All About Spike - Necessary Evils by Barb Cummings

Necessary Evils
By Barb Cummings

Sequel to A Raising in the Sun

Part 24

By the time they left Xander and Anya's place, a fire truck and a brace of police cars had arrived on the scene, and the parking lot was alive with strobing red lights and the garble of police radios. At least the car alarms had been turned off. Several towering, husky firemen and a pair of officers were herding the bystanders away with soothing stories about gas mains and methane build-up and explosions which were all under control now and everyone please return to your homes.

So they'd done just that, Willow and Tara on foot, Buffy taking Spike up on his offer of a ride. Dawn had met them at the door, woken by the motorcycle's roar, and despite the lateness of the hour insisted upon exercising her rights as resident vampire medic to House Summers.

"Spike, sit down!" Dawn's voice, peremptory and commanding, echoed down the hall.

"Not until you let go the sewing kit, Hawkeye. Contrary to popular opinion, I do possess working nerve endings."

Buffy paused in the bathroom doorway and bit her lip to stifle a laugh. Spike was backed up against the laundry hamper, glaring at Dawn, a force to be reckoned with in pink flannel pajamas, who was facing him down with equal determination and an extremely large and deadly-looking needle strung with coarse thread. The counter by the sink was littered with bandages and adhesive tape and tubes of burn ointment. Buffy hadn't the heart to tell her sister that the ritual was probably pointless; Spike was immune to infections and healed even faster than she did--and a good thing, considering how prone he was to getting himself beaten to a pulp.

Still, Dawn obviously enjoyed fussing over Spike as much as Spike enjoyed being fussed over. Let them have their fun. Besides, though his face wasn't too bad--the duster had shielded it from the worst of the Harrier's light--the burns across the backs of his hands were all crusty and oozing in the center and dark angry red around the edges. The sight of them made something inside her squirm, despite knowing perfectly well that he'd taken far worse injuries in the past, and weathered them alone and helpless... maybe Spike was due a little pampering.

"Come on, Spike, you do too need stitches!" Dawn was deep into stubborn mode, hands on hips and lips pressed together. "Your guts are practically hanging out. You could get--" She cast about for something sufficiently dire. "Peritonitis! I've been reading up on this. I think I want to go to medical school."

"Consider your dedication to humanity commended, Snack-size," Spike interrupted, "but, in case you hadn't noticed, somewhat inhuman here, and I don't recall volunteering to be your personal experimental cadaver. No stitches without brandy. Lots and lots of brandy."

Dawn's eyes narrowed. "It's for your own good. Buffy, tell him to--"

Buffy bent and gave the long gash across the rippling musculature of Spike's stomach a cursory examination. The crimson furrow intersected the white-on-white traces of half a dozen older scars, oozing a sluggish trickle of red where Dawn's cleaning the clotted blood away had opened it up again. Someday we'll have to compare sexy wounds. The Harrier's blades had parted pale skin and underlying tissue with laser-like precision--deep, but it hadn't quite penetrated the layer of muscle. "Sorry, Dawn. Distinct lack of visible guts. Have to vote with the vampire minority here." She snatched up Spike's shirt, currently wadded up on the counter, and headed out into the hall.

"Love, you don't need to--" Spike made as if to follow her out, only to be blocked by Dawn. He stuck his head out into the hall and yelled after her, "Oi! I need that!"

"Oh, come on, live dangerously! Wear a nice plaid!" Buffy yelled back, waving the shredded t-shirt at him. Honestly, you wouldn't think an immortal would get so attached to clothes, especially a t-shirt that was one of a set of a dozen clone-brothers. Entering the kitchen, she turned on the cold water in the sink and dumped the shirt in--it was a complete loss; the Harrier's blades had left it in tatters all across the front, but if there was one thing she'd learned in her career as Slayer it was that throwing away bloodsoaked rags was an invitation to trouble. People always took it the wrong way.

She watched the blood swirl Psycho-style down the drain and wondered idly what police forensics would make of it. Victim has been dead approximately a hundred and twenty years, and really likes garlic wings . She sluiced the shirt under the faucet and frowned; there was something off about the weight of it. Something in the pocket--whatever it was Spike had been trying to hide last week? Her questing fingers met chill metal amidst the wet folds of cloth. Cigarette case? No...

Half an hour later, Dawn had reluctantly downgraded her plans from major surgery to first aid, and shuffled yawning back to bed. Buffy had traded her own worse-for-wear clothes for a white terrycloth robe and retired to her room to recline on her bed, legs crossed demurely at the ankles and the copy of Fitzgerald Spike'd given her propped open in her lap. She left the door ajar--an open invitation, if someone chose to accept it.

Spike materialized in the doorway, his duster thrown over his shoulders and his alabaster skin gleaming in the lamplight--a slightly shopworn angel with shabby black leather wings. He was sporting a neatly taped bandage around his lean middle, and both hands were swathed in gauze and redolent of burn ointment. He propped an elbow against the doorframe in a stiff parody of his usual grace, wincing a little as the motion pulled at his wound, and looked around the room uneasily. "Er... where'd you put my shirt, pet?"

