Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The woman from the ad was already standing outside waiting for Buffy when she arrived. She took a drag from her cigarette as her eyes raked over Buffy’s body, taking in her rucksack, messy hair, and dirty, too pale skin. When she met Buffy’s eyes again, there was a panicked moment where Buffy was sure this stranger somehow knew everything, but the girl just took a last puff and dropped her ciggy on the ground. 

She stomped it out under a leather combat boot. “Buffy, right? I’m Lori. Come on in.”  

Lori led her past the tall gate that surrounded the old building, and heaved open the large metal door with enough effort to be noticeable. Buffy had found Lori’s ad in the bus station when she pulled into the Big Apple earlier that day. She’d called the number on it on a payphone, asking if Lori could meet sometime after sunset, and had hid out inside the station til then. Lori’s ad looking for another roommate had seemed normal enough at the time - a bunch of starved artist types sharing an old townhouse in SoHo, looking for a sixth. Now that she actually saw the place, Buffy realized the term “townhouse” was a generous exaggeration, if not an outright lie. But the rent was low and Buffy wasn’t in a place where she could be picky. The building she was looking at now was an abandoned factory, not unlike the one Spike had lived in when he first came to Sunnydale almost two years ago. She stifled a nervous laugh at the thought - how her new living place was gonna be just one more thing she had in common with her old enemy. Luckily Lori didn’t pay Buffy’s general weirdness any mind as she led her inside and gave her a tour. 

The first floor consisted of a large, open-plan room that remained largely undecorated with the exception of a few tatty old sofas where a couple of kids who looked fresh out of college were lazing around watching TV. At the far end there were two doors with men and women's bathroom signs on them. The signs weren’t taken down when the factory fell into disarray and got taken over by artists, Lori told her, but both men and women used both bathrooms so Buffy had to be comfortable with that if she was to live there. Buffy shrugged. With everything that had happened to her over the last few months, sharing a toilet with some guys she didn't know wasn’t all that high on her list of concerns. She could almost pretend she was living in the dorms at Sunnydale U with Willow. Dorms had mix-gendered bathrooms, right? She felt a familiar ache in her chest at the idea that she’d never find out, which was stupid because it was just a bathroom, and weren’t vampires supposed to be all grr and unfeeling anyways, and why did she even care?

There weren’t any windows on the main floor, which Buffy appreciated, and some of the art scattered about the place was actually okay. As Lori led her upstairs to the second floor, Buffy paused in front of a dangling sculpture of a naked man curled up in fetal position, painted entirely white with the exception of the penis which was unproportionately large and bright blue, sticking out from the body at a strange and uncomfortable angle.

“That one’s Tom’s,” Lori said with a grin. “It’s actually one of his less weird pieces.”

“What’s it supposed to mean?” Buffy asked, but Lori just shrugged. 

“Dunno. I mostly just do prints and pop art myself. Leave the big thinky shit to him. What’s your medium?”

Buffy hesitated for a moment. “I like poetry.”

“Nice,” Lori said with a nod, tossing her black hair over her shoulder. She looked fairly young, Buffy realized, no older than twenty-two or twenty-three. Her face was soft and round under her grungy makeup, and there was a pink tinge to her cheeks that was not quite hidden by the thick layer of pale concealer she was wearing. Buffy couldn’t help but let her eyes slip to Lori’s exposed neck. It was completely unmarked - void of everything including freckles - reminding Buffy uncannily of an empty canvas, just begging to be painted on. She didn’t have to listen closely to hear Lori’s steady heartbeat, and as she examined the other girl’s neck she realized she could just about see the faint movements made by her pulsing carotid arteries. 

Lori led her to a unit on the second, and only other floor of the building. She tried a couple of keys in the lock before finding the right one and swinging the door open. She fumbled around in the dark to find the overhead light switch, flicked it on, and gestured for Buffy to go on in. She complied, wandering around the room, which was surprisingly spacious. Better than she could have hoped for. 

“We think this room was used for storage back when,” Lori said. “That’s why there’s no windows. It’s not so bad though. Used to be mine 'til Grace moved out and I took her old room.” 

As Buffy continued to explore, Lori explained some of the building’s background. In true SoHo fashion, it used to be just another abandoned factory until it was commandeered by a bunch of kids who began squatting there back in the late 70s. Eventually the City got wind of what was going on and took possession of the property, but they still continued to rent it out as a work space for artists at a fairly low cost. “We’re not technically allowed to sleep here and stuff, that's why the rent's so low. We all do it anyways, though.”

Buffy glanced around once more, trying to imagine what her old boy band posters and pink rug would look in this dingy space, but she was drawing up blank. The room she stood in now was a far cry from her room back at Revello drive, but she knew it was what she needed as she started this new chapter of her life. Or, er, unlife. “So when can I sign?”

“Now, if you want,” Lori said. “I have the paperwork right here. Keys too. If you wanna move in today we can even ask Tom to borrow his truck to go get your stuff.”

If Buffy could still blush, her face would be beet red. “This, uh, is actually all I have,” she said, gesturing to the large rucksack she’d propped up against the door. It was mostly filled with unsentimental things she needed to live: a sleeping bag she’d picked up on her way out of town; a wad of cash she’d managed not to lose too much of in Vegas; a canteen of pig’s blood… There was little from her life that she’d brought with her - just Mr Gordo, a charmed bracelet that had been a hesitant parting gift from Willow, and the cross necklace Angel had given that she could no longer touch.

Lori didn’t look surprised. She handed Buffy two copies of the lease and prattled off some general house rules as Buffy pretended to do more than skim what she was signing. She handed the lease back back to Lori who glanced over it, pointed out one more place where she needed to sign, then folded it up and tucked it under her arm with a grin. “Sick. I guess I’ll let you unpack then. My room’s the one at the end of the hall if you need anything. If I’m not there I’ll probably be downstairs with the others. Oh, and we’re gonna go to CBs in about an hour if you wanna come.”

“CBs?”

Lori’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know CBGB? Shit, girl, where’d you come from?”

“Sunnydale,” Buffy said.

“Huh,” Lori said, nonplussed. “Well it’s a punk club not too far from here. Totally mainstream these days, but loads of fun.”

Buffy hesitated. She imagined saying yes. She imagined letting loose at some New York rocker version of the Bronze, dancing around and getting drunk with Lori and her weird art friends the way she used to with Faith. She imagined the grinding, the sweat, and the hormones that were sure to be running rampant in that sort of spot. She imagined losing control and ripping out Lori’s neck with her bare teeth. “I’m kind of tired,” she said instead. “It’s been a long day.”

“Suit yourself,” Lori said with a shrug, leaving Buffy to unpack. She accidentally flipped off the light switch as she left the room, but Buffy didn’t move to turn it on again. She didn’t unpack either. She just lay down on the cold, stone floor, and closed her eyes.

After a few weeks of living in New York, Buffy had come to find a routine. She woke up late, maybe three or four pm, and either stayed in her room reading trashy magazines or went downstairs to watch TV with her roommates. They weren’t bad company when she wanted it. All older than her, but they didn’t ask questions. At first they invited her out with them a lot, to go get lunch or dinner or to explore some new club. Buffy always turned them down, and eventually they stopped asking, but still let her come and find them when she needed a bit of company. It was fun watching them live their mundane day to day lives, Buffy thought. Like watching hamsters in a running wheel.

She got really hungry sometimes, and then they would smell so good, but when those urges came up she hid herself away in her room and drank bag upon bag of pig’s blood until the feeling went away. She was never quite satisfied, though.

Before Buffy was the Slayer, her relationship with food had been as intentionally disordered as your next valley girl. She started dieting when she was thirteen and she tried every fad you could think of. She did the low-fat thing, the no-fat thing, the only-water-for-three-days thing, and as miserable as it sometimes made her, there was something so satisfying watching the pounds on the scale go down, down, down… This went on for a couple of years, her weight fluctuating up and down as she starved herself until she was so hungry she would steal her dad’s credit card to order more pizzas than a singular human being should be able to consume, then felt guilty and starved herself again.

It only really stopped when she was Called, and her Slayer metabolism suddenly required her to eat twice the calories she used to need just to stay awake. She no longer had time for diet books and weight loss pills; instead she needed every bit of energy she could have. But even then, Buffy didn’t get to really enjoy food for what it was. She ate a lot, sure, but it was all the same things: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; macaroni and cheese; omelets… 

These days she couldn’t eat food at all, and wished she had been more creative in life. Why had she wasted so much time on low-fat yogurt without ever trying curry? A few weeks before she died, her mom had wanted to order Greek food but Buffy had been tired and grumpy and begged her to just get a cheese pizza instead. The summer she was in L.A, one of the other waitresses had asked if she wanted to try something called “bubble tea” with her, but Buffy had thought that sounded weird and gross and had just gone home after her shift ended instead. Now she begged to know what all of these foods must taste like. She wanted to try shawarma and fish and chips and Korean fried chicken. She wanted to try Tuna fish eyeballs and escargot.

She went out patrolling almost every night. She thought it would help her release some of her tension, and feel more like her again, but it somehow did the opposite. She didn’t really like staking her fellow vampires - not because she felt any sort of kinship with them or anything with them, but because it was so boring . She was stronger than them all. She was probably the strongest vampire in the world.

Every patrol left her with an itch she couldn’t scratch. She’d felt similarly back when she was the Slayer, but at least then she gotten to enjoy the moral satisfaction of making the world a better place or whatever. But she was soulless now, and sometimes when people would cry and thank her for saving their lives, she’d flash them a little fang and watch them run away screaming again. She would never actually hurt them, but it was still something the old Buffy would never have done. But then again, she wasn’t really Buffy anymore.

When she’d first risen on Graduation day, back in the Crawford Street mansion, she’d felt like Buffy. A very thirsty and very crabby Buffy, but Buffy nonetheless. She’d felt so much like herself that she hadn’t understood what was going on: why Angel was gone but she was still in the mansion; why Willow was crying so hysterically with the Orb of Thesulah shattered at her feet.

“It didn’t work,” she was weeping in Oz’s arms. “It didn’t work.”

Buffy had felt her stomach drop. “Angel,” she said slowly. “He lost his soul again?”

“Buffy,” Oz said in an unusually emotive voice. “What do you remember?”

Buffy had frowned, trying to remember, but everything felt hazy. “Faith,” she said after a moment. “I killed her.” She waited for the wave of guilt to hit, but it never did so she just pushed on, furrowing her eyebrows in concentration. “I killed her, but she fell onto a truck or something and disappeared. Angel still needed blood, and…”

The memories hit her all at once. She remembered sending Willow and Oz away. She remembered Angel, her sweet, lovely Angel, lying in bed, so sick and so confused. She remembered telling him she had a cure and his refusal, his desperate voice as he begged her not to make him do it. She remembered hitting him again and again until he couldn’t help but bring his fangs forward and plunge into her neck.

It had hurt. It had hurt so much, but even as he pulled her lifeblood out of her body and into his she knew that it would be so much worse if she didn’t do this, and Angel died. She remembered him taking and taking, and how she had grabbed a metal pot and crushed it in her hands to try to bear the pain. But she couldn’t help it in the end, and had started to kick, to writhe under him, her body betraying her mind as she tried to get him off of her.

“Angel.” She whispered his name and glanced up at Oz, who was having trouble looking at her. “Is he okay?”

“He’s alive,” Oz said calmly.

“I need to see him,” she said, managing to ignore the deep thirst she felt and push herself up off the ground. But she couldn’t. Her body stopped, tugging against something metal and heavy, and that was when she realized she was in chains. “I need to see Angel,” she said again.

Oz was backing up, pulling Willow with him. “I’m sorry Buffy. Willow… she told me becoming a vampire was your worst nightmare. We’re going to figure out a way to fix you, I promise. But Angel can’t be with you right now. Killing you… killing you might as well have killed him.”

“No,” Buffy said unsteadily, her voice shaking, refusing to believe what he was telling her. She wasn’t a vampire. She wasn't some wicked, evil thing. She was just Buffy, and Buffy needed her Angel. “I’m not dead. You’re lying.”

“He didn’t mean to,” Oz continued bravely. “He didn’t mean to, but he took too much, Buffy. Willow and I found you two together here. He was cradling your body, and you were so empty. He didn’t want to turn you, to make you this way, but Willow and I… We thought we could save you. We thought we could give you a soul, and you could be Buffy again.”

Oz was never much of a talker, but right then, he couldn’t seem to stop.

“I am Buffy,” she pleaded, begging him to understand. “I am. Oz, please, just let me go.”

Willow was crying even harder now, wailing something that Buffy couldn’t understand. 

“I’m sorry,” Oz said, “I can’t. I can’t risk letting you hurt us.”

“I would never hurt you. I would never,” she whimpered, and it was true. She didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. “I just want to see Angel.” 

“Buffy…” Oz said weakly, but he made no move to unchain her, and Buffy knew then that he didn’t understand. 

She needed Angel so badly; like she'd never needed anyone before. She needed him deep in her chest and in her stomach. She needed every part of him with her, his arms wrapped around her body and his mouth on hers. She needed him in her system, in her blood. She needed him inside her. She needed him to come and take her on the dusty floor of the mansion, to fuck her until she was bleeding and raw. She needed all of him. She needed to drink him up.

“I need to see Angel,” she said again. “Oz, please, you don’t understand! I need to see Angel. I need him so badly. I need him. It’ll be alright when he’s here with me. Where is he? Where did he go? I need to see him.” She was crying now, fat and salty tears. “Willow,” she begged, trying to get her best friend to look at her, “Willow, please. I’m not evil. I won’t hurt you. I just need to see him. Please. Let me see him. Please, please, please, please! I need to see him. My sire. My Angel. Please, Willow, I need to see him. Let me out of here! I need to see him. Why won’t you listen to me?! I need to see him! Let me out of here! LET ME OUT-”

Buffy cringed at the memory, and staked herself one last vamp as she finished patrolling the Bowery and began to wander back to SoHo. It hurt to think of herself like that, just another stupid fledgling, crying out for a sire who could not help her. Just because Angel started her unlife, did not mean she needed him to guide her through it. She was no Drusilla. A part of her would always ache for Angel, but he was on his own path now and she was on hers. 

She spotted another vampire in an alley off West Houston street. It was just a fledge - she could smell the gravedirt - and for a moment she considered just letting it go. She hated staking fledglings for the same reasons she refused to hunt humans. (Because it feels cowardly. Because it’s no fun.) But the fledge had a girl with him, and Buffy the vampire had a strict list of rules for herself when patrolling, to prevent her soullessness from letting her do something her human self wouldn’t have. And one of those rules was the immediate staking of any vampire (no matter how dumb, or smart, or cute, or funny) who was trying to hurt a human. She rolled her eyes and brandished her stake.

She was beginning to understand why Spike hunted Slayers. 

She ached for the rush that came with a challenging fight, a fight she might not win. For a moment, she fantasized about what it might feel like to kill one. It must be pretty wonderful, for Spike to have stuck it out in Sunnyhell for so long. 

Faith had died in the hospital mid-way through August, the day after Giles had told the world Buffy was dead. Apparently Faith died peacefully in her sleep as a result of her injuries, but Buffy didn’t believe that for a second. The whole thing stunk of a Council wetworks team.

Last Buffy heard, the new Slayer, Caridad, was leaving her home in Mexico City to take Buffy’s place guarding the Sunnydale Hellmouth. Tracking her down would be easy. She wondered if Willow helped Caridad - if she did spells for her and binged ice cream with her when she was sad. She imagined herself rolling back into town with a new set of wheels and righteous anger at being left behind, no more than a footnote in the Council’s records. She imagined challenging Caridad to a fight, and going at it with her for hours. She wouldn’t be evil like Angelus was, with his creepy (romantic, her demon whined) drawings, and slow torment (long courting, her demon protested). No, Buffy would be evil like Spike was. She’d be upfront and daring, and come at Caridad right away with full force. She’d dance with the Slayer all night long. 

Buffy froze when she realized she was being evil again. She pinched her arm so hard she broke the skin, and pushed all murderous thoughts about her sister Slayer from her mind. She crossed the road and walked home.

Chapter Text

It began, like all else, with Drusilla.

“Sunshine turns to darkness yet you still try to steal the moon!” she had wailed at him, her eyes yellow and wild. “But the moon doesn’t want you, my Spike. It is made of stone; it does not know it can love at all!”

Spike used to think that he was the poet out of the two of them, but God he was wrong. Drusilla had always been an artist: her rhymes were in the blood she shed; her madness was prose. Sunshine, darkness, and a man trying to steal the moon - those words were intentional, even if they made no buggering sense. 

She’d been breaking his heart for a hundred years now, hurting him in all the right ways that he couldn’t help but beg her to do it some more. But not this time. He would always love his dark princess, of course, but her poetry made it final. And yes, he was certain that that’s what the words she gave him were, for what else could you call a betrayal so prettily laid out, so heavily doused in metaphors? 

The century they spent together made leaving harder, for he hardly knew how to live his unlife without her, the woman who was his sire as well as his lover. But the time also made it easier, because she’d been leaving him for so long now, ever since he was just a fledge and she’d let Angelus take her in front of him.

He was back in Sunnydale now, because he never could stay away, sucker for pain that he was. There might be a gem here, one that would allow him to walk in the sunshine, moon be bloody damned. There might be a gem here, or there might not, but there was definitely a Slayer.

Buffy.

He exhaled deeply through his nose. God, he hated that chit. He hated her strength, he hated her passion, he hated her soft spot for sodding Angelus of all people. He hated her smug little smile when she found out Dru left him. He hated her stupid bottle blonde hair-

“Um, hellooo, earth to Spike?” The chit sitting accross from him at Willy's snapped him out of his thoughts. She was an alright girl. Barely older than a fledge, but from a strong enough bloodline - not Aurelian, but not totally foreign either. She must have been turned on more than a drop because she had no trouble keeping out of gameface, and while she was no dark princess, she had potential to be more than just a minion. “You were saying something about the Gem of Amarara..ra?” She prompted, trailing off at the end, looking vaguely confused.

“Right, yeah, the Gem. Total game changer. Makes it so you can survive sunlight, crosses, stakes… The Ex said it’s here in Sunnyhell, and I’m gonna find it.”

“And then what?” the bird - Harmony, she said her name was - asked.

“And then,” Spike said with a grin, “I’m going to kill the Slayer.”

“Oh,” Harmony said, looking vaguely underwhelmed. “You really need the Gem for that? How hard can it really be to kill a teenage girl?”

Spike decided not to bother pointing out that, while she may be a demon, Harmony herself was technically going to be a teenage girl forever. “I’ll have you know that Slayers are bloody hard to kill.”

Harmony shrugged. “If you say so. Though all the demons I know say the new girl is wayy out of her depth.”

Spike frowned. He vaguely remembered mention of a second Slayer, one that had replaced the girl Dru killed, running around and wreaking havoc last time he was in Sunnyhell. She had some religious-sounding name he couldn’t quite remember. Something along the lines of Grace or Hope or… Faith! That was it. It was an interesting concept, two Slayers at once. The mere idea had his blood rushing south. But Harmony was right, it really wouldn’t be that hard to kill some freshly Called kiddie, and Slayers were only worth it because they knew how to put up a good fight. No, it was Buffy that he wanted, Faith be damned.

“‘M not after Faith,” he said, to which Harmony laughed. It was an unpleasant, pitchy sound, accompanied with an unpleasant, better-than-thou expression.

“Good,” she said. “Because Buffy, like, totally killed her.”

Spike paused at that. “What, decided she didn’t want to share the power?” he mused, but even as he said it, it didn’t sound quite right. Buffy had been brassed right off when Dru had killed that other Slayer, Kendra or whoever. Said they had been friends, and all that. He doubted she’d killed her new sister Slayer in a fit of petty jealousy. More likely, this Faith chit had gone rogue - realized this whole dance was so much more fun when you weren’t fussed with right and wrong and good and evil. It wouldn’t be the first time a Slayer switched sides, in fact he’d met one back in the 20s. She was a lark. They danced all night to the roaring jazz scene of London at the time, before she’d begrudgingly pulled out a stake from somewhere under that tiny flapper dress of hers and told him to get out of town, pronto. She didn’t want a fight so he didn’t push it. She was taken out by the Wankers’ Council a few months later.

Harmony shrugged. “I dunno why. This all happened before I was turned. I didn't pay much attention to Buffy and her dork patrol back then.”

Spike laughed. “Right. Well, ‘m gonna kill her.”

He expected her to be impressed. He expected her to clap her hands together, or smile, or tell him he was the Big Bag, but instead Harmony just raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “You really have been out of town for a while now, huh?” Spike frowned, and Harmony rolled her eyes. “Buffy Summers is dead.” 

“What?”

“Yup,” Harmony said, twirling her straw around her fingers and taking another sip of the fruity neon-blue drink he’d ordered her. “That ‘college boyfriend’ she had? Really a master vampire. We both got turned on graduation day, actually. Go class of ‘99!” She said the last bit with enough pep to fuel an entire squad of cheerleaders, and nudged him flirtatiously under the table.

So.

Angelus had finally murdered the girl, just like Spike had known he would. Just like Spike had told his grandsire he would before he'd last left town, only to be shut down. To be told Angelus would never because Angelus had a soul now, and blah blah blah. But the soul was only window-dressing. Spike had known that. Because the soul hadn’t stopped Angelus from walking out on him and Dru and Darla all those years ago - not that Darla had wanted him to stay; but Spike had been so young and Dru so mad, and Angelus was both of their sires, wasn’t he? No, the soul had never made him good. 

Spike knew he should be happy. Even if it wasn’t him who got to do the killing, a dead Slayer was something a demon like him should be reveling in, regardless of the circumstances. But Spike felt no such elation. The whole situation reminded him too much of Dru. He remembered how badly Angelus had torn up the Slayer, not just over Acathla, but afterwards as well. It seemed that once again, Angelus had taken it upon himself to destroy a girl's soul and make her torture eternal by turning her. And God, Spike hated the Slayer, but she didn’t deserve that. She deserved to go out in a blazing fire, like the warrior she was. But maybe Spike could still give her the death she deserved...

“Tell me about her,” he said, and Harmony grinned.

“The story goes, she was killed in the early morning of graduation day and rose in the afternoon. She wasn’t even dead for twelve hours, and then she was walking again.” Harmony leaned closer to him, her face sporting a casual type of mischief one might expect from a kiddie telling a scary story. Which, when he thought about it, was kind of the case. “They say she was the worst type of monster when she first rose, calm and collected and deadly in a way they haven’t seen since the Ancient Ones. She was so terrible that a witch tried to tame her horrid appetite by cursing her with a soul, but the the demon was too strong, and the witch's chants fell on empty ears. 

“The once-Slayer was evil now, as evil as they come. She wanted to rip out throats and wreak havoc, and was happy to do so until her sire came to her, and told her she must be good. And even a demon as strong as herself couldn’t resist the power of a sire bond, and so she has been doing good ever since.” Harmony finished her story, suddenly looking embarrassed. “Uh, that’s what the others say, anyways,” she said, her voice back to its usual pitch and unserious tone. “I don’t know how much of it’s true, though. Me and Buffy met up at the Bronze once over the summer, and she didn’t really seem like an evil demon enslaved by a sire bond. She just seemed… quiet.”

There was a lot of disagreement in the vampiric community as to whether or not sire bonds were a legitimate thing. All fledges felt the inherent need to obey their maker, but how deeply did that need run? Did making a demon really mean you exert control over it forever? Most of the time, Spike didn’t think so. But sometimes, in those decades back before Sunnyhell, when Dru would scream and shout for her daddy until she couldn’t even speak, he thought maybe it did.

Spike stood up suddenly, his chair grating against the hardwood floor. He grabbed his duster and slung it over his shoulders. “Right then,” he told her. “Nice chatting, I’ll see you around.”

Harmony slumped forwards. “I thought you were going to pay for my drink?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “You’re an evil vampire, luv, you don’t need to pay for anything.”

“Where are you going anyways?” 

“To see Angelus. Then, the Slayer.”

“Um, Spike,” she said hesitantly. “There’s one more part of the story I didn’t get to. You see, the thing about Buffy is she’s actually kinda-”

“I’ll see you around, Harmony,” he repeated, heading for the door. He didn’t need to hear anymore scary stories for fledges ‘bout why you’ve got to listen to your sire. He needed to have a talk with his own.

He approached the Crawford Street mansion slowly, unsure of what he would find inside. Would Angelus be waiting for him, the Slayer-Vampire sitting at his feet in chains like the most obedient of dogs? He couldn’t quite picture it. 

The inside of the mansion was that kind of still even the undead couldn’t quite achieve, so he cracked open the lock on the front gate and strolled inside. In the entryway, he took in a deep breath. This place was often-frequented, he could tell, but not quite lived in. A hoard of smells bombarded his nose - witch, wolf, and human, but a disappointing lack of raw blood. The ex-Slayer must be well-trained, to be so docile and harmless around the people who should have been her first victims. It took him a moment, but he eventually sorted through the smells to find the distinct aroma that was Buffy: sweat, and dirt, and coconut-honey bath soap. The smell was weaker than the others, leading Spike to wonder if it had diminished since she had turned, or if maybe she didn’t frequent the mansion as much as the others.

Angelus’s scent was weaker than all the others, but it was everywhere, covering the place. Spike wrinkled up his nose.

He decided to snoop around his former home a little more. Upstairs, he found some changes, the most notable being the presence of a large cage near the back where all the wolf smells concentrated - it seemed Angelus was renting out the place as some sort of werewolf motel. 

In the basement, he found Dru’s old room to be padlocked shut. Like the lock out front, he snapped it easily and went inside. He was surprised to find the room completely untouched. A thick layer of dust covered the dollies Dru had been so furious about leaving behind. In the closet, he found a few of her handmade dresses, and he bunched one up in his hands and brought it to his nose. Her smell was weak on it now, and he let go. 

He heard a distinctive creaking noise upstairs and swore. He must have been too absorbed in Dru’s old things to notice someone else coming in. Upon concentration, he could make out the distinctive beating of a single heartbeat and relaxed slightly, but slipped into gameface nonetheless.

It was just the witch, carefully placing blankets inside the wolf cage. 

“Red,” he addressed her, and she made a squeaking sound.

“Spike!” she yelped, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said casually, shoving his hands deep into his duster’s pockets. “What’s with the blankies? Having a slumber party in the Big Bad’s old lair?”

“It’s a full moon tomorrow,” she began to explain, “I’m just bringing over some stuff to make Oz more comfortable and- hey! I’m the one asking the questions here, Mister! What on earth are you doing back in Sunnydale?” 

“Was hoping to have a chat with Angelus. He around?”

The witch stepped cautiously out of the cage and locked it again behind her, never breaking eye contact as she did so. “Angel’s out of town,” she said carefully. “Would you like me to give him a message?”

“Would I like you to-? Bloody hell, of course not!” he snapped. “Killing a Slayer’s really the kind of conversation that needs to be had face to face, don’t you think?”

“You’re here about Buffy?” she asked. “Um, why?”

He stalked towards her. “Had some questions ‘bout the whole her being dead bit, so I thought I’d swing by and talk with the old man. S’pose I could just talk with you instead, though.” He reached out to grab her - just by the hair or something - but the witch was quicker than he remembered and quickly slipped out of his way.

“Don’t!” she snapped. “I’ve cast a sanctuary spell on this place so you can’t hurt me here! So don’t even try!”

Well now he sort of had to try, didn’t he? He lunged at the witch, but when his fist was about to meet her face, he was slammed back by an invisible force, landing hard enough on his back to hear a distinct crack!  

“Right then,” he said, disoriented enough that he couldn’t help slipping back into his human face. “Worth a shot. Give a bloke a hand up?”

The witch glared at him, but she seemed too pleased with herself to hold much malice and gave him her hand anyways. “Why are you here, Spike?” she said again when he was on his feet. “Do you really need to get your butt kicked by the Slayer again?”

“Maybe I’ll kick her butt this time,” Spike grumbled, but he was too sore to put much conviction in it. 

“Caridad won’t be alone,” Red said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Just because Buffy’s gone, doesn’t mean that changes.”

“Who the fuck’s Caridad? And what do you mean, gone, I can smell her all over this place!”

A new expression slipped onto the witch’s face, one that Spike was having trouble discerning. “Caridad is the new Slayer. And I thought you knew - Buffy is dead.”

Spike shook his head. “Right, turned into a vamp, whatever. Where is she?”

“No… she’s not undead,” the witch said, her voice thick with inscrutable emotion. “She’s dead dead, Spike. She’s dust.”

He thought he’d hit rock-bottom after Drusilla, but Sunnyhell was once again proving that things could always get worse. “You’re lying.”

Even though she’d proved he couldn’t hurt her, the witch took a step back. “I wish I was. I tried to give her back her soul, but it didn’t work. She wasn’t Buffy anymore, and we had to- Giles, he-” She cut herself off and swallowed, hard. 

“You killed her,” Spike said hollowly, unbelievingly. After everything Angelus had done to their little group, his soulful self was just out of town, but the Slayer was soulless so she was dead? “How? Which one of you-?” his throat closed up.

“She’s gone, Spike,” the witch said, unable to meet his eyes. “Can’t we just leave it at that?” He clenched his hands into fists and shut his eyes. When he opened them, the witch was staring at him with big green eyes. “Isn’t this what you wanted anyways?” she asked, and he unclenched his fists. He turned from her, and left through the front gate.

He wasn’t sure how he ended up on the front porch of the Slayer’s old house, but as soon as he arrived, bottle of Jack in hand, he was sure he was in the right place. He didn’t even really know why he was so upset in the first place - there would be Slayers after her; after this Caridad kid. There would always be Slayers for him to try to kill but God, wasn’t Buffy different? What they had had was special, and didn’t he deserve to kill her just a little bit? “Stupid bitch,” he muttered under his breath. “Had to let soddin’ Angelus kill you. Bet you didn’t even fight back. Probably loved him too much or some rubbish.” He slumped down, back against the front door, and took another swig. 

He was vaguely aware of lights flicking on somewhere behind him, but he was still surprised when the front door was wrenched open and he tumbled back through the invisible barrier that should have kept him out. Bitch had never even disinvited him, then. Hadn’t thought he was worth the hassle, and now she’d never think about him or anything again. He let out another sob. 

“Spike?” a cautious voice rang out, and when he opened his eyes he was met with the concerned picture of Joyce Summers, wrapped up in a dressing gown and peering down at him. “Are you okay?”

Spike pushed himself to his feet. “‘M fine,” he muttered, straightening out his coat, but Joyce didn’t look convinced. 

“Oh dear,” she said solemnly. “I’m assuming you just found out about Buffy?” He nodded, and Joyce gave him a look of utmost sympathy. “Do come inside. Let me fix you up some hot chocolate.”

Feeling too drunk to be appropriately embarrassed, Spike just followed Joyce inside. She took the near-empty bottle from his hands and sat him down on a sofa in her living room while she went into the kitchen to fix them each up a cuppa.

Back when Spike was alive, there were so many rules one had to follow when mourning it was hard to keep count. Parents mourning children were expected to do so for an entire year, in which all social behaviour must be curtailed. In this period, they must always dress in black, and it was practically unheard of to be without some sort of memento from the deceased - perhaps a locket or a broach containing a lock of hair. Mirrors were covered with black drapes, and every family picture was to be placed face-down or turned around. Spike knew that the times had changed, and while he wasn’t expecting to see any of that, he wasn’t sure what to expect either. Joyce’s home wasn’t overly messy or clean, or overflowing with flowers, or filled with the distinct smell of shed tears. It was, almost entirely, exactly as it had been when Spike last saw it. He noticed Joyce had lots of photos of her daughter about, but didn’t remember the place well enough to know if they were new since the last time he was there. 

She was back a couple of minutes later, holding out both a mug of hot chocolate and a glass of water. “Water first,” she said sternly, but her voice was not unkind.

“Thanks,” Spike said awkwardly, taking an obliging sip.

“You weren’t very close with my daughter, were you?” Joyce said after a few moments of silence. “I know you helped her once, but she didn’t trust you. She warned me that you weren’t like Angel. She said that he had a soul and you didn’t, and that meant that you could only ever be evil while he could try to be good.” Spike shrugged, and Joyce pursed her lips. “But you weren’t the one to kill my baby, he was. Soul and all.”

Spike wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that, but Joyce’s sad eyes were staring at him, looking for some sort of answer, so he tried anyway. “Buffy was a good person. She was good like Angel could never be, even with the soul, because he’s still a vampire and vampires are monsters by definition.”

Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say either, for a pained look fell over Joyce's face and she shut her eyes tight. "So everyone keeps telling me. But you didn’t turn my daughter into a monster.”

Spike opened his mouth to say he was a vamp and he totally would have, but it wasn’t at all true and different words came out. “Before Drusilla made me a vampire, she asked me if I wanted it,” he began hesitantly. “She gave me the choice. Granted, I had no idea what the bleeding hell she was on about - and the poncey little poet in me would’ve been horrified if he knew what she really meant - but that doesn’t matter. When it came down to it, she asked me if I wanted more for my life and I said yes. It’s why you can’t call what she did to me murder. What Angelus did to your daughter… that was murder. It was worse than.” Joyce was staring at him again. “I wanted to kill Buffy,” he continued, “and to want that I had to know her, and I know she would never have wanted what he did. And I… even if I had killed her, I wouldn't have turned her. Even though she burned brighter than the sun and an eternity fighting with her could almost be bliss… I’d never have done that.”

Joyce wore a curious expression on her face. “You liked her, didn’t you?”

“‘Course I liked her,” he said with a scoff. “Sparring with her’s the type of thing that makes the unlife worth living.”

“And you miss her,” Joyce continued, and suddenly Spike felt embarassed all over again. He wanted to say of course he didn’t, ‘cept that wasn’t true either, and the fact he was even having this conversation was proof of it.

“S’pose I do,” he said instead. And then, realizing he was being particularly self-centered and soulless at the moment, he tacked on: “‘M sorry for your loss. You must miss her too.”

Joyce let out a hollow laugh. “Thank you, Spike.”

“Just wish I could spar with her one last time,” Spike muttered. “You know what Dru said when she left me? Said that I was covered with her. That when she looks at me all she can see is the Slayer. Then she said a bunch of jumble about fallen stars and me pining for the moon, but still... I wanted to kill the Slayer, but I never thought I’d miss her when she’s dead.”

Joyce was staring at him intently. “What would you do if you saw her again?”

“‘Sides call the bloody Ghost Busters?” Spike snorted. “I dunno. See if she still wants to fight me, I guess.”

“And if she didn’t? Buffy was the Slayer. If you saw her again, wouldn’t you be duty-bound to try to kill her anyways?”

“I’ve never cared much for duty. Mostly just do what pleases me. Might kill her anyways, I guess, but I’ve met four Slayers now, and I’ve only attacked three.”

Joyce was no longer looking at him, her eyes fixed on her lap. And then she whispered, so quietly Spike wouldn’t have heard it if not for his vampiric hearing: “She’s alive.”

Spike snapped to attention. “What?”

“I don’t know where,” she continued in hesitant, hushed tones, “but I know she is. She was miserable in Sunnydale, and she didn’t seem to want to kill anybody, so Mr Giles only pretended to dust her - he let her go.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “You’re thick in the head if you really believe a watcher just-”

“He wasn’t lying,” Joyce cut him off. “I know he wasn’t. I gave Buffy two thousand dollars and put her on a bus heading north. I don’t know where to. She tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to know at the time. I didn’t think I could love her - that creature that isn’t really my daughter - it hurt too much to try to.”

“So what,” Spike spat, standing upand taking a step back. “You’re siccing me on her to finish off the job?”

“No!” Joyce cried out, also standing now. “God, no, I’d never… I just… you miss her even though you have no soul. And she... she doesn't have a soul either, and I can't stand to think of her out there all alone.”

Spike grabbed his coat off the sofa next to him. “What, so you think I'll swoop in and be her knight in shinin' fuckin' armour just cuz we're both soulless demons? Want me to do what her actual friends won't?”

“I- I don't know. But you miss her. And at least you're something from home.” He was moving to the door, and Joyce followed him, a desperate look in her eyes. "You won't kill her, will you? That's the reason we pretended she was dead. So nobody would try to kill her."

“Dunno yet,” Spike said over his shoulder as he left the Summers house for good. “Ta, Joyce! I’ve got a girl to find.”

He left town that night. Sod the Gem of Amara. Trying to find it would take too long, and he needed to see Buffy as soon as possible.

She was hard to track. He went north, following rumours from town to town. Nothing solid. Nothing specific about a Slayer-turned-Vampire. But there were whispers. Whispers of a vampire with golden hair and uncrossable strength. Whispers about a stoic-faced demon who killed her own kind. 

He saw proof of her in Vegas - a photo of her face taped up under the word banned in a demon bar. 

Finding her was like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands, which Spike knew sounded cliché, but he'd always been a terrible poet so what did it matter? In Salt Lake City, in October, he thought he saw her but it was just a regular vampire. In Chicago, in November, he heard rumours of a girl with strength like none other, but she turned out to be a hoax. 

In New York City, in December, he got word of a demon hunter in Manhattan: a nobody vampire who patrolled the streets every night; keeping the humans safe. A few days before New Years Eve, he saw a girl who might just be her entering an old factory in SoHo, not two blocks from where he had first fought Nikki Wood.

He took a deep breath in. He recognized that smell, and knew he had finally found her. Buffy.

Chapter Text

Lower Manhattan got boring quickly. It was teeming with fledges that Buffy reluctantly dusted, and it didn’t take long for her to spook the few older nests into leaving what was now her territory. She expanded her patrol up into Midtown, quickly cleaning out Time’s Square and the Diamond District. Chelsea proved to be more of a struggle. Lots of artist types, few of them human and even fewer vampires. She wasn't sure why, but she didn’t care much for hunting demons who weren’t vampires these days. She’d do it if they were being actively murdery or world-endy, but for the most part she left them alone and they did the same.

