna go that easy. Faster than he’s ever seen her move, the tiny figure of the Slayer stands between him and the coveted exit, with the crossed arms and the tapping foot of a brassed-off Slayer.

“Do you want to step aside, Slayer, or do you want me to go through you and the front door? Hard to replace, what with the town in an uproar.”

“We have to talk, Spike,” she says.

“No, we haven’t. Kindly move away now, Buff- Slayer.”

“Spike, If you’re thinking about leaving Sunnydale, don’t. One toe away from the line and you’re dead.”

“What are you talking about, you daft bint? I’ve got a chip, remember, not going anywhere or doing anything.”

The Slayer looks at him with a small smile playing on her lips, and while he's staring at her mouth her fist comes up out of nowhere and punches him in the nose. Spike's control flies away from him and he clobbers her right back.

Buffy staggers back and through the blood trickling from her nose he sees her triumphant smile.

"Gotcha! I knew there was something wrong with the chip, I just knew! Do you really think I wouldn't notice you biting me?"

A prickling washes over his whole body. Bugger. She knows. What raised her suspicions? Gee, what would it be, a jeering voice in his brain says. Would it be some colossally stupid prat who forgot himself and bit the Slayer while his brain was up her twat?

"When somebody invites a vampire to bite her, like when she says, "ooh, Spike, bite me, harder", the chip recognizes my intention is not to harm," he tries, but he knows it won't wash.

"Yeah, right," Buffy snorts. "The chip can tell you’re going for a hickey. Please come up with a more likely story. Or, actually, don't. Won't help."

His hand involuntarily checks if the chip is still in his pocket, and faster than a rattlesnake, Buffy's hand shoots out and wrestles the tiny prickly thing from him.

"So that's what you’ve been fondling? You’ve got a chip in your pocket? And all this time I thought you were happy to see me.”

Spike can't fathom her attitude. She knows the chip is out, and she's still sort of flirting with him?

Spike swallows and keeps his face impassive. He hopes. “I meant what I said to Giles, Buffy. I promise not to harm anybody.”

He doesn't mean it, of course; all that it means is that he has to get out tonight. If the DeSoto won’t run, he’ll hitch a ride. He doesn’t know why he feels panic at the thought of leaving Sunnydale, but he resolutely quashes it. Immortality is not for wusses.

“Goodbye, Slayer. Let’s not meet again.”

“Hey! Don’t walk away like that! I’m not done!”

Spike strides off as fast as he can, ignoring her voice and the tight feeling in his chest. Indigestion. Or maybe he should stop smoking.

His only chance at a normal life is to get the hell away from her, and that’s what he will do.

TBC
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