Buffy assumed a big, perky, helpful-girlfriend smile. "That old thing? I tossed it."

An expression of mild panic crossed Spike's face. "You didn't--" He stopped. Noticed the pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles in her hand. Closed his mouth with a snap. Buffy held the glasses up, dangling them from her fingers by one earpiece. "Looking for these, Master William?"

"Oh, bloody hell," Spike growled, stalking over to the bed and snatching the glasses. Buffy giggled and scooted over, patting the mattress, and he dropped down beside her with a disgusted snort, examining the lenses for damage.

"I found them in your shirt pocket when I was rinsing the blood out. You really are out a shirt, by the way, unless the ventilated look is in among the fangy set. What are they for? I mean, the trophy coat is squicky yet understandable, but trophy glasses? We're getting a little fetishy here."

"No." Spike held the glasses up to the light, drew a deep breath, scrunched up his face as if he were expecting a firing squad to open up at any moment, and slipped them on. "They're mine."

"No way!" Buffy sat up and got onto her hands and knees, peering into his eyes. "You need glasses?" She'd run into vampires who wore glasses before--that librarian guy for one--but Spike? Glasses were the antithesis of Spike. Giles-y and bookish and definitely un-hot. Except... except when they were perched on that aquiline nose, emphasizing the arch of those incredible cheekbones and the depth of those luminous blue eyes and providing a scholarly counterpoint to tousled platinum hair and all those lean ropy muscles... "Uh." Oh, God, he's hot. Indiana Jones hot. Buffy realized her mouth was hanging open and closed it before her tongue could loll out. "I mean, you need glasses. You really, really need glasses. What happened to superior vampire eyesight?"

Spike looked testy. "Brilliant for spotting a moving target at five hundred feet in the dead of night. Doesn't do bugger all for your ability to read fine print. And I don't need glasses. Dalton, he needed glasses; blind as a bat he was. I'm just a touch far-sighted. Do fine without 'em." He folded his arms across his chest--definitely sulking now. "Dunno why you're so surprised. Cecily didn't give you the full and pathetic run-down on the life and times of old William?"

Buffy clamped her lips down on a smile and settled down at his side again. When Spike started talking about William in the third person it generally meant his ego wanted soothing. "Cecily lost me somewhere around the point your Aunt Letitia lost her husband."

"Good place for it. Auntie was a miserable old bat. Uncle Charles was well out of it."

She had to ask. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. "Did you kill them?"

Spike cocked his head. Spike-head-tilt with glasses was possibly even more meltworthy than without. "Could you be a bit more specific, love?"

"Your family. After you got turned. Did you--"

His breath escaped in a hiss of leashed annoyance. "No. Why should I have? Dad died when I was fifteen, and my Mum outlived me by a good twenty years. Died in her bed." Back to being William in the first person, Buffy noted. His eyes glinted behind the oval lenses, lost in time and distance for a minute; then the glint went vicious. "Ask about the wankers at that party and it won't be such a touching story. That's one bit my official Council biography's got right."

"Party?" Obviously Cecily had been just about to get to the good stuff.

"The one I went to on the night I died." Spike was watching her as he always did when he laid the horrors of his past out on the table for her, measured regard in his ice-blue eyes--would this be the confession that sent her packing? "Didn't go well. A week later I earned my nickname right and proper. Railroad spike through the head, nice and slow. One after the other. Among other amusements. Roger last, so he could see what was coming to him. He'd screamed his throat bloody by the time he died. Angelus was proud of me." A wry twitch of his lips. "First and last time, I think."

"Oh." She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat--not at the description of the carnage, but at the dreamy satisfaction in his voice as he described it. "You know, I keep thinking we've done this part. You tell me something awful, I react with shock and horror--and it never gets any easier, hearing this stuff."

His eyes were drinking in her face as if every nuance of her expression was his life's blood. Anger, horror, even revulsion he'd take in stride; it was her contempt that would break him. Buffy's fingers closed pre-emptively over his forearm, feeling the quiver of muscles even through the leather. "Which is good, I think. The day I start treating Spike's Tales From The Crypt like a Sam Raimi movie is the day Ward starts worrying about the Buffy."

Spike looked down at the five small fingers making half-moon indentations in the leather of his sleeve. "Did you know, I've told you the story of my life a hundred times?" Without meeting her eyes he reached over and enveloped her hand in his, turned it over, his thumb caressing the lines of her palm. He took nothing for granted with her. Probably better he should--she was still in the business of killing his kind, after all. How many times would they repeat this ritual in their lives? "Over the summer. Every pathetic detail. Tried telling you all different ways. Always came down to a bourgeois git with delusions of social grandeur and a portmanteau full of bad verse." A bitter smile chased across his face and was gone. "Sometimes it's a bloody sight easier to talk to you when you're not really here to listen. And then I'd get past the story of my life and into the story of my death, and it'd hit me after a while... I haven't done anything. I came, I saw, I killed--story of my unlife. That's what I am--what I'm here for. I'm a killer. Creature of sodding darkness. Ought to be enough, oughtn't it?" There were hairline cracks in his voice. "There shouldn't be this... this wanting more, like I was still that poncy little twit I got shut of a hundred and twenty years ago." His canines sharpened and his eyes went golden for a second. "I got more, didn't I? So why's it not enough anymore?"