She gained a reputation as a demon hunter that followed her out of SoHo. By December, there were few demons in New York who hadn’t heard of “the Aurelian”, as they had taken to calling her. The name amused her. She’d never really thought of Angel as part of the Order of Aurelius, despite the Master being his grandsire. The idea that she too technically belonged to that bizarre vampiric cult hadn’t even crossed her mind until a loose-skinned demon had politely asked about her bloodline over post-slay drinks when she’d first moved to town.

Nobody knew she used to be the Slayer. As far as the world knew, Buffy the vampire was dust, and Giles had made it beyond clear why she had to make sure it stayed that way. Unless she wanted to start fighting Watchers too.

Buffy twirled her stake around in her hand. It was two days til New Year’s Eve and she’d reluctantly agreed to attend one of her roommate’s art shows later that night. Luckily, with the winter solstice just a few days behind her, the sun had set at around 4:30 so she was at least able to get a patrol in first.

As she strolled down Howard Street, she felt a strong prickle on the back of neck and grinned. She had company, and by the strength of the tingling sensation, it was likely more than one vamp. She turned off the main street and into a dark and winding alley just out of traffic’s sight. She began humming something tuneless under her breath. 

She kept walking for a few minutes, giving her stalker ample opportunity to make a move, but waiting quickly grew tiresome. “Okay!” she called out. “You’re officially getting on my nerves, and an annoyed Aurelian is a stake-y Aurelian!” No movement. “Hellooo? I know you’re there! Are you from the Order of Tetraites? Because I’m so not in a being stalked mood tonight!”

The Order of Tetraites was a relatively powerful vampiric cult local to the Upper West Side, who’d recently decided Buffy was encroaching on their territory. They were her only susbstantial threat in New York City, but seemed hesitant to really try to kill her - likely worried this would piss off the rest of Order of Aurelius enough to start a full-on war (an idea that never failed to make her laugh). Mostly they just tailed her while she hunted, and she didn’t usually mind: the Tetraitans were rich for vamps and she could typically snatch a couple big bills from their pockets before she dusted them. But Buffy wasn't in the mood tonight. She was due back at the factory in half hour and wouldn't have time to wash her hair again before the art show if the Tetraitains had finally decided that enough was enough and retaliated properly.

The tingling feeling began to fade and she rolled her eyes. “Bye-bye! Give my love to the Master!” She hadn’t met the Tetraitan Master yet, but heard the creature was almost as old as the Aurelian Master, and not locked in a glass bottle of a cave. The thought made her lick her lips in anticipation.

She tucked her stake back into her waistband.

Back at the factory, her roommates were buzzing with anticipation about the show. As a rule, Buffy typically declined any and all invites to the events they gave her, but she couldn’t help but have a soft spot for Tom, a twenty-one year old sculpturist who occupied the room next to hers. When he’d eagerly knocked on her door a few weeks back to tell her he had finally managed to book a show, she couldn’t help but agree to attend.

She sighed when she looked at the pile of clothes in the corner of her room. Back when she was alive, Buffy thought herself to be something of a fashion expert, with a wardrobe full of the trendiest mini skirts and halter tops to back her up. These days, she only had a handful of clothes, most of which came from second hand stores or were stolen. (She didn’t steal often, because she tried not to do things Soulful Buffy wouldn’t. But Soulful Buffy had never been unemployed in New York City in the middle of winter, so Soulless Buffy made herself some allowances).

In the end she settled on a pleated denim skirt (all her skirts were pleated so she could still high kick in them if she needed to), a black T, and her usual worn-in boots. She paused for a moment, looking down at herself - it was times like these when she’d kill to be able to see herself in the mirror - then she grabbed her brown suede jacket and shrugged it on. As soon as the smooth leather was hugging her body, Buffy was slammed back into a memory.

It was just a few days after graduation, and she was locked in the cage Angel and Giles had set up at the back of the Crawford Street mansion. Apparently it didn’t matter that she'd helped take down the mayor without harming the hair on a single human’s head: she was a vampire now, so as soon as the apocalypse was averted it was back in chains for Soulless Buffy.

Angel was there. That entire first week, he rarely left her side. He sat in the armchair across the room from her cage and rarely engaged, but he was still there and she reveled in it - both parts of her did; the demon and the girl.

Xander didn’t come by to visit her. Willow did, but she was tentative and wary, and stood very far back from the cage. Giles came by with various books and tests. He asked her lots of questions about how inclined she felt towards impulsivity, mindless violence, and promiscuity. He only stopped when he realized she was lying through her teeth. 

Most frustrating, though, was the way Giles refused to address her as Buffy. He was gentle enough, but when she begged him to just talk to her like he used to, he kept reiterating that he couldn't. He explained, not unkindly, that she wasn’t a person anymore, but a parasite who lived inside a person’s body. It wasn't her fault, he said, but there was no point in either of them pretending that that was anything other than true.

But Buffy didn’t feel like a parasite. She could remember every thought and feeling she'd had when she was alive vividly. She remembered them as if they were her own.

In the end, the only person who treated her remotely normally was Cordelia. She wrinkled up her perfect nose when she came to visit Buffy on her third day in the cage. “Geez,” she said, “you sure look like you’ve seen better days.”

“Cordy!” Buffy said, sitting up excitedly in her cage, not unlike a puppy eagerly greeting her master. She couldn’t help it; the slightly more animalistic nature she showed now. Everything after her turning felt heightened since, not just her senses but her emotions too. At first, everything got more of a reaction out of her. “You’re here!”

“Here, I am. I was supposed to leave for L.A today but it felt a bit mean, what with you being dead and all. Why are you in a cage?”

Buffy shrugged. 

“Will you try to bite me if I go in the cage with you?”

Buffy shook her head emphatically. “No! Of course not!”

Cordelia raised an eyebrow and turned to Angel, who was now standing from his armchair, looking tense as he watched the scene unfold from across the room. “Angel, will she try to bite me if I go in the cage?”

Slowly, Angel shook his head, and Buffy’s demon was practically purring at the approval from her sire. “She’s exhibited impressive restraint so far. But Cordelia- you must remember, she’s not Buffy anymore.”

To Buffy’s surprise, Cordelia just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. Angel-Angelus, Buffy-Buffyus. But Buffyus won’t bite me, will you?”

“I won’t, I promise.” Buffy said eagerly.

“If only you had been this grovel-y in high school,” Cordelia said with a sigh. “Y’know it’s kinda nice, seeing you all needy like this.”

Buffy frowned. She didn’t like being called needy, but her demon was new to the world and still getting used to so much, and she supposed the word wasn’t entirely inaccurate. No wonder the fledges she used to hunt were so easy to kill. Buffy was a baby. She felt everything so sharply. She was raw. She needed her sire, but if she couldn’t have him she would take a companion. A friend.

Cordelia grinned and grabbed a pillow to sit on before joining Buffy in the cage. She didn’t ask questions about what it was like to be a vamp, which Buffy appreciated. Cordy talked to her about clothes and fashion and the kinda disappointing apartment she had found in L.A. She pulled out some catalogs, and they flicked through the pages together. Cordelia found a pair of dark blue pumps that were to die for. Buffy found herself in love with a brown suede jacket that cut off just below the waist and had tiny gold buttons down the front.

“What do you think of this one?” she said, pointing it out. 

“Love it,” Cordelia replied, turning the page and accidentally slicing her finger on the corner as she did so. “Ouch! Papercut.”

Buffy inhaled deeply, enraptured by the sweet smell of Cordelia’s blood. On the surface, the scent was tangy and metallic and just like anyone else’s. Beyond that, it was sweet and aromatic, with a rich undertone that was so distinctly Cordelia. Her blood would be like desert, Buffy thought, like a fine New York-style cheesecake…

Cordelia swiped her across the nose. “Buffyus! No biting,” she said sternly, and that was when Buffy realized she had vamped out. 

She slipped back into her human guise. “Sorry,” she said, feeling distinctly embarrassed. “I didn’t realize I’d… Sorry Cordy.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes again and began to say that it was fine, but Angel was already shuffling her out of the cage. “Come on, Cordelia, that’s enough for today. We don’t want to get her too worked up. Even if she doesn’t think she wants to hurt you, she’s still just a fledgling and…”

Buffy tuned him out. It was a difficult transition - from being Angel’s girlfriend to his Childe. Like Giles, and Xander, and pretty much everyone except for Cordy really, he didn't see her as Buffy anymore. And that hurt, because somehow being dead only made her love him more.

Cordelia came back to visit every day that week, until she announced that she was finally going to move to L.A. “This is the number at my new place,” she said, passing Buffy a piece of paper with ten digits written out in a familiar, loopy scrawl. “Don’t be a stranger.” 

She wrapped Buffy in a tight hug, and left a gift in her cage. It was wrapped in shimmering pink paper which Buffy made quick work of as soon as Cordelia was gone. 

When she saw what was inside, the back of her throat began to burn. Cordelia had nothing - her parents were in trouble for tax fraud and she could barely afford the clothes on her back. But she had gone out and bought Buffy the expensive brown suede jacket from the catalog, without saying anything at all.

Buffy drew herself out of the memory, and back into her room in the factory. She felt almost warm with the familiar leather feeling of the jacket around her. She grabbed her keys and shoved them in her pockets, before going to meet the rest of her roommates downstairs.

The gallery hosting Tom’s exhibit was a two story building a few blocks from the factory, and the first thing Buffy thought when she walked through the front doors was how much it reminded her of her mother. It didn’t have the sort of art Joyce’s gallery displayed, but it was that same type of small and local and friendly. The girl at the front desk seemed to know all of Buffy’s roommates well, and as the group wandered around the space, the others were constantly bumping into friends and old classmates.

Buffy had always lived and breathed art of all forms, from her mother’s passion for foreign paintings, to her father’s dream to make her into the perfect figure skater, to her own infatuation with poetry that lasted longer than the crush on the boy who had inspired it. The familiarity of attending a gallery felt special. Like a thread connecting her old life to her new one that was just beginning.

“Where is your work?” she asked Tom, who grinned and wrapped his arm around hers. He led her most of the way up the stairs, before pausing and looking at her seriously before they entered the second floor gallery space. He was a bizarrely tall young man - tall in a way which would be intimidating if not matched with the bumbling smile that almost never left his face. As he spoke to her, the top of his head was grazing the ceiling.

“Buffy,” he said hesitantly. “Before you see my exhibit, I wanna warn you... Um, if you feel at all triggered by my work… Well I’m gonna stay by your side, and… Look, just tell me if it’s too much or if it’s bugging you, and we can go outside for a bit.”

Buffy nodded, and let him lead her in. She hadn’t seen any of his final pieces, but she’d seen enough snatches of his works in progress to know why he was worried about her. According to Lori, Tom used to be anorexic, and lot’s of his work was influenced by that. When Buffy first moved in, Tom had been the most insistent with his invitations to join the others for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Buffy always declined for obvious reasons, but knew her roommates had likely drawn their own conclusions about why she never ate, had such cold skin, and always appeared (for lack of better words) pretty much dead.

Tom’s sculptures only took up one corner of the gallery space, but its presence was huge, and Buffy felt an unexpected swell of pride when she saw how many people were drawn towards his work. There were a dozen sculptures in total: statues of people that looked like they were made from stone, almost Greek in appearance if not for how devastatingly thin they were. Not all of the statues were complete, some of them were just detached body parts, hanging from the ceiling. The occasional inanimate object was thrown in there too.

The closest piece to Buffy was of a life-sized male torso. She walked a circle around it, taking in the smooth, marble-like quality of the surface, and the sculpted ribs that poked so violently out of it.

“It’s my torso,” Tom said after a moment. “What I looked like back when I was sixteen or seventeen.”

They weaved their way through the hanging sculptures, and Buffy found herself unable to look away from an arm holding a blood red apple with a bite out of it. It was the only part of the exhibit that wasn’t in shades of grey. The only limb that didn’t look like it belonged on a corpse.

“I almost hate it,” she said, the words tumbling from her mouth as if out of her control. “It’s so beautiful, but horrible at the same time. I feel uncomfortable liking it.”

Tom smiled; a soft and kind expression most unlike his usual goofy grin. “Thank you.”

The last sculpture was of two hands held together in prayer, and it was the only part of the exhibit that Buffy didn’t implicitly understand. “What does this mean?”

“Anorexia is a new word,” Tom said. “Well, new in the grand scheme of things. It was the late 1800s, I think, when it was first used by doctors to describe people with a ‘nervous absence of appetite’. People today think they understand mental illness so much better than those before them, just because they have fancy words and diagnoses to support what they’re saying. But they’re just as clueless. When people find out you’re anorexic they think you’re self-absorbed or stupid or vain. They act like it’s some new, first world problem. Just another result of the corruption of modern life. But before… Before there was a word for it, people still chose to starve. They did it for God, and it made them feel good, and noble, and closer to their faith. To me, that's what anorexia was really about. Not about being thin, but about being pure. And what could be more pure than eating nothing at all? The praying hands mean, well - fuck fancy wording - they’re what it really felt like. But even though not eating made me feel all noble and better than, it still made me almost dead. Just like I tried to show in the other sculptures.”

Buffy felt a wave of something terribly sad wash over her. Because she understood the feeling, just not the way Tom probably thought she did. 

Her fangs itched behind her teeth. 

She wasn’t like Tom, or the praying hands, or any of the other people whose stories were captured by his work. She could never bite the apple, for it would be like biting into dirt. She could never drop her hands from prayer and feast the way she wanted to, for the meal she craved was people, with lives and families and struggles of their own. 

She remembered Angel’s words: “She’s not Buffy anymore.”

It would be nice if he was wrong, but he wasn’t, not really. She had Buffy’s memories, her feelings, and even some of her old dreams and desires. But she wasn’t that girl anymore. Buffy Summers never burned like she did now. Even when she was fourteen years old and starved herself for days, she never craved food the way she craved the warm blood pulsing beneath Tom’s neck.

She was never this fucking hungry.

“You were right,” Buffy said after a moment, clearing her throat. “This is a lot. I need to go sit outside for a bit. To cool down.”

A sympathetic expression washed across Tom's face. “I’m so sorry, I know how stuff like this can feel when you’re struggling. Not to assume that you can relate! I just mean - let me come outside with you and-”

“It’s okay, Tom,” Buffy said with a forced smile. “It’s a lovely exhibit. It makes me feel a lot. But I’d like to be alone now.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it a moment later. He let her go.

Buffy found a nice spot to sit by herself in the parking lot behind the gallery. It was almost empty - the type of people who attended these sorts of events weren’t usually the sort who had cars. It was cold outside, and while Buffy could feel it, it didn’t hurt the way it would have if she was alive. The aching that would be a sign of frostbite in humans felt dull. Diminished.

She wrapped her jacket tighter around herself, and dragged her fingers over the concrete beneath her, giving herself all sorts of little scrapes and cuts that only sort of helped ground her. She went over her list of rules in her head, and decided the first thing she would do after sunset tomorrow was head to the butcher’s to buy some more pig’s blood. She was less neurotic on a fuller stomach.

She took in a shaky, unnecessary breath and stood up off the ground. If she were alive, her body heat would have melted some of the icy pavement beneath her, leaving her skirt wet. But as it was, she was the same temperature as her surroundings - cold-blooded like a frog, Willow would astutely say - so her clothes were still perfectly dry.

She brushed herself off anyways, and made to go back inside the gallery when she felt a familiar tingling sensation grace the back of neck. She went as still as the dead, and tilted her head slightly, listening but hearing nothing. A small thrill ran through her. She was feeling low, and a good fight would make her feel a little better.

She didn’t hear footsteps, but her vampire tinglies told her someone was approaching. She reached into her bag to pull out a stake, when something stopped her dead in her tracks. That sensation… it wasn’t just her usual Slayer signals. It was stronger; familial. It was comforting in a way she had only ever felt from one vampire.

“Angel?” she called out, unable to keep her voice from warbling every-so-slightly.

There was a pale hand on her shoulder, and if her heart could beat it would have skipped it anyways. She spun on her feet, ready to fall apart in her sire’s arms. To be his again, like she was supposed to be.

“Not ever so,” the other vampire chuckled, before connecting his fist with her face.

Buffy stumbled backwards. Her demon was clamoring around inside her chest, grappling at her heart and stomach as it tried to break free. She let it, fangs descending and yellow eyes getting a better look at the man who was not her Angel, but her demon somehow felt it knew just as well. She took in the sight of him, from the bleach-blond hair to the black leather duster, and couldn’t stop a grin from growing around her sharp teeth.

She had prayed for a good fight, and it seemed that at long last, she was going to get one. “Hello, Spike.”

Chapter Text

It always struck Spike as odd, how much becoming a vampire changes a person. It surprised him to see the stark change in others, because when he was first turned he still felt every ounce the man he had once been, just stronger, faster, and perhaps a little more bloodthirsty. There was no real line that marked where William Pratt ended and William the Bloody began; they were one and the same. 

He had quickly realized that this was not the case for everyone, of course, after he turned his mother. No longer could he deny the fundamental way that becoming a demon alters someone. It was the reason he never made a Childe himself - because the outcome was so unpredictable. He could find somebody he liked in life, sure, but how could he tell what sort of demon they would become in death? To Spike, it never felt worth the risk.

Looking at the former Slayer now, Spike could see bits and pieces of his own bloodline reflected back at him. That Cheshire cat grin she wore now was all her own, but there was a glint in her eyes that belonged to Darla, and the slight hunch of her shoulders and ramrod straight back were undeniably inherited from her brooding Angel. 

The local demons had taken to calling her the Aurelian, which had made Spike chuckle when he first heard it, but looking at the Slayer-Vampire now, he could see why they'd named her so.

“Hello, Spike,” she said, and her voice sent chills down his back. Had Spike ever seen her so eager to fight him before? Willing, always; but excited? He wasn’t sure.

She had been knocked backwards when he’d struck her, but was still on her feet, probably courtesy of all that new vampire strength running through her system. Her yellow eyes had raked over his body, and now were fixed on his own. She dropped whatever she was reaching for back into her bag and pounced forwards, striking him in the nose. He returned her strike with a blow to the side, which she quickly blocked with her arm. He pulled away and managed to block a few more of her strikes, even landing a kick of his own to her stomach. 

“Ow!” she said, looking surprised. “That actually hurt!” 

Spike grinned. “In case you’ve forgotten, Slayer, that’s kind of the point.”

The Slayer-Vampire narrowed her yellow eyes, and lunged at him again. Her moves were more cohesive now - they had been scrapping before, but now they were dancing. She grabbed him by the shoulders and tossed him into a sad, rusty excuse of a car. It dented upon contact, but the car alarm didn't even go off. She pounced at him again. 

God, this was fun! She was an animal in the ways she sprung at him; unrestrained and deadly. They clashed again, and she scratched his face from below his eye to his jaw. Her nails were sharp, but they weren’t quite claws like Drusilla’s. His face stung where she had scraped him, blood rushing forwards to his skin’s surface. He hadn’t fed in a few hours so his blood was cool, likely escaping from the cut in dark beads that experience allowed him to picture perfectly. The Slayer-Vampire was so strong it was easy to forget she was still practically a fledgling, but even so, Spike could pinpoint the exact moment when she realized she'd drawn blood. For just a second, her hand dropped from the lapel of his duster, and her eyes darkened as they danced across the line of his cut. The distraction only lasted a moment, but it was all he needed to knock her off her feet and back onto the harsh, icy concrete beneath them. 

He was sitting on top of her now, chest heaving with unnecessary breaths as he looked down at the girl beneath him. He pinned her arms down under his knees, and despite her now inarguably superior strength, he could probably rip her head clean off with her restrained like this. That was what he came to New York to do, right? Fuck Dru’s mad ravings of sunshine and darkness and the moon! Screw Joyce Summers’ desperate pleas for her daughter’s life. He was the Slayer of Slayers, and he had a Slayer nailed down beneath him. Even with her newly undead persuasion, there was only one thing for him to do…

But he wasn’t ready for their dance to be over. “I always knew it would end like this,” he leered at her anyways. “Buffy Summers, dead beneath me.”

The ex-Slayer was still struggling beneath him. “Not dead yet,” she gasped out, eyes still stuck on the cut she’d given him.

He shifted on top of her, gracing his hand across the side of her neck more gently than he’d intended to. “Don’t feel a pulse...”

She continued to struggle beneath him, and Spike took in a deep breath, intent on finally getting to smell her fear… except that wasn’t fear he smelled on her now. He accidentally dropped gameface, surprised. The chit was a vampire now, so Spike really shouldn't be too surprised to find their fight had gotten her hot, but the scent of her arousal was still enough for him to momentarily forget why he had her under him in the first place. 

The former Slayer used this to her advantage, freeing her arms and quickly knocking him over so that suddenly she was the one straddling him. She glanced between his eyes and the cut on his face quickly, then ran her thumb up the side of his face, wetting her digit with his blood. For a moment, Spike was sure that she would bring it to her mouth and suck - that would be the vampiric thing to do, after all. But she shocked him again by instead grabbing his head and smashing it back down into the concrete. 

“Bloody hell!” he yelled as she scrambled off of him. “What’d you do that for?”

“No stake,” she said as some sort of nonsensical explanation. “What else was there to do?”

Spike could think of quite a few things the chit could’ve done to him in that position, but was having trouble voicing them as the stars he was seeing were yet to subside. He staggered to his feet, and forced himself to focus on the vampire in front of him. She was in better shape than he was, but he was pleased to see that the first punch he’d landed was already starting to bruise, and that she too was panting for the air that neither of them really needed.

With his hands on his knees for support, he waited for her to grab a stake from her bag, or a wooden branch off a nearby tree, or some wire from the chain link fence that surrounded the parking lot. The Slayer was a creative bird when she wanted to be, and their surroundings were not lacking in little knickknacks she could probably manage to kill him with. 

But instead, she simply circled him, seemingly waiting for him to recover his senses enough to strike her again. Against his will, Spike found himself pushed back into a memory of fighting the Jamaican Slayer - the one Dru had killed - about two years ago. He’d been gaining on her - he was close to killing her - when the Sunnydale Slayer had yelled “Switch!”, the two girls had quickly traded places, and suddenly he was fighting Buffy instead. He should’ve been angry, for he almost had the other Slayer, but for some Godforsaken reason he wasn’t. “I’d rather be fighting you anyways,” he couldn’t help but tell her. “Mutual,” she’d replied.

“What’s the matter, Spikey?” the Slayer-Vampire teased him, snapping Spike into the present. “Is the ‘Big Bad’ all bark no bite?” 

He lunged at the smirking girl and hit her in the teeth. Her lip split, bloodying her mouth, and she bore her blood-covered fangs at him. It was marvelous, watching the once-Slayer behave like such an animal. She looked so free. Even in the bluish haze of the moonlight she was completely golden.

They exchanged a few more strikes, then returned to circling each other. “When I kill you,” Spike said gleefully, “which parent do you want me to send the dust to? Angelus, or your human mother?”

If the ex-Slayer was bothered by the mention of her missing sire or abandoning mother, she didn’t show it. “Who should I give your dust to? Drusilla? Where is she these days? Not by your side, I see. Is she waiting for you in a cozy little tomb nearby, or did she dump you for another chaos demon?” She looked him up and down. “I’m guessing the latter.”

He was surprised by how unbothered he was by her mention of the woman who was once his whole world. “Maybe I dumped her!” 

“Right,” the Slayer-Vampire said, her words dripping with far more venom than he’d ever seen her use when she was alive. 

He grabbed at her again, and slammed her backwards into the chain link fence. The back of her brown leather jacket snagged on one of the supporting poles, and he heard a rip as she fell to the ground. He made to hit her again while she was down, but Buffy had shrugged off the jacket and was on her feet again before he got to her. All the humor was gone from her face, and when she hit him it was unrestrained, with all the Slayer-Vampire strength he hadn’t realized she was still holding back. Spike flew backwards and dented another car, this one’s loud alarm going off immediately. 

He pushed himself up again, and spun towards the Slayer, but she was no longer paying any attention to him. She carefully unhooked her torn jacket from where it was caught on the fence and folded it over one arm, before grabbing her bag and running off without sparing him another glance. 

Spike frowned, trying to feel for a trick of some kind. The car alarm was still blaring noisily behind him, and he glanced around, looking for a spot that the Slayer could be waiting to pounce at him from. “Uh, Slayer?” he called out into the darkness. “Where'd you go?”

There was no answer, and he couldn’t smell her nearby. He straightened out his duster, and ran a hand over his messy hair to try to smooth it back into shape. He weighed the pros and cons of tracking her scent and racing after her, but eventually decided against it. His head was still throbbing painfully and his entire body felt sore. 

He glanced in the direction she had run off in. “The bloody hell was that about…?” he muttered to himself.

There were a few key things you needed to do in any city if you wanted to survive there as a vamp. Finding a good lair was a given, as was establishing yourself a nice hunting ground. You needed to know what types of other creatures you were sharing with (does your turf come with a Slayer? No? That’s good, but what about other demon hunters? What about rival nests and demons?). You also needed to know a good place to go to find information, and gather minions.

A little sniffing around had told Spike that the Slayer-Vampire (or Slaypire, as he’d taken to calling her since their fight) had not just limited herself to SoHo; she had properly staked out the entirety of Lower Manhattan. When Spike had lived in New York in the 70s, the Bowery had been his turf, and a part of him had expected to find it still teeming with vampiric activity even twenty years later - his and Dru’s presence normally had that inspirational sort of effect. Instead, his old hunting grounds were abandoned, save for a couple of vamps who’d agreed to start bagging it. How depressing.

One of the only upsides of the Slaypire’s apparent crusade was that it was easy to find a nice place to settle down in. Mansions were really more Angelus’s style than his, but when he’d found a particularly grand one that had been nested in by some recently dusted or departed vamps, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The local human population was also far more relaxed after dark than they had any right to be, which made grabbing a snack or two off the street particularly easy.

After his fight with the Slaypire, Spike had strolled (definitely not stumbled) right back to his new lair to plan his next move. He had identified three problems that he hadn’t properly anticipated, and that were going to make him killing the Slaypire harder than he thought.

For starters, being turned had clearly made her way stronger than she’d been as a human Slayer. She’d been holding out on him for most of their fight, only revealing her true strength right at the end, and even before that he’d been struggling to keep up with her. Spike had heard of the measureless strength of turned Slayers before, hell, he’d been excited for the challenge, but it was something he was going to have to consider seriously if he didn’t want her to kill him. 

Second of all, the Slaypire was a fledgling, so unstable. He tried to remember how he had felt when he was first turned; the good but also the bad. Her demon was a baby that could be set off by anything at any moment, like when he’d torn her coat when they were fighting. He couldn’t exactly say it was an accident, for he didn’t really care what happened to the Slaypire’s clothes while they fought either way, but he certainly hadn’t meant to make her snap like that - smacking him hard and running off. He supposed he’d be a little upset if his duster was ruined, but that was different! It was a prize he’d won after one of the hardest (and most satisfying) fights of his life! And even then, it’s not like he’d ditch what he was doing if it got a little tear. He was going to have to be careful not to piss the Slaypire off like that again. Or, to piss her off when he wanted her pissed off, not in the middle of a perfectly enjoyable brawl.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there was the problematic realization that Spike didn’t really want to kill the Slaypire anymore. She’d always been a curious creature - even when she'd had a heartbeat he’d wanted to shag her almost as much as he wanted to kill her. That wasn’t too surprising, as he’d always enjoyed tussling with Slayers, but this time he’d had so much fun he hadn’t wanted it to be over at all, even when he’d had her pinned beneath him with no way to escape. He should have killed her then but he’d hesitated, unwilling to let their dance end before the music stopped playing. And he wanted to do it again - not just the part where he overpowered her, but the parts where she straddled him and beat him back too. 

He still hated her, obviously, but it was a lot to think about.

God. Being with Drusilla for so long must have seriously screwed him up.

So by the time sunset rolled around the day after their fight, Spike had admitted to himself that he wasn’t quite ready to go after the Slaypire again. He turned on the telly for a few hours and flicked to a channel that was playing reruns of Dawson’s Creek (not as good as Passions, but alright for entertainment) as he waited for it to be late enough for the other beasties to come out to play. At around ten, he grabbed his duster and hit the streets.

The city had changed a lot since the 70s, Spike thought with a sigh as he wandered past the spot where his old flat with Dru had been replaced with a high-rise. Back then, this part of town had been cram-full of vagrants you could snatch off the streets without a passerby so much as blinking. It had been the home of all things poor and punk rocker, but now seemed halfway towards being posh. He scowled as he passed by a high-end grocery store.

Spike ended up, unsurprisingly, at CBGBs, the punk club that had once been the end-all of his hunting grounds. Dru had hated the place - said it was too loud and made the pixies growl - but he’d managed to drag her along a handful of times. They’d seen the Ramones play live then went backstage with them after. It had taken a lot of willpower to stop Dru from eating the lead singer, especially after he’d pointed out Spike’s look and asked if it was ‘cause he was an Idol fan.

The club looked mostly the same, Spike was pleased to see, although the line outside was far longer than he'd ever seen it. He tried to skip it by flashing some fang at the bouncer, but the man was unperturbed. In the end, Spike just found his dinner in the form of a twenty-something-year-old who wasn’t as eager as her friends to spend hours waiting in line to see music she apparently wasn’t even that into. Spike nodded and flirted and treated her with false sympathy, until he was able to get her into a back alley and quickly drained her dry.

Feeling invigorated, he decided it was time to hit up a demon bar. 

While the human side of the city seemed to have been turned on its head since Spike was last in town, the demon side was largely unchanged. Spike was unsurprised (but a little relieved anyways) to find that Shadows & Shots, a local demon bar that had been founded around the same time as the city itself, still stood strong. 

The bar was pretty lively, and looking around Spike recognized several species of demons that most certainly were not human-friendly, so he figured the Slaypire must not know about the place yet. Thank God for small victories. He swaggered up to the bar with all the Big Badness he could muster up despite still being a little bruised from the day before, and ordered a glass of whiskey.

The bartender, a grey-skinned demon with eight arms, hesitated slightly (perhaps sensing the fact that Spike was absolutely not going to pay for anything he drank) before letting out a tired sigh and pouring him the drink. “Thanks, mate,” Spike said cheerily, taking the drink and turning to observe the sea of demons in front of him, trying to identify the best minions, and best blokes to beat for information. 

An hourish later, Spike was several drinks in and had stopped the pretense of ordering at the bar in favor of reaching behind it to steal the entire bottle. He wasn’t quite at the Drusilla-dumped-me-again or I-came-all-the-way-to-Sunnydale-just-to-find-the-Slayer’s-dead level of drunk, but he had a nice buzz going for him as he chatted about the Slaypire with a loose-skinned demon named Dave.

“The Aurelian’s a nice lady!” Dave told Spike sternly. “Sure, she has a bit of a thing against vamps, and I’ve heard some of the guys complain that she won’t let them get away with even teeny-tiny apocalypses, but she’s not that bad.”

“You just think that ‘cause you don’t know her like I do,” Spike explained. “She can be a right…” he trailed off when the woman in question wandered through the front door. 

Spike’s first thought was that she was staging an ambush, but she had opened the door gently rather than knocking it down, so he paused. She was in gameface, so must be there for information, was his second thought, except she didn’t so much as smack the bartender, instead ordering a glass of something pink and sparkling, and taking a cool sip without so much as blinking. 

“There she is now!” Dave said with a smile. “She comes in here most nights after patrolling the streets. Did I mention that?”

Spike grit his teeth. “No. You didn’t.”

He stared at her back. She was wearing the same brown suede jacket she’d worn the night before, the tear down the back stitched together poorly with noticeable black thread. Spike could have done a much better job himself. Dru often ruined her favourite dollies during her fits, so he had practice at making broken things good as new. He could see the exact moment that she sensed him, her back going ramrod straight before she turned slowly on her heels. He considered bolting out the door, but decided against it.

It took her longer to make her way over to him than he would have expected, and he was mildly surprised when she didn’t draw her stake the moment she got to his table. Instead, she settled on hitting him in the nose.

“Ow! Bloody hell woman, the nose still isn’t quite healed from yesterday!”

“What are you doing here?” she asked with that same bite he remembered from when she was alive, and for some reason, Spike found that strangely reassuring.

“‘M having a drink,” he replied breezily. “And doing well, thanks for asking.”

She narrowed her yellow eyes at him. “So me beating the crap out of you last night didn’t give you the ‘get the hell out of my city’ memo?”

“Mmm, see that message usually only works when you actually win the fight. Scampering off into the darkness kind of dulls the effect.”

The Slaypire crossed her arms over her chest, looking almost embarrassed.  

“Uh, I should probably be getting back to my friends…” Dave mumbled, his eyes darting nervously between the two of them. “Nice bumping into you, Aurelian, Spike…” He scampered off, and the Slaypire surprised Spike again by sinking down into the vacated seat.

“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously, to which the bitch just sighed, running her finger around the top of her glass.

“Enjoying a drink at my demon bar in my city?” She said it like it was obvious.

“See, here’s the bit where I’m confused, luv,” Spike said, leaning forwards slightly. “Slayer plus demon bar? Usually doesn’t equal Shirley temples.”

She was still in gameface, and Spike wondered for a moment if she was so young she wasn’t good at controlling it yet. Although that didn’t really make sense because he knew she lived with humans. “I’m not the Slayer anymore,” she said, yellow eyes now refusing to meet his blue.

Spike snorted. “Right. That’s why you were so quick to jump me last night.”

“You hit me first!” she said indignantly, which Spike had to admit was a fair point. “Besides, look me in the eyes and tell me you didn't come to New York just to kill me.”

“Well fine, obviously I’m here to kill you, but that brings us back to my first question. What are you doing at my table?”

“Getting to know the enemy. It’s an important strategic decision all generals know to make,” she said, and Spike stared at her. The Slayer was joking with him. The Slayer was joking with him, and she wasn’t a particularly funny bint, but still his undead insides were still warming up a little. “It’s kinda flattering,” she continued after a moment, “having a mortal enemy who’ll follow you across the country, even when you’re dead. Some girls struggle just getting guys to call them back.”

Spike couldn’t help but feel suspicious. “Really, Slaypire, what’re you-”

She laughed so hard she snorted some of her drink out her nose. “Did you just call me Slaypire? ” she asked, and okay, fine, maybe it sounded a little ridiculous when you said it out loud, but she was the one who just said she wasn’t the Slayer anymore!

“What should I call you then?” Spike grumbled, and the Slaypire/ex-Slayer/whatever she was chewed on her bottom lip as she seemed to contemplate this.

“The locals call me the Aurelian,” she mused. “Kinda ironic since I killed the Aurelian Master and all.” Her yellow eyes widened. “Does that make me the Master?”

“No it bloody well does not,” Spike said. “When Old Nest died, the Annoying One became the new master. If anything, I'm the Master now since I killed him.”

She tilted her head to the side, looking surprised. “You killed the Anointed One? I always wondered what happened to him…”

Spike leaned back in his chair, refusing to think too seriously about the fact that the two of them were now having a whole civil conversation. “He was a little wanker. Went on and on about how I’d ruined his feast of Saint whatever by not waiting ‘till Saturday to kill you.”

A smile tugged at her lips, and Spike realized that at some point she’d shifted out of gameface. Her demonic features were glorious; the true face of a warrior and all that. But now that he was looking at her properly, he realized her human face was kind of lovely too.

“Wanker,” she repeated, green eyes sparkling.

“Either way,” Spike said firmly, “I’m not calling you the Aurelian. What a stupid name.”

“I like it. It’s ironic,” she said with a shrug. “Buffy.”

“Whassat?”

“If you don’t want to call me the Aurelian, you should just call me Buffy now. I mean, you’ve tried to kill me how many times? You’d think we’d be on a first name basis already.”

“Okay,” Spike said, looking at the woman he couldn’t help but remember was technically Drusilla’s sister. “Buffy.” Suddenly the silence between them felt heavy, so Spike quickly broke it. “So how was patrolling? The other monsters tell me that’s something you still do, for some daft reason.”

The Sla- Buffy shot him a withering look. “Might not be the Slayer, but some vamps still gotta be slayed. Boring night though. Ran into a couple of fledges but left them alone.”

Spike frowned. Leaving a bunch of fledges alive so they could go on to inevitably eat people seemed rather out of character for a vampire who had made a name for herself by brutally killing her own kind. “Why?”

Buffy shrugged. “No fun in that fight.”

“‘M pretty sure the bartender eats baby’s flesh on his smoke breaks. You could go slay him.” Spike suggested, brightening at the idea of having his tab so easily cleaned out for him.

She surprised him by laughing. “Nice try, Spike. Timbuu demons eat flies and bugs.”

“Worth a shot,” he smirked. “I’ve had a mediocre night myself. You have any idea how much this neighborhood has changed since the 70s? Used to be the place to be! An all you can eat buffet of drunks, and the punk scene was just- Oh, forget it.”

Buffy grinned. “You sound like my roommate Lori. I almost thought she was a vamp for how much she claims to miss the ‘old scene’. Never mind she wasn’t alive for it. She says the city’s filled with ‘posers’ now.”

“Too right,” Spike grumbled. “Sounds like this Lori chit’s got the right idea of it. I ate a girl from the line at CBs earlier today and she’d never even heard of Blondie. Can you believe that? Now some of the old bands, I’d get not knowing. Hell, I could even make an exception for The Ramones, but-” he cut himself off when he heard a glass shatter. Suddenly, there were shards of glass all over their table, and Buffy’s hand was covered in blood. She was no longer smiling at him, and that bothered Spike more than he thought it would. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Her expression was inscrutable. “You killed a girl tonight? Before you came here?”

“Well, yeah,” Spike said, unsure as to what exactly the problem was. “A man’s gotta eat, dun he?”

“How many people have you killed since you got to New York?” she asked, her voice flat.

“Is that what’s got you in a tizzy? Me killing people?” She didn’t say anything. “I haven’t killed as many people since I’ve been here as those fledges you didn’t dust are likely to tonight.” More silence. “Why do you even care, anyways? Way I’ve heard it, you’re just as soulless as I am!”

“I have a list,” Buffy said quietly, as if that made any sense at all.

“A list,” he repeated incredulously, “right. And I take it I’ve broken one of your little rules then? How to not be evil for dummies?” She still didn’t say anything, and she really was Drusilla’s sister, wasn’t she? Who else could be so goddamn infuriating? “Whatcha gonna do? Stake me?” he continued sarcastically. “Oooh, real scary.”

“I can’t do this,” Buffy muttered, grabbing her stupid torn-up leather coat from the back of her chair and swiftly leaving the bar.

“Slayer!” he called out after her, chasing her out the front door. “Buffy!”

“Leave me alone, Spike,” she said, spinning on her heels to face him. She still wasn’t in gameface, but he would have preferred it if she was. The demon, he could understand. He wasn’t so sure about the girl.

“I don’t get it. You don’t actually care about those people, do you?”

“No I don’t,” Buffy said sharply. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” And with that she ran off again, leaving Spike even more confused than he’d been the previous night.

He scowled, and headed back into the bar for another drink. Talking with Buffy would get him nowhere. He really ought to get back to killing her.

Chapter Text

Craig had been a vampire for coming up on five years now, and he finally felt he’d gotten a handle on the gig. There had certainly been some trials and tribulations along the way (revenge-turning his ex-wife? Definitely not as good an idea as it seemed at the time) but he’d come to peace with the whole undead thing now. 

He was sired by one of the more prominent members of the Order of Tetraites, and upon indoctrination to the cult had quickly taken to busying himself with tasks to help the Master, so as to avoid being staked - or worse - bored. He had been an accountant in life, and therefore had a keen eye for numbers that the Master was happy to use to her advantage. At first, Craig was mostly in charge of organizing her treasure troves and such, but he’d made his way up in the ranks recently, and was now being tasked with grave-robbing, kidnapping, and even minion siring! 

Craig liked the simplicity of his undead life. He no longer had to worry about silly things, like the fact he hadn’t set up a pension plan early enough, or what he was going to lose in the divorce. As long as he diligently completed his tasks like a good little minion, the Master would see that he was well provided for.

But things were changing in the Order of Tetraites, things even Craig and the Terrible Ex-Wife of Doom were unable to keep from noticing. There was a new player in town - some wannabe Vampire Slayer who went by “the Aurelian” - that was mucking things up for everybody.

Craig had seen the Aurelian a few times from the shadows, watching nervously as she took out his fellow minions. He reckoned that the Master could totally take her in a fight, but for some reason her magnificence refused to give it a proper try! One of the older Order members explained to Craig that this was because the Tetraitans had a long and gruesome history with the Aurelians, and the Master was too clever to endanger them all by angering the wrong vampire. The Order of Aurelius was unstable these days, ever since some Slayer in California had killed their old Master, and that meant they were unpredictable. It wasn’t a good idea to muck up their tentative alliance with the other vampires now. What if killing the Aurelian ticked off whoever the new Aurelian Master was, and suddenly the Tetraitans had a whole war on their hands? They didn’t want that, did they? Craig had shook his head no, of course not, but the whole thing made him antsy anyways. How many minions would the Master let the Aurelian stake before she decided the girl needed to be taken care of?

It was for the aforementioned reasons that Craig couldn’t quite believe his ears when he overheard a conversation between the Aurelian herself and a vampire who went by Spike (of all things!), on what was otherwise a normal Saturday night at Shadows & Shots.

He wasn’t even really eavesdropping until he heard the male vampire proclaim that he had killed the famed child-vampire known as the Anointed One, making himself the new Master of the Order of Aurelius. Craig gulped. So it wasn’t just one Aurelian encroaching on their territory now, it was two of them? One of whom was the Aurelian Master?

One rogue Aurelian staking a few fledges, they could handle. A new Master in town… that was something else entirely. Did that mean the Aurelians wanted to go to war? How many more vampires were currently on their way to New York City? Craig knew that the Order of Tetraites couldn’t just sit back and wait for the Aurelian to blow on to the next town anymore.

Craig tossed back the rest of blood and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his white collared shirt. He gave the bartender a twenty and told him to keep the change. 

It was time for Craig to report back to his Master.

Buffy rubbed her eyes furiously as she made her way back to the factory. Although physiologically impossible, her cool skin felt hot and scratchy, and for the first time in ages, she was struggling to keep out of gameface.

She was humiliated, and it was the second time in as many nights that Spike had made her feel that way. And frustratingly, she knew it was her own damn fault. Not the first time (for who could have anticipated Spike blowing into town like that?), but just then, at the bar. Why did she go over to talk to him? She could have easily pretended not to see him - or better - she could have just made with the shovel talk and left it like that. But no, she had to sit down across from him, and start to open up to him, and why did she do it? Was it because he was somebody she had known before she died? Because her demon couldn’t seem to stop clambering around inside her mind, screaming that he was family?

She took the long route home, taking every possible detour she could think of. She drew her stake even though it was a Friday, and nothing about the city at this hour was dead - undead or otherwise.

Fucking Spike. Why had he looked at her like that when she’d told him to call her Buffy? It was just a name. There was no reason for his stupidly blue eyes to get all soft and twinkly the way they did. And why wasn’t he in gameface anyways? All the other vamps in the bar were, herself included.

And, ugh, he’d managed to trick her so easily! All he’d had to do was smile a little and suddenly she was actually talking to him, and enjoying it way too much. She’d enjoyed their fight the night before far too much too, until he’d snapped her out of it by ruining the jacket Cordy had given her. Her stomach had dropped when he’d knocked her into that fence and she heard the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping. That jacket was the one thing she had that was completely Buffy; the one link she had to home that wasn’t entirely contingent on her still being human. Still being the Slayer.

After their fight, she’d run home and rummaged through her things until she found the scrap of paper with Cordy’s number on it. She had punched the digits into the shared phone her roommates kept in the common space, but Cordelia hadn’t picked up and Buffy had been unable to stop from crying then. She could have left a message, but it felt impossible. Instead, she’d knocked on Lori’s door when she woke up the next day, and asked to borrow a needle and some thread. Only when her jacket was fixed up to the best of her abilities could Buffy even begin to think about Spike again.

She had liked fighting Spike back when she was the Slayer, but it felt different now. Back then she’d had to ignore the seductive ways he moved his body while fighting, the way every inch of him was always rock hard when he pressed his body to hers. It had been easy to ignore such things because people’s lives depended on it. 

But as Spike had just reminded her, people’s lives still depended on it. The only thing that had changed was that Buffy didn't  care the way she used to, and that upset her. 

She didn’t have a soul, but she had her list of rules. She didn’t want to be evil, and it wasn’t just for her friends’ sake. They were across the country now, and nobody was likely to find out if she took a nip out of a human or two. The only thing that stopped her from killing was the fact that she used to be the Slayer. And maybe Giles was right, and those memories didn’t really belong to the girl she was now, but they felt so real. She had given her life trying to fight evil - allowing herself to become it now would be like it was all for nothing. Angel said thay the way she felt was impossible, and maybe he was right and she was just making it all up, but fuck. She hated the idea that there was some shiny new Slayer out there who had taken her place, but somehow she still felt connected to her; to the whole Slayer line. Real or not real, it was enough to make her hesitate before becoming just another nasty thing that goes bump in the night

But it was hard. She was so hungry all the time. Not just for blood, but for violence and company. She thought of Angel, off somewhere far away without her, and she clenched her jaw. For a moment she hated him so much she was sure she was going to grind her teeth into dust, but the moment passed. He hadn’t done anything wrong, she reminded herself. She’d told him to drink and he had, and now she was unliving with consequences. Sire… her demon wined sadly, but Buffy quickly shushed it. Her death was harder for Angel than anyone else - it wasn’t his fault that he needed to get away from it all. He had killed his soulmate. It made sense that he needed to start again someplace new, somewhere nobody knew him and he could try to do good. 

It made sense. It was what Giles had told her to do too, when it became clear that even though she didn’t need to be locked up in a cage, she couldn’t just stay in Sunnydale.

Buffy sighed. Doing good would be so much easier if she still cared about people. If she did, killing Spike, and the fledglings she’d let go earlier that night, and all the other little nasties in the world would be easy.

When she finally arrived home, she was surprised to find the main floor completely empty. It must be later than she thought. She dropped her weapon-filled bag down on the floor and slumped back onto one of the moldy couches and shut her eyes for a moment, before forcing herself to get up again and finish the short journey upstairs to her room. She never napped downstairs like the others did. Angel once told her she didn’t breathe in her sleep. She didn’t sigh or snore or do any of the little things that distinguished her as living dead. If one of her roommates found her sleeping, they would think they had stumbled upon her corpse.

As soon as she got to her room, Buffy stripped to her underwear and flopped back onto the mattress she had set up in the corner of her room. She didn’t have a bedframe for it, but given most vamps seemed to sleep in literal nests of assorted fabrics or simple stone floors, she felt that just having one put her step above her brethren. 

As soon as she closed her eyes she saw Spike staring at her again, and parts of her that had no right to be felt tingly and electric. “Buffy Summers, dead beneath me,” he had said, lighting her ice-cold body on fire. “Buffy,” he had said in the bar just over an hour ago, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “Slayer. Buffy.”

Dying had fucked her up real good.

She wasn’t blind. She’d known Spike was attractive from the moment she’d properly laid eyes on him in that alley behind the Bronze. “Nice work, luv,” he’d said, and her hair had stood on end, but not for the reasons it did now. She thought of his cold, hard body pinned beneath her as she straddled him the previous night. She thought of dipping her thumb in his sticky blood…

She sprang up off the mattress in favor of pacing around her dark room instead - she absolutely refused to indulge in any sort of Spike-related fantasy, no matter how delicious the thought. She scolded her demon for even putting the idea in her mind, but Buffy could practically see the creature shrugging with faux-innocence. Wasn’t me… it whispered, and she wished she could punch it in its smug little face. 

She didn’t stop pacing for about an hour, until she was too tired to continue and felt her eyes beginning to droop despite herself. She wouldn’t let Spike bug her like that again. He came to New York City to kill her? Well, fine, he could give it a try. No more fun flirty Buffy. She had made a name for herself in this city for a reason, and if Spike tried her again, she would show him exactly why they called her the Aurelian.

The next day was New Year’s Eve, and the entire factory was buzzing with excitement about it. Buffy stayed in her bed all day, even once the sun had set and it was safe for her to come out of her room. She pulled a bag of pig’s blood out of the mini-fridge she kept in the corner of her room and bit into it, eagerly lapping up every last sip. It was cold, and it didn’t taste good, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to go downstairs and heat it up in the microwave. What the actual fuck would she tell her rommates if they asked what she was cooking?

At around eight o’clock, Tom pounded on her door. She decided to ignore him, but he kept on banging and banging until she finally got up and swung the door open. His face was flushed, and she could smell tequila on his breath. 

“Buffy! Party tonight! You in?”

She shook her head. “I have plans already. But thanks.”

He wandered off to bang on Lori’s door instead.

She wasn’t strictly lying when she said she had plans, they just weren’t plans that involved anyone but herself. She heard that every year in Times Square there was a ball drop, where this massive, specially designed disco ball thing drops down a flagpole at midnight to mark the start of the New Year. There were supposed to be parades and puppets and a special concert, all sponsored by some famous champagne company or something.

It felt like the sort of thing she might have gone to with Willow and Xander back in the day. Willow would have known the entire history of the thing - when it started and who founded it and why. She would explain the cultural and historic significance of it all, and roll her eyes in a light-hearted manner when she realized Buffy and Xander didn’t get what she was saying at all. Xander would be wearing a massive grin and make some joke about how only Willow could know all that, which would have sounded mean if it came from anyone but him. He would swing an arm over each of their shoulders, and say they were his best girls, and Buffy would roll her eyes and Willow would smile and he would laugh again. 

She got dressed into plain jeans, a grey shirt, and her brown suede jacket. She wondered what her hair looked like. She ran her hands through it and decided that it might be a bit frizzy, so she pulled it back into what she hoped was a smooth ponytail. She contemplated the makeup she’d stolen from the drugstore back in November, but hadn’t tried out yet. Without a mirror mascara and eyeliner were out of the question, but she dared to smudge some grey eyeshadow across her eyelids because how badly could she mess that up, even without a reflection?

She tucked her stake into her waistband, but neglected to bring an entire bag of weapons. This outing was for Buffy the girl, not Buffy the vampire, and definitely not Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

She walked to the entrance to the subway at Prince Street. She was glad for her vampiric tolerance to the cold, for the temperature was hovering around the freezing point, with the occasional flurry of snow waffling about being nasty wet rain. The inside of the station was beyond busy, but Buffy had a full stomach so wasn’t too bugged by it. It would be a quick journey. Once she got on the train it would take her straight to Times Square.

She smiled to herself - New York subway system: 0; Buffy Summers: 1. 

Her smile dropped when she heard screaming behind her, and suddenly the crowds were pushing away from the platform. Somehow, before she even turned around, Buffy knew which monster she was going to be greeted with.

“Slayer,” Spike growled, and Buffy’s frown deepened. Slayer? It was better than Slaypire, sure, but what happened to “Buffy”?

“Spike,” she greeted him boredly, reminding herself that flirtage was strictly forbidden. “Can we do this some other time? I sorta have plans.”

“Don’t think so, luv,” he lisped through his fangs. He was already in gameface, flanked by two other vamps. 

“Are those minions ?” she asked indignantly, and he was properly glaring at her now, all of the previous night’s humor gone. Buffy almost did a double take when she realized he was holding a stake. 

He looked really mad, which pissed Buffy off. What right did he have to be mad at her? He was the one who came to her city all gung-ho about killing her, only to get all rub-y while they were fighting then make stupid puppy-dog eyes at her while saying her name all deep and huskily… If anything, Buffy should be the one who first drew the stake. 

Her demon was banging on her chest, and Buffy let it out, eyes turning yellow and fangs descending. She flicked her stake at one of the minions, piercing it right in the heart. It exploded into a cloud of dust, and her weapon clattered to the ground just out of reach. She met Spike’s eyes again. “Final warning, Spikey. You sure you wanna do this?” 

“Come and get me, Slayer.” 

She leapt forward, grabbing her stake off the ground and apparently surprising him by immediately tossing it at and dusting the other minion.

She didn’t want any interlopers.

The station was empty of everyone but them now, and Buffy almost laughed - it seemed the people of New York city were a little less brave than the old Sunnydale population. She wondered what sort of story the police here would use to cover up their fight. Gangs on PCP was always a classic back home. But maybe this sort of thing didn’t even get coverage in the big city? She doubted a brawl scaring away the passengers at a local subway station made it to the top twenty most exciting things happening tonight, even if witnesses swore they saw a fang or two. A train pulled up, but the passengers on board had enough sense not to get off.

“I can’t believe-” Spike huffed between blows, “I’ve wasted so many years-” kick “-not killing you.”

“Believe me,” Buffy managed as she slammed him back a couple of feet. “The feeling’s mutual.”

Spike growled at her - like, actually growled at her - as he rushed forwards and hit her with enough force to knock her onto her back. She swiped her arm around and hit his legs in a way that made him fall to his knees. Looming over her, he swung his stake down at her chest, but she stopped him before he impaled her by biting into his arm, hard. Hard enough to break the leather of his duster and surface of his skin so she was tasting his blood. And- oh. Wow. It tasted kinda good.

“Ouch!” he yelped, dropping the stake and pulling away from her. “Fucking bitch,” he said, but his tone was almost affectionate.

Buffy shook herself out of her thoughts and snatched the stake off the ground before knocking Spike into the wall. She pinned him back with her left arm across his throat and brandished the stake she’d taken from him with her right. Was he as hot for it as she was? She barked out a laugh. They were both technically room temperature, after all. 

Spike’s eyes flickered between hers and the stake she was holding. He didn’t look angry anymore, nor did he look anywhere near as worried as someone in his position should. She swung the stake forward as if to kill him, and he audibly gasped before she veered slightly at the last moment, embedding it in his shoulder instead of his heart. 

His fangs disappeared and his once-yellow eyes were blue again. She should stake him now, she thought, do it nice and quickly. She pulled the weapon out from his shoulder - how quickly could she kill him now? He would feel the burn in a second. He would be dust in two.

She pulled away from him. 

“Don’t start a fight you can’t-” finish, she was going to say, when suddenly two pairs of hands were grabbing her from behind. She tried to tug away from them but she was outnumbered, and their joint grip was strong. What the hell was happening? She was sure Spike had only brought the two minions.

Spike was cackling as he watched her get dragged down. “Oh, Slayer, how the mighty have fall- hey, wait, what are you doing?” 

She felt a type of twisted satisfaction as the smirk slipped off Spike’s face and he too was swarmed by vampires. She pulled away from her captors and-

Out of the corner of his eye, Spike saw one of the vamps who wasn’t struggling to hold Buffy still smash her over the head with a rock, knocking her out cold. 

Spike roared back into gameface, flashing a mouthful of knives as he struggled against the two vamps who had grabbed him. He tried to break free from their grip, but it was hard. Blood was oozing out of the hole in his shoulder where Buffy had staked him, and he was feeling appropriately woozy. That didn’t stop him from trying though, and he wrestled hard against the chains they were wrapping him up in and- ow! When the bare skin of his palm made contact with the metal, it began to sizzle. The chains had been doused in holy water. That, or hydrochloric acid.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” he spluttered as a balding man dressed in business casual stepped forward.

“Hello, Mr Spike. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the man said, the sour expression on his face suggesting it was in fact anything but. “My name is Craig.”

The man was so completely average-looking it took Spike an embarrassingly long moment to realize he too was a vampire. “Craig. Sure. Look mate, mind telling why you’ve got me and the bird done up in chains?”

Craig gave him an unpleasant, bizarrely formal smile. “But of course! I am an associate of the Order of Tetraites. I would assume that you, the Master of the Aurelians, have heard of us?”

The Master of the-? Bugger. It seemed that Spike’s big mouth had gotten ahead of him again. “Right, yeah. The Master. That’s me. You were at the bar last night, then?”

“I was indeed.”

Spike scowled as he tried to rack his brain for anything the great-grandbitch might have told him about the Tetraitans. They were old, as old as the Aurelians at least, and long time allies? Or were they enemies? Spike couldn’t remember. He’d never cared much for being a member of the Order of Aurelius, that was always more Darla’s thing. Hell, he’d only ever met Old Nest the once, when the great-grandbitch had dragged him and Dru back for a homecoming after he’d killed his first Slayer. He didn’t remember having any trouble with the Tetraitans the last time he was in New York, but he also hadn’t gone around randomly slaying the lot of them as Buffy almost certainly had.

“What does your Master want with me, then?”

Craig gave him an indulgent smile. “Your Childe there,” he said, gesturing at the unconscious Buffy, “has been causing us a lot of trouble these past few months. The Master would simply like to have a conversation with you, Mr Spike. As I’m sure you know, we consider the Order of the Aurelius to be important allies-” Spike perked up; allies sounded promising, “-and we would like to be certain of where you stand now that this ancient treaty has been broken, and our connection is up in the air again.” Bugger.

Spike narrowed his eyes. “Me and my-” uh “-Childe really weren’t planning on staying in town for long. Unchain us now and we’ll be out of your hair and on our jolly way in no time.”

“The time for that has passed,” Craig said. “The one who calls herself the Aurelian must be held accountable, and the Master must speak with you.”

Spike tugged on his chains again. “Yeah? And what if I don’t wanna speak with your Master? Gonna smash me over the head with a rock too?”

“The Master would never want to disrespect a vampire as old and equal to herself as you, Mr Spike. That being said, a conversation needs to be had.” 

Well that was a bloody “yes” if Spike ever heard one. 

He sighed. “Lead the way.”

The minions transported Spike and Buffy most of the way to their lair by tube, and Spike had some truly mixed feelings about the fact that not a single person in the train car seemed to notice anything wrong with a group of blokes in business casual dragging around a chained hostage and what appeared to Buffy’s still corpse. A hundred and change years as a vampire, and the willing ignorance of humans still managed to shock him.

They got off the tube at 79th street, and led Spike down into the sewers, then through a sloping vampire-made tunnel that only burrowed deeper into the ground. The air seemed to cool down to a supernatural degree the further they went, until they finally reached a steel door, behind which was an inarguably beautiful bejeweled cave. 

One of the minions locked the door behind them, but Spike was confident that he’d be able to kick it down if he had to. Two of the other minions dragged Buffy over to the side and dumped her into a heap on the floor, locking her hands up in manacles and chaining her to the cave wall for good measure.

“Oi! Careful over there!” Spike couldn’t help but yell out when the minions grabbed at her a little too roughly. They glanced hesitantly between Spike and Craig, who deferred to Spike with a small bow.

“As our guest wishes,” Craig said, and Spike decided he would be the first to dust as soon as he was unchained.

He was a little relieved when Craig didn’t have Spike chained up right next to Buffy, but he didn’t remove his bindings either, even with the (admittedly breakable) cave door closed firmly behind him. He instructed the minions to keep a careful eye on Spike while he went to collect the Master.

As soon as Craig was gone, Spike turned to the closest minion, a fledgling no more than a few weeks old. “Hey you!” he called out. “Yeah, you there, the cross-eyed looking chap! Come loosen my chains a little, won’t cha?” The fledge didn’t even look at him. “Whatever this lot is paying you, I can double it.” The fledge looked pointedly anywhere but at Spike, who gave up after another minute or so of pestering. “Fine, be like that. But you’re getting a slow and very painful death when I’m out of here.” The fledge gulped and Spike bore his fangs at him. “Yeah, you should be scared. Pillock.”

When Spike made his way over to Buffy the minions got nervous, hesitantly watching them from a few feet back, clearly unsure on whether or not they should intervene.

“Slayer,” he hissed, nudging her with his foot. “Time to wake up.” No movement. Spike knelt down beside her. A lock of that magnificent golden hair of hers had fallen out of her ponytail, and he pushed it behind her ear. “Buffy,” he whispered, his lips twitching upwards slightly when she began to stir… only to roll over and become deathly still again. “Useless bint,” he muttered, abandoning his attempt to wake her up in favor of neurotically pacing around the cave.

At least an hour passed before Craig finally returned with the Tetraitan Master (which was a power play if Spike ever saw one) and when he finally saw the woman his breath hitched in his throat. Like Nest, the creature was so old her features were no longer quite human, but not traditionally vampiric in the way he had come to expect. Her skin had an almost green tinge to it, and her eyes were red instead of the usual yellow. She had smooth, grey hair that stopped just above her shoulders, and a strong roman nose that stood out among her otherwise truly demonic features. 

There was something about her that reminded him of how he’d seen Dru as a fledge. She had always been bloody glamorous to him, but back when his demon was a baby, she’d also been earth-shatteringly terrifying.

“Unchain him,” she told her minions. “They say he is the rightful Master of the new Order of Aurelius. He must be treated with respect.”

She smiled at him, and when her heavy gaze met his own, Spike felt smaller than he had in years. “William the Bloody,” she said, her voice smooth and regal. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

He blinked, trying to figure out what the smart thing to do in that moment was. In any other situation he’d smother his pride and drop to his knees, but as far as the Tetraitans seemed to know, Spike was the new Aurelian Master, and it was probably in his best interest not to correct them. He settled on a compromise, bowing slightly, but not dropping to his knees. Her lip curled up, and Spike decided he’d made the right choice. “The pleasure is all mine,” he said.

“I am sorry my acolytes handled you so roughly,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “May I offer you something to eat as an apology?” She snapped her fingers and one of the minions dashed off, quickly returning with the bound and gagged body of a teenage girl. 

Something uneasy stirred in Spike’s stomach as he glanced between the scared child and the Slayer’s sleeping form. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” he lied.

“Very well,” she said calmly, and the minion gracefully snapped the girl’s neck and dragged her away. “I hear you gained your title by slaughtering the Anointed One,” she continued, her voice heavy with something that wasn’t quite an accusation, but made Spike uneasy anyway as he scrambled to put together enough Aurelian lore to come up with a reason more acceptable than “he was an annoying little shit.”

“He was not fit to lead,” Spike said cautiously. “He was too young, and his role in our prophecy fulfilled. He was no longer of any use to the Order.” That sounded nice and cryptic, he thought, giving himself a mental pat on the back. Darla had had a brief phase in the 1890s where she was constantly moaning about the prophesied death of the Slayer and how the Master would create a new favourite Childe to send her to hell (or something like that), and he felt he had reflected that quite nicely.

“I understand,” the Tetraitan Master said. “But you too are young, William.”

Spike shrugged. “Had a hundred years on him.”

“I do not mean it as an insult. But the Order of Aurelius is in shambles, ever since that pesky Slayer killed your last Master.” She was looking at Spike all-too-knowingly, and he felt the knot of dread in his stomach tighten. Nobody was supposed to know Buffy was once the Slayer, according to Joyce. She was in enough danger as is. “You will have your work cut out for you before the Order of Aurelius is returned to its former glory. You will need allies.” She paused pointedly. “Heinrich Joseph Nest and I had no qualms. Us Tetraitans stuck to our own territory, as the Aurelians did to theirs. But that trust has been broken recently. Your acolyte has been causing us much trouble.” She gestured a bony arm at where Buffy was rousing. She looked casual - sleepy - for a moment, before stretching her arms out made her chains jingle and she snapped properly awake.

“Spike!” she called out to him, her voice a type of frantic he’d never heard from her before. Or if he had, he'd never been on this side of it. Her eyes were wide and scared and confused, and he just couldn’t get over how weird it was that she was calling out to him for help! Obviously he would choose Buffy over this creepy old Tetraitan bitch a hundred times over, but still. “Spike, you’ve got to-”

“Gag her,” the Tetraitan Master said uninterestedly, and even when Spike did nothing to stop the minions from shoving a nasty-looking swab of fabric in her mouth, Buffy didn’t turn her big green - nope, yellow now - eyes away from him. “She has slain many of my followers,” the Master continued, “but I gracefully let it go. She is young; rogue, I thought. But now you, her Master, are by her side.”

“A misunderstanding,” Spike said quickly and firmly. “The Order of Aurelius does not want to start a war with you.” For one thing, Spike didn’t exactly have an army to go to war with. He tried to picture gathering up the rest of the Aurelians and setting them loose in the city. Who would they even be? The handful of Sunnydale vamps that still worshipped the Old Nest’s dust? The dozen or so boys that Angelus had sired two years ago? The crazed, turned victims that Dru left behind in every city she visited? Angelus and Drusilla themselves? He snapped out of it. “Any trouble she has caused you, I apologize for. She does not speak for the rest of the Order.”

“Really?” the Master said evenly. “She seems to be waiting for you to rush to defense.”

Spike tried to look nonchalant under the Master’s steady gaze. All of this because Buffy the vampire had given herself a stupidly loaded new name, and he couldn’t keep from bragging a little in a pub? He supposed he’d been in stickier situations for dimmer reasons. “She’s a fledgling,” Spike said neutrally, ignoring the wounded look Buffy gave him. “Who knows why she does what she does.”

“Is she not your Childe?”

Spike paused, considering his next answer carefully, while Buffy now seemed to be trying to saw her manacles off by grating them together in the background. He needed to convince the demented old bat he wasn’t trying to start a war he couldn’t back, but he also couldn’t act like Buffy didn’t matter at all or she’d surely kill her. The thought of his Slaypire dying in chains in some dank old cave made his blood boil. In the end, he decided to go with something akin to honesty. “She is not quite my Childe, but she is close to me. Her sire, Angelus, is my grandsire. He had a curse placed on him, and-”

“I know of the One with the Angelic Face,” the Master said, and Spike almost broke character right then and there because he really hated it when people called the pillock that. “He was cursed with a soul, yes?”

“That’s the bastard. Couldn’t raise a fledge properly if he tried. Look, I can’t vouch for what she’s done before, but if you release her to me now I’ll take us both far away from this city and give ‘er a good telling off-”

“William,” the Master interrupted. “I believe you misunderstand the intentions of this meeting. ‘The Aurelian’ has caused me much hardship over these past few months, and so she must die. I hesitated before because I did not want a war with the Order of Aurelius, but I see now that your pose little risk and I needn’t have worried. I am only conferring with you now to make sure she is the only one who needs to be killed, and I do not need to wipe out the scattered remnants of your entire bloodline.”

Right then, so it was gonna be like that.

“That will not be necessary,” Spike said through gritted teeth. “She means little to me. She can die.” He glanced back at Buffy, who was no longer struggling against her bindings. He tried to give her a look, to make her understand that he would not let her die like this. She was made of Angelus, and so was he. Because of that she was his family - she was his. She’d always been special, and she was not about to die now, just because some bitched up power-cunt said so. But Buffy didn’t seem to understand, and Spike supposed he had given her no reason to. She glared at him with such intense hatred he thought he might just combust. He turned back to the Master. “Have your minions unchain her for me first though, won’t you?”

The Queen Bitch narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“You know us Aurelians,” he said lightly. “We love our rituals. If she is going to die, I insist on being the one to kill her. And I will do it the way the Master before me did.”

“Very well. You will kill her. You swear to it,” the Tetraitan Master said as she looked deep into his eyes, and suddenly Spike realized why this ancient creature reminded him so much of Dru. 

“I will kill her. I swear to it,” Spike repeated back to her in a monotone voice as he tried to contain his glee. If there was one thing he gained from living with Drusilla for the better part of a hundred and twenty years, it was complete immunity to the thrall.

The Master gestured at her minions and two of them quickly went to Buffy’s side and grabbed her, forcing her to her knees while a third unlocked the manacles binding her and slid them off. Another minion gave him a stake, which he took before moving towards Buffy so that he was standing above her. 

He slipped back into his human face. 

What was it he had said to get her to realize they were on the same side when Angelus was trying to end the world two years ago? He remembered doing a whole speech about Man U and People Happy Meals, but how did he start it off? She was bubbling with anger now, still struggling, but not breaking eye contact as she did so. What could he say to stop her from immediately attacking him when he set her free in a second, to get her to understand he was never really considering teaming up with the nasty old bitch? He remembered seeing her, then smashing that police officer in the face, then saying…

“Hello, cutie.” Recognition flashed in her eyes, and finally she stopped fighting. She was breathing heavily, even though she didn't need to. He touched the side of her face gently, and she didn’t flinch away from him. “Let go of her,” he told the minions, who hesitated, glancing back at their Master. “She’s Aurelian,” he continued, “she knows she has done wrong by me and will willingly lay down her life for it.”

The Master, still believing Spike was under her thrall, gave a nod of approval and the minions let go of Buffy and stepped back. Buffy, thank God, stayed kneeling. And then - because he just couldn’t help but tease her a little - he swung his stake towards her heart, stopping when the weapon was just an inch away from her chest.  

“Was gonna stake you in the shoulder, as payback, and all that,” he whispered, tapping on the wound she’d given him earlier that night, “But you’ll probably need your strength for this next bit.” In one swift moment he pulled the gag out of her mouth and dropped the stake in her open hands. “Welcome back, luv.”

She grinned. “Thanks.” 

The first two minions were dust before the Tetraitans seemed to understand what was going on. 

“But you swore on it!” the Tetraitan Master screeched, eyes wild and terrifying. “The thrall-!”

“-Don’t take well to being thralled, thanks,” Spike said as he let his fangs descend and pounced towards her, but she disappeared into the shadows before he could so much as lay a finger on her. Great, Spike thought to himself. On top of being about a thousand years old, apparently the Tetraitan Master was also a sodding witch.

Even with their Master safely vanished, the minions continued to swarm them. Spike glanced around to see where the fledge he’d promised a particularly painful death to was, but Buffy must have already taken him out and- wow, what a glorious sight!

She was like a cobra, the way she quickly struck and retreated, twirling around the minions as she danced them into dust. She was graceful, but also a little feral in the way she fought now, more demon than girl.

“Fucking finally!” she exclaimed as she staked two minions back to back. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for these guys to make a proper move,” she said, and Spike realized he was talking to her. 

“What, so you went riling up an ancient vampiric cult on purpose? Just to get your rocks off in good fight?” Spike called back as he grabbed Craig by the collar of his shirt and punched him in the face.

“Yuh huh!”

And even though the whole situation had been intense and scary and almost lethal up until a moment ago, it was such a Spike thing for her to do that he couldn’t help but laugh. “Bloody brilliant!”

“Glad you think so,” she said, flinging a minion his way for Spike to rip its head off. Taking them down was easy now that the two of them were fighting together, and the blighters lost the element of surprise.

But it didn’t take Spike long to notice that no matter how many minions they dusted, their numbers just weren’t going down. “Slayer!” he called out as he fought his way towards the door they’d come through and knocked it down. “Let’s move out!”

A minion had her on her back, but Buffy just snarled and used her fangs to tear into the soft skin on his throat. The minion tried frantically to pull away, and she used his force to flip them over before staking him. It was an incredibly arousing thing to watch, even though it made Spike’s arm pang a little where she’d bitten him earlier. 

Buffy was so caught up in the fight she didn’t seem to notice anything besides whoever her current opponent was, so Spike moved back over to her and grabbed her by the arm. “Buffy,” he said firmly, looking into her yellow eyes. “They’re just gonna keep sending more. We’ve got to go.”

She staked another minion and looked up at him. “But we’ll come back,” she said, and Spike couldn’t fight off a grin.

“You can bloody well count on it.” 

His hand slipped from her forearm to her hand, and they ran out of the cave and back into the sewers together.

Chapter Text

Buffy made no effort to blend in with the rest of the New Yorkers in the subway station. Several heads turned when she and Spike left the sewers and burst back into the subway, looking beyond haggard, but beyond that they were largely ignored. They passed a group of girls Buffy’s age in minidresses singing  We Wish You a Merry Christmas, who trailed off before they could get to the more relevant ‘and a happy New Year’ bit of the song. They shot her concerned looks as their eyes darted between her and Spike.

Buffy knew she looked rough - she glanced down and saw dirt and blood spattered across her chest - but was surprised to find she didn’t much care. Taking out those Tetraitans had been a thrill. They were mostly minions, sure, but they had had her outnumbered and surrounded. They had been a formidable enough foe that her own victory wasn’t quite guaranteed, and that was what made the fight worth it.

“The Master knew you were the Slayer,” Spike told her once they were above ground again. His hands were on his knees as he gulped in breath after unnecessary breath. 

Buffy stared up at the moon; a brilliantly bright waxing crescent. She took in a purposeful deep breath of her own, enjoying the way it filled her up, even if she didn’t need it. 

“Nothing we can do about that now,” she eventually replied. “It’ll only really be a problem if it gets back to the Council, anyways.”

“The Master - you see how she disappeared like that?”

Buffy shook her head. As soon as she was unbound, she’d been more focused on making as much minion dust as possible than what had happened when the Master slunk off. “No. Like what?” 

“Melted into the shadows.”

Buffy frowned. “What, you mean literally? Is that even possible?”

Spike grimaced. “Reckon it is if you’re a witch.”

A muscle twitched in Buffy’s face, and it definitely wasn’t a smile, but it was something. An almost. “Huh. A vampire witch. That’s new.”

Spike gave her a funny look - a bizarre mashup of mirth and confusion and maybe something else too. “Not worried?”

The demon inside her was incensed by the Tetraitan Master, and her desire to wipe out the entire Aurelian bloodline, but the Slayer part of her was thrilled that the fight didn’t have to be over just yet. For some reason, Buffy thought of Faith as she replied: “Feelin’ fine. Five by five.”

When they were almost back in SoHo, Spike started walking in the wrong direction up Fourteenth Street, while Buffy had to stick on Sixth for a half dozen more blocks to get home. And okay, sure, it’s not like Buffy was going to invite her deranged sort of mortal enemy back to her place, but still. It was kind of rude of him to just start to walk away without saying anything, right? She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and began to turn away when Spike glanced back over his shoulder at her and raised an eyebrow. “You coming or what?”

So he wasn’t just leaving her. Huh. But she was still mad. Before he left, Angel had told her she wasn’t very rational as a vampire; that she confused him now in ways she never had when she was alive. Like always, he was probably right.

Buffy scowled. “Back to whatever creepy lair you’re hauled up in these days? I don’t think so.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “What, so you’re just gonna run home and lead any minions that might be following you right to your human flatmates? Real smart, that.”

Buffy ground her feet into the sidewalk, suddenly suspicious. “What do you care?”

Spike looked stumped. “I don’t. Obviously. But if we’re gonna take down a group like the Order of Tetraites we’ve gotta be smart about it, yeah? I took over an old vamp nest in the Bowery - probably one you cleared out. Lots of space and weapons. We’ve got a few hours till sunrise. Makes most sense if we both go back and regroup there.”

“You want to help me take down the Tetraitans?” Buffy asked, not quite believing her ears. Sure, they’d teamed up before, but that was only when the entire world (and his relationship with the Vampire Queen of Skanks) had been on the line.

Spike looked almost offended. “Well I said I would, didn’t I?”

Did he? Buffy asked herself. Maybe in a sort of roundabout way while they were fighting the minions. She thought about it for a minute. She didn’t need his help, of course, for she was certainly strong enough on her own. But then again, the Tetraitans seemed to agree that killing the Anointed One made Spike the new Master of the Order of Aurelius, and Buffy didn’t want to underestimate how seriously vamps took all their stupid rituals and traditions. Strategically, having a self-proclaimed “Master” by her side could only be a good thing. Or, she could always just kill Spike now and take the title herself.

She sighed. For some reason, she really really didn’t want to kill him.

“Fine,” she said eventually. “Truce?” She held out her hand for him to shake, which Spike took with a sardonic grin that made her feel all kinds of ways she most definitely shouldn’t. 

Buffy’s demon did a somersault in her belly, clearly pleased with this decision, which made her suspicious enough that she reeled back and dropped his hand immediately. Buffy got the sense that if her demon had a body of its own, it would be rolling its beady little yellow eyes. We can trust family, it told her, and Buffy wished she could pluck the creature right out of her undead body and give it a good shake, because did it completely forget that Spike had come at her with a stake just a few hours earlier?

Spike raised an eyebrow. “You alright, pet?”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked him distrustingly.

“Doing what?” he said, and ugh, she hated him, because didn’t he know? 

Didn’t he feel it?