"I don't know." Buffy laid her head on his shoulder, the scuffed and battered leather cool beneath her cheek, and felt the tension in his body start to ease, fiber by fiber. "But I'm glad it's not. A pretty smart guy I know told me once that just because I was a killer, that didn't mean that a killer was all I was."

Spike's arm shifted to accommodate her weight, curling round her waist. She felt his intake of breath, his chest rising and falling in perfect unison with hers, the cool, supple, inhuman vitality of his body against her own. This close, his angelic face and Elgin marble body revealed subtle flaws: the ghostly fretwork of old scars that even vampire healing left as evidence of battles lost and won, the netted laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes, the nicotine stains on his fingers (but not his teeth; did going fangy and back again get rid of them? Or did he just use a good toothpaste?) No pure, cold, Anne Rice marble perfection, this undeath of his--a body that, however strong and fast and impervious to damage it might be, still got hungry and hurt and horny, needed exercising and shaving and flossing between the fangs. Somehow the imperfections just made him more achingly beautiful--knowing as she did that she'd put some of the lines on that ageless face.

"I want to hear it, Spike--the story of your life, I mean. From you. And the Tales From the Crypt? I need to hear this stuff. Angel and I--we never talked about... what he did, not really. I thought it wasn't important--he had a soul, you know? Why would I need to know all that icky old stuff that would never come up again?" She managed a laugh of sorts. "And I'm not a very talky person. You may have noticed."

"I've gotten the suspicion off and on." Spike dropped his head with that look which meant he'd have been blushing if he were still capable of it. "Not a lot to tell about my human life, really. And dull enough it can wait until you're not already about to fall asleep." He shifted uncomfortably, stuck one gauze-swathed hand through a Harrier-made slit in the front panel of his duster and wriggled his fingers. "Getting to be more hole than coat. P'raps I can get Will to waste a bit of the old mojo fixing it up. Though I'd've thought she'd be less apt to waste it after running out the once."

Buffy allowed the change of subject without comment. "She seems to have a lot to waste." Willow's mysteriously-restored magic nagged at her; things that seemed too good to be true usually were. She debated telling Spike of Tara's fears that Willow would never recover her magic, but Tara'd given her that information in confidence. "Just let Wills hold it together until tomorrow night, that's all I ask." She began playing with the lapel of his duster, curling the point up and unrolling it again. "I know I wasn't making with the master plans out there tonight, but I wish she hadn't zapped that thing. We could have found out more." Her fingers brushed across his bandaged stomach in a tentative caress. "You gonna be in shape to not hit people tomorrow night?"

"Yeh, I'll be there." Impossibly firm muscles tensed and relaxed again under her touch and Spike looked down at himself. "Didn't even feel it at first. Sodding things were so sharp I could have lost my head and never dusted for not noticing."

"It was willing to kill Xander to get to Anya." Buffy nibbled on her lower lip. "So the extra credit question is, is it coming back, and is it bringing friends? Are we positive this was one of the good guys?"

Spike's cheeks hollowed, and he pulled his lighter out of the duster pocket and played with it for a moment before stuffing it back in. "It'll be back. Thing about demons, pet, good or bad... we're not complicated. We've got a job and we do it, and it doesn't much matter what's in the way." One corner of that expressive mouth quirked. "'S one reason the pure ones can't stand us vamps. Too much humanity left in the worst of us, all those petty desires and conflicting emotions--affection and jealousy..." He laughed, short and sharp, and pressed his free hand to his midriff. "You ever stop to think, pet, that pure good's got as little use for mercy as pure evil? What could a bloke who never does wrong ever understand of we poor sods who do?"

Buffy winced as if it were she whose gut had been sliced open. Faith, staring at her with pain-filled eyes. "You got no idea what it's like on the other side..." Even when he wasn't trying, Spike threw up unpleasant truths like stones from a plowshare. It struck her that she'd already made the choice she'd been pondering earlier in the evening, walked through Door Number Two without a glance at the curtain where Carol Merrill was standing now. This was becoming the heart of her life, these moments alone with Spike, bathed in the glow of candles or the harsher illumination of tungsten filaments. She could be the Slayer alone, but this was what allowed her to be Buffy, gave her strength to battle the league of mundane foes that awaited her outside the boundaries of their charmed circle. "Tonight, with the car? That was...I don't want to say this like I'm giving you Snausages or something, but--you did good, Spike. I was proud of you. Well, except for the axe thing, that could have used some work."

His hand sifted through her hair, honey-dark against the white of the gauze, twining the tawny locks around his pale fingers. He smiled, a self-deprecating light in his eyes. "Ah, the heroism bit. Well, pet, I know you get off on it. Even when you're supposed to be on strike."

"Well, yeah." With some effort she kept the smile from her lips. "Suppose you're telling me you don't? How many of my kind have you saved, Spike?"