Any alliance between them would be a twisted, wrong thing, and it had to be treated as such. Because, fine, Buffy didn’t have a soul, but she was a good vampire! She was good, and Spike was evil, and they shouldn’t be on the same page about anything because what did that mean about her? About both of them?

It had to be a trick. That was the only explanation that made any sort of sense.

“You shouldn’t be helping me,” she was able to say, her voice strangely pitched. “You’re the Slayer of Slayers, and now you want to help one?”

Spike looked amused by this. “Thought you said you weren’t the Slayer anymore.”

Buffy threw her hands up in the air. “I’m not! But that doesn’t make this make sense!”

“I wanna kill the Tetraitan Master too,” Spike said easily. “She’s a nasty bitch who wants to kill us and wipe out our entire bloodline.”

“There is no us,” Buffy tried to explain, because yeah, she wanted to kill the Master too, but he was completely missing the point! “You hate me, Spike. You said it yourself - you came to New York just to kill me!”

Spike tilted his head to the side, looking at her with those funny blue eyes of his. Buffy missed the yellow. The yellow was so much easier to understand.

“Not just to kill you.” He stepped forwards, grazing a finger along her jawline, and Buffy wasn’t sure he even realized he was doing it. She should hit him now. She should hit him hard, and fast, and run back to the factory. 

“Then why?”

Spike frowned. He looked uncertain.

Then he kissed her, and Buffy’s worries and suspicions scattered from her mind.

She’d been kissed countless times before this, mostly by Angel. His kisses were usually sweet and tender, but sometimes deep and passionate. Spike’s kiss was nothing like Angel’s; it was rough and confusing and kind of angry. Buffy’s unneeded breath stuttered out, and she should push him away, but instead she was deepening the kiss and pushing into him instead.

Spike was tugging at her hair and pulling it out of the messy ponytail that had barely survived their encounter with the Tetraitans. He ran his hands through it, but her hair was knotted and he was doing it roughly enough that it sort of hurt, and Buffy really should push him away, but instead her hands were running along his body, feeling him up.

She groaned. This was so fucked up, and Spike was such a good kisser it made her angry, so she kissed him harder, hoping to maybe bruise his lips a little.

And, oh God, she needed him inside her. Needed him! Wasn’t that a bizarre thought? She’d never felt she needed sex from anyone besides Angel right after he’d first turned her, and he had refused to perform. For one thing, there was the matter of the soul. He’d also claimed the act would be a desecration of the real Buffy’s corpse. 

If she begged Spike the way she had begged Angel, Buffy didn’t think he would refuse. 

She felt his erection through his pants, pressing against her stomach. She probably wouldn’t even need to beg.

“Stop,” she said, and Spike did, but he didn’t step back. His blue eyes flickered between her green ones and her bruised lips.

“You tried to kill me tonight,” Buffy reminded him, but Spike was grinning at her now, and if he had any diffidence about what they had just been doing, he didn’t show it.

“I did,” he said, and even though they were no longer kissing, he was still so close to her she could almost feel him against her. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and leaned down so she could feel the breaths he shouldn’t be taking against her skin. “Wasn’t able to, though.” He surprised her by biting the lobe of her ear with blunt teeth, and she surprised herself by moaning. “Anyone ever told you you’re bloody strong, Slayer?”

“Not the Slayer,” Buffy said, finally pushing him away from her properly. “But you’re still Spike. Still my enemy.”

“Thought we were on a truce?” he said, and oh right, they were, weren’t they? She’d already basically said she wouldn’t kill him, so it didn’t really matter if she kept kissing him, right? For the second time that night, she thought of her dead sister Slayer. “Doesn’t slaying always make you horny and hungry?” Faith had once said, and even though Buffy had pretended not to know what she meant, she did. She always did. Yes, Spike was ruthless and soulless and a bloodthirsty killer, but Buffy kind of was too, in her own way. Her demon always wanted to kill things, but now it wanted something different. All of Buffy did.

And fuck, she really couldn’t emphasize enough how good of a kisser Spike was.

This time Buffy was the one to pounce on him. She swung her arms around the back of his neck, and he wasn’t much taller than her but she still needed to tug him down slightly so their lips could meet. He groaned into her mouth before starting to kiss along her jaw as one of his hands pressed against her belly. He dropped it down to the spot between her legs. 

She gasped against him as he stroked her over her jeans, and he wasn’t even really touching her yet but it already felt so good. He was ice cold - they both were - so how come she felt like she was burning up?

Somebody whistled at them from across the street, and the real Buffy would have died right then and there of shame, but she was vampire-Buffy, so she just snickered when Spike flipped their interloper the bird with his free hand.

Spike pulled not-Buffy into a dark alley that real-Buffy would have been disgusted by (despite the fact her human nose would’ve only picked up a fraction of the nasty smells) and pushed her against a brick wall hard enough that her shoulders felt scraped even through her jacket. Even though Buffy liked the way it hurt, she didn’t like the idea of Spike beating her in any sense of the word, so she bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. It flooded her mouth, which should have been gross but he tasted so good that she couldn’t help but let a moan slip from her lips as she swallowed his rich, borrowed blood down.

“Fuck, Slayer,” he said against her. “That’s the second time you’ve bit me tonight.” But he didn’t sound mad about it, though, and he didn’t pull back. If anything, he just started kissing her harder.

Spike was making quick work of her pants, which were suddenly off her and on the disgusting alley floor. A breeze hit her bare skin, and she shivered, not because it was cold (because vampires didn’t really feel that), but because she was half naked in an alleyway about to be fucked by a hundred year old vampire who had murdered two of her sister Slayers. The disturbing part was that she found she didn’t mind one bit. Why didn’t she feel violated? She knew she shouldn’t want this - want him, want the way he was looking at her - but she was dripping for it. 

She really was a monster. Nobody good would be so wet for such a creature. 

She stopped kissing him and shut her eyes, waiting for the pain she knew was to come. She’d had sex before, so she knew what to expect. The sharp tearing pain, followed by that gradual build up of pressure that just about made it worth it. Angel, at least, had been slow and gentle with her, so even though it had hurt more than she’d expected, it had at least been an act of love.

This - whatever it was she was about to do with Spike - would be nothing like that. It would be rough and painful like their kiss; like their many fights. She doubted she’d get much pleasure from it, but that was a good thing, really. If he made it hurt enough, maybe she wouldn’t feel as guilty afterwards. 

But when he touched her it was softly, and Buffy’s eyes flew open. Spike was on his knees, kissing his way up her inner thigh while one hand began to gently circle her clit, and suddenly Buffy was shaking. He grinned up at her, then buried his face deep between her legs and began to lick. 

“Oh my God,” she said as he kissed the space between her legs like it was her mouth. Every stroke of his tongue made her shudder, and Buffy’s eyes rolled up in her head as he continued to lick and suck, and she repeated herself - “Oh my God” - because now he was fucking her with his tongue in earnest.

Every inch of her was tingling, and Buffy felt a pressure in her stomach quickly building, and in no time at all she felt just about ready to explode. How the hell was Spike doing that? How was he making her feel so good - better than she’d ever felt with Angel - with just his tongue?

It was nothing like she expected.

It didn’t hurt at all.

Why was’t he making her hurt?

She let out a loud groan, and Spike’s fingers began to pump into her as he continued to suck and twirl his tongue around her clit. The pressure was almost too much now, building up inside her, turning her entire body on and lighting her up like a Christmas tree.

They were just two cold, dead bodies moving together, but somehow they were making heat. If she wasn’t so overwhelmed with sensation, she might have giggled at the thought, which was way too lovely a desciption of being fucked in a filthy alleyway. Buffy thought back to when Lori had asked what her medium was the day she moved into the factory, and how she’d offhandedly said poetry. She’d tried to make good on it by writing a few poems, but they were all terrible. Although now Buffy couldn’t help but think that maybe that was just because she didn’t have a good muse. With Spike’s head between her legs, occasionally glancing up at her with that look in his eyes, she could feel the art exuding from every pore in her body. She felt she could make more than one simple poem right now; she could write a whole epic about the way he was making her feel.

After what felt like an eternity, but was maybe no time at all, Buffy exploded, crashing like a tidal wave onto a sunny L.A. beach. She threw her head back and it smashed hard against the wall behind her, but she didn’t quite feel it because she was coming now, and the sensation stole her away from pain and into bliss.

Spike was on his feet quickly, kissing her roughly.

He pulled back.

“So,” he said, sounding smug. “Wanna go back to my creepy lair?”

The Slayer was mostly quiet as she tugged her jeans up and followed him back to the mansion. She kept glancing over at him, as if she was about to say something but kept thinking better of it. Spike was feeling pretty self-satisfied. He’d clearly done her good enough to throw her for a loop.

In all honesty, he wasn’t quite sure why he kissed her - it certainly wasn’t what he'd come to New York to do - but it felt right at the time. Now, having tasted the Slayer’s sweet cunt, he was entirely sure it was the right decision.

It was more than that. It was a bloody revelation.

He adjusted his trousers, which were feeling particularly tight against his hard-on. He could’ve fucked her properly back in the alley. He was sure she would’ve let him, and then he wouldn’t be quite so uncomfortable. Again, he wasn’t sure why he didn’t, except maybe because what they had just done wasn’t about fucking a Slayer, it was about Spike and Buffy. He had been going to slam right into her as soon as he got her trousers off, but then she’d grimaced and screwed her eyes shut, and suddenly it didn’t seem like the thing to do anymore.

He looked over at the silent Buffy, and he could’ve sworn her cheeks were tinted slightly pink, even if it was technically impossible for their kind. Neither of them said anything for a little while, as they made their way through Lower Manhattan. The streets were starting to clear out now, as the last of the party-goers stumbled back into their homes.

God, this was awkward. Spike had only done it with a handful of people besides Dru, but he never remembered the post-coital being so uncomfortable with anyone else. Buffy was looking at him again, he could see out of the corner of his eye, and he stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his duster.

He should say something to her, maybe, but he wasn’t sure what. He didn’t want to risk being too genuine, and giving her even more power over his heart. No- not his heart. She didn’t, and would never, have that. He was just getting confused because he was raised proper, and usually saved screwing for people he gave a crap about. He had to admit he felt a lot for Buffy - the infuriating bint - so now he was just thinking with his prick and getting all confused.

When he’d first gotten confirmation that she was still hunting demons after becoming one herself, Spike had thought Buffy must be a miserable excuse for a vampire. Turned wrong, perhaps. But after seeing her fight and fuck tonight, he realized he was wrong. Buffy might be the one thing in the world Angelus had ever done right. Not done right by, perhaps, but he’d at least made her properly. Turned her on more than a drop. It was a wonderful thing, really, that she was still so much the Slayer, even in death. Spike liked that she had kept so many of her old traits, even if he’d hated them back when she was alive. But now, he didn’t want to imagine a Buffy without her fire, her passion, and her drive to fight. It would’ve been a right shame if she’d turned out like Darla or Dru, all torture-the-weak, and guts, and prophecy.

“How’d you get turned anyways?” he asked after a little while, and Buffy shot him a death glare that Spike couldn’t help but feel was a little unfair given the way he’d just made her legs shake and her eyes roll up. He barrelled onwards. “Obviously Angelus killed you - everyone knows that - but why? Well, I guess I know the why too, ‘cause Angelus has always been a sadistic bastard, but what I don’t get is what you’re doing up here while he’s off galavanting around L.A?” Buffy met his curious gaze with what she probably thought was stoic silence. “Wouldn’t think he’d let you out of his sight,” Spike mused. “Certainly never liked it when his other darling daughter would go off without him. I tried to spirit Dru away once - trust me, not a mistake I made again.” Spike realized he was rambling a little now, but didn’t know how to stop without admitting defeat, so blazed on. “Afterwards Angelus tortured her nice and good so she’d remember who her daddy was. He ever done that with you? If so, good on you for getting out of there. Say, did her ever try that thing with the pliers where-” 

“What me and Angel have now has nothing to do with what he did back then,” Buffy snapped. “I’m nothing like Drusilla, and anyways. Angel’s different now. He has a soul.” 

Spike fixed her with an appraising gaze. Really, the way Buffy hopped to Angelus’s - sorry, Angel’s - defense, was just proving his point. The prat really did know how to make ‘em loyal. “You’re right, luv. You ‘n’ Dru? No similarities at all.” 

Buffy bristled, and Spike felt a brief pang of regret. Now she probably thought he’d only snogged her because she was like Dru, which was stupid because while they were a lot alike, it wasn’t in any of the ways she was probably thinking. Should he say something? No, shut up, he told himself sternly.

They finished their walk in silence.

When they got back to the mansion Spike shrugged off his duster and hung it up in the coatroom off the main hall. He left the door open so Buffy could do the same, but she just wrapped her tatty brown jacket closer around her. 

Right then.

“You know this doesn’t mean-” she began to say at the same time as he said “My room’s up-”

He shut his mouth, and Buffy avoided meeting his eyes. “What happened earlier…” she began again, “You know it doesn’t change anything between us, right? We’re still just temporary - and very reluctant - allies.”

“Of course it doesn’t change anything,” he snarled, feeling unreasonably hurt even though the bint was absolutely right. “Was just a cheap screw between vamps, Slayer. Not anything I haven’t done before.” 

He willed himself to believe the words; only problem was now that he’d tasted her he wasn’t sure it’d be enough. She was in his system. In his blood.

Buffy opened her mouth for a moment, then shut it again. “Good,” she said shortly. 

“I’m going to bed. You can find yourself a room,” Spike said gruffly. “We can figure out a plan after the sun sets.” 

He didn’t wait for a reply before storming upstairs and slamming his door, but he could hear the Slaypire padding around the mansion a while longer. Getting to know her surroundings, he supposed. Eventually she seemed to settle on a room, and he heard the clicking of a lock turning into place. 

The sun was rising now, and even though the windows in his room were barred shut with wooden planks he could feel it in the vamp warning bells running up his spine. He was exhausted, and angry, and unsatisfied. He stripped out of his clothes and lay down on his bed. He needed a good wank, but with her new vampiric hearing, there was a good chance Buffy would hear him if she was still awake.

A few uncomfortable minutes passed, and then he decided that he didn’t rightly care if she heard him and started tugging at his prick. He came in his hand a little while later, thinking of Buffy’s mouth and cunt and pretty golden hair.

Chapter Text

When Buffy woke up in Spike’s mansion at sunset the next day, she was immediately struck by the lack of heartbeats. Most days upon waking in the factory, the first thing she was aware of was the beating hearts of her roommates. The second was that despite all the noise, she was completely alone.

Spike’s mansion was completely silent save for the distant creaking of pipes, but for the first time in months, Buffy knew she wasn’t really alone. She could feel his presence everywhere, in his distinct smell and in a low tingling on her lower neck.

She shut her eyes tight for a moment, not quite ready to face the day yet.

Once Spike had stalked off upstairs the previous night, Buffy had wandered around his (actually quite nice) lair, and quickly determined it was in fact the old nest of some vamps she’d previously dusted - she could tell from the vaguely familiar smells. It was bizarre, walking around the mansion that had clearly hosted so many different types of inhabitants over the years. There were signs that the home had once belonged to a real family: she saw it in the dust-covered cooking supplies in the cupboards and the kitchen; the overflowing filing cabinets in the study; and the room on the first floor that had enough boy band posters, makeup, and mirrors that it could have only belonged to a human teenage girl. 

Almost more disturbingly, Buffy found she could also tell that this place had been a home to the vampires that had murdered the human family that came before them. In the living room, there was a pile of nested-in blankets that smelled like vampires who weren’t Spike. There was a polaroid camera in the room that had once belonged to the human teenager, and Buffy could tell from the stack of makeup-in-progress pictures beside it that it had been used as a vampiric substitution for a mirror.

It made her feel weird; recognizing the homely aspects of the nest. Not guilty, exactly, but not good either. After all, she lived her unlife according to strict rules that told her while she must never harm a human, vampires were fair game. Looking around this mansion, the line between the two species felt blurred. The vampires had killed the humans then taken their home. Buffy had killed the vampires, and now she was sleeping in their nest.

In the end, Buffy had chosen the room that felt most uninhabited - by both vampires and humans - to sleep in. Despite quite literally being behind enemy lines, she had fallen asleep the moment her head had hit the pillow of her chosen bed. 

She sighed.

Eventually Buffy decided she might as well get up, and decided to wake herself up properly by going to the kitchen to check the fridge for pig’s blood. There was none, of course, because Spike only drank blood straight from humans. She should probably tell him he wasn’t allowed to do that while they were allied.

Stomach grumbling, she sat down at the kitchen table and waited for him to come downstairs.

She drummed her fingers across the tabletop.

Before going to bed at the end of the previous night, Buffy had decided she was no longer going to allow herself to be weird about what had happened in the alleyway. While she genuinely wasn’t embarrassed by what they’d done, she knew she’d been acting like it afterwards. But no more. Not today. She was a vampire now, for fuck’s sake! Sex with someone she didn’t love - someone like Spike - really was one of the most tame mistakes she could have made. She refused to be ashamed of it.

But still. 

The last time she’d had sex, it had almost ended with the entire world being sucked into hell. Maybe it made sense she was a little anxious about the whole thing.

Best to forget it ever happened.

It’s not like it actually changed anything.

That was what she had tried to tell Spike before she’d gone to bed, although it must have come out wrong, because he seemed mad.

The only problem with Buffy’s plan to move past it and forget was that whatever Spike had done to her last night had been mind-shatteringly good. Despite all her qualms about sex, she couldn’t help but want him to do it to her again. Do that, and worse. She wanted him to come downstairs, bend her over the kitchen table and take her from behind. She wanted to push him down onto the nest of blankets in the living room and ride him til she popped. She wanted to make his legs buckle and his eyes roll back, like he had made hers. She wanted to fuck him til he turned to dust. 

Since being turned, Buffy rarely felt anything except unbreakable. Strong, sure, but also numb and cold.

Spike had made her feel soft, and raw, and also like she was on fucking fire.

She squeezed her thighs together. 

It was one thing to think such thoughts about Angel, the man who had started her unlife; the man she would always feel something akin to love for (Angel had often reminded her that since she had no soul, what she felt couldn’t really be called love anymore). It was an entirely different, much more shameful thing, to think such thoughts about Spike. 

Spike, who wanted to end her unlife.

Spike, who said Buffy reminded him of Drusilla. 

Buffy was not delusional. She knew that whatever Spike had meant last night about her and Drusilla being the same had nothing to do with what they’d done in that dark alleyway. It was just a dig at Buffy, who Spike must know loathed the idea of being anything like that horrible creature that was technically her sister. 

Spike, being soulless, of course could not actually love Drusilla, but Buffy knew he cared for her. He cared for her like he would never care for Buffy, which was obviously a good thing, but also something Buffy had to remember and be cautious about. Just because the last time Spike had pressed his body against hers he had kissed her, did not mean that the next time he wouldn’t use the opportunity to skewer her with a stake.

It would be a terrible thing to let Spike get close to her again. Although if he tried, Buffy thought she might just let him.

Eventually, Spike joined her downstairs. He was dressed in his usual black shirt and pants, but he hadn’t gelled his hair back yet, leaving it in messy curls that sprang from his head in every which direction.

Spike smirked at her, and Buffy realized she had been staring. “Like what you see, pet?”

Buffy was thankful she couldn’t blush. “You might want to check your hair-” she began to say, and Spike’s hands shot to his head in a most Cordelia-esque manner.

“Bollocks,” he said as his eyes widened, and he tried desperately to pat his curls down.

Buffy felt smug at how quickly his cocky demeanor had dropped, even if she secretly found herself kind of liking the way he looked at the moment. “You don’t have any blood in the fridge,” she informed him, even though this was something he obviously already knew.

“Yeah, yeah,” Spike said. He grabbed a tube of hair gel from his duster and began applying it generously to his hair, disappointing Buffy slightly. If he forgot again, she decided she wouldn’t say anything. “I’ll nick some bagged stuff later.”

Buffy blinked. “You will?”

Spike rolled his eyes at her. “I’m not daft, Buffy. It’s not like you’ll be letting me snack on the pulsers as long as we’re working together. Figure I’ll let you skip the threats and get right to the stealin’ when I get a mo’.” He perked up slightly. “Unless you’re okay with a bit of catch and release?”

“What the fuck is ‘catch and release’?”

“Y’know, when you find a human and take a quick bite, while still letting them live to tell the tale?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m guessing your highness has never done it herself, then?” he said in a mocking voice.

“Of course not,” Buffy said irately. “And no, I’m obviously not going to let you go around traumatizing the poor, unsuspecting people of my city.”

“Won’t necessarily traumatize them,” Spike said, his voice dropping to a purr as he leaned back in his chair smoothly. “Bite a chit at just the right time, when you’re balls deep inside her, and she’ll be coming so hard she won’t even notice.”

Somehow, the idea of Spike getting girls off while he bit them made Buffy even more mad than when she’d pictured them screaming and trying to writhe away from him. “Absolutely not,” she spat, the words feeling particularly acidic on her tongue. “You wanna work with me? No hurting humans.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Yeah, alright. We can swing by the hospital in a bit.”

“The Hospital?” Buffy began, but she quickly caught on to what he meant. Of course Spike would never lower himself to drinking pig’s blood. Even if he wasn’t getting it on tap, he’d still find a way to stick to the human stuff.

Buffy, on the other hand, exclusively drank animal blood. The idea of stealing bagged blood from a hospital had never even really crossed her mind.

When Angel had finally began to act like a real sire and teach her how to be a vampire, after that painful week and a half she’d spent locked inside her cage in the Crawford Street mansion, his first lesson was that human blood wasn’t something to be taken lightly. If Buffy started drinking it, she wouldn’t want to stop, and then what? With her superior strength, just how easy would it be to slip up and hurt someone? Did she want to let the monster out?

Still, Buffy had to admit that as long as he wasn’t killing or maiming, it wasn’t really her place to argue with Spike about his diet. Really, even Spike agreeing not to do catch and release or whatever the hell he’d called was more than she could’ve hoped for. They hadn’t set any such rules during their last alliance - they hadn’t had time to even begin to think of such things back then. 

“Okay,” she said eventually. “The hospital; that makes sense. Thank you.”

Spike’s eyes softened for a moment, then he straightened his back, suddenly looking all down to business-y. “Either way, blood’s not gonna be a problem for tonight. Way I see it, the most important thing we need right now is information. Luckily for us, I know just the place to go, and we can even get some nosh while we’re there.”

Buffy raised an eyebrow. “Is it Shadows & Shots? The crowd there loves to talk.”

He shook his head. “Nah, the place we’re going is much more fun. You’ve obviously been to demon bars before, so you know how they’re pretty skeezy, even by my standards. Sure, they can be a good place to get info, but they’re also a good place to get the shit beaten out of you. But there are other demon-run joints where you can find things out. Places under sanctuary. You ever been to a demon restaurant, pet?” Buffy shook her head, and Spike’s face lit up into a grin. “You’re in for a treat.”

The place Spike wanted to take them was a forty minute drive away over in Brooklyn, and while Buffy was automatically suspicious of any place Spike would consider “a treat”, she agreed that they needed information and didn’t have any better ideas as of where to start.

“How creepy is this place going to be? Like, on a scale of pig’s blood cocktails to human flesh barbecue meat?” she asked, slumping into the passenger seat of Spike’s ancient (but admittedly kind of cool) car. 

“No more sinister than what they’ve got going on over at Shadows & Shots, Slayer,” Spike said as he fiddled around with the radio, landing on a station that was playing some obnoxious, tinny-sounding rock music. Buffy rolled her eyes, but Spike at least kept the volume pretty low.

She fidgeted in her seat. She didn’t yet regret her decision to form an alliance with Spike, but it felt weird sitting in the passenger seat of his old DeSoto, listening to tunes and talking to him casually as if they were some sort of… talking buddies.

“Why do you still call me Slayer? I thought you said you’d call me Buffy now.”

“I do call you Buffy. Well, sometimes I do,” he amended. “Only call you ‘Slayer’ when you’re acting like one.”

“You think I’m acting like a Slayer right now?” Buffy mused. She didn’t agree. No Slayer would willingly get into a car with a soulless vampire. “Not a Slaypire?” she added teasingly.

“Nah,” Spike said. “Way I see it, Slayer’s the one who cares about humans. The one who’d call a perfectly respectable demon-run joint creepy. Slaypire’s more the ruthless sort. Cares less about humans, but still has the demon scene by the balls. Nothing’d creep her out.”

Buffy paused, seriously contemplating Spike’s words when she glanced over at him and saw his slightly upturned lips and light eyes, and realized he was teasing her back. She couldn’t help but crack a smile, and decided that even if he was poking fun at her, she’d take what he said as a compliment.

“I’m not the first ‘Slaypire’, you know.”

“‘Course I know,” he replied. “Slayer of Slayers, and all that.”

Buffy perked up despite herself. “Have you ever met one? Besides me?”

“Nah. Only met the three Slayers besides you, none of them vamped.”

Buffy frowned. “I thought you killed two Slayers.”

“That’s right. Number three didn’t want it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“She didn’t want the fight,” Spike said simply, and Buffy furrowed her brow.

“I didn’t want it either,” she said incredulously, to which Spike just chuckled.

“Sure you did.”

“No, I definitely didn’t,” she said, unable to keep from raising her voice. “I was only slaying demons in my town when you rolled in all guns blazing!”

“Exactly,” Spike said exasperatedly. “You were still slaying demons, even if you didn’t come after me. You were the Slayer. ‘Course you wanted a fight - why else would you be doing that?” Buffy opened her mouth, but Spike cut her off. “Just because you’re the Chosen bird, doesn’t mean you actually have to take the job, yeah? You coulda just pissed off somewhere your watcher couldn’t find you and minded your own damn business. Nothing anyone could do to actually make you fight.”

Buffy thought back to her slay-free summer as Anne back in L.A. “Okay, so?”

“The Slayer I met back in London, she’d gone rogue, right? Decided she didn’t give two tosses about slaying demons or stopping evil, and would rather just get rich and sod all else.” There was an excited glint in Spike’s eyes, and he only had one hand on the steering wheel as he waved the other around expressively as he began to tell his story. “So here I come - ‘bout ten years after doin’ my first Slayer in - all excited for the big battle, and what does this chit do? Laughs at me! Tells me she doesn’t care much for slaying, but one of her loyal demon pals will give me a good staking if I really need it. Then she says she’s going dancing with some friends, and if I wanna check out her moves so bad, she’d rather we just do that. So we dance a little, do the whole roarin’ twenties scene, then when the sun’s about to rise she tells me to get lost for good. The bint wasn’t quite evil, y’know, and didn’t want any dead pulsers on her turf. She whipped out a stake and everything, even though she’d already made it clearly she barely knew how to use it.”

“And did you?” Buffy asked, finding herself eagerly hanging on to his every word. “Get lost, I mean?”

“Well, yeah,” Spike said. “Reason I hunt Slayers is for the challenge. The real battle. The chit mighta talked big, but she was a dancer, not a fighter. And I don’t mean the kind of dancin’ you ‘n’ I do.”

“What happened to her?” Buffy asked, trying to picture this faceless, super-powered flapper, who had forgone her sacred destiny in favor of dancing in London and living her life. 

“Killed by the Watcher’s Council, way I heard it. Suppose they need the Chosen bird to be one they can control.”

Buffy’s stomach dropped. Suddenly Spike’s flapper girl wasn’t faceless anymore. She was Faith.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes.

“Did you hear about the other Slayer, Faith?” Buffy eventually asked him, and Spike nodded.

“Bits and pieces.” 

“They say I killed her. And hey-” she gave a cold laugh, “I certainly tried. Put her in a coma and everything. But when I visited her in the hospital a bit after I was turned, Faith was still stable, even if the doctors said she might never wake up.” Spike didn’t say anything, but he was looking at her with an almost sympathetic expression on his face. “She died the day after Giles told the Council I was dead. Suspicious, right? I think they killed her too.”

Spike nodded. “Reckon you’re probably right.”

“I- I don’t feel guilty about what I did. Angel needed Slayer blood. It was her or him.” She chuckled humorously, gesturing down at her pale, undead body. “Obviously, that didn’t work out. The thing is with Faith… I really hated her, y’know? Or I wanted to, at least. And even if I don’t feel guilty - I don’t even know if I can feel guilt anymore - I still wish things could’ve been different with her. She was still my sister Slayer. She was still…”

“Still family,” Spike finished for her. “I get it.”

Buffy nodded. Somehow, she got the feeling he really did.

They pulled up outside the restaurant, a dingy little diner inconspicuously named Maria’s, at about seven o’clock. Despite the early hour meaning the Brooklyn streets were still packed with humans, Buffy couldn’t help but notice not a single person stopped to even consider going inside - their eyes seemed to skip right over it.

“How do they do that?” she asked Spike.

“Do what?”

“Get the humans to not go inside.”

He gave her a crooked grin with way too many teeth. “Not with magic, I don’t think. Suppose the good people of Brooklyn have learned that those who go in don’t come back out.”

Something squeezed inside Buffy’s chest. “It looks so normal.”

“You should’ve seen it in Paris in the forties,” Spike said, a nostalgic expression taking over his face. “Hub of fun in the middle of a ruined city. Fucking Nazis…” he muttered the last bit.

Buffy blinked. She knew, of course, that being over a hundred meant Spike must have seen all sorts of things - wars won and lost, the rise and fall of regimes - but it was hard to corroborate this fact with the picture of him actually being there. Of living in places and situations she had learned about in grade school history textbooks; of having thoughts and opinions and an impact on what was happening, rather than just watching from the sidelines. 

Spike seemed to notice her confusion, but misattributed it. “Mar’s place moves,” he explains, as if that was what had stumped her. “She’s gotta have been around for at least five hundred years. Would be boring if she stayed in the same city.”

“Huh,” Buffy said neutrally.

Spike made to open the car door, and instinctually, Buffy flicked down the passenger side sun visor to quickly check her reflection before she hopped out too. She froze. She’d been dead half a year now so it was silly, really, to have forgotten something as obvious as her lack of reflection. She swallowed and quickly pushed the visor up again, then she noticed Spike staring at her.

“You look fine, luv,” he said, his voice an uncharacteristically soft rumble. He leaned a little closer. “Can I just…?”

Buffy frowned, unsure of what he was going to do, but she didn’t stop him. He wet the pad of his thumb in his mouth, rubbed something away under each of her eyes. He rested his hand under her chin and tilted her head up far too gently, examining her for a moment then pulling back with the faintest traces of a smile on his lips. 

“There,” he said simply.

Buffy’s mouth felt dry. “What did you do?”

“Your makeup from last night was all smudged. Had a bit of eyeshadow, I think it was, under your eyes.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

He didn’t meet her eyes. “Was nothing. Follow my lead.”

As soon as they were out of the car, Buffy saw Spike’s entire demeanor change as he puffed himself up like a cat. Gone were the hints of tenderness he had shown while fixing her makeup, leaving a harsh and dangerous-looking warrior in his place. Buffy was reminded of the second time she saw him, while he was roaming around her high school, hunting her on parent-teacher night. She mirrored his stance, standing up more straight as she followed him inside.

The place was dim, but not dark, with demonic patrons mostly sticking to themselves in small groups, their conversations little more than a dim rumble.

“How are we going to learn anything here?” Buffy asked when their waiter - a Bifron demon with alarmingly matted fur and teeth even sharper than Buffy’s fangs - placed them at a secluded table by the back.

“Not by eavesdropping,” Spike replied. “Can you hear the cloaking spell, covering up others’ conversations?”

Buffy listened carefully. She tried to listen in on the conversation of a group of green-skinned demons at a nearby table well within her usual vampiric hearing range, but while she could somehow tell they were speaking English, none of their words were distinguishable. It was like listening to a baby babbling.

“Mar - the owner - is a Susurro demon,” Spike began to explain. “They deal in secrets, which would lose their value if they could be stolen by spies. That’s one of the reasons the place was so popular back in occupied Paris - demonic resistance forces could come here and know their information was safe.” 

Buffy blinked. “Demonic resistance forces?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to look so surprised; most of us hated the Nazis as much as you Yanks. For starters, they wanted to build an army of vamp slaves - me and your ex-honey actually got kidnapped by a group of ‘em once. And let me tell you-”

He was cut off by their waiter clearing his throat. The crature had returned with two glasses of water, and was now looking at them impatiently as he tapped his pen against the pad of paper in his clawed hands. 

“Give us a second, mate,” Spike told the irate Bifron demon, who grumbled something under his breath and added a bit of rhythmic foot-stomping to his impatient pen-tapping. “Just pick something off the menu, pet. We’ll get what we came here for when Mar comes by with the bill.”

Buffy glanced over the menu in front of her, the items on which were far less eerie than she’d expected. Under the drinks page, there were all the typical inhuman drinks that she’d come to expect at demon bars (human plasma shots, genuinely Bloody Marys, martinis with sheep eyeballs instead of olives), but the food seemed to be bizarrely human-oriented. 

“Uh, I’ll have a glass of pig’s blood, please,” she said, closing the menu and passing it back to the Bifron.

Spike raised an eyebrow. “That all?”

Buffy scowled. “Well what else am I supposed to order, Spike? I don’t drink human blood.”

Her vampiric companion rolled his eyes - something he was doing far too often, in her opinion. “Uh, I dunno, maybe some food? I’ll take a pint of O-neg, a plate of chicken wings - extra spicy, and one of those blooming onion things. Cheers.”

The Bifron jotted down their orders with a glare and stomped off.

Buffy stared at Spike. “Why did you order all that?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re vampires. We can’t eat human food.”

Now Spike was staring at her like she was crazy. “Says who?”

“Says Ange-” Buffy started to say before cutting herself off, but it was too late.

He looked completely flabbergasted. “What, so just ‘cause Angelus is a big brooding lump of misery who refuses to indulge, we all have to be? Food might not give us energy, luv, but it can still taste good. Have you even tried it since being turned?” 

Buffy crossed her arms over her chest, trying very hard not to feel foolish. Not being able to enjoy human food was one of the things she hated most about herself since becoming a vampire, and she couldn’t stand the way he was acting like she was just imagining it. “Of course I have,” she said hotly. “I’ve tried all my old favorites - pizza, macaroni, chicken noodle soup… They’re horrible now. Everything tastes like dirt, just like Angel said. ”

Spike looked almost angry at this. “That’s ‘cause you’re eating the wrong things. Your Angel wasn’t entirely wrong - food does taste more mild to a dead tongue, but that’s why you’ve got to change up your orders. Bland stuff like mac ‘n’ cheese won’t be much fun, but we can taste most meals if they’re spicy enough. Anything with garlic is usually delicious. Since we’re mildly allergic to it, it burns up our tongues and opens up the palate for more other flavors - that’s why the blooming onion is so good. An extra-rare steak seasoned properly is one of the best things you can eat. All that animal blood mixed up with that chewy flesh…” 

A memory of Buffy, freshly-turned and sitting with her friends, sprang to mind. She had been allowed out of her cage since Willow had cast a sanctuary spell on the mansion, and was hanging out with Willow and Oz and a reluctant Xander, trying to pretend for a little while like nothing had changed. And so, to help keep up the illusion, she’d taken a slice of the unappealing-smelling pizza they were all munching on and tried a bite. She’d managed to swallow it down, so as not to remind her friends of all the ways she was different and dead, but it had tasted so horribly wrong, and she’d discarded the slice back into the box as soon as her friends’ heads were turned. 

She’d tried to tell Angel about it later; about how upsetting the whole thing had been. Her sire had just rolled his eyes at her, like he so often did back then. The woman Angel had loved was dead, and it was obvious that he resented the way her friends and watcher were guilting him into playing sire to the demon who lived in her corpse.

Of course you don’t enjoy human food, he had said. You aren’t human anymore.

Buffy sire-worshipped Angel, but even then she hadn’t just taken his words at face value. She’d contined to try a few more of her old comfort foods, hoping to find something she would still be able to stomach. 

Snapping back into the present, in the restaurant, she looked into Spike’s genuine, hungry eyes and wanted to scream. Why hadn’t Angel told her that all she had to do was try something different, the sort of crazy spicy food that the old Buffy would have wrinkled her nose up at? She would’ve done it in a heartbeat.

The waiter was already back with their blood and food, making Buffy realize there must be some sort of magic involved in the cooking process for everything to be ready so impossibly fast.

“Here,” Spike said, dipping a piece of his blooming onion in sriracha sauce and passing it to her. “Give it a try.”

Hesitantly, she took the food from him. 

She almost hoped he was wrong, and that she would find the meal in front of her as bland and disgusting as the few other human meals she’d had so far. It almost felt like a better alternative, to never be able to eat human food, than to think she’d wasted half a year of her unlife avoiding pleasure unnecessarily. Avoiding it because Angel had told her to.

She was not so lucky: the blooming onion was ridiculously, mouth-wateringly tasty. It was the opposite of bland; it was burning hot, right out-the-oven. It was crispy and spicy, and her tongue sizzled a little thanks to the minced garlic sprinkled across it. A moan slipped from between Buffy’s lips, and she quickly slapped a hand over her mouth, mortified.

Spike looked way too pleased with himself, like he had last night when he’d made her come so hard she’d had trouble making her legs stop quivering long enough to slip her pants on again. “It’s good, innit?”

“Yeah,” Buffy agreed, because what would be the point in lying after such an embarrassingly obvious display of contentment?

“Have some more if you want,” he said. “Nothing to do but eat and enjoy ourselves til Mar comes around.”

Buffy considered refusing, then figured fuck it, it’s just Spike, and gladly divied up his food into two portions. Spike watched with obvious amusement as she loaded half the food onto the small side plate the waiter had left in front of her, but he didn’t say anything else about it so neither did she.

With each delicious bite she took, Buffy bristled, growing more and more annoyed with Angel, until she calmed herself down with a sip of soothing, warm pig’s blood. She didn’t want to think about Angel right now.

“So,” Spike said a little while later, while Buffy was dusting off her last spicy chicken wing. “Are you finally going to tell me the full story of how you were turned, or do I just have to live with the little tidbit you gave me earlier in the car? So you gave up your blood to save Angelus, huh? Very noble. But how does that lead to you becoming a vamp? Did tasting that delicious Slayer blood of yours make him lose control? Or did he make you this way on purpose? A strategic decision, maybe, to make you tougher…”

“Fuck off,” Buffy told him, but the words came out far more mildly than she’d intended, as she felt annoyingly full and satisfied.

Spike just smiled into his pint of blood and took a smug-looking sip.

The waiter came around with the bill the exact moment both of their plates were clean and gave it to Spike, who grinned and passed it to Buffy. “Think you can take care of this one, pet.”

For a moment, Buffy panicked. She didn’t have much money on her - just about enough to cover her pig’s blood and half the blooming onion - but she paused when she saw what the bill read: 1 childhood secret.

“What the hell…” she mumbled, and Spike grinned. 

“Like I told you. Mar deals in secrets. You’ll have to pay up. She already knows my name so my secrets aren’t worth squat here.”

“Knows your name? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Names have power over a demon - the kind of power Sussoro demons like Mar live off of. If Mar knows your name, she’ll feel you.” Buffy wrinkled up her nose, and Spike quickly backtracked. “That came out wrong. What I mean is if you tell her your name, she’ll be able to reach in and know basically everything about you. Every emotion you’ve ever felt, every thought you’ve had, every little secret… she’ll know. So try not to tell her yours.”

Buffy shivered. “What does she do with all that information?”

Spike shrugged, “Nothing monstrous. Just consumes it, I guess. Sussuro demons like the rush that comes with knowing another person from the inside out. If Mar finds out your name she’ll be completely condescending ‘bout what she thinks she knows, but Susurro Laws bind her. Your secrets become hers, so she can’t tell a soul what she’s found out. Unless it’s a secret you give willingly, of course, like as payment on this bill.”

Buffy frowned at the bill and raked her mind for something appropriate to pay the creature with. Her childhood had most decisively ended once she was Called, so at least whatever she revealed had no chance of being something Slayer-y and important to the battle against the forces of evil. Still, it was a weird request, something as personal as a childhood secret, just to pay for a meal. She would rather use human coin. That would be far less vulnerable.

“It doesn’t have to be serious, does it?” she asked, and Spike shook his head. 

“Wouldn’t think so, but it’ll depend on Mar’s mood, I guess.”

Eventually, she landed on a secret that felt just embarrassing enough to be appropriate. As if on cue, their waiter disappeared and was replaced with a new demon, one who was so beautiful she made Buffy freeze.

Buffy had never met a Susurro demon before and hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t the gorgeous woman standing in front of her now. She was old - Buffy could sense it in the way she held herself, and the strength of the tingling on the back of her neck. Physically, the demon didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Her skin was dark brown, with cool, almost bluish undertones, and her face was so sharp it looked like it had been sculpted out of marble. Despite her otherworldly beauty, Mar could have just about tricked Buffy into thinking she was human, if not for her eyes. She had no distinguishable pupil, eyelid, and sclera. Both of her eyeballs were entirely black.

“William,” she greeted Spike warmly - no, comfortably - seeming almost smug, although Buffy wasn’t quite sure why. Was it because she knew his name?

“Mar,” Spike said with a nod of his head. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Likewise,” the creature agreed. “I felt what happened to you with those Nazis and the free virgin blood party. Terrible shame.”

Spike scratched the back of his head, looking distinctly embarrassed. “Yes, well, I was young and stupid,” he said, peaking Buffy’s curiosity.

“It could have happened to anyone,” Mar said, but from the twist of her smile Buffy wasn’t sure the Susurro demon meant it at all. “I see you’re no longer with Drusilla.”

“I-”

“Good for you,” Mar interrupted him, her expression now kind, far more sympathetic that Buffy was used to seeing on a demon. “She was only going to bring you trouble, William. Too broken for even you to fix. And who is this?” she asked, turning to look at Buffy properly for the first time.

“You can call her the Aurelian,” Spike said sharply, before Buffy could properly introduce herself. “And you won’t be tricking her into saying her real name, not like you did to me.”

“A shame. Names are power, and I’d love to get a scrape of hers. You’re no regular fledgling, are you my dear?”

Buffy glanced over at Spike, who gave her a small nod. “I guess I’m not.”

“Interesting,” Mar said, “I’d love to know more. However I can see that that is not on your bill, so I will settle on a regular childhood secret instead. Tell me, pretty, something you as a babe never told a soul.”

Buffy hesitated. “I was scared of the dark until I was fourteen. I always slept with a nightlight that I kept hidden from everyone. Even my parents.”

It was a humiliating thing to admit; that she had needed a nightlight almost right up until when she was Called. When she was in the dark, even in the safety of own room, she had always been on edge, with sweaty palms and a racing heartbeat. It was like she had somehow known, even as a child, that in the dark, she was not safe. That her parents were wrong when they said monsters didn’t exist, and that no matter how many times they checked under her bed and in her closet, there was nothing anyone could really do to protect her.

She felt Spike watching her, and averted her eyes.

Mar contemplated her secret, finally settling on an expression that made Buffy feel like she had passed some sort of test. “Yes, that will do. I accept your secret, thank you for gifting it to me. Now do tell, why are the two of you really here? I suspect it is for more than just my cooking.”

“We need information on the Tetraitans,” Buffy said, glad to be back in the familiar territory of demon-investigating.

“Do you now?” Mar said mildly. “The Order of Tetraites is a powerful cult. I have information on them, but it will cost you dearly.”

“More secrets?” Buffy asked.

Mar gave her an unpleasant smile. “What else?”

“We’re fine with that,” Spike cut in, stealing Mar’s gaze away from Buffy who let out a sigh of relief. “I’m sure I still have a secret or two from you.”

“Very well,” Mar said. “Ask away.”

“The Order of Tetraites - why do they care about the Aurelians?” Spike asked, to which Mar just waved a dismissive hand.

“All the usual reasons. They keep tabs on all the vampiric groups they feel have enough power to rival their own. It is said that Tetraites and Aurelius were as close as brothers once upon a time, equal in strength and bloodlust. When their Orders began to war, they agreed to an alliance to stop the mutually assured destruction they saw unfolding. I cannot say how much of this is true and how much is legend, for Tetraites and Aurelius both passed long before my time. All I can say for sure is that the Tetraitan Master was willing to honor this ancient contract, until you came to town.” She fixed her eerie, black eyes on Buffy. “Now, word on the street is that the Tetraitans want to see the Aurelians dead.”

Buffy’s demon wriggled around in her stomach, making her feel rather queasy. “The Tetraitan Master-” Buffy began. “Is she a witch?”

“Of course,” Mar said. 

“Is she powerful?” Spike asked, and Mar seemed to contemplate this, tilting her head to the side. 

“In some ways. She is among the strongest of vampires, but weakest of witches.”

“So we won’t need magic to fight her,” Spike said, looking relieved.

Mar looked amused. “How should I know? I cannot see the future. I am no witch.”

Buffy tried not to show her frustration at the non-answer. “What should we do then?”

“That is for me to neither know, nor say. I deal in secrets, not prophecy. You are asking the wrong questions.”

Buffy paused, glancing over at Spike. While it was a relief to find out that even if the Master was a witch, she wasn’t a particularly powerful one, Buffy couldn’t help but feel frustrated with the lack of obvious next steps she could take away from the conversation. Across the table from her, Spike seemed just as torn. 

For a brief moment, Buffy felt a deep pang of sadness that Willow was not there with her. Buffy had always been the muscle before she was anything else. Her best friend had been the brainy one, the one who was good with the books and the research and the planning and the witchcraft. 

Buffy missed all her scoobies. The last time she went against a Master, Giles was chock-full of ominous prophecies she had often detested at the time, but at least they had been something. A clue pointing her in the right direction. The problem with the Master was that she was a witch as well as a vampire, and neither Buffy nor Spike knew the questions to ask or the steps to take to defeat her. As Mar said, she did not deal in prophecy.

Buffy paused.

But maybe that was easily remedied. Maybe all they needed was for Mar to point them in the direction of somebody who did.

“You said you do not deal in prophecy,” Buffy said slowly. “Can you point us towards someone who does? Someone who will know what to do to defeat a witch?”

Mar smiled with unexpected friendliness, looking at Buffy with an almost proud expression on her face. “That is a good question. And a rather tricky one. To kill one witch, you’ll likely need to speak with another. However all the black and grey witches of New York are in league with the Master, and while they are unlikely to fight for her, they will not readily betray her either.”

“What about a good witch?” Buffy asked, for surely not every witch in town was evil, like the Master and Amy’s mom. Surely there must be girls like Willow in New York City too.

Mar laughed. “Do you forget you are a creature of the night, child? No white witch would help you. And even if I believed they would, I would not endanger a pure one by giving a vampire their name.”

“But I was-” Buffy began, before shortly cutting herself off. What could she say? That she was once the Slayer? She didn’t think she wanted this creepy demon who brokered secrets to know anything more about her than absolutely necessary. And even if she did say it, it’s not like the title meant anything anymore. She was once the Slayer. Once . Not anymore. “But I… I don’t hurt people.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Spike piped up. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the tales of the Aurelian? Manhattan’s newest demon hunter? Trust me, Buffy here’s as good as they come. Wouldn’t bite a baby.”

Buffy went to snap at Spike for the poor (and frankly rather horrifying) metaphor, but she was distracted by Mar, whose dark eyes had widened as she began breathing deeply through her nose. Too late, they both realized the secret Spike had inadvertently let slip: Buffy’s name.

“Fuck,” Spike said, eyes widening. “Sorry, pet. This’ll probably take a moment.”

“Buffy,” Mar murmured. She was breathing very heavily now, her entire body shaking with it. Buffy felt very small in her chair. “Buffy. Buffy the Aurelian. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Your name tastes delicious on my tongue.”

Buffy shot Spike a panicked look, and he held his hands up in a sheepish apology.

“What is she doing?” Buffy hissed.

“Learning your history,” Mar replied breathily before Spike could. “Unraveling you. Every word you ever said out loud is mine now.”

“What!” Buffy squeaked.

“Try to relax, Buff,” Spike said. “Remember, she can’t do anything with whatever she learns.”

“Relax?!” She couldn’t relax. She felt exposed. Trapped. For a sharp, painful moment, she considered lunging across the table and dusting Spike right then and there. Her hand itched towards the stake she kept in her waistband.

“Buffy Summers,” Mar mumbled, her breathing finally beginning to steady as her black eyes seemed to lighten, a shade closer to navy than the onyx they’d been before. “Oh God,” she said, clutching her stomach suddenly as she stumbled slightly. “Oh God. I feel you. I feel it all. You loved him so much - how could he do that to you?” The creature grabbed Buffy’s face with both hands, using those big dark eyes to peer right into the place where Buffy’s soul should be. “They were your friends. How could they all?”

Buffy tried to pull back, but Mar had her caught in a terrifyingly strong grip. Buffy didn’t need to hear from some creepy name-stealing telepath demon how horrible things had been when she first died. She'd already lived through it once.

“So much pain, I can hardly stand it. You- you don’t need a soul. You know that, right?” Mar sounded desperate, her words more a plea than a question. She was acting nothing like the cool, aloof demon she’d been mere moments ago. “A soul is just like any other part of you. Important, yes, but not everything. You can live without it. Love without it. You still have a heart.”

Mar’s warm hands were still cupping Buffy’s face, and despite the deep discomfort Buffy felt because of the other woman, a part of her almost found it comforting. When was the last time she was touched by something alive and warm?

“Tell me you know you have a heart,” Mar repeated, and Buffy swallowed down something uncomfortable and sharp.

“I- I know,” she said, although she wasn’t sure she did. After all, it wasn't even beating.

Finally, Mar drew back. “Googlack!” she called out, and suddenly their waiter was at the table again. “Give me your pen and pad.” The demon soundlessly complied, and Mar quickly scribbled something down and passed it to Buffy. “Here. The name and address of a white warlock who should help you with the Master. He does not often get involved with outsiders, but if he determines your quest worthy he will give you guidance. Visit him during the day, if you can. He does not fare well with most creatures of the night.”

Buffy bit her tongue, and tried to steady herself. “Thank you.”

Spike leaned forwards, an unfamiliar expression on his face. “Thank you, Mar. What do we owe you?”

Mar just stared at Buffy with a hauntingly knowledgeable expression on her face. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Chapter Text

Despite the victory that was their trip to Mar’s, Buffy had closed in on herself as soon as they left the restaurant. She was quiet and sullen as they drove back to Manhattan, but even though her face was mostly blank, Spike was surprised to find he could still read her. 

At first glance she seemed fine, but the clench of her jaw was Angelus’s - Spike recognized the tell from the Boxer Rebellion; a sure fire sign the bastard was unhappy. Buffy also seemed to be borrowing her stiff upper lip from Darla, looking much like she did a little while later when Angelus had finally left their family for good. Those weeks after China had been the first time he had realized that the great-grand-bitch might actually be capable of feelings too, her calm and collected mask always seeming to be on the edge of slipping away for good. 

Right now, Buffy was holding herself in much the same way. Spike could smell the tears she was trying not to spill.

He didn’t know what to do about it.

The girl was clearly embarrassed that Mar had said so much, especially because in front of him. He understood that; not wanting to show weaknesses (he of course wouldn’t want her to see his own), but he disliked it. For some reason, he wished the girl moping in his passenger seat would open up to him. Spike had spent a century with Drusilla, after all. He knew what to do with upset women, if only Buffy would open up...

The thought alarmed him and he tried to dismiss it as soon as it arose. Spike wasn’t supposed to be caring about the Slaypire. Ally with her? Sure. Screw her? Even better. But care?  

For a while, he managed to keep his mouth clamped shut, until: “Buffy. You alright?” The words slipped out before he could catch them.

She glanced over at him, obviously surprised. “What?”

Despite the fact he was still wrapped up in the hunking familiarity of his leather duster, Spike felt oddly small and awkward. “Just… what Mar said. About you hurting. You seem…” He trailed off as Buffy’s gaze turned suspicious.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a frown.

“What do you mean, what am I doing?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You. Talking to me. About my feelings ? What’s your game, Spike?”

“No game!” he exclaimed, indignant. God forbid a fella actually gives a shit, right? “Look, I just wanna know if you’re gonna keep sulking and feeling sorry for yourself all the way back to Manhattan. If not, maybe we can start actually planning how to take these Tetraitan bastards down.”

Something like hurt flashed across Buffy’s face, but it was quickly replaced with an indignant scowl, like this response was nothing more than she’d expected. Never mind the fact that she’d gotten pissy with him first. At least now the Slaypire looked less dejected, and more just ticked off .

“I’m not sulking,” Buffy snapped. “But, fine, yeah, let’s talk about the Tetraitans. What we need to do next is…”

Turned out, the Slaypire was about as crap as making plans as he was. For the rest of the drive, they bounced ideas off of each other. Most of her ideas were either ridiculously clever and over the top to the point of being impractical, or too short and simple to be particularly effective. All of them ended with some sort of enormous brawl where she ripped every one of her enemies heads off. In other words, her plans were not unlike his. In the end, they realized they’d probably have to meet the warlock before they decided on their next move.

When they finally arrived back at the mansion, Buffy hopped out of the car, green eyes blazing. She checked the inside of her bag (a ratty canvas satchel Spike could never picture her owning back when she was alive) for something, then turned to begin stalking down the dark street.

“Where are we going?” Spike called out after her.

“I'm going to patrol.” She didn’t stop walking, but a moment later: “I guess you could come, if you want.”

He grinned. “Lead the way.”

Half an hour later, Buffy seemed to be regretting her invitation.

“Stop stomping so loudly,” she scolded him as they passed through a nearby graveyard. “You’re gonna scare away all the creepy crawlies.”

He frowned at her word choice. “So vamps are creepy crawlies now? What does that make you, luv?”

She glowered at him. “Shut up. You’re supposed to be a master vampire for fuck’s sake. How are you so loud?”

“No point staying quiet,” he replied. “Nothing undead around here for miles.”

“How can you tell?”

He tapped the side of his nose, and Buffy paused, taking in a couple of deep sniffs herself. “Hm.”

“Happy to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” she replied, and he forced himself not to roll his eyes.

“Thought you wanted me to come along? In case we see the Tetrairans? Or was allying with me just an excuse for you to put your hands all over my hot, tight little bod.” He grinned at her, and Buffy’s nostrils flared angrily as she broadened the space between them. 

“That’s it. Go home, Spike.”

He got the sense she was actually cross again now, but ignored it. “You are right in wanting my help though. Unless your big plan to defeat the Tetraitans is to let them bash you over the head with a rock again. They wouldn’t be expecting that, at least. Course you’d probably end up too dusted to do anything to them in return.” He smirked at her. “Admit it, Buffy. You need me.”

“I’m the Slayer,” she snapped. “I don’t need anyone.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she stuttered out. “ Was the Slayer,” she corrected herself with a frown. “Point is, I have experience with this sort of stuff, and I definitely don’t need you slowing me down.”

Spike backed down. “Fine, whatever. As a Slaypire, you’re more than a smidgeon stronger than me these days, and I’m man enough to admit it. Maybe it’s not need , this thing we have. But you want me with you. Don’t tell me you don’t.” 

“Seriously, Spike, just go away. I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Make me.”

Unfortunately, Buffy didn’t take the bait. Instead, she turned on her heels and continued walking. “Just be fucking quiet,” she said, and Spike knew that was as close to a concession as he would get so happily stepped back into pace with her. 

The night continued to be disappointingly quiet, lacking in monsters for them to slay. They ran into a group of vampires just out of fledgehood in Little Italy, who recognized Buffy on sight. They weren’t Tetraitans, though, and immediately tried to flee from her. Spike grimaced. It was a futile effort on their part; Buffy staked the lot of them without even breaking a metaphorical sweat. 

She didn’t seem to want his help at the mo', so Spike didn’t give it. He liked watching her move, though, and was genuinely glad he’d insisted on coming along. 

Plus, if the Tetraitans did try to strike, he wanted to be there for it.

“Why do you still patrol?” he asked her another hour later, as they began to make their way back to the mansion. She shot him an annoyed look, and he held his hands up in mock-surrender. “Not being funny, Buff, I really want to know. You told me you don’t care about people, so why do you still hunt vampires? Is it just for the rush?”

She shrugged, twirling her stake around in her hand, a non-answer if Spike ever saw one. He sighed, resolved to the fact he wasn’t going to get much from her tonight. It was clear that the mood she’d gotten herself in at the restaurant was sticking around, and the unsatisfying patrol had only seemed to make her more snippy.

“Do you know what the Slayer’s mission is?” she asked him a little while later - just long enough that he’d almost forgotten he’d asked her a question first.

He blinked in surprise. “‘Course I do. Protect the pulsers from the forces of darkness, yada yada -”

“No,” she cut him off, and he was surprised by the conviction of it. “ In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer. ” She recited the words in a way that told him this was something she’d said or heard a hundred times before.

Spike frowned. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

“Not quite. Thing is, there’s no mention of saving humans in there. That was more of a Giles thing. A Giles and Buffy thing. According to the Council, the Slayer’s mission is to, y’know, slay . It doesn’t matter how many human lives are saved or lost in the process. Killing as many vampires as possible is the priority, until one day there aren’t any left at all.”

Spike’s eyebrows shot up. It made sense as a mission, he supposed, but it didn’t blend well with the picture he’d had of the Slayer when she was alive: the girl who put the sanctity of human life above all else. He didn’t say anything just yet. He didn’t really see what her response had to do with his question.

“Really, the saving people thing was just a bonus. Slayers are designed to hunt, not help, after all.”

Spike couldn’t help but interrupt her then. “But that wasn’t how you saw it. Back when you were alive.”

“No,” she agreed. “It wasn’t.”

“So’s that why you patrol now? Not to help humans, but to continue your old mission?”

Buffy blinked, looking at him with obvious surprise, like the idea hadn’t even crossed her mind. “That’s not what I… No. It’s… It’s like you said. I guess I just like the rush.” She was quiet for a moment. “With the Slayer thing, I didn’t mean… I was just sayin’.”

And that was when Spike finally got it. It was obvious, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized it earlier. Maybe Buffy wasn’t the Slayer anymore - it didn’t matter. The important thing was that she missed it.

He should have found it pathetic; the way some small part of her was still clinging onto her identity as the Powers' warrior, even now that all things good and light had left her for dead. 

Instead, he just found himself feeling incredibly sad. Sad for her. What the hell was that about?

“Course, pet,” he said with a shrug. Nonchalant.

Even when she turned pointedly away from him and sped up, he chose to keep patrolling at her side. Because what else was there to do?

When they were just a few blocks from the mansion again, Buffy seemed to sense something that made her spring to attention. “Stop,” she said, and Spike froze at her side.

“What?”

She looked at him with wry amusement. “You haven’t noticed? Come on Big Bad , use that nose of yours.”

She was obviously being sardonic, calling him that, but Spike couldn’t help the way his body reacted. Subtly, he adjusted his duster so it was completely covering his front.

“Spike?” Buffy’s voice was light, but her eyes were dark and hungry. They were the kind of eyes you could write a thousand poems about, and still have more to say.

For a moment he fantasized about taking her right there. Sod patrolling. Not like the Tetraitans were going anywhere. He could move quickly and cup her face with his larger hands, tilt her head back and kiss her. She’d be surprised - wait, no she wouldn’t, not with that hungry look on her face. She’d be expecting him, and kiss him back with the ferocity of a bite. In fact, maybe she would bite him, and then he’d pick her up, hands on that pert little bum of hers, slam her against the closest wall and-

“Well?” Buffy said, tapping her nose expectantly, and Spike snapped out of his daydreams. He hadn’t found himself so constantly sidetracked by a woman since his fledgling days with Drusilla. He refused to think too deeply about what that might mean.

When he finally took a deep breath in he realized Buffy’s hunger might actually be the literal kind. He had no idea how he’d missed it before - the familiar smell of freshly spilled blood. Lots of it. To the point of being near intoxicating.

(Convenient excuse if Buffy had noticed his strange behaviour.)

“Oh, I smell it,” he said. “Reckon it’s the Tetraitans after all.”

“How do you figure?”

“That much freshly spilled blood, this close to the lair? Fifty-fifty on if we’re about to walk into a trap. Could be a coincidence, but…”

Buffy nodded. “Let’s get a move on, then.”

Where to? He almost asked, but when he looked at her again he realized the answer was obvious. She had that familiar, determined glint in her eyes, and Spike reckoned the Slaypire would still choose to charge forwards if the Tetraitans were waving a massive sign saying “Not a trap!! Slay us here!!” .

She reached into her bag and tossed him a stake. “Follow my lead.”

Spike nodded, willing to play the role of the sidekick just this once . He frowned when he caught onto the fact she was sniffing the air around them, apparently still trying to get a precise trail to follow the scent of spilt blood. He found himself smiling fondly. That was a common problem among fledges - they had the nose to smell the blood, but not the experience to let them track it properly. A moment passed, and Buffy decided on a direction. She moved confidently, even though experience told Spike that her internal compass was more than slightly off.

He caught her by the arm when she moved to cross the street. “Bloodbath’s this way, luv,” he murmured in her ear, turning her slightly so she was facing the right direction - towards an alley so dark and dank it was almost too obvious.

“I knew that,” she said, pausing to give the alley a reproachful look. “Creepy. What do you think the odds are that it’s a trap now?”

Spike followed her gaze. “Eighty-twenty.”

They tracked the scent of the blood down the alley for about a block, as the smell quickly increased from intoxicating to almost overwhelming. He was lucky he’d eaten earlier. He glanced over at Buffy, who seemed to be faring surprisingly well given her age, and the fact she’d only had pig’s stuff earlier.

She was light on her feet at first, but as the smell got stronger she seemed to be having more trouble controlling herself, tripping over her feet. He considered giving her advice; acting like the sire she didn’t have. You see, Buffy, he would say, the trick is to stop breathing when you find the smell too overwhelming. You don’t have to breathe, after all. If you stop yourself from doing so, you won’t find the scent nearly so distracting. In the end, he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure how she’d take advice from him, but he was sure it wouldn’t be positively.

Maybe he ought to anyway, though. There was a reason most fledglings dusted before they made it to their first deathday.

They turned the corner, and a glance at Buffy’s expression quickly reminded Spike why he needn’t worry about her. 

He expected to lay his eyes upon a massacre, for the amount of blood he smelt, but instead all he saw was a handful of minions, each holding a bucket of steaming, human blood. 

If the Order of Tetraites had been hoping to lure them out with the tempting smell of fresh blood, they had succeeded. Somehow, in the blink of an eye, they were completely surrounded by minions.

“Huh. Trap it is. She tossed Spike a lazy smile before turning to face the minions. “Nice party you guys have going here - very slaughterhouse chic. You didn’t set this whole thing up just for little old me, now did ya?”

“Aurelian,” one of the more bulky minions hissed, and Buffy threw up her arms in faux-confusion.

“Who, me? I’m not the Aurelian , geez.”

The bulky lead minion’s frown deepened in confusion. “You’re not?” he asked daftly, and Spike just about gave up home for all of vampirekind. 

“Well,” Buffy said almost sheepishly, before tossing the stake straight into the bulky minion’s heart. “Maybe just a little bit.”

And then everything was happening at once. The minions rushed them; mostly focusing on Buffy but a couple of them veered off and attacked Spike too. He staked them quickly, and turned to focus on Buffy, who in that moment was indistinguishable from a Valkyrie, or an Amazon princess. 

While he was watching her another minion smacked him over the head with a crowbar, and Spike turned and snarled at it, angry at the interruption to what was quickly becoming his favourite show. He dusted the git quickly, and moved to guard Buffy’s back so no minions were able to get the jump on her like they did on him. It was a shame that he could no longer watch her moving, but Spike was not his grandsire, lurking in the shadows. He’d dust a few more of them ‘till the numbers were better then let her do the cleanup.

And besides, killing alongside the Slaypire was also oddly satisfying, if in a less easily explicable way.

Soon, there were only a couple of minions left. Spike lit a cigarette as Buffy leapt onto a large vampire’s shoulders and wrapped her strong legs around its neck.

Spike raised an eyebrow.

The minion stumbled around, scraping frantically at Buffy’s legs to get them off his windpipe, apparently having forgotten he doesn’t even need to breathe. The Slaypire made a sharp twisting movement, snapping the vampire’s neck between her thighs. 

It was violent and unnecessary and it made Spike’s prick twitch. The last standing minion tried to drag its broken friend away, but the poor sod didn’t have a chance in hell as Buffy quipped at him and finally staked them both. 

She tossed that blonde mane of hers over her shoulder, eyes gleaming when she finally looked back over at Spike. He was trying for cool and collected, but her grin was contagious.

“The mice thought they were cats,” he purred approvingly. “You showed them. Kitty has claws.”

It was Buffy’s turn to raise an eyebrow, but her expression didn’t hold any of the scorn he was used to receiving from her. “And that means what exactly?”

He finished his cigarette and tossed it behind him. “They thought they could catch you. Thought you were just a meek little mouse. Bad set up. If that was a trap, they were the cheese.”

“You’re such a dork,” she laughed, still bright and smiling, and for a moment Spike thought the Slaypire might just be the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. 

He reached out a hand to touch her just as Buffy turned to survey the mess of blood spilled from buckets and vampire dust around them. “Maybe the Tetraitans aren’t as tough as we thought,” she said, still grinning, but the moment had passed and Spike frowned at his hand near her cheek, not quite sure how it had gotten there.

He opened his mouth - to say what; he was not quite sure - but was beaten to it by a low rumbling from the furthest end of the alley. 

“Nice going, Slayer,” he grumbled as large gleaming eyes blinked and narrowed at them from the dark, because she really should have known better than to so obviously invite more trouble.

Buffy giggled nervously, and returned to a fighting stance with an obviously tighter grip on her stake. “I totally jinxed us, didn’t I?”

The creature prowled forwards, and Spike sucked in a shallow breath. They were idiots, him and the Slaypire both. A Vampiric Order led by a witch obviously had the means to summon creatures through magic. The blood buckets had only been to get their attention, the minions had been the real bait. And now the trap was about to spring.

Spike didn’t recognize the demon - if he could call the thing approaching them that. In his mind, 'demon' was a bit more of a refined term, something meant for thinking, feeling beasts like himself. One glance at this creature’s wild eyes told him it was less than an animal; more like a monster from a storybook. It was enormous, frothing at the mouth, and Spike’s impression of it was torn between that of a bear and a horse. Neither descriptor was quite accurate, especially since the thing was covered with scales and easily three times the size of either animal. It was dragon-like, almost, although Spike had seen a real dragon back in Peru in the 30s, and that had been a beautiful creature, most unlike the hunkering abomination stalking towards them now.

“Any idea what that thing is?” Buffy hissed as Spike moved closer to her, taking her right side.

“Fuck if I know,” he retorted, wishing he had a weapon on him besides the measley stake she’d tossed him early. “You got any more weapons besides stakes?”

"Nope. Aim for the head and heart?”

“Obviously. Still feeling giddy for a good slay?”

The beast went up on its hind legs and roared at them, a noise halfway between a snarl and a moan.

Buffy”s jaw was set. “Always. I’ll go high, you go low.”

Before Spike had the chance to ask what she meant, the creature was roaring again and Buffy was off. She sprinted forwards, leapt on top of a dumpster, and used the extra height to propel herself up onto the creature’s back. She wrapped her legs around the creature’s neck like she’d done to the minion, and forced its mouthful of teeth closed with both her arms wrapped around its muzzle-y snout. 

She was so strong. She was Athena, Aphrodite, and Persephone; all wrapped up in one.

“Spike now!” she yelled at him as the beast bucked and snarled, spiked tail thrashing.

He didn’t need to be told twice. 

Spike was usually more of a hand-to-hand combat man, and the beast wasn’t the type of creature he was used to fighting (especially not during the last century he spent hunting with just Dru). That being said, it wasn’t dissimilar to the sort of monsters the Immortal had constantly been siccing on him and Angelus back during their brief feud with the sorcerer in their Italy years. And anyways, Spike had always been a quick learner.

He felt victorious as he reached the beast’s underbelly and slammed the stake in and out of where he’d expect its heart to be if it really was some sort of mammal. He then viciously impaled the nearby flesh a few times, just in case.

For a moment the beast staggered and swayed, Buffy still clinging on tight as she plowed her own stake into one of its mad-looking eyes. 

“Nice work,” she grunted at him as Spike pulled his own bloody stake out of the beast’s chest and dropped it on the ground. 

He wondered if this was how Angel felt when he helped the girl, and began to understand his souled-up poof of a grandsire for the first time in a century. Did being the Slayer’s lapdog make Angelus feel this same affection? This same relief?

Buffy loosened her grip on the creature’s head and neck, and began to shimmy her way down off its body when Spike realized something. The monster was straightening itself out again, and the gaping holes that had shown him the insides of its chest cavity just moments ago were almost completely healed. 

Wooden stakes? Not gonna cut it.

“Slayer!” Spike yelled out in warning, but she seemed to have realized their victory was premature only moments after him. 

“ Shit! ” she yelped as the creature turned to her, snapping its ridiculously large teeth. It tried for a bite and she moved back quickly in surprise, falling the rest of the way off the creature’s back and onto the ground. 

“Oi!” Spike shouted. “Over here!” The beast’s attention snapped to him and he cursed, eyes darting around the alley until they landed on the crowbar that one of the minion’s had hit him with. He snatched it up and the creature lunged towards him. Spike darted forwards beneath it, jamming the crowbar up into the soft flesh of the creature’s lower jaw as it descended on him, but not before the monster dug its claws in and got a large scrape out of Spike's chest.

He rolled out the way dizzily as the monster began to screech. When he managed a look at his handiwork, Spike blinked. It worked: the creature’s mouth was pried open, the crowbar having gone right through its lower jaw, lodging in the roof of its mouth. But despite the noises it was grunting and the oozing black sludge leaking from its wounds, the beast seemed barely fazed. Beginning to heal already, it turned its head back to Buffy, spittling that gooey black blood of its onto her face as it roared. She glanced between Spike's crumpled form on the ground and the foe before her. Spike could see her clench her jaw.

Clutching at his bleeding chest, he swore. Would cutting the thing’s head off work? It didn’t seem like a particularly clever beast, more a thing of instinct - did it even need a brain? Was it a real creature that would stop attacking if they hurt it enough, or was it something cooked up with magic that would just continue spitting and snarling until it could move no more? 

Fucking witches .

What Spike needed was a real weapon - something powerful; imbued with magic - what he needed was… in the trunk of his DeSoto, a good three blocks away.

He felt he was about to pass out. Had he really lost that much blood already?

Struggling to his feet, Spike suddenly found himself near overwhelmed with memories of Prague. 

There he’d been (here he was), bleeding out, just a few paces away from the woman he’d loved (the Slaypire bitch he hated). So fucking close, but helpless to do anything to save her. Feeling queasy, Spike pulled his hands away from his chest and looked at the borrowed blood that painted them. 

Drusilla (no, wait, Buffy) was trying to pull the crowbar from the beast’s mouth so she could at least have a weapon to fight it with. Even if she was succesful, it wouldn’t end well, with the monster’s mouth undoubtedly snapping closed the moment she got the metal out, biting off one or both of her hands in the process. If only he could get her the weapon she needed, but there was no way he was leaving his lady alone in the mob’s (beast’s) clutches again. Prague was dangerous. He needed to get to the DeSoto, but alone she’d be torn to pieces…

Spike paused; forcing himself to fight the blood loss and clear his head.

He wasn’t in Prague.

Buffy wasn’t his lady.

Wasn't  Drusilla.

She was Buffy, the ex-Vampire Slayer, and probably the stongest girl he’d ever known. She could certainly handle herself for couple of minutes while he ran to grab something from the car.

“Spike!” He heard her call after him as he struggled to his feet and began to make his way out of the alley towards the main road, abandoning her, but only for a moment. He didn’t have the energy to explain.

Embarrassingly weak on his feet, he managed to make it back to the mansion in just under five minutes. A handful of humans shot him concerned looks as he made his way, but they seemed to have enough sense (or perhaps it was the work of their unconscious sixth sense) not to approach him.

He rummaged around in the trunk of the DeSoto, which was littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts and fast food wrappers. He pushed an old collection of finger bones out of his way, dumping them onto the driveway beneath him alongside an old pair of trousers, one of Dru's dolls, and all his other trash.

Then he saw it.

Rusty from negligence, and worse for lack of use, was the enchanted sword he’d nicked off the Chinese Slayer he’d killed ninety-nine and a half years ago. 

Spike flipped the sword over in his hands and grinned - to this day, that was probably the best night of his life. The chit wasn’t quite as good as Nikki (and not nearly as good as Buffy), but he’d been barely out of fledgehood himself, and it had been the fight of his short unlife. She was all skill, he was all passion, and it was only ‘cause of her thinly veiled death wish that he’d made it out alive. He’d tasted her delicious Slayer blood that night and immediately felt drunk and high and like he’d taken the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac all at once. It was only after thoroughly shagging Dru against a wall that he’d even thought of taking a trophy. He hadn’t realized at the time that the sword was enchanted, and that the scar she’d given him with it would never heal; he’d simply thought the sword was a nice weight and design and would come with excellent bragging rights. When months had passed and he still had the scar on his eyebrow, he’d started thinking of that mark as his trophy instead. He'd all but forgotten about the sword (he never really was one for poncy weapons anyways), but still, he had never gotten rid of it. It had seemed a waste.

Sword in hand, he slammed the trunk closed - opened it again to quickly grab his flask and tip the contents down his throat - then shut it and began to limp back to Buffy as quickly as he could. Nobody made eye contact with him this time, now that he was not only hurt, but was also carrying an obvious weapon.

Back in the alleyway, the smell of the blood the Tetraitans had used to lure them there was almost overpowering, and if Spike was a weaker man he’d forget the monster entirely and drop to his knees and lap the sweet, healing human lifeblood up like a cat. He didn’t, though.

Buffy was backed into a corner, looking frantic and messy but both her hands were intact so Spike breathed out a sigh of relief. 

“ Buffy! ” he shouted as loudly as he could, making his way towards her. Both the beast and the girl’s heads snapped towards him.

“Spike!” she called back, looking torn between elation and forgetting the monster entirely to rip his head off instead. “You came back.”

“Always do. Catch!” He tossed her the Chinese Slayer’s sword. She briefly weighed it in her hands as the beast turned back to her and Spike cleverly said: “Magic sword! Chop it’s fucking head off,” just in case she needed a hint.

She moved fluidly, so lightly and quickly it looked to Spike like she was flying. The sword was in her hands, and the monster’s bloodied head was on the ground, and Buffy was triumphant, and the ground was speeding towards Spike’s face, and- 

Oh. Apparently he had lost enough blood to pass out after all.

Chapter Text

Stealing human blood from the hospital was almost ridiculously easy; Buffy didn’t even have to sneak in for she immediately stumbled across an entire truckload of donations ostensibly waiting for her outside. 

She flashed her fangs and growled lightly at a nearby fledgling to scare it off, then handled the van’s padlocked doors with a swift kick. Inside, she refused to let the tempting scents of bags upon bags of different human blood types distract her. She snatched a couple of bags of O-neg - universal donor - and scrambled back onto the streets. 

After their fight with the scaly Gruffalo thing, Buffy had managed to drag Spike’s unconscious form back to the mansion with little difficulty. She’d placed him down on the couch and - feeling exhausted - had been planning on heading straight to bed, but for some reason she found she couldn’t just leave him lying there like that. The stomach wound the monster had given him was deep, looking not unlike the one she’d given Faith, and if Spike was human it would have killed him. And while Buffy knew logically that just because he looked like a corpse at the moment, it didn’t mean he actually was one (well, no more than usual anyways), she couldn’t help but feel all nervous and clammy at the sight.

Because the thing was, people - as Mar had made so embarrassingly clear in the restaurant earlier that night - had a tendency to leave Buffy.

Nobody ever came back for her.