He pulled back, deep suspicion in his eyes, shoved his glasses higher on his nose and stared at her. "Would the answer be 'Not enough?'" he asked.

Buffy nodded. Oh, he so deserved this. "Mmhmm. And they just keep coming, don't they? And some part of you wants it. Not only to make me happy--but because you're just a little bit in love with it."

Spike jolted back against the white-iron curlicues of the headboard with the look of a man upon whom a horrid and seductive truth had been sprung. Payback, Spikey! He blinked, momentarily speechless, then sputtered, "You incredible bitch, how long have you been waiting to say that?"

She smirked, slipping her hand beneath the duster and splaying the fingers over his silent heart. "Awhile."

His eyes had the most incredible expression, regret holding wonder at bay. "Not like I cared deeply about her, love. Don't give me credit I'm not due."

How carefully she had to pick her words. "No... but you cared about saving her. It's something."

Spike snorted. "It's perverted."

Turning in the circle of his arm, she raised her hand to his cheek, tracing strong bones and the sandpaper roughness along his jaw--incipient 5:00 AM shadow. "So you're perverted. I like my vampires a little kinky that way, you know?"

Lips met parted lips, warm and cool together, touching, tasting--so soft for such a hard man, that luscious mouth of his. Spike nuzzled along her jawline, nipping at her earlobe. "How about other ways?"

"Out of curiosity, do you ever think of anything but sex?"

"Not while you're around." He cupped the impressive bulge in his jeans with his free hand and leered at her. "Nurse Buffy, I've got a swelling. Wanna kiss it better?"

Buffy poked him in the stomach. Spike yelped, but if anything it appeared to increase his enthusiasm. "Do not tell me this is the fun kind of pain."

He didn't laugh--probably it would have hurt in the non-fun way--but his eyes were dancing. "Nah, but it could lead to the fun kind." His hand cupped her breast, cool confident fingers kneading the soft flesh before giving her already-alert nipple a firm pinch. The hand dropped away and she yearned after it, all tingly-warm, calling his fingers back to tweak and tease. Spike callously ignored her imperious little whimper and reached for the book lying on the coverlet beside them. He flipped it open, cleared his throat, and began to read-- not, for once, squinting and holding it at arm's length.

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,

Some letter of that After-life to spell

And by and by my Soul return'd to me,

And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell"

She listened, happily mesmerized. He could get her off with that voice alone, rich and rolling, raspy with a century's worth of too much booze and too many cigarettes.

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,

And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

Buffy reminded herself that Dawn was asleep just down the hall, and Willow and Tara might get home and walk upstairs at any minute, and letting her hand wander down to Spike's fly was just asking for trouble. She'd always been a troublemaker. God he looked hot in those stupid glasses. Oops, there went the buttons. No wonder, with the kind of pressure they were under, day in, day out, poor things, set the impossible task of restraining not-so-little Spike, ready to stand up and do his duty for Slayer and country. Wasn't three hours of sex in a day enough for anyone? Obviously not. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Let's find out! One, two, oh, way more than three...

Spike started to take his glasses off and set them on the nightstand, but Buffy reached up and laid a hand on his arm. "Leave them on, William." As her golden head descended upon him once more, Spike leaned back on the pillows with a happy groan and a grateful wonder in his eyes, as if she'd given him an unexpected gift. She looked up one last time, eyes sparkling. "And keep reading."

Dawn Summers sat at the kitchen table, drawing figure eights with her spoon in her cereal and trying to decide exactly how pissed off she was at her sister. Not allowed to sit in on the summoning. Not allowed to go to Anya's shower. Buffy was totally over-reacting to the shoplifting thing. It was bad enough that she was persona non grata in Sunnydale Mall; grounding her from everywhere else was beyond the pale.

Not pissed off enough to tell Mrs. Kroger that Buffy was dating a guy who thought he was a vampire--no, that would be going entirely too far, and get Spike in trouble. On the other hand, that edifying scene she'd caught a glimpse of through the crack of Buffy's bedroom door, before Buffy had slammed it behind her in their morning race for the bathroom--Spike, dead asleep with a sated smile on his face, wrists still lashed securely to the iron headboard with what looked suspiciously like a pair of her sister's underwear--that had possibilities.

Not that she'd actually tell The Kroger that Buffy was engaging in bondage fun with a vampire (or anyone else) a mere twenty or thirty feet from her impressionable younger sister. That way lay a one-way bus ticket to L.A., and Joyce Summers hadn't raised any dumb children. But letting Buffy think she might was another matter.

In the midst of her internal debate, Spike ambled into the kitchen, decked out in mostly-buttoned jeans and little else, all sleepy purry stretches and bed-head. Someone needed to explain to Buffy that cleaning out a drawer for her demon lover wasn't particularly productive if he wasn't given the opportunity to put anything in it. Dawn studied him critically; if the way he was moving was any indication, the gash across his stomach was healing nicely beneath the bandages. Move over, Noah Wyle.