Xander never looked at her the same after she died. Angel said he had to leave her so she could have a normal life, then he sired her and left her behind anyway.  Giles chose to take up the dusty mantle of “father” because they both knew she didn’t really have one of her own, but then he treated her like an imposter in her own body when she was dead and vamped and needed him the most. Her Watcher had told her she’d be happier away from the hellmouth, then acted like he was doing her a favour by pretending to dust her and moving back to England.

And it wasn’t just the men.

At the Sunnydale bus stop, Willow had given her that charmed friendship bracelet and a kiss on the cheek, but she’d let her go all the same.

Vampire-Buffy (the parasite; the demon; the not-Buffy) had thought for a moment that maybe someone still cared when Mom had handed her a few thousand bucks to help her set up an unlife of her own. But when she had tried to discuss her big plans on where she’d go next, the woman she still considered her mother had refused to hear it. She might as well have staked Buffy through the heart when she made it beyond clear that the real reason she’d given her money was to get the creature wearing her dead daughter’s skin out of sight and out of mind.

Deep inside her, Buffy’s demon let out a low whine. 

Buffy clenched the worn leather strap of her satchel more tightly. It was almost sunrise now, and she started to walk a little faster.

What Mar hadn’t seemed to realize - or at least hadn’t felt the need to creepily hint at - was the fact that the whole people leaving Buffy thing hadn’t even started when she died.

It wasn’t always their fault, she knew - it wasn’t like Kendra and Merrick had chosen to abandon her by dying. But that was still what it felt like. (Her father had promised the divorce had absolutely nothing to do with her, but it hadn’t taken long for him to stop calling).

So Buffy was used to being left behind. 

When the Gruffalo-thing had clawed up Spike’s chest and he had scrambled off and seemingly left her to finish the fight alone, she hadn’t been surprised. It was the him coming back bit that threw her for a loop. Because he hated her, didn’t he? So why would he be the one person to not leave her alone?

It was confusing; hence the blood. It’d heal him up quickly so Buffy wouldn’t have to look at him all dead and dejected on the living room couch when she went about her day. 

She probably should have just gotten him pig’s stuff, but it was still night time so all the butchers were closed, and she really didn’t really want to go back to the factory just yet, despite the fact she had more than enough blood there to go around. 

Had it really only been a few days since Spike had come barreling back into her life? Their partnership felt like it had been going on much longer; it was spontaneous and weird and seductively hazy, and Buffy was somehow certain that it wouldn’t feel so good under the harsh overhead lighting of her own home.

Plus, Spike liked human blood better than pig anyways, and she knew it was healthier. If the butcher’s shop and factory were both out of the question, stealing a few bags from the hospital was really just the next logical step.

And yeah , maybe Buffy had stolen it from sick people who deserved it way more than some nasty old vamp like Spike, but so what? It’s not like she had a soul to make her feel all bad about it, and she didn’t have the energy to try to care about something as petty as stealing right now. If she did this thing for him, maybe they’d be even, and then she wouldn’t have to think about, well, any of it .

It was a good plan, she thought to herself.

Spike was already awake and half-sitting up on the couch when she returned to the mansion, despite the fact he’d looked pretty awful when she’d left him there barely more than an hour ago. 

“‘Lo,” he said with a grimace as she made her way into the living room.

Buffy cocked her head to the side: it always surprised her how easily vampires could heal from supposedly mortal wounds. “I don’t get how you passed out from blood loss, but are somehow awake again without drinking any more.”

Spike shrugged, and Buffy pretended not to notice the way the slight movement made him wince. “‘S not really about biology or logic. More about magic, innit?”

Buffy frowned. She’d never really thought of the demonic power source that kept her corpse animated as a type of magic .

“Where’d you toddle off to anyways?” he asked, as Buffy perched on the arm of the sofa Spike wasn’t currently draped all over.

She reached into her satchel and tossed him one of the packs of blood she’d stolen by way of answer. “Got you this.”

“Ta, pet,” he said, catching the bag and biting into it eagerly. Buffy watched, feeling somewhat turned on, as his bumpies came out and he broke the plastic with sharp teeth. He drank the blood greedily and with apparently little thought, until the bag was almost empty and he broke away suddenly. “This is human,” he said, looking hilariously bewildered in his full demonic face.

“Well, duh,” Buffy replied with a breeziness she didn’t really feel. “Human blood helps vampires heal quicker, right? You were bleeding all over the couch and I had no idea when you’d wake up. You’re hardly useful to have around when you’re all corpse-like.”

But Spike wasn’t so easily placated. “I thought you didn’t drink human stuff.”

“ I don’t,” Buffy agreed, “but stealing it from the hospital was stupid easy, so I figured-” she cut herself off. Spike’s eyes were blue again, and he was staring at her with a certain awe on his face that she wasn’t sure if she liked too much or not at all. 

“Why, Slayer,” he said, the beginnings of a smirk spreading across his handsome face. “You nicked this? For me?”

“Don’t be weird about it,” she snapped. “I’m a vampire now too, remember? I steal stuff all the time.” But her words sounded childish and too defensive, even to her own ears. Spike was fully grinning now. “Ugh! Shut up.”

“Didn’t say a thing,” he replied, smiling into his blood bag. 

Buffy grabbed a second one out her bag and whipped at him at full force, maybe hoping that it’d explode all over him in a Jackson Pollock-type way, but he easily caught it with one hand.

She refused to meet his eyes again. “Drink up. I want to visit the warlock tomorrow, so you need to be up to driving two hours to New Haven. Mar said to visit during daylight as a sign of good faith or whatever, so I want to leave in the early afternoon.”

“As the lady commands,” he said, looking annoyingly sexy, which only served to deepen Buffy’s scowl. 

“No later than two,” she said, before stalking off to put the rest of the blood in the fridge then strategically retreat to the room she’d claimed as her own.

Under the covers of some dead person’s bed, she tried to ignore the annoying fluttering feeling in her stomach by closing her eyes tight and pulling her pillow over her head.

To her dismay, Buffy was actually the one to sleep well past dusk the next day, foiling her own plans to see the warlock as soon as possible.

“It’s for the best, really,” Spike said once they were done sniping at each other over whether or not he should have woken up (“What? Get up in the personal space of a sleeping Slaypire? No bloody thank you.” / “Pussy”.). “‘M mostly better, but an extra day or so will make it less likely I accidentally open up this again.” He lifted his shirt to give her a good look at his healing wound and admittedly well-muscled torso. 

Buffy was vaguely aware that if she was still human she would most definitely be hiding her blushing eyes, but instead she found herself moving closer to rather shamelessly examine him. Strategically speaking, Spike’s physical well-being was something she should be aware of for as long as they were allied. Plus, despite quickly ending up half-naked herself, Spike had stayed annoyingly clothed the other night in the alley, and Buffy was curious to see what he was packing under those pesky layered shirts.

The wound itself was looking better. She’d had a peek yesterday when he was still unconscious, and at the time it had been a gaping wide hole in his stomach, revealing a disturbingly clear picture of his inner organs. Today, however, it was almost completely scabbed over; new flesh surrounded by an angry red line of scar tissue. 

She grazed over the new skin gently with the tip of her index finger, and Spike let out a soft hiss.

“Sorry,” she said quickly, surprising herself by meaning it.

His eyes were soft as he glanced down at her. “S’alright.”

So they didn’t leave for New Haven that day, or even the next two after it. Buffy had never met a warlock before, and wanted them both at full strength in case they landed themselves in a situation they needed to fight their way out of. 

The days passed similarly and slowly, noticeable only in Spike’s growing restlessness and Buffy’s brief trips out to patrol and purchase herself some pig’s blood. At first, she kept to herself, but on day two she began joining him for Friends reruns and, fine , to be a little less alone. 

Her demon liked being around family, and when he wasn’t actively trying to kill her or wind her up, Buffy could almost bring herself to admit that the man wasn’t entirely bad company.

They weren’t friends, and didn’t just sit around and chat, but Spike would talk incessantly during commercial breaks of whatever TV show they were watching. He was equal parts amusing and infuriating, and as he tried to pry at the tightly locked secrets of her unlife, he ended up letting slip all sorts of things about himself. She learned that Giles’ books were wrong about his age, and he was actually just under one hundred and twenty. He was originally from London, killed almost his entire social circle upon turning, and liked being a vampire because it made him feel free. He’d been to every continent except Australia, and wanted to see Blondie perform live again soon, but was worried he wouldn’t get the chance before they eventually died or broke up. He thought human lives were silly and short and fickle, but had befriended a handful of them over the years anyways, mostly at shows and festivals. He’d been at Woodstock, and feeding on a flower girl had caused him to inadvertently spend the next four hours tripping, and finally seeing flashes of the pixies Drusilla was apparently always moaning about.

Mostly Buffy just listened, snarking at him occasionally, but she also found herself sharing tidbits from her life too. When he told her about meeting Picasso, she told him that she liked art, which was why she’d chosen to live with Lori and Tom in the factory in SoHo. When he talked about crashing an afterparty at the 1908 Olympics, she mentioned that she used to be a figure skater, but was never able to land an axel. She told him that she only tried again once since being Called, and felt weird about the fact she could now easily land a double.

He was an oddly good listener, and did a good impression of being genuinely interested in even the most mundane details of her middle-class SoCal life.

By the end of day three, she was really just pretending to watch TV, and found herself secretly looking forward to the commercial breaks.

On what would have been their fourth day of resting, Buffy found herself waking up at the outrageously early hour of eleven in the morning. Even more surprising, when she left her room she found Spike already up and sitting at the kitchen table.

“Mornin’,” he said gruffly, not looking up from the map he was examining. 

“You’re up early,” she commented, heading over to the fridge to grab herself breakfast. She poured some pig’s blood into her favourite mug - a ridiculously nerdy Star Wars one shaped like R2-D2 - and heated it up in the microwave before stirring in some crumbled up cornflakes (Spike’s suggestion; annoyingly tasty).

“All healed up,” he replied absently as she joined him at the table. “Ready to do something.”

Up close, she could see he was planning a route from their place in Manhattan to the address Mar had given them in New Haven. He had a focused look on his face; eyes narrowed ever so slightly, mouth drawn into a thin line, and Buffy found herself wondering if this was what he’d looked like back in Sunnydale, trying so hard to plot her death. For some bizarre reason, the thought made her feel all fuzzy and sentimental.

“Think the warlock Mar’s sending us after is a kid,” he said after a few more moments. “That or a dusty old scholarly-type.”

Buffy glanced up from her mug. “How can you tell?”

“Address is smack in the middle of the Yale campus.”

“Hmm,” Buffy mused. “Mom always wanted me to go to an Ivy. She gave up hope way before she knew I was the Slayer, though.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Bad grades,” she explained.

“I went to Cambridge,” Spike said, and Buffy rolled her eyes.

“You’re so full of shit.”

They decided to leave by noon, and after breakfast Buffy began hunting around the mansion for something to wear on their trip. Vampires weren’t stinky so she’d been wearing the same bloodied grey shirt and jeans since she’d left the factory on New Year’s Eve. She’d tossed her clothes in the washing machine the day after they’d fought the beast, but had been unsuccessful in removing the bulk of the blood stains. Plus, her jeans had gotten a bit ripped. The clothes were fine for lounging about the mansion with Spike (cuz it’s not like she cared what he thought of her), but she’d stick out like a sore thumb on a university campus. It didn’t really matter, she supposed, but still… It was a proper trip, and for the first time in a long while she kind of wanted to look nice.

The dead teen’s room seemed like the most promising place to find new clothes, but all the tops were a bit too baggy around the chest area. A quick poke around revealed that none of the vampires nesting there before Buffy had left anything promising behind either. 

In the room that seemed to have belonged to the dead family’s matriarch, Buffy finally found something that could work: a strappy dark blue sundress patterned with little white flowers. The mirror was obviously no help, but holding the fabric up against her pale skin revealed the colours suited her well enough, and she was able to use the tie around the waist to cinch it so it fit perfectly. Buffy shrugged on her brown suede jacket and used a belt to secure the sword Spike had lent her (the enchanted one she had absolutely no intention of ever giving back) to her hip.

She suppressed a grin. Sure, she didn’t know exactly what she looked like, and maybe the blood-stained clothes would actually draw less attention than the bizarro combination that was a sundress in January and a sword on the hip, but fuck it , for the first time since dying, Buffy felt hot.

And from the big bad wolf, wanna-eat-you-up- look Spike gave her when she strode over to the entryway and tugged on her boots, he agreed.

“What’s the special occasion?” he purred, causing Buffy’s demon to puff up proudly.

She shrugged. “Getting out the house, road-tripping, cute Yale boys…”

Spike looked annoyed at that last bit, and his obvious irritation fed Buffy’s ego and made her mood fly even higher. He opened the blinds a peek, dropped them, and tossed her a blanket.

“Car’s out in the driveway. I’ll go first and pull it round front. When I honk, run and join me - I’ll have the passenger door open. Got it?”

“Got it,” she replied, draping the blanket over her body and head.

Inside the car a few minutes later, Buffy was swearing and clutching at her lower legs which had, thanks to the length of the stupid fucking sundress she officially no longer found cute, gotten a bit scorched by the sun and had turned a toasty pink.

Spike, swerving dangerously due to a combination of poor visibility through the blacked out windows and what appeared to be a malicious disregard for the rules of the road, glanced over and passed her a flask.

She opened it, expecting it to be filled with some sort of alcohol she could pour over herself to cool the burns, and accidentally let out a growl when she found it to be filled with the last of the human blood instead.

Spike barked out a startled laugh. “What was that, Slaypire?”

Buffy fastened the cap on again and tossed the flask back to him. “Fuck you, Spike. You know I don’t drink human.”

He shoved the flask into one of his duster’s pockets. “Your loss, pet. And fuck you too, by the way. Was just tryna help. Those burns are your own damn fault for wearing that tarty little thing out in daylight; I was in the sun way longer than you and I’m fine.”

Buffy crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re such a pig.”

This apparently amused him. “You slurp pigs up all day long.”

She wrinkled up her nose at his words (did they count as an innuendo? There was definitely an innuendo-y sort of vibe going on…) and resisted the urge to comment something dumb like “if anyone's slurping things up it's you... because of the oral sex...” She couldn’t quite get the quip to work in her head so instead she just stuck with a stony, dignified silence.

“You’re getting real good at brooding,” Spike commented half an hour or so later. Despite having been in the car for a while now, they were only just leaving the city limits due to a truly obscene amount of mid-day traffic. “I bet daddy’s real proud.”

“Fuck off,” Buffy said, scratching at her lower legs. They already didn’t hurt so bad, courtesy of Slaypire healing, but they still felt stingy and itchy and way too sensitive, decorated with a welt or two in the spots that got the worst of it.

“No, really,” Spike said. “You’d think it’d be hard to brood without a soul, but you’re doing a stand-up job.”

“I’m not brooding,” Buffy snapped. “I’m-” Uh -

“Sulking?”

“No! Mad at you!” she said hotly, then cringed.

He raised a brow. “What’d I do?” She glowered at him. “Seriously. You didn’t get burned that bad. If you’d just drank the damn blood those legs of yours would be good as new by now, instead of looking like some sort of cautionary tale involving the misuse of deep fat fryers.”

Weirdly human analogy , she thought, drawing her legs up closer to her. “They don’t look that bad.”

“They don’t,” Spike conceded. “You know you’re still fit. But why not drink the blood?”

“Because I don’t-”

“‘-drink human blood!’ Yeah, yeah, save the speech, Slayer. You’re the one who stole it in the first place, and it’s not like drinkin’ it would hurt anybody. And human blood’s right tasty, you know. Don’t knock it till you try it.”

Buffy tensed, her mind jolting back to the night she had tried it - the night she tries to never think about.

Unfortunately, being Spike, he noticed her freeze up. 

“What’s this? You have tried human blood before?”

She grit her teeth. “Shut up, Spike.”

“Well, well, well, isn’t that interesting…”

She forcefully rolled her eyes at him. Spike was just being Spike. She wasn’t going to engage. She wasn’t going to think about it.

Distantly, she was aware of Spike asking her if the blood she’d drank had been from a bag or from a person, and she tried to tell him to shut up again but her tongue was suddenly too heavy.

She wasn’t going to think about it.

“Buffy, have you killed someone?” she heard him gleefully say, and... 

Uh oh. She was thinking about it.

She felt like she was sliding back into herself; like she too was trapped in that place deep inside her where her demon seemed to live. It wasn’t anything magical - just a panic attack. She knew because she’d had them back when she was human too.

But God, it felt like dying for a third time.

Her mouth was dry, as she thought of hot summer nights, and cages, and bland food that got stuck in her pointy teeth.

Her bumpies were showing.

She thought of the sad way Angel looked at her, and how the Scoobies were always bailing on her, and the night she hung out at the Bronze with a vamped Harmony of all people.

She thought about mean girls-turned-monsters, and cocktails, and bad music. She thought about dancing, and hunting, and how she hated her own evil vampire guts. 

She was vaguely aware that she was hyperventilating, which was stupid, because she didn't even need to breathe. She was also aware of the fact that Spike wasn't trying to rile her up anymore. He must have pulled the car over, because they were no longer moving. His large hands were cupping her face as he forced her eyes to meet his ancient, yellow, demonic ones.

His demon was strong. Old, and dangerous, and she could feel it drying to compel her own; trying to get her to focus, and slow her unnecessary breaths, and calm down.

But she couldn’t.

Spike was so unlike Angel, and suddenly she wanted to heave.

She thought about patrolling, and accidents, and if Kendra was still alive, what would she think of her now?

An abomination.

Buffy thought of Ford, who would’ve been so jealous of her. This was exactly what he wanted for himself, wasn’t it?

Spike was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him.

She thought of the people she couldn’t save.

And, of course, she thought about that night - the one she never thinks about. She thinks of that girl in the alley, clutching her neck, already half-dead from the attack of a vampire Buffy had just dusted.

“Buffy, luv, you’re okay.” 

She thought about watching the life leave the girl eyes.

She thought of fledglings, and dust, and diet books.

She tasted salty tears on her lips.

“C’mon, Slayer, deep breaths.”

She thought about creatures that hide under little girls’ beds, and Big Bads, and low fat yogurt.

About one girl in the whole world who’s supposed to stop it all (like she has a real chance).

She hadn’t meant to taste the girl’s blood; it was a dumb mistake.

She’d been trying to put pressure on the wound, but it was too late for the girl anyway, and Buffy had been hungry.

She had been hungry, because she’s always hungry, and even then she had barely taken more than a sip.

“Shhh, Spike's got you now. You’re okay, luv. You’re okay.” 

She had been trying to help. It was just a small slip-up; a dumb mistake.

But Angel hadn’t seen it that way. And he hated her for it.

Buffy Summers was dead, and she should be gone from this earth, so why was she still here? Still being forced to feel everything?

She was a vampire, but also sort of the Slayer, and that was a terrible mix of things to be. She was so fucking hungry, and so fucking alone.

Again, her eyes met Spike's, and he was still trying to use his older demon to control her younger one.

She should probably fight it, because it was Spike, but her life couldn't get any worse so she let him in.

Everything felt smoother under compulsion. She was still sort of in control, because she knew she could push him out of her head at any moment, but she also wasn’t, because Buffy wasn’t the one moving her body and getting her to breathe deeply like that.

All the while, she felt Spike’s demon whispering to hers in a language she couldn't actively understand, but felt all the same.

You’re going to be okay.

She blinked as Spike’s influence left her, and she found herself feeling sort of steady again. He had indeed pulled them over to the side of the road, and the occasional car zoomed past them. He had long since stopped gloating, and was looking at her with concern. His yellow eyes faded back to blue, and she shoved her own demon down again.

“There you are.”

He was so close. As close as he’d been that night in the alleyway. He looked so worried about her, and how dare he?  

“You okay now, luv? I’m sorry. I should’ve just dropped it. Know that now. And should’ve noticed what was happening to you sooner, too. I was with Dru for how many bloody years, right?”

“I’m fine ,” Buffy said hoarsely, batting his hands away from her. “Let’s just get this stupid trip over and done with.”

He hesitated. “It’s okay, Buff. Dru used to... well, let’s just say I’ve seen fits like yours before, and I understand. I’m sorry about trying to compel you without asking first, but it always seems to help Drusilla, and... I- I’m glad you let me in. Dru used to say-”

“Shut up about fucking Drusilla!” she found herself shouting. “Just fucking stop, okay? I’m not her, and she’s not me, and the only thing we have in common is the sire who hates both of us, okay?! So just... just stop.”

He pulled away from her, and put the car back into drive.

She looked everywhere except at him, eyes landing on the painted passenger side window as he pulled the car back onto the road. It was hard to tell with the windows blacked out, but the lack of bustling noises told her they were outside the city. She imagined a fairytale-style woods surrounding them, lined only with the occasional rustic cottage. 

She could hear him swallow. He looked… the word rueful sprung to mind. It made her angry at him. Angry for acting like he cared, angry for comparing her to crazy Drusilla, and angry for pushing her about the whole human blood thing in the first place. And God, did she ever feel embarrassed. She fought literal horror movie monsters on the daily, but apparently a few stupid questions about a night she didn’t want to remember was enough to reduce her to a quivering, sobbing mess.

She’d also never been compelled by another vampire before; not even Angel. He had told her it was just a trick Big Bads used to recruit minions, a brief signal-y type thing they sent out to dominate demons that were weaker than their own. But that... that had felt intimate. She wondered if letting it happen was another thing she should feel embarrassed about.

She wasn’t sure. It really had helped.

Buffy continued to glare at her covered window, and it wasn’t long before Spike began babbling again, this time about a previous trip he’d taken to New Haven in ‘78. Buffy’s embarrassment and residual post-panic attack shakes quickly made way for annoyance at having to hear another stupid Spike story when she really wasn’t in the mood. 

She had just decided that she actually hated him more than ever now, when she noticed the way he kept on glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. She glared back at him, because fuck him , but for some reason he just continued talking about nothing with even more confidence. Her tears were all dried up. He was such an idiot, and he was totally-

Trying to distract her. 

His eyes darted over to her again and she saw his lips twitch, apparently pleased that he was pissing her off enough to drown out the panic and tears that had felt suffocating not so long ago.

It didn’t seem right that he was trying to comfort her, but it also hadn’t been right for him to try to compel her our of a panic attack he’d pretty much caused, so fuck it, she decided to let him. Everything was always so hard, and softness made a nice change for once, even if it came from someone as crooked and phony as Spike. Buffy shut her eyes and leaned back in her seat, letting her mind drift away with his words.

She supposed maybe she didn’t hate him that much after all. 

“So that’s why I never say anything bad about abstract anymore. Still have the scars somewhere as a reminder. Any of your flatmates like that?” 

Buffy’s eyes blinked open. “Huh?”

“The other day you said you live with a bunch of artist types. Any of them ever try to pass off some piece of shit scribble as ‘abstract’?”

“Uh, no,” Buffy said. “They’re actually all pretty good.”

Spike made a low humming noise of agreement. “Ever dip your own brush in the communal paint pot?”

“What?”

“Do you ever make art of your own?”

She thought about her poetry. “Uh, I guess,” she said, fiddling with the hem of her dress.

“Yeah? What kind?”

“Terrible poetry,” she said honestly, because she’d used up all the embarrassment she had in her already. Suddenly, they were swerving into the wrong lane and a bunch of other cars were honking at them. “Ahh! God, Spike, what’s your damage?!”

“You takin’ the piss outta me?” he asked sharply after getting back into the right lane, all previous softness gone. His grip on the steering wheel was tight and his knuckles were even more deathly pale than usual. 

She squinted at him. “ What? My poetry has nothing to do with you, you dick.” (Well, not until he did that thing with his tongue the other night, anyways.)

He relaxed a hair, looking sheepish. “Oh. Uh, sorry. Just got jumbled up, I s’pose.”

“I’ll say,” Buffy muttered.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, with Spike still glancing over at Buffy every few minutes, but no longer like he was checking on her. More like he was about to say something, but kept thinking better of it.

“What?” Buffy snapped after the fifth time or so.

“Nothing!” Spike said, turning to stare intently at the round ahead of them. Another minute passed. “You like readin’ poetry too, or d’you just write it?”

“I read it,” she said suspiciously.

“Who’s your favorite? Uh, writer, I mean?”

“I like Emily Dickinson.”

His face lit up like a little kid opening a present on Christmas morning. “Me too.” 

“Yeah, sure you do,” Buffy said sarcastically, trying to picture Big Bad William the Bloody perched over her copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson .

And then something entirely bizarre happened. 

“Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all .” He turned away from the road to fix her with a smug grin as he recited a poem she hadn’t heard before. “And sweetest - in the gale - is heard, and sore must be the storm, that could abash the little bird, that kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land, and on the strangest sea. Yet - never - in extremity, it asked a crumb of me. ”

Buffy blinked. “What the fuck?”

“What?” Spike said with a smirk. “I can have layers.”

“ What the fuck? ” she repeated.

“It’s a nice poem, innit?” he said, suddenly looking so genuine that Buffy wanted to claw his eyeballs out.

“No,” she said, mostly just to be contentious. “It’s a stupid poem. Hope ‘ perches on the soul ’? We’re vampires, Spike, we don’t even have souls. Hardly relatable, now is it?”

He rolled his eyes. “Dickinson wasn’t part of our world - she didn’t mean soul the way you or me might. It’s about being brave - how nothing can stop you if you have heart.”

“Still stupid,” said Buffy, turning away when Spike deflated. How was he making her feel guilty right now? After everything they’d already done to each other? Despite the fact that vampires aren’t even supposed to feel stupid guilt at all?

But he looked so dejected, and she’d done that to him, and when he’d been the one to upset her earlier he’d tried to cheer her up.

And she did like Emily.

“Have you read her poem Because I could not stop for Death ?” she found herself asking, and Spike glanced over at her curiously. “I… I like that one.”

He smiled. “Me too.”

Chapter Text

Peter wished he could say he knew he had visitors before they knocked on his door because of some sort of cool, preternatural warlock powers, but really it was because they were bickering so damn loudly.

“Are you sure this is really the right room this time?” said a female voice with a pitchy SoCal accent. “Because one wrong door is awkward. Two is funny. Three times, and we’re getting you glasses, mister.”

“You read the sodding thing then,” replied a gruff-sounding male. “Mar’s handwriting is chicken scratch - what do you think that digit is?”

There was a pregnant pause. “Well I know it’s not a one or a seven.”

“Har bloody har. Look, pet, it’s a two. See the way it curves at the top there? Definitely a two.”

“That’s what you said when you thought it was a one. And a seven.”

“Well this time I’m sure. It’s a two. So room twelve.”

A weary sigh. “Just knock on the damn door.” 

“As the lady wishes.”

There was a loud knock on the door, and Peter sprung to his feet, slamming his Classics 101 textbook closed. “Come in!” he called out stupidly, because apparently seven years at the Watchers’ Academy hadn’t taught him better. 

The door opened with a slow, ominous creak , and Peter gulped when he found himself faced with an odd-looking pair. If the man’s outdated punk look and the woman’s entirely inappropriate winter clothing hadn’t already set off alarm bells, the weapons they were both carrying most certainly did. It didn’t matter that they were wearing their human guises, because while Peter might have been a terrible watcher-in-training, he was a damn good warlock. And the pair’s auras… Well, they were actually quite pretty, but just glistening with the tell-tale smokey tendrils of vampiric magic.

Peter scrambled backwards, grabbed a wooden pencil off his desk, and wielded it in front of him threateningly. The vampires exchanged amused looks, and Peter noticed the way their auras brightened slightly when their eyes met. A mated pair, then. The literature was pretty divided on if that made them more or less dangerous. Peter thanked the Powers that the sun was still high in the sky. Should worst come to worst, it wasn’t that far a drop from his first floor window to the courtyard below.

“Hi,” the female vampire said with a charming smile and a hand held out to shake. “You’re Peter Worrall, right? The New Haven warlock?” The vampiress was thin, with blonde hair, green eyes, and a perky little nose. She looked about his age - maybe eighteen or nineteen - but could of course be much older. She was pretty, Peter decided, if you were into the whole “gold standard of conventional beauty” thing. He suddenly felt very self-conscious about the large pimple that had popped up on his chin that morning.

Hesitantly, because he didn’t want to offend or spook this deadly, beautiful creature of the night, he took her ice-cold hand and shook it. “Hello, um, yes. Peter. New Haven warlock. That’s me. Pleasure to meet you.” He blushed slightly - he hadn’t realized he’d made such a name for himself.

The punk-looking male vampire rolled his eyes.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” the female said, ignoring her mate’s rudeness. “We heard of you from a Susurro demon named Mar. She said you’re a powerful white warlock, and may be willing to help us with a little problem we have back in New York.”

Peter frowned, although he had to admit his interest was piqued by the fact they’d purposefully set out to find a good warlock such as himself. Surely a practitioner of the black arts would be much better suited for the needs of a pair of demons such as themselves. 

“I don’t know anybody by the name of Mar,” he said slowly, and the male vampire let out a snort.

“Doesn’t mean she doesn’t know you , mate.”

Peter couldn’t help but scowl at the incredibly dangerous predator that was now leaning back in his desk chair. Between the familiar accent, leather coat, and attitude, the male vampire reminded him far too much of the neighborhood boys who used to pick on him, despite the fact he was far more likely to eat Peter than tease him for being a mama’s boy.

“Ignore him,” the sunny female vampire said lightly. “He’s just antagonizing you. Nice dorm room, by the way. L ove the posters.”

“You like Star Trek?” Peter asked hopefully.

“Jesus Christ,” said the male.

“Anyways,” the female vampire continued, ignoring them both. “We’re here because we have a vampire problem. Or, er, a problem with other vampires. You do know we’re vampires, right?”

Peter nodded slowly, his gaze flickering over the female’s aura again - he’d never seen anything like it. Some parts of it were familiar; colours and patterns common to the auras of so many young women. But there was also strong demonic power there, and not all of it was vampiric. He wondered if this woman had already been part-demon when she was turned. The closer Peter looked, the more uneasy he felt. His heart rate ticked up, and he was certain the vampires noticed. The male was watching him cautiously; the female curiously. The female’s aura was missing the hazy blood red that was swirling dangerously around her male counterpart’s, but somehow Peter still found her far more terrifying.

There was also something very familiar about her face, Peter realized with a start. He wondered if he had perhaps seen her picture back at the Academy. She was blonde, like the Scourge of Europe Darla, but that couldn’t be right - Peter remembered the celebrations his father hosted the day that vampiress was slaid. Perhaps he was currently face-to-face with the mighty Carmilla, or the treacherous Princess of Deception. He repressed a shudder. He probably made up the familiarity of this girl in his head.

“Um, yes,” Peter said eventually, when he realized she was waiting for an answer. “I can see it in your auras.”

For some reason, the female seemed to flinch at this, and the male glanced over at her with a look of impossible concern on his face. He moved closer to her and placed a hand softly on her shoulder. The female looked almost startled by her mate’s subtle display of affection, but after a tense moment seemed to relax slightly into his touch.

“It’s in my aura, huh? That’s… cool. So, about our vampire problem. Have you heard of the Tetraitans?”

“Of course,” Peter said. “The Order of Tetraites: a group of vampires led by an ancient vampire-witch whose real name was lost to history. They’re very influential in these parts - at least as much as the Order of Aurelius in California, and maybe even more than the Cult of Ul-Thar….” He trailed off. “You want my help with them?”

The female smiled. “Who’d be better at fighting a witch than a warlock?”

“That’s kind of you to say, but trust me. When it comes to the slaying of vampires, I’m not your guy.”

At this, the corner of the female’s lips twitched into something almost like a smile. “No, that’d be my job. But the thing is, I don’t really get magic. We came to you because we need advice from someone who does. We aren’t asking you to fight anybody, just to point us in the right direction. Can you help?”

Peter hesitated. He could, but should he? The people asking for his help, after all, weren’t actually people.

He took a step back into the fading sunlight, extremely grateful for his West-facing window. “Why should I? You’re speaking of fighting vampires, but you’re both vampires yourself. I’m a good warlock. I don’t help demons do evil things.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” the male vampire said, ignoring the shushing sounds his mate was making. “You wouldn’t be helping demons do evil things, you’d be helping us do something good for once.”

“I don’t believe you. Why would a vampire want to do something good ?”

“Well-” the female began, but the male cut her off.

“Selfish reasons, obviously,” he said, and if Peter didn’t know better he would almost think the creature was being sarcastic. “Let me make this real simple for you, mate. Us: Aurelians. Them: Tetraitans. We come to New York, they say we’re encroaching on their Territory and try to make us go poof . So what do we do? Try to kill them right back. We’re not heroes . We’re monsters, and we’re evil, and we’re bloody selfish, but in this case our interests actually align. Help us kill the Tertraitans and that’s less vampires in the world. Never mind why we want to kill the bastards. All that matters is we do .” 

Peter bit his lip. He knew what his father and the Council would say, but didn’t he leave England just to get away from their constant micro-managing? The male vampire’s argument was actually pretty convincing, because everyone knows dead demons are always a good thing. Plus, if Peter accidentally gave them bad advice and got them both killed… Well, that wouldn’t be such a disaster either. 

“Okay, I’ll help you. Just, um, let me get out my tarot cards.”

As he rummaged around under his bed to gather his magic supplies, Peter heard the male vampire mutter something along the lines of “Better not have driven’ all the way to New Haven for soddin’ tarot reading,” but pretended not to hear him.

He laid out his grandmother’s deep maroon rug in the middle of the dormitory and lit twelve candles around it - twelve because the number is nicely divisible into halves, thirds and quarters, and magic really is much more connected to math than most people think. Next, he took out a carton of blackberries from his mini fridge and placed one at the base of each candle for healing and protection. Finally, he shut the blinds, took off his shoes and socks, and sat cross-legged on one side of the rug.

“I can only do one of you,” he said, glancing nervously up at the vampires.

“And why’s that?” the male asked, sounding annoyed. “Pixies gonna get cross if you’re too helpful?”

Peter frowned. “I don’t know what that means. But to answer your question, magic corrupts, and it’ll take time for the energies in my room to rebalance when I’m done.”

“And we can’t just move to the common room then?” the male snarked.

Peter shot him a withering glare. “That’s not how it works. Choose who you want me to read and I’ll do it, but that’s all I’ll do.”

“That’s fine, Peter,” the female insisted, even as the male opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something rude or threatening. “Thank you for doing this, we- well, I , at least, really appreciate it. You can do me.”

The male vampire snorted, but Peter ignored him to continue to set up. 

When he was almost ready, and finally got the female vampire to cut her hand anoint him with a drop of blood, the male vampire began to look uneasy. Feeling uneasy himself with a vampire breathing down his back, Peter quickly put his hands in the air and tried to reassure him. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do magic on her , just on the cards we draw. Your mate will be perfectly fine.”

But for some reason, Peter’s words had the opposite of a calming effect on the couple in front of him. “His what?! ” the female yelped as the male jumped to his feet, looking angry all over again.

“Listen here, Percy,” the male snarled. “This isn’t Animal fucking Planet. We are vampires, not cows. I do not have a mate, I have a lady.”

“And I’m not his anything!” the female piped in, although her aura blushed pink.

Peter gulped. “Right. Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.” Both vampires seemed to accept this, but Peter felt the male’s angry gaze on him as he continued his work.

“What does that do?” the female asked when he sprinkled a dusting of dried heliotropes over the deck.

“Blesses the cards,” Peter replied, cutting the deck in two and drawing four cards to place face down.

“Cool. What do we do now?”

“Take my hands and pray to the Powers for guidance. Now stop asking questions, this next bit is hard.”

With the female vampire’s chilly hands in his own, Peter began to chant. “ Powers above, we ask for your intervention, hear my words and feel my pure intentions. Show me the challenges to be faced by the one in front of me as she begins her next journey .” 

As he spoke the words, the first card began to float upwards, revealing itself to him upside-down: the Magician . Peter dropped the vampire’s hands and gently plucked it out of the air, preparing himself for the moment of truth. If a higher power really was listening they’d grant him with answers by way of a vision to. If not, he'll have to interpret the card all by himself. 

He was not disappointed. 

As soon as Peter touched the card bright pictures began to flare in his mind, feeling both wonderful and overwhelming. When the Master of the Tetraitans appeared in his head, Peter felt her icey presence like she was really there. He saw her call shadows towards her and use them to fade away into nothing. When she thralled a fellow vampire, Peter felt the tug of her powerful will, and when she summoned a monstrous beast with snapping teeth, he smelt its stinking breath. She cast a spell that forced a man to eat his lover up, and Peter felt the man’s hunger alongside the woman’s fear. He gasped. He could really feel the Power guiding him; all warmth and strength and undeniably goodness.

(He also felt the beginnings of a migraine.)

“The Master is strong,” he said aloud, dictating what he saw as it began to fade away. “Her powers are both vampiric and wiccan in nature. If she finds herself in danger, she will call upon the shadows themselves to spirit her away. She will thrall you and summon beasts. She has gotten - or perhaps will get - a man to eat his lady love alive.”

When he opened his eyes again both vampires were staring at him. He felt the intensity of their gaze as the second card floated up into the air. Three of Pentacles , upright, telling of teamwork and collaboration. At first its meaning seemed obvious to Peter - the two vampires should stick together - but when the Powers stepped into his head he realized the card was actually telling him about a past with someone else. He saw a flash of bright red hair and a fuzzy pink sweater. He felt the familiar tug of strong magicks. He watched as a sparkling chain was dropped gently into a pale palm, and fingers closed around it. “You are under the protection of the Red Witch. She has tried to give you a gift. If you accept it, the Master’s thrall and spells will do you no harm.”

The vampire girl’s eyes both widened and fogged with confusion. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

Peter ignored her as the third card revealed itself to be the Knight of Wands , and the Powers sent him pictures that matched the action, adventure and fearlessness he read there. “Do not be afraid. Your adventure will continue a little while longer, but fate is on your side. Before you confront the Master, sprinkle salt around her lair. This will bind her so she can no longer run away with the shadows.”

The final card was Two of Cups . “Unity, partnership, and connection,” he said as a vision of the two vampires began to unfold. They were fighting, then dancing, then kissing. They were scared and wary, but at least they weren’t alone. He saw a glimpse of the future, one out of a million possibilities. The Master was dead and the male vampire on his knees before the female. She held a sword in her hands - a sword that once belonged to her sister that he killed. Someone’s cold blood was dripping from his mouth, but he loved her, didn’t he? He would accept anything from her, even death. “Your companion will make you feel stronger. When the battle is done you must decide what to do with him.”

As suddenly as the Powers entered his body, Peter felt their influence disappear, leaving him with a pounding head and heart. He pushed himself to his feet and staggered over to his desk, where he grabbed an ibuprofen and quickly chased it down with a big glug of water. Already, he was forgetting what he was shown. He was not a seer after all, and as the magic left him, the memories of his visions did too.

“I-is that everything?” the female asked hesitantly.

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us anything else? Help us interpret?”

“No.”

“Okay, okay. So the Master can use shadows to teleport away and summon demons,” she began to recap. “Oh! We should probably write this down! Spike, can you-”

“On it.”

Peter almost smiled. Spike . What a bizarre name.

“Thanks. So she can thrall, summon demons, use shadows to disappear-”

“Which we already bloody knew.”

“Which we already knew. But hey! Now we know she can do a spell to make people eat each other.”

“Don’t need a spell for that,” the male replied in a teasing voice, snapping his teeth at her.

Peter didn’t have the energy to laugh, or even pay attention to them. God, he was so tired; magic always did this to him. He sat down on his bed. Then lay down. But he kept his eyes open, because it would be foolish to let his guard down with two vampires in his room. He would perform a disinvite spell as soon as they leave…

“...and I’m ‘under the protection of the red witch’, whatever that means.”

“I reckon he’s talking about your old pal from Sunnydale, luv. Red hair and all.”

“Maybe, but Willow never…”

Peter’s eyes had slipped closed again, but he snapped them open when the female vampire suddenly popped up at his side.

“Oh no! Peter, are you okay? I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think to check! Are you…” Peter couldn’t help but tune her out, only perking up again when she took a step back and seemed to be concluding her rambling. “Thank you so much for helping. Your advice was maybe a little more cryptic than I would’ve liked, but before we were going off nothing so this is honestly a huge step up. Oh, poor Peter, you look so tired.” She grabbed a blanket from the end of his bed and draped it over him. He wondered vaguely what the male’s reaction to this was, but was too exhausted to make himself open his eyes again to check. A nap would be good. He’d sleep just a little, then do the disinvite spell, then finish working on his Classics essay... 

The female vampire was asking him if he needed anything, and Peter mumbled a sleepy “no no,” because he really was going to be fine.

“Come on, Buffy,” the male said. “We’ve got what we came for. If we’re really not gonna eat sleeping beauty here, let’s leave ’im to rest.”

He heard her say her goodbyes, then the sound of the door opening and closing again.

They were already gone when Peter lifted his head slightly. “Goo’bye B’ffy.” 

When Peter woke up again hours later, his mouth was dry but he felt much better - mostly re-energized and ready to do the disinvite. His roommate was back from class now and muttering complaints about how messy the room was, and how Peter really ought to clean up better after his nerdy games.

He blinked sleepily at the four tarot cards face-up on the rug. All the candles surrounding them had gone out.

Now that they were gone, Peter couldn’t help but wonder if helping the vampires had been such a good idea after all. Their argument about less vampires being a good thing no matter what was convincing at the time, but now he felt uneasiness creeping back in. 

Who the hell were they?

Apparently, some strange punk named Spike and his companion Buffy who definitely washis mate. And what sort of name is ‘Buffy’ anyway- 

Peter froze. His stomach dropped when the reason the female vampire seemed so familiar clicked into place. How did he not realize who she was earlier? For years, he’d passed her portrait in the Academy every day. Everyone knew the story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the woman who killed the Aurelian Master and Kakistos, who stopped the world from being sucked into hell before she even turned eighteen. 

Buffy was a cautionary tale. She’d trusted a vampire and ended up dead because of it. She’d briefly risen again, sure, but had been slayed shortly after by her old Watcher. 

Hadn’t she?

Peter leapt out of bed and began tearing through his various spellbooks, Yale textbooks, and old Academy books until he found what he was looking for - a record detailing the lives of all the Slayers in the last century. It was a few years old, so not entirely up to date on the latest girls, but it had pictures…

He opened the book and flipped to the second last page. He stared at the photograph of the Slayer Buffy Summers (called c. 1996), and she stared right back. 

Oh God, he felt sick. 

He felt the ghost of her hands in his. A Slayer-turned-monster had waltzed right into his room, charmed him into helping her, and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Oh God,” he said out loud. She hadn’t hurt him when they met, so Peter was almost surprised by the sudden depth of his fear. Maybe it was because he had heard from his father how dangerous she was. And hadn’t he noted something particularly dark in her aura? “Oh God,” he said again.

Ignoring his roommates continuous questioning, Peter snatched their phone off its hook and dialed his father’s number. It rang seven times.

“Father.”

“Good heavens boy! Do you have any idea what time it is here? Honestly! This better be-”

“I’m sorry,” Peter cut in. “But Father, you must listen. It is an emergency. See, earlier today I was visited by two vampires, and-”

“Are you alright? Did they harm you?”

“No,” Peter quickly reassured him. “I’m quite fine, but-”

“Then why-”

“Father please. Just listen.”

There was a grunting noise from the other end of the phone, distorted slightly by the enormous distance between Peter and his father’s house. For the first time since moving to America, Peter felt genuinely, ridiculously homesick. Not that his father would offer better comfort in person, but Peter was queasy and scared and irrational, and wanted to be back in London anyway.

“One of the vampires used to be Buffy Summers.”

The silence from the other end of the line was deafening, filled only by the faint crackling of the phone.

“Peter,” his father said. Not ‘boy’ or ‘son’, but Peter. “Are you very certain? The Council has it on good authority that she was slain.”

Peter gulped. “I’m positive.”

“You said you saw two vampires. Did you get the identity of the other?”

“I think so. I think I heard her call him ‘Spike’. Does that mean anything to you?”

More crackling. 

“Peter, I must go. I will call you back shortly to discuss this in detail.”

Then the line went dead.

Chapter Text

Spike watched Buffy out of the corner of his eye as he drove them back to the city. She was sitting with her knees pulled to her chin, her dress doing little to cover her. 

She was chewing absently on a pen.

Her eyes were fixed on the list they’d made at the warlock’s, probably still trying to figure out what the bloke meant when he said she was “under the protection of the red witch” or whatever.

“I can’t believe you were complaining about Mar’s handwriting earlier,” she muttered as they merged onto the highway. “This-” she pointed at his perfectly proper cursive writing “-is ridiculous. Who even writes like this?!”

“What can I say, luv. ‘M a Victorian. Not my fault schools today are rubbish.”

“Whatever, grandpa,” she said, and Spike couldn’t help but feel pleased by her teasing tone. The day had been off to a particularly rough start (what with Buffy wanting to flirt with the university blokes, and Buffy burning her legs ‘n’ shouting at him, and fucking Buffy with her nervous breakdown in the car), but she was feeling better now, and so he was too. He grinned at her.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing! ‘S just… Today wasn’t so bad, is all.”

“I guess it wasn’t,” she said sheepishly, looking so absolutely darling that Spike wanted to gobble her up. “Maybe we should celebrate.” 

“Why Buffy,” he said, one hand leaving the steering wheel to rest right over his heart, “I think that might just be the best idea you’ve ever had.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. “Well why not? The info Peter gave us was good, and don’t we deserve some kind of break? If we were back in Sunnydale, I would totally be Bronze-ing it up right about now.”

Spike couldn’t help but snort. “Only you, Slayer, could live in New York City and miss the soddin’ Bronze.”

She crossed her arms. “I like the Bronze. It’s multi-faceted. You can study, dance, and kick major vampire ass, all in one night.”

“Yeah? Well we’ll see how it compares to the place I’m takin’ you tonight.”

She raised a brow. “You think you’re taking me out?”

“Well, yeah. I do.”

“Where?” she asked coolly, taking on a couldn’t-care-less sort of attitude that Spike suspected was just for show. “A club?”

He grinned. “You’ll see.”

“But-”

“Shh, Slaypire. No spoilers.”

“Whatever,” she said with an eye roll, but- there! She couldn’t quite hide her smile in time.

They drove a little while longer in silence, but unlike on the way to New Haven, this silence was comfortable. Still, a little while later Spike couldn’t help but ask: 

“So… Was Peter one of those ‘cute Yale boys’ you were nattering on about earlier?”

Buffy barked out a startled laugh. “Don’t be mean,” she said reproachfully, which was really an answer in itself.

When they passed over the state line between Connecticut and New York, Spike glanced over at Buffy again and was mildly surprised to find her already staring at him. Looking flustered, she quickly turned away.

Spike had wanted to drive straight to the club, but after substantial pestering from Buffy agreed they’d stop home then take the subway instead. After all, he needed a drink, and didn’t think she would take too fondly to him eating any coppers who may try to give him a DUI. 

So they stopped back at the mansion, where Buffy decided to change her clothes yet again, apparently fed-up with the sundress she blamed for her fading burns. Spike was almost sad to hear the skimpy piece of fabric had to go, ‘til she pulled it right over her head the minute they were through the front food, and conducted her search for something new to wear in just her underthings. 

Frustratingly enough, Spike didn’t think she even realized what she was doing to him. Human values like modesty often slipped the mind of a new vampire, and Buffy seemed genuinely absorbed with her task. When she finally glanced up and caught him staring, she froze up, tossed a boot at him, and scampered off to her room.

He sat around drinking the last of the human blood then fucked around in the kitchen a bit, til he got fed up with waiting for her to get ready because it was time to fucking go.

He donned his duster again and went after her. After all that fuss about finding an outfit, she had ended up back in her own damn trousers - plus the lovely addition of a skint little top that seemed to be held up by Slaypire willpower alone. Or maybe magic. 

“Ugh, I need clothes,” she grumbled to Spike, fidgeting with her hair at the vanity despite her obvious lack of reflection.

“Nah,” Spike grinned, picturing a world where Buffy exclusively paraded about stark naked.

She shot him a stinking look. “These jeans are basically ruined, and I can’t keep scavenging dead people’s stuff forever.”

“Don’t see why not,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “‘S not like they’re using it.”

She ignored him. “This doesn’t quite fit,” she said, fingering one of the little strings that tied the top around her neck and back.

“Then go get some clothes from your place tomorrow,” he said with an eye roll. “Look, can we go already? It’s almost eleven.”

Taking no notice of his complaints, she returned her attention to her hair. “I don’t have much at the factory - I didn’t bother bringing most of my old clothes up from Sunnydale when I moved here. It’s not like vampires need to look hot…”

“Bah, you’re always hot,” he said offhandedly.

“Um, thanks,” Buffy said after a moment that stretched on just long enough to make them both uncomfortable. “But anyway, earlier on campus, seeing all those coeds in their outfits… Well, it got me thinking. Just because I’m dead, doesn’t mean I have to act dead, right? And I always loved shopping. Why shouldn’t I get myself some nice new things?” 

She looked up at him, uncertainty brimming in those big green eyes, and Spike blinked at her, feeling vaguely taken aback. How many ways had Angelus screwed the poor girl up? Most fledglings rose from their graves and didn’t give a fuck about anything anymore; the rules of their old world lost on them. But not Buffy. The poor chit seemed to need permission just to live. And why the bloody hell was she looking for it in him of all people? It’s not like he’s her sire.

“No reason I can see,” Spike said in the end. “Personally, I vote for the return of those tiny little skirts you used to wear. Just because you’ve suffered, doesn’t mean they have to too,” he added sardonically.

She tossed her hairbrush at him - a recurring theme. He caught it with an easy smirk.

Letting out a belligerent sigh, Buffy turned from him again and began to shakily apply some scavenged makeup. Maybe because the stuff was likely old as dirt, or maybe because she wasn’t used to not having a reflection yet, Buffy was obviously struggling. Even Spike could tell she was doing a piss poor job, smudging it all over the place, and wondered if he should maybe say something. She would always be a pretty bird, but the current effect was a bit less femme fatale, and a bit more kiddie raids her mum’s closet. A glare from Buffy when she caught him staring made him bite his tongue.

“Just let me,” Spike said after she wiped her makeup off and began to restart for the third time. She fixed him with a hard, considering look that reminded him of being stuck in the headmaster’s office as a lad. “C’mon, Buff, at the rate you’re going, we’re gonna miss last call. I know what I’m doing.” 

“Really?” she said flatly, raising a suspicious brow. 

“Well, yeah. Dru was insane. How’d you think she managed to get that perfect cut crease?”

Buffy barked out a laugh and handed over the supplies. “I guess I never really thought about it. You’ve really done this before?”

Spike grinned. “Do you want a nice, clean look, or are we going for something a little more grunge-y tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy said. “This is totally weird.”

“No opinion? Well you’re a vampire, so grunge-y it is.”

He started by touching up her mascara, then added a sharp streak of eyeliner. He asked if she wanted him to do lipstick too, and rolled his eyes when she said she was more of a gloss girl. Bold lip colours apparently didn’t suit her, which was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing Spike had ever heard. Buffy would look stunning in anything. When he started applying some smokey grey eyeshadow, she gave him another funny look.

“You promise this will actually look good, and you’re not just fucking with me?”

“Relax, pet,” he said. “I’ve done all this for Dru ‘n’ Darla how many hundreds of times…”

Buffy pulled back and looked at him, clearly surprised. “You knew Darla?” 

“Well, yeah. Course I did. She was part of the gang. Hell, she started the gang, turning Angelus and all.”

“The gang?”

He nodded. “You know, the Whirlwind. Me, Angelus, Darla, ‘n’ Dru.” She blinked at him. “The Scourge of Europe?” When there was still no sign of recognition in her eyes, he let out a huff. “The bloody Fanged Four?! What, did Angelus tell you nothing ‘bout our family?”

She crossed her arms defensively. “Sure he did. We’re um, Aurelians, obviously. Totally old order of vampires, bent on bringing back-”

“Not the Order of Aurelius,” he cut her off, “I mean about him. Us.”

She looked away. “Well, yeah. I know all about that too. Um, Darla made Angel, and he made you and Drusilla. Then the three of you went around killing and maiming people and stuff.”

It was probably stupid that his heart was breaking for her. After all, Angelus had been a right terror as a sire, what with his tendency to torture Spike and shag Dru right in front of him - but fuck. Brutal as he could be, Angelus had taught Spike everything he needed to know. He’d had stupid rules and stupider punishments for when he broke them, but at least Spike had always had a place. Angelus been a cruel sire, but a good one, and Spike had always had a place in his family. Right out the grave, he’d known exactly who he was and where he came from. His unlife had had a purpose - he was made to be Drusilla’s, and therefore Angelus’s too. 

Buffy, on the other hand, didn’t have a clue.

“Dru sired me, actually,” he said after a moment. “Though I reckon it was Angelus who told her to. He was my sire in that he taught me how to be a vamp, but technically…” he trailed off. “And it wasn’t just us three. Darla usually hung around too, though she sometimes buggered off to visit Old Nest for a fortnight or two.”

“Right,” Buffy said, clearly not understanding the strain in his voice or why he was even telling her this at all. Vampires were pack animals, but she’d never been part of a family - she didn’t even know what she was missing. “So were you all, like, close then?”

“Yeah, we were close,” Spike hummed, examining his handiwork. “Need to blend this out more. Close your eyes, luv…” He tried to ignore the melancholic pang of nostalgia he got whenever he reflected on their old glory (heh, or gory) days. He cleared his throat. “Darla, Angelus, Dru ‘n’ I… raised bloody hell together, the four of us did. Traveled the whole world… Was a shame to hear Angelus killed his mummy dearest back in Sunnyhell.”

“Did you and Darla get along?”

“No,” he snorted. “She never had much patience for me, baby of the family, and all that. Plus she was a sadistic, stuck-up cunt. Total firecracker, though,” he added affectionately. “There was this one thing she used to do to men with their eyeballs… sorta stuck her fingers around their sockets til she got a good grip on them and just-” He cut himself off, remembering who he was talking to, although when he met Buffy’s eyes she seemed more intrigued than disgusted. Her head was tilted to the side like she was trying to pick him apart and- hey. That was something he did too. Of course, he thought. Soulless. She might make a good show of acting otherwise, but… Still, even upon deciding the rest of the story was probably safe to tell, he hesitated. “I’ll tell you some other time. The thing about Darla was…” he trailed off. How to explain what a bitch she could be, but how Spike still kind of adored her… a lightbulb went off and he smirked. “She was a lot like you, actually.”

Buffy seemed torn between offense and intrigue. “Really.”

“Oh yeah. Never went as far as dropping a church organ on yours truly, but she pushed me off a roof or two.”

Buffy let out a startled laugh. “It must have been nice though,” she said after a pause, maybe almost getting it. “Being part of a group. Besides all the murder-y stuff, of course!” she added hastily.

“Of course,” Spike echoed back at her with a teasing grin. “And yeah, it was. Even when we hated each other, it was comfortable. I wish you got to have something like that.”

“But you hate me,” she said, but for the first time Spike found those words no longer rang true. 

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, I can’t help but feel it. You’re Angelus’s, and like it or not, that makes you family.” Mine, he thought greedily, not quite sure where the errant thought came from.

Her lips quirked down, but she nodded thoughtfully.

He placed a hand under her chin and guided her head upwards slightly so he could examine his work.

“How do I look?” she asked.

Dazzling. Glowing. Efful-“Fit,” he said. “Now let’s fucking go.”

The spot he took her was the opposite of the kind of haunts he’d usually visit. Where there should be live bands, there was a DJ. Instead of black shirts and fishnets, the local chits wore knee high gogo boots and sparkly mini dresses. He figured it’d be the type of place the Slaypire would enjoy, though, and he couldn’t have been more right.

The place was busy, but the line moved quickly and the bouncer waved them right through. Spike expected to have to flash some fang to get Buffy in, but the Slaypire had surprised him by whipping out a ridiculously well-done fake ID. She explained it away by saying she needed to get some sort of documentation since Buffy Summers was legally dead. Couldn’t explain why her false persona was twenty-one years old though. Supposedly a coincidence. Spike grinned.

The club was bustling on the inside, but instead of moving straight to the dance floor like he expected, Buffy hung around the sides a bit while he ordered them each a couple of shots from the bar.

She took hers gratefully, flinching a little when the harsh liquid went down. She scratched her arm, looking oddly nervous.

“You alright, luv?” he asked over the music - thank God for vampire hearing - but she waved him away unconvincingly.

“Fine! This place is great. Just…”

“Just what?”

Buffy licked her lips nervously, bouncing on the heels of her combat boots. “Lots of humans around. Lots of tasty, yummy, mouth-watering humans. Lots of delicious, pumping blood…” she trailed off with a distinctively post-soul Angelus mix of guilt and longing.

“Oh yeah,” Spike said, reaching into his coat pocket and tossing her his flask. “Figured you’d get hungry, so I made this before we left,” he said as she uncapped it and took a hesitant sniff. “Was gonna give it to you earlier but forgot. Go on, drink up.”

She eyed it suspiciously. “This isn’t-?”

“Not human. Learnt my bloody lesson there, didn’t I?” he chuckled.

Buffy hesitated for only a moment, before tipping it back. “Bottoms up.”

The look on her face when the concoction hit her taste buds was adorable. Her nose crinkled up instinctively (at the taste of the rum, no doubt), but she swallowed it down, peered inside the flask again, and took another tentative sip. “That’s… weirdly good. Spike, what the hell am I drinking?”

He smiled because she was smiling. “Lamb’s blood, coconut rum, and sprite. The blood’ll stamp your cravings out - figured you might need something like that in a place like this. The rum’s to give you a good buzz, ‘n’ the sprite’s just a mixer.”

She drained the contents of his flask in one go and passed it back to him. “It’s so much more filling than pig’s blood,” she commented, looking vaguely stunned. “I feel at least sixty percent less likely to pull a Hannibal Lecter on the next person who bumps into me now.”

She looked more beautiful than ever, smiling hesitantly at him under the flashing lights. It took Spike a moment to realize she probably wanted a reply. “Well, some of that’s the rum. But lamb’s blood is always nicer than pig’s. For starters, pig is disgusting. And lamb… it’s got a crackle to it, cause of the youth.”

Her smile was dazzling. He always knew she was a stunner, but right now…

“When did you have time to make it?”

“That would be telling.” He held out a hand. “Wanna dance, Slaypire?”

Her smile turned wicked as she took his hand and pulled him towards the dance floor. “Why Spikey,” she said mischievously, hands suddenly wrapped around the back of his neck to pull him down to her level. “Don’t you know? Dancing is all we ever do.”

Bloody buggering fuck, basically summarized Spike’s thoughts as they quickly fell into the rhythm of it all. God, how she’s charmed him, this half-sad, half-mad fledge. He grabbed her hand and spun her around. The DJ was playing some appalling pop song now, but that didn’t seem to matter. The way they were dancing was all swing. Except swing dancing usually had a leader and a follower, and Spike honestly couldn’t say which of them was which right now. He dipped her back, and she cackled. Some teeny-bopper girl knocked into her, and Buffy flashed golden eyes at the interloper. 

Spike was infatuated. He was going to need far more to drink.

A few more trips back and forth from the bar, and Spike was a little drunk in spite of his vampire constitution. 

“We aren’t dancing the way we’re supposed to,” Buffy said as Spike spun her around again.

“We’re vampires.”

“You use that as an excuse for everything,” she laughed.

“Cause it bloody works for everything. How do you know how to dance like this anyway?”

She grinned. “Dunno. Slayer. Cheerleader. Figure skater. Take your pick. What about you?”

“Silly question, luv. I’ve been dancin’ a hundred plus years. Not much I can’t do.”

Buffy laughed at him again, but it wasn’t meanly.

The song changed, and Spike pulled her closer. Her breasts were heaving - funny look on a vampire.

She caught his eyes. Hers were sparkling. How did he look to her?

“What do you think, Buffy?” he whispered in her ear. “Better than the Bronze?”

She bit her lip. “I feel like a traitor saying this, but yeah.”

“Traitor? Bah, none of that.”

His head was light, and she was very close to him now. And sparkling. Somehow she’d gotten glitter in her hair. It wouldn’t take much at all to close the distance between them, Spike realized, and he wanted that. He wanted it so badly. Did she want it too?

“Fuck it,” she muttered, answering his question and pulling him to her by the lapels of his duster.

Suddenly, Spike was on fire.

They were kissing, but it wasn’t at all like last time. That time had been filled with anger and confusion and passion and lust. That wasn’t to say this kiss lacked all of those things, but it was very different nonetheless. 

It wasn’t very vampiric.

It consumed him, but at the same time was sort of uplifting, and surprisingly playful. Necking, was what they would have called it once upon a time. When he broke away, Buffy was grinning at him, so giddy and pleased-looking he felt he could almost blush. 

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said with a tipsy giggle.

“Just go with it,” he replied breathlessly, pulling her close to him again.

Somehow, they managed to detach themselves long enough to make their way to a corner booth, and somehow, Buffy found herself straddling Spike in public like some sort of floozy. 

The music was loud, and the lights were twinkling, and Buffy had this slightly dizzy but totally happy feeling in her stomach. She loved the club! She loved New York City! She loved kissing Spike! She… she…! She was totally drunk! 

She broke away from Spike long enough to grab the bottle from him and pour the dregs down her throat. Somewhere between all the kissing, Spike had managed to steal a full bottle of Jameson, and she had totally been planning on telling him off… she just decided to have a few quick taste tests first. And, well, one thing led to another. Spike pouted slightly when he tried to take a sip himself and found she had finished it, but Buffy distracted him before he could dwell on it. He was hard and cool and solid underneath her, and she totally loved it.

“Buffy,” he moaned into her lips as she ground down on him, then pulled away again to let out a laugh. Yes, she thought, this was his place. This was how it was supposed to be. Then a song she loved came on so she got off his lap and pulled him out of the booth so they could dance, but when they were both up he didn’t let her drag him to the dance floor. He grabbed her hips and slammed her back into the wall, and she thought she felt something crack behind her back but she didn’t care enough to check because Spike was kissing her again. She was almost mad, because she really liked this song, but actually no, she didn’t care, because this was way more fun anyway. His hands were still on her hips, holding her a little higher than she could really stand by herself - she was on her tippy toes.

“God, Buffy,” he muttered into her ear, “do you have any idea what you do to me?”

She gasped and smiled and nodded because he was grinding against her, so she really could feel what she did to him. She grabbed his butt and pulled him even closer to her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, rocking his hips against hers. “You’re a princess,” he continued, so he must be drunk too, and Buffy should probably find his words cringey but his voice was so rough when he said it, and it just turned her on more. “I want to dress you up in the finest gowns and jewelry,” he whispered, his hand running up her body and resting on her neck. “I’d put rubies right here, Buffy. I just want to…” He squeezed her throat and kissed her again. 

If she was a human, he would’ve been choking her, but instead his hold felt like a caress. Her eyes fluttered open again and she just looked at him. She could feel some kind of emotion bubbling up, because this was all kinds of wrong, but the demon in her couldn’t help but think otherwise. His grip should be too tight, but Buffy was dead, so it was perfect.

He pulled away a little, and stopped kissing her to just rest his forehead against hers. She was still staring at him, and his hand stayed on her throat as he stared right back. She was grateful he was holding her so tightly she couldn't talk; if she could, she’d probably start babbling and ruin whatever this was. 

“So beautiful,” he said again, slowly peeling his hand away, and she sank down a little so her heels touched the floor again. She knew, vaguely, that the DJ was still blaring music and the club was alive around them, but for a moment it felt like they were the only two people in the world.

“I want to tie a ribbon around this hand,” he said lowly, taking one hand and placing her pointer finger between his human teeth. He bit down, gently, and Buffy’s toes curled in her boots. He took her other hand and pressed it above her head, against the wall. “And wrap a diamond bracelet on this one. Would you like that, precious?” he asked, and the correct answer was obviously no because he was being totally creepy and vampiric right now, but almost against her own will she nodded yes, and he devoured her once more.

This was what Drusilla must have felt like, she thought hazily as Spike stroked her hair with one hand and began to touch her over her jeans with the other. Always dressed up in Spike’s affection and imaginary jewelry, no wonder Drusilla was so crazy; Buffy was beginning to feel it too. 

What she was feeling wasn’t real, of course. It was a combination of liquor, and loneliness, and maybe some sort of vampire family blood connection she didn’t quite understand; but wow it was good.

Her eyes drifted down to his throat. He had a beautiful neck, she thought, and suddenly she really really wanted to make it hers. A little part of her yearned to wrap her hands around it and squeeze, like he had just done to her, but she knew that wouldn't be enough. 

His kisses were no longer what she hungered for.

But he just kissed her again, and God, he must be really stupid. Didn’t he realize what he was doing to her? He was playing a dangerous game. They both knew she was stronger than him, and if he kept this up, she was bound to accidentally rip him to shreds.

So she pulled back, her eyes yellow, her teeth hideously sharp and stretching against her gums which were now uncomfortable and distended. She was going to warn him, because despite all their past, she found she didn’t want to do him harm. When their eyes met his were still blue, but he nodded at her and she was ravenous, so she took it at face value and sunk her teeth into his neck.

Oh, God.

Copper poured into her mouth, and Buffy moaned when she tasted him. She’d taken a nibble out of him before - twice now - but this was something entirely different. Her teeth hit a vein or an artery or something (she couldn’t think well enough to remember which was which), and it wasn’t at all like when she’d accidentally fed off that human girl back in Sunnydale. That girl’s hot blood had spilled easily out of her neck and into Buffy’s mouth. Spike’s blood was cold and slow and demonic, and Buffy had to suck hard to get at it. It was kind of like they were still kissing, or she was giving him a hickey or something, and his hands dropped hers to clench at her upper arms instead.

He gripped her tightly.

He staggered backwards a little, and when he fell onto his back she landed on top of him, but still couldn’t stop drinking. If it weren’t for the alcohol in her system, she’d probably be mortified - or at least pretend to be. She could hear herself making these embarrassing little moaning noises in the back of her throat, and was weirdly relieved that Spike was making them too. He was hard beneath her, and pulled her closer, which took some sort of pressure off her chest because even though she wanted to eat him up, she didn’t really want to hurt him. Not more than he wanted her to.

Distantly, she felt the mood of the club shift around them, as previously blind-eyes turned horrified and people began to push away from them. 

This was how Angel must have felt when he killed her; no wonder he couldn’t stop. Because it wasn’t just the taste of him which was addicting (which was saying something, because Spike tasted good - like something fine and rich and maybe sautéed). No, it was more than that. As she drank his blood, she could feel him pouring into her - not his soul, because he didn’t have one - but his essence or being or something. With every sip, she could taste his past and present and future. She could feel his bravery and heartache and dedication to his stupid dark princess.

She eased up after that, because she didn’t want to feel like Angel at that moment - didn’t want to feel like she was killing him.

“God, Buffy,” he said as she let him go, and Buffy knew she looked like a monster as she wiped his blood off her chin.

“I’m sorry,” she said faintly, but he vigorously shook his head.

“Please. Don’t be,” he said, eyes just as beautifully blue and lustful as they’d been before she’d bitten him.

“Did I take too much?” she asked as she helped him to his feet again.

“Not even close.” He grabbed the back of her head and was kissing her roughly again. (Not that kissing quite felt like the right word anymore. What they had been doing earlier, before she ground herself on his dick and drank his blood... that had been kissing. This... it was like he was trying to eat her right back). He must be able to taste himself on her lips

The crowd was pulsing to the beat of the music as people shouted and cried and made a bottleneck towards the exit, and Spike took Buffy by the hand and gave her a grin. Finally, he was wearing his demon face.

Buffy was feeling dizzy - from the alcohol or the blood, she wasn’t sure - and even though she knew she’d never hurt them, she felt something deep and ancient and powerful rumble inside her as she and Spike stalked out of the club, following the panicking humans outside.

Things were beginning to blur together a little bit.

People were screaming, and Buffy knew what this scene must look like to an outside observer. What it would have looked like to the old her. She just couldn’t quite find it in herself to care.

There was a word for the way her demon was feeling; it just wasn’t in a language she knew. It was something ancient, and demonic, and the closest thing she could think of was "Big Bad", and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This was what being a vampire was supposed to feel like, and it was something she knew she couldn’t let herself indulge in again.

She was going to be ashamed of herself come morning time.

I am not an evil thing that goes bump in the night, she told herself as Spike picked her up, spun her around, and placed her elegantly at the bottom of the steps to the club. This was ridiculous. They were being ridiculous. Indulging her demon in this was probably like a gateway drug, but damn, if scaring these poor people didn’t give her a headrush. 

“We won’t do this again,” she told him as they stood under the moonlight, finally alone again as creatures like themselves are supposed to be.

Spike smiled at her, and began to reach for her neck again. Buffy took a step back, because she couldn’t quite read him and didn’t really want him to bite her right now, even though she had totally started it. 

“Relax, pet,” he said, opening the palm of his hand to reveal a shiny pendant necklace.

Buffy frowned at him. “What’s that?”

“A gift. Nicked it from one of the bints in all the panic. Now hold up your hair, luv.”

She tried to think of when he’d had the chance to grab it, but the trying made her head hurt so she chose to forget it.

He held the necklace out again, slowly, like she’s a rabid dog and if he moved too quickly she might just bite. Which… fair.

She turned around and held up her hair so he could clip it around her neck - something he did seamlessly, like he’d put a thousand necklaces around girls’ necks before. He had, Buffy realized. He'd done this an infinite amount of times for just one other girl. Vampire skank. Whatever. 

When Spike took a step back, Buffy wobbled on her feet slightly and stared at the pendant rather than looking at him again. It really was beautiful, a dark red colour speckled with navy and wrapped in gold. It looked out of its time, in a sort of cool vintage way, and Buffy wondered if that was why Spike had chosen it. 

“Drusilla’s a ho bag,” she found herself saying, still unable to look up at him. She held the pendant part of the necklace in her hand, and rubbed it with her thumb. Shiny. Horrifyingly enough, she felt tears begin to prickle behind her eyes. 

“Buffy-” Spike began softly, and when she finally looked up at him she couldn’t read the expression on his face.

She forced the tears back and let the pendant dangle again. “Thank you, Spike. I love it.”

He cleared his throat, looking hesitant. “Course. ‘S just what you said earlier, ‘bout missing your fashion-y bits and bobs. I meant what I said about dressin' you up. Saw this, and figured it’d look far nicer on you than the original owner.”

That was kind of mean, Buffy thought, but she couldn’t quite muster up the energy to comment on it. She wouldn’t really mean it if she did.

And she really did like the necklace. 

The only other jewelry she had in New York was Angel’s cross, and that stupid charmed friendship bracelet from Willow.

Buffy blinked, suddenly feeling rather stupid. “Under the protection of the red witch” - that was what Peter had said. Her and Spike had briefly discussed if this might have something to do with Willow, but had scrapped the idea because Willow had never cast any spells on Buffy (except for a failed ensoulment spell that still made her chest ache when she thought about it too hard).

But they’d been thinking about it all wrong. The protection spell wasn't something on Buffy herself. It was on Willow's parting gift!

“Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “I am so mentally challenged!”

Of course Willow was the red witch - how many freaking witches did Buffy know?

Spike frowned, and tilted his head to the side. “What’s the matter, then?”

“I know what Peter meant about the red witch or whatever. Follow me.”

She began to power walk. 

“Where are we going?” Spike asked, quickly catching up to her.

“Back to the factory,” Buffy said, before promptly stumbling over and falling on her ass.

Chapter Text

To her credit, Buffy managed to get back on her feet quickly, and without taking Spike’s offered hand. He wasn’t quite sure how she managed to get so sauced - Slaypire constitution must be a hell of a beast - but he supposed she was quite tiny, strength aside, and drinking his highly boozy blood mustn’t have helped.

He touched the two pricks on the side of his neck where she’d bitten deep, and felt a pleasant shudder run through his body. 

As a vampire of a certain age, Spike was of course no stranger to how erotic a bite could be, although he’d very rarely been on the receiving end of it. Drusilla was his sire, after all, and it would have been uncouth for her to bite her Childe. Not that that had stopped him from forcing feeding her a nibble or two during that painful period of weakness after Prague - but still. For most of his unlife, he had always been the one doing the biting; a childe suckling on his mother's blood rather than breast. And don't get him wrong, it had been nice, drinking Dru up like that, but being the one who was bitten...

God. It was to die for. He wasn't a good enough poet to describe it better than that.

He felt some deep, raw emotion bubbling in his throat and tried to push it down. Because suddenly, Spike wanted to give her the world. He felt he'd do just about anything to keep her looking as flushed and satiated as she did right now. He would strip himself naked and present himself to her with nothing more than a ribbon around his neck. He'd light himself on fire and jump off a roof. He'd destroy or save the entire world for her, and no.

He had to stop.

He must be drunker than he thought, because these feelings could not belong to him.  

What he felt for Buffy Summers could not be anything more than lust. He refused to let them be. Because Spike had always felt things with an intensity most others didn't, and if he admitted what he felt for her - even to himself - well that would be the end of it all.

Eventually they arrived at the factory she had spent the last few months living with, and Spike watched Buffy slam open the gate and stroll through the yard, drunk and loud and looking stupidly pleased with herself.

"Your going to love this place," Buffy told him, turning to fix him with earnest eyes. "It's very vampire-y. It always reminded me of you." She accentuated that statement by poking him in the chest.

After spending almost a minute trying to magically open the door with no key - just stubborness alone - Buffy finally grew frustrated and pulled the entire lock mechanism out of the door. 

"Oops," she said, dropping it to the ground with a loud thud.

“Welcome to my lair, Spike,” she managed to get out between slowly subsiding giggles. "Come on in." She passed right through the invisible barrier, but Spike's hand got stuck at threshold. Her invitation didn’t work. Spike supposed it didn’t matter that Buffy was technically paying rent for this place; she was still a creature of the night. The laws of demon magic trumped city bylaws and leases, apparently, and the universe seemed to know that creatures like her didn’t belong in places like this.

“Shit,” Buffy said, stepping back outside again and staring through the open doorway, looking adorably stumped. “I guess you’ll have to wait out here-” she began, before being cut off by the screeching trills of a human woman.

“Buffy?” the woman called out from inside the home, sounding nearly hysterical. “Is that you?” 

Buffy looked particularly inhuman as she turned to face the woman. “Hi, Lori,” she said, her voice toneless and uncaring in a way that reminded Spike once again that Buffy was still very much a fledgling.

“Oh my God, come inside,” said the woman - who turned out to be a pretty fit goth girl - and while her message was probably intended for just Buffy, her eyes were stuck on Spike as she said it, and the barrier disappeared.

Buffy grinned as she realized this, grabbing Spike by the arm and tugging them both over the threshold.

“Thanks, Lori,” she said, the inflection of her voice still not quite right; smug before genuine.

The woman - Lori - rushed forwards and put her hands on Buffy’s biceps, holding her tight for a human as she examined Buffy's face (for what, Spike was not sure). After a moment, she muttered something that sounded a lot like "thank God" and pulled Buffy into a tight hug that made the Slaypire yelp, and stand still for a moment before hesitantly hugging her back.

“So what’s this about?” Buffy asked as Lori stepped back again.

“What’s this about?! Buffy, nobody's seen you since New Year's!”

“Oh, right,” Buffy said, rolling her eyes. “I guess I owe you all my portion of the January rent.”

“That’s not what I-” Lori began, before cutting herself off. “Buffy, you’re eighteen years old, and you disappeared for a week without telling anyone where you were going. We thought you were dead.”

Her words inspired Spike to look at the woman properly. Her thick black hair was greasy and flat on her head, her lips were pale and chapped, and her big statement eyeliner was smudged in a way it couldn’t have gotten in just one night. The poor thing looked properly frazzled - apparently with worry over Spike’s girl.