"Hullo, Bit." Spike wandered over to the refrigerator, ran a hand through his unruly hair, and hung on the door, gazing into its depths as if he could read omens in the disposition of leftovers. "You look peaked." An uneasy thought appeared to strike him. "Didn't keep you up, did we?"

"No." Dawn weighed the decorative advantages of a shirtless Spike wandering around the house against the disadvantages of having to fight someone even more hair-obsessed than Buffy for the bathroom of mornings. Tough decision. "Mrs. Kroger's coming over after school and I have to sit through the big Shoplifting Is A Cry For Help speech. It's like, I've got it already, okay? Stealing's bad. I'm not gonna do it again. So what's their damage? My language comprehension's at college level, they have no clue what my life's like, and getting all Grover and Ernie to explain to me how I feel is the height of lamitude."

"So far as authority's concerned, it's not enough you don't repeat your sins--you've got to suffer for 'em. Hence the lecture." Spike pulled out the remains of the experimental macaroni-hotdog casserole and sniffed at it. His eyes lit up. "Curry?"

Dawn nodded. "And ketchup. Gives it kick." She started to scowl at her cereal, reconsidered and turned on the puppy eyes instead. Spike was a sucker for the puppy eyes. "I did suffer. Still suffering. Big time, paper bag on the head suffering."

Spike set the casserole dish on the kitchen island, fetched a spoon from the silverware drawer and dug in. (Spike was, Dawn often felt, the only person she knew who had any sense of culinary adventure.) "Wankers, the lot of them, but--" He gestured with the spoon between bites. "Wages of getting caught, Pidge. Fair cop, innit?"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mr. Undead Citizen Of The Month."

"Next time you'll know better."

She shot him a conspiratorial grin. "Not to get caught?"

Spike winked at her and laughed. "Got it in one. Look, pet, been thinking about it, what aside from nicking stuff might give you that feeling you're looking for..."

He had? "I can't wait to hear this one."

"...and doing a naff job of it since most of what I come up with I'd have to use your guts for guitar strings if you tried it and flense anyone you tried it with--but there's always killing things to cheer a chap up on a rainy day. Could show you a few moves. If I can talk your sis into it, anyway. You're old enough to kick a little arse, and it's not like I could hurt you by accident."

Did that mean what she thought it meant? An entry into the elite Scooby patrolling circle? Self-defense lessons beyond what she could scrounge spying on Buffy's training sessions? Realizing that a delighted squeak wasn't exactly the reaction of a mature woman of the world, Dawn repressed her impulse to bounce up and down in her seat. Cool, calm, collected. A second later she burst out, "Omigod, that would be so cool! Can you teach me that thing where you just go snap--" She demonstrated graphically with both hands-- "and break their necks like a stale Dorito?"

"Absolutely!" Spike paused, visibly reconsidering. "Er, well, p'raps not right off. Not a big supply of necks to practice on, once we've used up Harris. But eye gouges, kicks in the balls, that sort of thing..."

"Spike, you are so great!" Dawn leaped out of her chair, sending it screeching across the kitchen floor, and gave him an enthusiastic hug. Trepidation hit her like a cold wave. "Buffy's not gonna go for it. She's going to think it's too much fun or something--she even grounded me from Anya's dumb old wedding shower!"

"Let me handle your sis." Spike smoothed Dawn's hair away from her face affectionately and his expression went serious. "But you've got to give me something to work with, Platelet. That means no larking about or having The Kroger on. Nod 'n smile and pretend like they've nailed your psyche to the wall with darts of incisive analysis, even if they're spouting utter bollocks."

Dawn nodded vigorously. "Got it. I'll be so non-recidivism girl. Buffy will think I've been replaced by Pod Dawn." She would have pressed for further details of the neck-breaking thing and possible demonstrations, but at that juncture Willow and Tara appeared, juggling backpacks and overflowing book bags, and the kitchen erupted into the normal chaos of House Summers on a school morning. Dawn flung herself back into her chair, twining her feet around the legs to defend her claim in the face of potential squatters.

"Are we completely out of orange juice?" Willow asked, ducking under Tara's arm and burrowing into the terra incognita of the vegetable drawer. "And what happened to my Raisinettes? Did Hurricane Buffy blow through on a post-slay binge again, because they most definitely said 'Willow' right on the box, and--"

"Might have been Spike," Dawn pointed out, excessively helpful. "He eats like a horse too." Spike looked affronted, but as his mouth was full, any attempts at a snappy comeback were momentarily thwarted.

"Check behind the milk," Tara advised, stuffing a handful of granola bars into her bag. "Dawnie, do you have a ride, or--"

"There's nothing behind the milk but pig's blood. Oh, wait, here they are. But no OJ, and a day without orange juice--"

Spike perked up. "Hand that out, would you, pet?"

"Yeah. Megan's mom's picking me up." Mrs. Kendall, fortunately, had not gone into overprotective parental meltdown over The Incident, probably because Megan hadn't been involved, for once--or maybe having an elder daughter currently sporting lumpies and fangs made her a kinder, more tolerant person where merely human peccadilloes were concerned. Yeah, right.

"--is the kind of day we get until the next Social Security check arrives." Buffy came trotting down the stairs in full war paint and Office Drag, fixing her conservative gold stud earrings and displaying every sign of pre-interview jitters. "And don't even say it; I didn't have enough money with me when I stopped by the store to get everything on the list. I had to leave the Minute Maid melting in the magazine rack on the way to the checkout. I'm never going to be able to show my face in the frozen goods aisle again." She turned and fixed a gimlet eye on Spike, who was in the process of reaching over Willow's shoulder for the pig's blood. "How much of that stuff do you drink a day, anyway?"

Spike froze with the carton half-way to his lips, looking alarmed, faintly guilty, and puzzled as to what exactly he had to be guilty about. "Two pints, give or take," he said cautiously. "Sometimes three. More if I'm mending."

Buffy said "Hmm," in the disapproving tone she used for any subject connected with The Budget, the one that made Dawn feel like a traitor for shooting up three or four inches in the past year and thus taking up valuable space, food, and new clothing. "If you're going to be over here twenty-four hours a day, I've got to plan for it. You're not going to be living solely on Dawn's radioactive mutant leftovers."

Spike fished around in his back pocket, pulled out a handful of crumpled bills, and laid them on the countertop. "Blood and orange juice all round. Knock yourselves out."

Tara gave him a grateful smile. "Thanks--we can stop by the store on the way back from--"

Buffy grabbed Tara's wrist before she could take the money. "You know we can't take that, Spike."

“We can’t?” Tara asked. “Why? It’s not counterfeit.” She picked up one of the bills and examined it. “Is it?”

Spike's jaw set in concrete. "Not asking you to support me, Slayer."

Buffy's eyes went slitty. "I have no intention of supporting you, but I'm not taking your money, and you know perfectly well why."

A deep throaty growl and a burst of vampire speed put the two of them were nose to nose. "No woman of mine's going to be put out keeping me in blood and beers--that's the bloke's job--"

Behold the male ego in its natural habitat. Dawn hid a grin behind her hand as icicles formed in her sister's eyes. Way to go with the convinciness, Spike. "That would be 'job' as in 'bank job?'" Buffy asked sweetly. "I'd rather be put out than put away."

There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Lisa peered cautiously through the blinds. Dawn stood up, scooped up the last few spoonfuls of cereal and reached for the door, mindful not to open it far enough to let the morning sun in. "Lise! Does your mom know--"

"Hey, maybe I could do a water to blood spell or something," Willow said, eyes lighting up at the prospect of magical usefulness like Spike's at the scent of curry. "Or water to orange juice. We'd never have to shop again." Tara, who'd taken advantage of Buffy's distraction to slip Spike's money into the petty cash cookie jar, shook her head and made a throat-cutting gesture.

"No, I didn't tell her we were getting you," Lisa whispered. She looked nervously around, expecting hidden cameras, perhaps. "She just thinks I'm riding with Megan." She inched one hand through the door and held out a square envelope with a wreath sticker on it. "I just wanted to drop this off for..."

"If you really want to make yourself useful, Will, magic me up a tunnel from the basement to the sewers. It's bloody annoying making a mad dash for the nearest manhole."

"Really? I could--"

"NO!" Buffy and Tara shouted at once, as Willow raised a casual hand and an ominous underground rumble shook the house on its foundations. Spike, looking rather shaken himself, mouthed "Joking!" at Willow.

Megan's pert and over-mascara'd face appeared below Lisa's in the gap of the door. "Dawn? Was that, like, an earthquake? Are you--" She caught sight of Spike. "Oh. My. GOD!"

"I can get you a mop to go with that tongue, if you want," Dawn said acidly. "The floor needs washing." She took the card from Lisa and handed it over to Spike.

"Look, Slayer, if you won't let me look after you, at least let me look after myself!" Spike and Buffy looked to be a hair away from either kissing or punching each other, having taken their argument from zero to sixty in five seconds flat. Spike diverted his attention from the Slayer stare-down for a second to give the card a puzzled look, which he then turned on Lisa.

"It's a Christmas card," Lisa squeaked. "Because of saving my life and all."

Spike looked from Lisa to the card and back again, a little startled, and, Dawn suspected, far more pleased than he was about to let on. After an awkward silence he nodded. "Thanks."

Out at the curb Mrs. Kendall was honking her horn for them to hurry. Lisa gave Spike a watery smile and ducked out. Megan remained in the doorway, gazing at Spike with the adoration she usually reserved for guys with staples in their navels, until Dawn shoved her bodily out into the driveway. Willow and Tara followed them out, arguing earnestly over whether or not an off-the-cuff tunnel spell would have resulted in the sewer backing up into the Summers' basement, and set off down the street towards the bus stop, book bags banging at their sides.

"How do you live in that house and not, like, absolutely die?" Megan asked.

Did Megan absolutely have to undermine her noble resolve at every opportunity? Dawn gave the eye-roll another workout. "It's a constant struggle. Geez, Megan, he's not only my sister's boyfriend, he's your sister's ex. Generational issues much? Plus, smoker. He probably kisses like sucking an ashtray."

Megan tossed her hair and giggled. "Ooh. So maybe I should take up smoking. With one of those, you know, long holder thingies?"

Dawn reflected cheerfully as they trotted down the driveway that soon she'd know how to snap Megan's neck like a stale Dorito. Not that she would; that, she reminded herself with a pious giggle, would be wrong. But it was sure fun to think about. Spike might be right about the rainy day thing after all.

"Did she buy it?" Buffy stood on tiptoe at the kitchen window, pulled the curtains back and pressed her nose to the pane, craning to see the curb where Dawn was sliding into the back seat of the Kendalls' Aerostar. Radiant bars of sunlight striped her face like Harrier's blood and made a corona of her hair, pricking out every errant strand in molten gold. He didn't miss the sun much for himself, but he loved to see her limned in fire like this. His battle maiden. Pick me, Chooser of the Slain.

"Hook, line and sinker." Spike pulled a clean bowl out of the cupboard, rummaged around through the three or four half-full boxes of cereal on top of the fridge for the revoltingly healthy and vitamin-enhanced one Buffy claimed to favor, and filled it to overflowing. "Now I'll convince you, you'll give grudging permission, and Bob's your uncle. Here, stop flitting about and eat." He appropriated a chair and dropped into it, slid down on his tailbone, and took a gulp of his blood. "We'll have to be careful, pet--the Bit's smarter than the two of us put together, and if she suspects we're playing her instead of her playing us--"

"Hellmouth hath no fury. Right." Buffy let the curtain fall back and stepped away from the window, diminishing in two paces from Valkyrie to potential office help. This wasn't his Slayer, this buttoned-down mouse in the sensible shoes and the skirt of old-lady grey--not the warrior, not the woman. It ate at him to see her like this, all her fire damped in the service of fitting in. Buffy Summers should never have to fit in; she should be sashaying through the world in designer clothes and deigning to allow it to conform to her whims.

She strolled over to his chair, spun round and dropped down on his knee. Against him was one place she fit in perfectly. Both hands came to rest on his shoulders and worked down his chest, massaging his pectorals, fingers dancing across the ticklish spots on his ribs till he shivered. Her lips brushed his ear. The warmth of her breath took his away, and all the perfume and deodorant in the world couldn't wholly mask the rich musky female scent of her courses. His Slayer after all, beneath the clever disguise. "Now. Where were we?"

"Five seconds away from ravishing you on the kitchen table. Spikey wants his Slayer snacks." Spike ran a hand up her inner thigh until his fingers encountered a barrier, gratifyingly damp already. Nylons. Interesting texture, that, when circled against very sensitive skin just so. She melted against him, stormy eyes half-lidded and rosy lips half-parted, and he felt the surging pulse of her blood all around him as her hips arched into his. He pulled his hand away. "But eat your brekky first."

Buffy pouted and smacked him on the shoulder. "Jerk. I was going to skip breakfast. Anya said I was gaining weight." She pushed the cereal away.

Spike dragged it back. This was familiar territory, though Dru's refusal to eat had generally stemmed from illness, ennui, and a fear of invisible blood-dwelling giraffes infesting her liver. "Good. You could stand another five pounds." He gave her rump a cheerful slap, which, to his interest, did not set off the chip in the slightest. Possibilities there. "Eat up. Can't live on vampire jizz."

"Gack. Like I can eat anything with that image in my head." Nonetheless she curled all kitteny in his lap and let him pour milk for her and didn't argue until half the cereal was gone. For all her protests of independence, Buffy liked her cosseting once you talked her into it. A droplet of milk threatened to spill and her little pink tongue darted out to catch it, running over the smooth bowl of the spoon until it was clean enough to eat off of. Spike shifted to ease the pressure on certain delicate portions of his anatomy, and Buffy gave him a sly look from beneath her lashes and popped the whole spoon in her mouth. “Mmmmmmm,” she said, withdrawing it with agonizing slowness. “I meant where we in the... discussion."

"Oh. That." He ran a fingernail along the back of her knee, enjoying the sensation of her ass wriggling against his crotch. "You were being completely unreasonable." His hand came up to trace the curve of her jaw with a finger, tipping her head up to meet his eyes, and he injected a coaxing note into his voice. "Love... can't you let me take care of you, just a little? I was good at that once, though you might not think it to look at me now. This chip's made half a man of me, but I could still do my bit if you'd let me."

Her fingers stilled on the button she'd been toying with, and she tore her eyes away from his, seeking refuge in the patterns of spilled cereal on the tabletop. "Spike... stop it. Please." She met his gaze again, the sunlight bringing out tawny flecks in the grey-green depths of those big beseeching eyes. Her warm little palms flattened to his chest, stroking the taut muscle. Beat me, whip me, rip my heart out and stomp on it--only keep touching me while you do so... "You don't know how tempting it is when you say things like that to--to just throw up my hands and fall into your arms and let you take care of it! I hate living like this! I suck at money, and interviews, and--I've got to draw the line somewhere, Spike. Decide when I'm going to look the other way and when I'm going to bust your chops. Especially with this thing with Dawn. And until I can figure out something better, the line's at my threshold. Stolen goods, stolen money, and anything bought with stolen money, not invited."

"Swindled money all right?" Buffy banged her forehead into his chest with a groan. "Teasing, sweetling." He buried his nose in the shining mass of her hair, still warm from its passage through sunlight. It would save them all a great deal of aggravation if she'd give in, but he suspected that some small part of him, the part that connected, however briefly, with small Chinese girls intent on killing him, and took secret perverse pride in pulling complete strangers out of cars, would have been forever disappointed if she had. "But look here--if I come up with honest dosh, you'll have to take it, pet. No excuses. I'm yours. And I take care of the people I belong to."

"Deal." Far too quick and pat an agreement; didn't think that was a possibility, did she? The eldest Miss Summers was in for a surprise. William the Bloody was nothing if not stubborn. She went all serious on him then, as he'd gone on Dawn, bending her head to press kisses to his collarbone. "Spike--don't ever think that chip makes you half a man." Her voice muffled against his skin, the words vibrating from her lips and into his chest as if she would instill them directly into his heart. Buffy circled his waist with both arms, interlacing her fingers across his spine. "It forced you to find out how much more than a killer you are. It's why we're standing here. Sitting here. Whatever. Without it one of us would be dead by now, and not coming back. If Riley ever shows his face in Sunnydale again, I'm going to give him a big smooshy kiss." At his irate rumble Buffy looked up with an impish grin, the point of her chin digging into his chest. "All right. Just for you I'll make it a hearty handshake."

"Wear rubber gloves," Spike grumbled. "You don't know where he's been. About this grounding thing for Dawn, love, I think it's wearing on her. If..."

Buffy's hands immediately stopped the lovely things they were doing to his back muscles. She sat back and folded her arms, one eyebrow climbing for her hairline. "Spike..."

"What?" Comprehension dawned. "She's playing me, isn't she?"

"Like a trout. I just had the most horrible thought."

"Eh?"

"All those times I put one over on Mom--was I really putting one over on Mom?" She gave an exaggerated shudder. "That way lies getting drummed out of the rebellious teenagers union. I've gotta book; my interview's in half an hour. Do you want to hang here today?"

"For a bit, but I won't be here when you get back, most like. Things to do." He bestowed a kiss to her brow as she hopped off his lap. "I'll do the manhole dash and see you tonight."

Buffy grabbed her purse and the car keys, gave her reflection a last spit-check in the side of the toaster, and dashed out the door. Spike sat at the kitchen table, deep in thought, finishing off his pig's blood and macaroni-hotdog surprise while the tame whine of the SUV's engine died away down the street. When the only thing audible outside was desultory birdsong, he went upstairs. Things to do, indeed.

A longer-than-really-necessary shower and a leisurely toss later, he wandered back into the bedroom. It was starting to look like a room again, very slowly--the single book on the bare shelf had been joined by a magazine or two, lipstick and eyeshadow and face cream jostled together on the dresser, and a Gettysburg of clothing lay strewn about the floor near the closet, victims of Buffy's compulsive search for the perfect outfit. She'd left the blinds drawn for him, and the room was dim and cavernous, still redolent of Buffy and blood and sex. Spike took a deep breath, all the way down to the bottom of his lungs, and held it: essence of Buffy to tide him over, at least until the next time he had to do something stupid like talk.

He wandered around the room for a minute, a deep thrumming growl of content rolling around inside as he picked up little bits of Buffy, examining them, setting them down. He imagined them migrating insensibly over to the crypt, a slow invasion of girly scents and textures trooping past a counter-invasion of Racing Forms, bottles of Guinness, scuffed up motorcycle boots and fugitive copies of Swinburne he'd deny owning. It pleased him, this image of their living spaces insinuating themselves into each other, a long-distance house-fuck. He prowled naked through the rest of the house room by room--a predator thing, leaving his mark in the subtle disarrangement of bric-a-brac in his wake. His territory, now, his pack, his pride in more ways than one.

At last he returned to Buffy’s bedroom and pulled on his jeans and boots again. He started to grab his glasses from the nightstand, where they’d eventually ended up, and hesitated. Very good, falling asleep to her soft feminine snores and the lovely heat of her body wrapped around his. Infinitely better waking up to the painful-pleasant stretch of his arms still bound overhead, and the pressure of her warm little fingers closing possessively around his cock, which had woken well before he had. Not as good as waking up to her every morning, but before he could make that particular fantasy a reality, he was going to have to do something about Buffy's stubborn refusal to take anything from him. Until then... he folded the glasses carefully, got up and put them in the empty dresser drawer, a placeholder for things to follow.

He picked up his duster from the bed and shrugged into it. Damned if he'd let her support him. He had his pride back again, and seeing as it was she who'd resurrected it from the ashes, she could bloody well deal with the consequences. Spike galloped downstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Home, and then for a sewer-crawl; if possible, he wanted to retrieve the trank gun. Vague plans which had been bubbling since L.A. were beginning to coalesce into something which might actually be a good idea.

There was a first time for everything.

Continued in Part 25