“-and now you come back here with this creepy guy?” Lori stopped talking to Buffy, and turned her increasingly fiery rage on Spike. “Who the hell even are you, sniffing around our Buff? She’s eighteen fucking years old, and I don’t care if that makes… whatever the hell you're doing with her legal, because if you’re hurting her Tom and I will-”

“Lori!” Buffy cut her off. “It’s fine! I'm fine! This is just Spike. He’s my…” She trailed off and Spike waited, desperate to hear how she’d describe him. Her enemy? Her ally, her friend, the bane of her existence? Her potential lover? “Well, he’s family, I guess.” 

“You don’t look related,” Lori said with a curling upper lip, and Buffy actually smiled at this.

“People in our family typically don’t.”

Lori kept her harsh - and kinda brave, given the circumstances - gaze on him. “You swear to God you’re not some rando creep who’s gonna hurt her?” she said, and Spike found himself shaking his head.

“No, ma’am.”

Hey eyes flickered back to Buffy. “And this ‘family’ of yours is legit? Not some mob shit that’s gonna come back and bite all our asses?”

“It’s real,” Buffy said, surprising him with her genuineness. (Was she saying that just because she was still drunk? He really hoped not.)

Lori finally deflated. “Well thank fuck,” she said, running a hand through that sweaty dark hair of hers, revealing the beginnings of some dirty blond roots. “I guess I'll tell Tom to call off the search party. Now you,” she said, pointing her finger at Buffy, “have to promise not to pull shit like that again. Are you here to stay now?”

Buffy shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I’ll come and I’ll go, but you don’t have to worry about me. I have Spike. I won’t be dead.” She said that last bit a little wryly again.

Lori took in her words with an accepting head nod, before turning to fix that pointer finger of hers on Spike. “And you, Spike, need to give me five hundred and forty dollars, stat.”

Spike blinked at her now open-palmed hand. “What?”

“You say you’re her family, right? Well, Buffy really does owe me some rent, so pay up. Five hundred and forty dollars. Don’t tell me you’re not the type of guy to carry cash.”

For a moment, Spike considered just ripping this lady’s head off; but it passed. Buffy wouldn't like it, and besides - even if she didn’t know what she was doin’ - talkin’ to a vampire like that? Well, it took balls. Buffy snickered as Spike rolled his eyes, begrudgingly passing the goth slumlord chit a few of the big bills. It was a little over the amount she’d asked for - Spike didn't have exact change - and when Lori counted it her eyes lit up. 

“On second thought, maybe I don’t care if this is a mob thing,” she joked, a grin stretching across her thin face. “Well now that that’s sorted, I’m going to fucking bed.” She turned on her heels, but when she reached the stairs she hesitated. “Buffy, sweetheart?”

Buffy snapped out of her own head and looked at Lori once more. “Yeah?”

“I really am glad you’re okay.”

Buffy blinked at this, looking a little peaky. Perhaps because of all the drink? “Um, thanks.”

When her funny new mood didn’t slip away with Lori, Spike asked her how she was feeling.

The look left her face, replaced with a drunken smile. “Nothing,” she said. “I just didn’t realize she cared, is all.”

For some reason, walking into Buffy’s room felt far more significant than crossing the real, magical boundary to her house.

Spike supposed it was because this room was all her; a thought which quickly became depressing when he got a good look at the place. A bare mattress with no frame. A pile of crumpled clothes on the floor. A mirror with no reflections to show.

It certainly wasn’t what he had been expecting. It was the den of the creature others might think of her as; not the bedroom of the girl he knew she was.

He poked around her things a little, as she rummaged through her belongings, looking for the charmed bracelet as she described to him, shoving a few items of clothing into a large worn-out rucksack as she went. 

Eventually, she found it: a delicate silver chain decorated with a few bright charms, and tangled up with what appeared to be a cross necklace.

“Ouch!” she yelped, and the smell of searing dead flesh hit Spike’s senses immediately. He felt a little ill.

“Christ, Buffy,” he said as she carefully picked up the knot of jewelry again, dangling the cross part as far away as possible. “The fuck are you doing with one of those?”

“I don't wanna get into it,” she replied, eyeing the cross with a mix of trepidation and longing that warned him against probing further. “It's kind of a thing.” She turned to face him fully in a flash of Slaypire strength, moving her arm as if she was going to toss the cross at him, and Spike caught himself bracing for it before he realized she was just toying with him.

With a smirk, she slipped the junky bracelet into the inner pocket of her rucksack, and slung the whole thing over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Even though they weren't too far, they took the tube home rather than walking. Dawn was encroaching and it made both of them a little nervous.

They were the only ones in their particular passenger coach, and when Spike took a seat, Buffy sat down right next to him. She was definitely still drunk, or at least very sleepy, because she told him she was gonna shut her eyes for the smallest second but quickly ended up leaning on him completely.

It filled Spike’s stomach with butterflies, and his mind drifted back to the other Slayer he’d shared a tube ride with. Why did he feel more happy fuzzy feelings when he thought of Buffy's head on his shoulder than the feel of that other Slayer's broken neck between his hands? It was unnatural.

That realization was trying to sneak up on him again; that something he really didn’t want to actualize just yet, so he pushed it down again.

He let the liquor and the disappearing night take over his body, switching to autopilot when they arrived at their stop, and he picked a sleepy Slaypire up and carried her the last few blocks home, bridal style. 

“Something terrible’s going to happen,” Buffy mumbled into his shoulder as he laid her down gently on her bed.

“What’s that, kitten?” he asked, trying to pull away - deny it one last time - but she caught him by the arm and tugged him into bed with her.

Her eyes were barely open. “Terrible,” she repeated, and he had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but he let her hold him close. “I can feel it - like when you pull an elastic band super far apart, and finally it breaks - like bam!”

“What’re you prattlin’ on about, luv? Us?”

The look she gave him was almost a smile. “Worse,” she mumbled, snuggling into his once more.

“Worse?” he repeated, almost amused, but Buffy was asleep again.

A tingle ran up his spine, and not the normal kind he got just from being around her.

(The woman lying next to him wasn’t the Slayer anymore, but apparently his body didn’t know that. “Danger, danger, predator!” a little voice in the back of his head was always nagging, even now, as Buffy let out a low huff in her sleep before becoming as still as a corpse once more.) 

But no, this time it was just her words that left him uneasy. Slayer’s were supposed to be a little bit prophetic, weren’t they? So what she said might mean something important; might mean everything. Or maybe it was nothing. Maybe they were just the incoherent rumblings of a lonely girl who’d had a few too many to drink at a club, and Spike was only worrying because he spent too many years with Drusilla.

He looked at her now. She seemed to be at peace. She was holding onto one of his arms so tightly he probably couldn’t escape her grip, even if he wanted to.

And he didn’t.

Because far more disturbing than any sleepy, prophetic words, were the realized feelings Spike simply couldn’t deny any longer. He was in love with the girl in bed with him. 

He just hoped she wouldn’t kill him for it.

Buffy sat on top of headstone, sharpening her claws with a nail file as the Slayer fought vampires who came from all around her. Restfield was one of the up and coming graveyards in Sunnydale, and Caridad was right to patrol it regularly. It was what Buffy had once done herself, back when she cared.

Behind her, someone scoffed. “You still care, B,” Faith said, coming up beside Buffy to watch the fight too. “It’s all you ever do.”

Buffy tilted her head to the side and smiled. Faith painted a pretty picture, but it wasn’t quite true anymore.

“This one’s a real firecracker, isn’t she?” Faith said as Caridad continued to dance with the vampires, dark hair spinning out around her. 

“We were better,” Buffy said, continuing to examine her claws. They were sharp enough now, but… “Do you have any polish?”

Faith shook her head. “They gave all mine away. Things like that are wasted on girls like us, and now that little sis isn’t coming…”

Buffy sighed. “I know.”

A particularly large vampire knocked out one of Caridad’s teeth.

“There was so much I had to do before she gets here,” Buffy said, her claws no longer interesting. She found herself aching to have human nails again.

Caridad stood victorious in the graveyard. The vampires were all dust now, and she glanced over at her sister Slayers. “Are you coming with me?” she asked, and Buffy glanced over at Faith.

“What do you think?”

Faith gave her a crooked look, the same one that always used to make Buffy weak in the knees. “You go. I’m the wrong kind of dead.”

Buffy stretched out languidly, like a cat, and hopped off the grave to follow Caridad into an elevator, down underground, then into an enormous, gaping white room. 

In the middle of the room there was this… thing. Buffy didn’t know what it was - not a demon like her; it seemed more machine than anything else - and time trickled by as Caridad fought it.

She watched, at times almost nervous, but Caridad was the Slayer so Buffy wasn’t all that surprised when she finally managed to rip its head off.

“You did it,” Buffy told her. “You know what that means?”

But before Buffy could explain it all to her - how to take care of the girl - bullets rippled through Caridad’s chest and Buffy sighed, because now she’s dead too.

Caridad stepped out of her body, as a team of little boys with toy guns dragged her flesh away.

“I’m sorry,” Buffy told her, and Caridad smiled sadly.

“Are you jealous?”

“A little,” she admitted. “You get to be normal dead.”

“They’re coming for you next, you know,” Caridad said, as men poured bleach over the bloodied floor, trying to mop Caridad up, but Slayer blood was strong and all they they managed to do was smear it around.

Buffy frowned. “Toy soldiers with pet Frankensteins?”

“No, silly,” Caridad laughed. “I’m talking about a slightly more British brand of humans.” She kept laughing and laughing until she couldn’t breathe and her lips went blue. She laughed until it wasn’t funny anymore, then gave Buffy these big sad eyes that Buffy’s demon should probably want to tear out, but strangely didn’t. “I know she was supposed to be yours, but… I would have been a really good big sister.”

Buffy felt very sad all of a sudden. “I know.”

Caridad’s eyes grew unfocused. “The next girl… I knew her at the Academy. She was never kind to the other Potentials. What if she doesn’t do it right?”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Buffy said, wrapping a monstrous, clawed hand around Caridad’s callused but very human one. 

“Hey, don’t think like that,” Caridad told her. “My body’s just as cold as yours.”

They were back in the graveyard and the ground was shaking. “What’s happening?” Buffy said, and Caridad looked at her once more, eyes wide and fearful.

“I have to go - it’s the shadow men!” she whispered, her voice terrified, which was funny because what could she possibly have left to fear? She was already dead, and far more permanently than Buffy was.

Buffy spun around as the ground trembled and the graves cracked open, but she knew the danger coming wasn’t from the undead hands scraping their way up to the surface. 

“I don’t understand!” she yelled, “Who’s after me?”

Caridad was already gone, but Faith reappeared with pale cracked lips and a neck that was strangled black and blue. “Honestly, B, I thought you were supposed to be the smart one. Who do ya think?”

Buffy woke with a start. Her chest was heaving and her body was slick with sweat that shouldn’t exist.

“Oh, shit,” she said, biting her own lip so hard she drew blood. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Spike mumbled from next to her in bed - next to her in bed?! Whatever. A later problem. 

Buffy sprung to her feet and raked a hand through her hair. “It's the Council. They're coming for me.” 

Chapter Text

Tara, baby, I’m sorry. 

No, I  do  have to apologize. 

Look at me! I’m a mess! My throat is sore and my chest is aching, and I just can’t stop crying, no matter what I do. No, I don’t know why. We both know I didn’t even like her that much. 

Well, it’s true.

Because the thing is… Well, you never met Buffy. Yes, Caridad was good and noble and always tried her best, but… She wasn’t Buffy. She couldn’t be.

And yeah, I know Caridad took down Adam, but she died in the process - Buffy would’ve survived. When the monster was dead and the soldiers came to investigate with their tasers and their guns and their horrid Nazi pride, Buffy would have stood her ground. She would have had her chin-up, fists ready, and in the end they would have run away with their tails between their legs.

Caridad was weak. Self-effacing. She was lovely, but she tried to make excuses for herself and reason with them - like she hadn’t just saved their asses from a monster of their own making - and look what it got her: a bullet in the head. 

Chest.

Whatever.

She should’ve known they were the ‘shoot first’ type.

Please, Tara, don’t look at me like that. I know I’m being horrible, but how could I not be? If I’m not at least a little angry, I’ll just be sad forever, and I don’t think my heart could take it.

I just wish… 

No, I don’t wish. I know better.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I thought I could prevent this kind of thing from happening. All this death. All this gloom. What’s the point of magic if I can never seem to get anything right when it comes down to it?

And I know I’m making no sense, but it’s all connected, don’t you see?

It’s like, if I could protect Caridad, that would mean something. And no, it wouldn’t make up for the fact that my best friend is still somewhere out there, soulless and suffering, but it would be a start. And now... How can I feel anything for myself but hatred? Look at what I’ve done; look at all I’ve failed to do. 

I don’t know how you can stand to look at me.

No, I’m not being too hard on myself. Becoming a vampire was her worst fear, and you don’t know the full story. And yeah, I guess that’s my fault too. I  want  to tell you, but I don’t know where I would even start. 

Why not from the beginning? Tara, don’t you see?

You’re so amazing. You’re everything that’s beautiful and light and pure and good. The first spell you cast was all about joy and childhood and making lollipops float. Mine was about gypsies and curses and the insertion of a bleeding black soul into the monster that killed my favourite teacher. (And then my best friend, so you can see all the good that did, in the end.)

And I want to tell you, Tara, I want to tell you everything, but it hurts too much. I’m bleeding on the inside, and what difference does my pain even make? 

Buffy’s still dead. 

(So are Kendra and Faith and Caridad. And I didn’t care about them like I did Buffy - I hated Faith -  but their deaths still taught me something, I think.)

Now I guess there’s some fresh-faced Slayer out there who’s just been called, but all I can think is what’s it all for? She’ll beat back the bad guys again and again, but soon enough she’ll be dead too. 

We’ll probably all be.

Wait, baby, don’t pull away from me. I know you don’t like it when I talk like this, but I’ll be better. More bubbly, like I used to be, back when I was young and innocent and never knew loss greater than that of my class’s pet gerbil. Goddess, how I want to be the version of myself I once was. I think you would have really liked her.

I just need to wallow a little longer. 

Well, because that’s who I am. Pathetic, useless, wibbly-wobbly wallowing Willow.

Well, yeah, I did. But she could be anywhere, facing off with anyone. What’s one little charmed bracelet going to do?

No, it works. It’s not the magic I’m doubting. Just myself, I guess.

Yeah. You’re right. Of course you are.

I know.

I will. I really want to, it’s just…

Soon. I’ll tell you soon. I promise.

Thanks, baby.

I love you, too.

Chapter Text

Three vampires dressed in grey. Two teenage girls. Salt Lake Park. Thirty minutes.

As soon as Cordelia finished describing the vision, Angel and Wesley bolted out the front door. Head still pounding, she sighed, packed up her things for the day, and wandered home. Dennis had a bubble bath already drawn for her when she arrived home, and Cordelia sank down into the hot water right away with renewed appreciation for her ghostly roommate. She stayed in there till the water ran cold, then dried herself off, shrugged on her favourite bathrobe, and headed back to the living room to watch some TV. Visions often left her head too noisy, and she would need to drown it all out with something easy and meaningless if she wanted to get any sleep at all.

She clutched her hand to her chest and let out a shriek when she found a dark-clad figure waiting on her sofa, face a little grimey and a bloodied sword in hand. “Agh! Angel! How many times - I have a doorbell for a reason! ”

He gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry, Cordy.”

She tightened her bathrobe and sank down onto the couch next to him. “It’s whatever. What did you bring me this time?”

“Besides the good news of two more lives saved?” Angel said dryly, before catching on to her scowl and hastening to continue. “Uh, Japanese noodle soup from that place on 11th street.”

Cordelia’s lips twitched upwards as he hurriedly passed her a plastic take-away bag. He must have put that vampire of his speed to good use getting it to her - when she pried the lid off the bowl of ramen, a wave of delicious hot steam rose up to greet her happy nostrils.

“I love you,” she said casually, leaning forwards to grab the remote and turning the TV on to one of those trashy channels dedicated entirely to fake “reality” TV about young women even more spoilt than she used to be.

Angel shifted uncomfortably - like he did whenever anybody expressed any kind of affection - and seemed to settle deeper into the couch. She rolled her eyes. Despite the good show of indifference Angel tried to put up, Cordelia had a sneaking suspicion he cared a whole lot more about her and Wes than he’d ever admit. Exhibit A: his regular delivery of various post-vision soups. Exhibit B: his begrudging tolerance for her taste in TV. Say what you will about her brooding creature of the night colleague; when she was in pain, he cared.

“Why didn’t Wes come tonight?” she asked during a commercial break, and Angel made a low huffing noise. 

“Thought he could take out one of the vampires with that new nunchuck-stake contraption he made.”

“And?”

Angel made a sly expression that was probably the closest thing to a smirk his typically stoney face could manage, and Cordelia shook her head. For a two-hundred-and-something year old vampire, he could be impressively childish in his little competitions with Wesley. Unfortunately for the ex-watcher, vampire strength and agility seemed to trump his DIY weapons, nine times out of ten.

Cordelia finished her ramen pretty quickly. “Grab me some ice cream from the freezer?” she asked Angel, because her head was still aching and she didn’t want to miss the on-screen cat fight - besides, it’s not like he was  really  watching the show anyway. “Some tea would be great too,” she added, keeping her eyes glued to the television as the shifting weight of the couch told her he had gotten up.

Angel spent a weirdly long time in the kitchen, and Cordelia probably would have gone to check on him if she hadn’t been so absorbed in her show. Veronica and Betty were no longer fighting, but Heather was now deliberating over a proposal from her serial cheater boyfriend. 

When Angel finally came back, he passed her her things roughly, grabbed his sword, and left her with the echoing slam of the front door.

Cordelia blinked. She forced herself up off the couch and headed over to the door. “Angel?” she called after him, but the vampire in question was already long gone.

She let out a huff and dropped back to the couch. She couldn’t imagine what he could have seen in her kitchen that would make him storm off like that. Dennis must have been winding him up again or something, because the only change Cordelia had made since Angel had last come by was tacking up some old photos from high school to her fridge door.

In all honesty, she didn’t know why she’d only done it now, but the thought had never crossed her mind in the first five months or so of living in L.A.  Cordelia loved her new city, though sometimes - probably due to some sort of hellmouth-y Stockholm Syndrome - she found herself missing her old home town. She didn’t really keep up with anyone there (besides her weekly business-related phone calls with Willow), but after Doyle… She’d just needed something familiar, she supposed. So she’d dug up a handful of old photos and taped them all over her fridge, and it really was nice, seeing them at the beginning of every day as she got out the cream for her morning coffee.

Her favourite was the one she’d taken at homecoming with Buffy. They both looked wrecked in it - after a night of fighting both demons and each other - but the sight was weirdly comforting. They were standing in the school parking lot, Cordelia with an arm thrown over Buffy’s shoulder, and they both had their heads tossed back, laughing over the fact some loser nobodies had won Homecoming Queen over either of them… 

Cordelia froze, wondering how she could have been so monumentally stupid. 

The picture of her and Buffy. That was surely what had done it.

She shuddered.

Of all the countless, terrible things Angel had done in his many years (and she really did mean  countless ), nothing left her more shaken than what her boss had done to her old friend. If asked, she wasn’t entirely certain she could explain why. After all, he’d done worse, and what had happened to Buffy had been an accident when it came down to it. And besides - no matter what Willow and Xander and Oz had said - Cordelia really hadn’t found bitchy vampire Buffy too different from bitchy PMSing Buffy. 

What bugged her, she supposed, was that Angel had been Angel when he killed her.

Buffy’s death would have been so much easier to forgive if he had been Angelus when he’d done it, because then Cordelia could just tuck it away, like she’d done with the rest of her nasty memories of him from those terrible months back ‘98. If Angel had been soulless, it would have all been clean cut and easy. It still would have been terrible, but explainable, at least.

The worst thing was, she knew she couldn’t dwell on it. Because if she did, there was no way she would ever be able to trust Angel again, and that was not something she could afford to do. 

Because for the first time - maybe ever - Cordelia was actually doing something important with her life. Instead of standing on the sidelines, waiting impatiently for her friends to save the world, she was finally doing it herself. Being friends with Buffy had changed her for the better, and she couldn’t afford to let her own confusing emotions distract her from what that meant. 

She was Vision Girl - Angel’s direct line to the PTB - and people’s lives depended on her being able to set him on the right path. How could she let herself think about something that would otherwise make her hate him? The answer was obvious: she couldn’t.

So, yeah. In Cordelia’s mind, Angel couldn’t be the vampire who had killed Buffy. That was somebody else; an entity even more separate from her boss than his soulless counterpart. And if that division was too hard to make, the best thing she could do was try to forget it ever happened. 

Forget Buffy.

(Even if in the back of her mind, she would  always  be living in those excruciating few hours between finding out her friend was dead and being told that said death wasn’t going to be the permanent sort; the same way she would always be reliving the moment Doyle had turned from her after their first and only kiss.)

She would try to forget because once upon a time, a girl she knew had taught her what being a hero was all about. She had taught Cordelia by showing her; by being brave, and fearless, and trying not to let her own stupid feelings get in the way of destiny.

For Cordelia, Buffy could be a memory, but that was all. She would live only in the photograph on the fridge, as the pretty girl in the red dress who had made Cordelia laugh. She was the star of a moment in time that had long passed. She would not be another person for Cordelia to mourn.

She wouldn’t let herself think about what had happened. 

(But Cordelia would keep the photo of Buffy up on her fridge, even if it upset Angel.) 

Across the room, the phone began to ring, and Cordelia dragged herself over to it, on the off chance it was  Angel Investigations -related.

“Cordelia Chase speaking.”

“ Cordy ,” said a familiar voice over the phone, and as soon as Cordelia heard it the resolutions she’d been so serious about mere moments ago melted away. Suddenly, she was a teenager again, and destiny and the fate of the world were the kind of things that sorted themselves out.

“Oh my God,  Buffy ?! It’s so great to hear from you! How have things been?!”

Vampire-Buffy laughed. “ Insane. Apparently they call New York the ‘City that Never Sleeps’ for a reason- ”

“You live in New York now?!”

Cordelia could almost hear her dead friend’s smug smile through the telephone. “ Yeah .”

“Oh my God, wait, let me sit down again,” she said, headache suddenly gone, replaced with a perkiness she hadn’t felt since everything with Doyle. “Okay, I’m sat. Tell me  everything .”

Sprawled across one of the couches, legs kicked up over the armrest and phone at her ear, Buffy laughed as Cordelia wrapped up another story about the misadventures of living in L.A. Auditions, knock-off designer bags, and finance bros…  God , but Buffy loved talking to Cordelia.

There had always been something about her - something Buffy had felt even back when they were sixteen, and Cordelia was more a bully than a friend - a kindredness that she couldn’t quite explain. It wasn’t that Cordelia had been a particularly  good  friend to Buffy in life, more that she had been the kind of person Buffy always understood. Take away the monsters, hellmouths, and sacred destinies, and Buffy and Cordelia were cut from the same synthetic cloth.

Talking to Cordy was easy, and kind of needed because that morning had been anything but.

When she’d first woken up, Buffy had been hysterical; unconsolable for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate to Spike. 

“I’m a vampire Vampire Slayer,” she’d said to him when he asked again what was wrong. “The Council kills vampires. The Council kills Slayers. Do you know what I am in their eyes?” She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but in her own eyes too… “I’m an abomination,” she whispered, trying not to choke on the words. “I am what I should never have become.”

For some reason, that had made him angry. “So what? Who gives a rat’s arse what they think?  Be  an abomination, if that’s what you are. Who cares? I have it on good authority that abominable vampire Vampire Slayers can still pack a mean punch.” 

Buffy almost smiled, but found she couldn’t quite pull it off; the expression quickly melting from her face like hot candle wax. “It’s not enough. The Council isn’t like other enemies I’ve faced. They don’t play by the book. The way they fight… It's human, not otherworldly, and I was never any good at working that way, even when I was human myself.”

Spike watched her quietly, and she really should kick him out of her bed, because why was he just  sitting there  (through her blurry memories of last night, she vaguely recalled pulling him into bed with her, but  still! ), and how was she supposed to muster up the energy to pretend to not want him when the Council was coming? The Council! Just  thinking  about them was enough to make her stomach start to churn, and her demon was suddenly clawing at her insides again, scratching to get out.

“Besides, it’s not just me, they frighten,” she told Spike, pushing down a bubbling, hysterical laugh. “It’s freaking out too.”

“‘M afraid you lost me there, pet. What’s freakin’ out?”

“My demon.” 

Spike tilted his head to the side in that familiar way of his, and looked at her like she’d gone completely looney toons. “Why’re you speakin’ ‘bout your demon like it’s its own creature? It’s all just you, luv.”

“I know that,” Buffy snapped. “Like, in theory I do. But… you know how it is. It’s all so separate. I have my Buffy thoughts, and my demon has its demon thoughts, and we sorta duke it out over who’s in control. And like, if the Slayer-y Buffy part of me is scared of the Watchers’ Council… Well, my demon is doing cartwheels. Weird, scared,  get me out of here cartwheels, because they’re demon hunters, and I guess it has even more reason to be afraid than I do. And - ugh, I don’t know why I’m explaining this all to you. You’re a vampire too. You know what I mean.”

“Don’t know that I do,” Spike confessed, making Buffy frown. “I’m a hundred and nineteen years old, Buffy. My demon’s been a part of me for a bloody long time - I can barely remember how it feels to be without it. I haven’t really been able to split myself in two like that for the better part of a century.”

Buffy stopped pacing around the room, thinking back to her panic attack in the car, and how Spike had used his older demon to compel her own. How he’d used that power to get into her head, and it had been like their demons had touched, and  that  was what had calmed her down. That connection. And now he was saying what? That that demon of his she’d felt didn’t really exist?

“But yesterday, in the car… When I… when we were talking about blood.” She looked down at him on the bed, her green eyes meeting his blue. “Your demon compelled mine. It stopped me from freaking out. I could  feel  it.”

He met her gaze with a ferocity she wasn’t sure she understood. “Don’t know what you’re saying. That was just  me  compelling  you . No other demons involved.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Well yeah, it was you - your Spike-demon having a nice little chat with my Buffy-demon. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m saying,” she added when his eyes flashed with gold. “I could feel you inside me,” she said, and if she could still blush, she would have been beet red right about now. “Goddamnit, Spike, it was like your demon touched the place where my soul used to live! Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that too-” She cut herself off when she caught the soft way he was looking at her now, suddenly feeling embarrassed.

“I don’t know what to tell you, luv. Maybe it was the demon in me that let me do that, but it was just me. Just Spike, talkin’ to Buffy.”

To a certain point, Buffy could maybe understand that, but… “But you still know, y’know? Like, if you see a pretty girl walking down the streets and think ‘yummy snack’ instead of ‘wanna fuck’, you must know that’s the demon talking.”

He shrugged. “S‘pose, but I’d probably have to think about it for a moment or so to be sure. Again, it’s all just me. Don’t exactly spend time parsing out what thoughts an’ feelin’s are comin’ from where.”

A troubled feeling settled over her. “Is that the same for all of us? Will I not be able to tell what’s demon and what’s left over Buffy-ness one day too?”

Spike shrugged again. “Everyone’s different, pet, so I can’t say for certain. But yeah, probably.”

She tried to imagine what she would be like if she couldn’t tell her demon bits from the pieces of personality that the real, human-Buffy had left behind in her corpse. She liked the control her residual Buffy-ness had over her demon, and didn’t like the picture she came up with at all. “That sounds terrible.”

“On the contrary. It’s a wonderful thing. Freein’. Don’t you think you’d be happier if you weren’t so torn up?”

“I don’t feel torn up!” Buffy said hotly, then cringed. “Well… we both know that that’s not true. But I still don’t want some other, weird demon-y voice having equal control over my brain. I like knowing exactly what my demon wants, because then I can avoid giving into it.”

Spike shook his head. “You’ll like the feelin’, Buffy. We all do. Cause it’s not just any old demon that’s prattling around in there, it’s  yours . Trust me - you’ll like being all you.”

“But what if I shouldn’t? What if the person I become isn’t good?”

She hated the desperateness she couldn’t keep from seeping into her voice, but Spike just smiled up at her from the rumpled sheets she’d curled up with him in the night before.

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “It’s all there inside of you already, and the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.”

He sounded so sincere, so soft and weirdly Giles-y that she found herself moving towards him as if in a trance, perching down on the side of the bed.

He wouldn’t have to move much to close the gap between them and kiss her again, and without warning, she found herself craving him once more.

“I don’t know why I was ever afraid of you,” she whispered, looking into his eyes, only able to hope he couldn’t see the affection she was hiding behind them.

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “You were afraid of me?”

“Not for a long while, now,” she said with a small smile, and Spike looked away from her, down at his own pale hands. For a moment, she was sure he was going to kiss her, and when he didn’t she felt weirdly deflated. 

He must know, after her humiliating display of bloodlust in the club last night, that she wanted him. She had made no effort to hide her desire for him then, and had been ready this morning to have to all but fight him to get back to status quo again. Because he was Spike, and he was evil, and he was everything she was supposed to be against - everything she had to make sure she wasn’t becoming. He was an undeniably bad influence on her, and she shouldn’t want him, but she  did  so why wouldn’t he just fuck her already?! She refused to ask for it, but if he just pushed her back onto the bed… If he just forced her a little so she didn’t have to admit to the way he was making her feel… how  alive  she was with him…

But even though she was practically  dripping  for him (and he must know it; must  smell  it) he allowed the moment to pass, and Buffy didn’t understand why. Last night he had danced with her and stolen her jewels and tucked her into bed like it was the easiest thing in the world, but now he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. She didn’t understand what could have changed for him from when they fell asleep together and what was happening now, but Spike was being weird and three-dimensional and she really didn’t like it at all.

She realized she was rubbing the pendant he’d given her between her forefinger and thumb, and quickly dropped it, hopping off the bed again to resume her pacing.

She cleared her throat.

“The problem with Slayer dreams is that they’re so  confusing ,” she told him, moving onto the next important topic of discussion. “Like, I could just about figure out from Faith’s less-than-subtle strangle-y cameo that the Council wants me dead, but other than that, anything could have meant anything.”

“What d’you mean?” Spike asked.

Buffy ran a hand through her hair. “Just that the dreams are never straightforward. They’re never like: ‘ The Council wants you dead and this is what you have do to stop them. ’ They’re more like: ‘ Here’s the Slayer you dreamed of killing and here’s the one you almost did. Let’s watch fledglings and Frankensteins kick the new girl’s ass while we chat about little sisters and nail polish. Oops! Now New Girl’s been shot in the freaking chest, and you’re gonna feel really sad about it while she tells you some vague shit about shadow men and the next Slayer. By the way, the Council probably killed Faith since those bruises she’s sporting are definitely new, and oh! Did we mention? You’re next! Good luck! ’”

She cut her rambling off and took a deep breath. “I’m not a seer, Spike. How the hell am I supposed to know what any of that means?” 

He looked thoughtful. “Well what if you tried to find out?”

Buffy blinked at him. “What d’you mean?”

“I dunno. What if you knew if that Caridad chit is really dead, and how it happened? Maybe that’d help you work it all out.”

Buffy sat back down on the bed again, this time with a ‘hmph’! She flopped onto her back and rubbed at her tired eyes. “It might. We could always ask around at Shadows and Shots, I guess. News of a dead Slayer should travel fast, right?”

Spike looked annoyingly amused. “Sure. Or you could just call up one of your little friends and ask  them  what the hell’s going on back in Sunnyhell.”

Buffy’s stomach dropped. “I don’t have any friends in Sunnydale,” she said, surprising herself with the conviction of her own voice.

He frowned. “If you’re not friends, then why the hell did the witch give you  that ,” he said, gesturing to Buffy’s backpack - or more specifically, the charmed bracelet within it.

“Look, Spike, it’s complicated, okay?”

“I’m just sayin’, a bit of intel from your old gang might go a long ways to-”

“Just drop it, okay?!” Buffy snapped, digging her fingernails into her palm. “I can’t call Willow.”

“Then what about the Watcher? Or the droopy boy?”

“His name is Xander,” she defended him automatically, then kicked herself for doing so. “And I can’t call him either. We didn’t exactly leave off on the best of terms.” She could feel Spike’s gaze on her; heavy and real. “The only person I would even consider calling is Cordy, and last I heard, she lives in L.A. now anyway.”

“Well, do you reckon she still keeps up with the Sunnydale happenings?”

Buffy scoffed at that idea - as if Queen Bee Cordelia Chase would ever look back after being shot of the town she’d been dreaming of leaving for as long as Buffy could remember - but then she thought of the Cordy who had tried to help her save people even when she was scared and angry and helpless; the Cordy but who had given her that brown suede jacket, and hesitated. 

“I don’t know,” she had said in the end. “I guess calling her couldn’t hurt.”

So Buffy called Cordelia to find out what was happening in Sunnydale, but didn’t jump straight to the topic. Part of her simply  didn’t want to know what her old friends were getting up to without her, and Cordy had plenty of stories from L.A. to fill the void with, and didn’t seem too eager to bring up Sunnydale either. So they danced around the topic together - Cordelia telling her all about the auditions she’d been going to, places she’d been seeing, people she’d been meeting…

There was something slightly sad in her life; something evident only in the rueful way she brushed away the accidental mention of a friend named Doyle, who had kissed her once but who she was adamant she couldn’t ever see again. Buffy didn’t ask why not. She understood wanting to keep some things to yourself.

“But that’s enough about my love life,” Cordelia said. “What’s new with you, Buffyus? Any hot new thang in your unlife right now?”

On the other side of the living room, Spike’s eavesdropping became even more painstakingly obvious. He straightened his back and gave rapt focus to the book he was holding upside down. Buffy rolled her eyes.  What a dork .

“Oh, you know how it is,” Buffy replied breezily, because hell would freeze over before she had this conversation in front of Spike. “I’m a city girl now. Boys come and they go. It’s not as if there’s one guy I’m hanging out with all the time-”  or living with “-or anything.”

At that, Spike  did  look up from his upside down book to give her a knowing smirk. She made a shooing gesture at him. 

“You are  so  lying to me!” said Cordelia.

“What? No I’m not!”

“Yes you are! You’re using your lying voice and everything. God, you’re the  worst  vampire ever. Shouldn’t you be way better at all that deception stuff now?”

Buffy grumbled.

“You’re totally seeing someone,” Cordelia said smugly, which made Buffy’s skin feel all prickly and uncomfortable.

“Am not! He just works with me! Like, in the struggle against evil and stuff.”

“Aha! So there is a he!”

“Look,” Buffy said, feeling panicked, because this was  so  not at all funny anymore. Spike, meanwhile, had given up the pretense of reading entirely, having tossed his book aside in favour of watching Buffy squirm. “Can we not talk about this right now?”

“Aw, why not? Tragic doesn’t  begin  to describe my love life, and I wanna hear about your new boyfriend.”

“He is  not  my boyfriend,” Buffy hissed into the receiver, sitting up straight on the couch.

“Vampires prefer the term paramour,” Spike inputted cheerfully, popping up beside her. Buffy hit him in the face - quick and instinctual, but without the force to make it much more than a love tap - and stood up off the couch entirely.

“Was that him?” Cordelia asked excitedly. “Is he  British ?”

“Yes and yes,” Buffy muttered, turning away from a still-grinning Spike. “But he’s nobody, okay? He’s not the reason I called you.”

“There was a reason?” Cordelia said, surprisingly serious and more down-to-business than Buffy was used to from her.

“Uh, yeah. You remember how I told you about those Slayer dreams I sometimes get? Like the dream with my cousin Celia and the demon who sucks the life out of kids? Or the weird one I got just after Graduation Day, where Faith kept going on about Little Miss Muffet or whatever?”

“Sure I do,” Cordelia said, sounding genuine in a way that a vampire like Buffy might not deserve, but  really really  missed hearing. “You had another one like that?”

“Sorta. I mean, Faith was there, and so was the new Slayer, but she died in it and I think it was supposed to be some sort of warning?”

“Right,” Cordelia said, contemplative. “How can I help?”

“Well the thing about Slayer dreams is you never really know what’s real in them and what’s not, and I guess I was just wondering if you’ve been keeping up with the guys in Sunnydale? Like, if you know what’s happening there, so I can maybe compare it to my dream to try to sort it all out?”

Cordelia hesitated. “Of course, but... maybe you should call Willow? We talked last night, actually, and she told me the gist, but she would know what happened better than I do.”

“I can’t call Willow,” Buffy said hollowly.

“Okay,” Cordelia said, no more questions asked. “Well, uh, the new Slayer - Caridad, I think she was called - did  die. Just a few days ago.”

Buffy felt something weird in her chest. Like this uncomfortable tightening that needed to be de-knotted and pulled out. “She was shot, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Cordy said, sounding sad but not too surprised. “The way Willow tells it, we’re both lucky we got out of Sunnydale when we did. There’s been some sort of shady, government organization hanging about, trying to use science to control demons - or make hybrid demon soldiers or something - and obviously that turned ugly.”

“I’ve heard of that kinda thing before,” Spike whispered to Buffy. “‘Specially back in the forties. Should’ve known the idea’d make a return.”

Buffy squeezed the phone tightly. “And Caridad?”

“I don’t know exactly, Willow wasn’t super clear. She might’ve just been caught in the crossfire of some bigger fight, or the soldiers might’ve taken her out on purpose. There was something about a build-your-own-monster that she killed, and the military might have murdered her for being too strong, or knowing too much, I guess.”

Buffy thought about the toy soldiers from her dream, with their plastic faces and plastic bodies and stupid plastic guns. “Right.”

“Buffy,” Cordelia said, her voice feeling as far away as she was. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” Buffy said, even though she felt distant and sluggish and kinda sad. “Why wouldn’t I be? I never met Caridad. It’s not like she was really my sister Slayer…”

She felt a grounding touch on her shoulder, and glanced over at Spike, who was looking at her with quiet blue eyes that made her head hurt.

“Thanks for telling me,” she told Cordelia. “Do you… have you heard anything about the new Slayer?”

“How do you mean?”

“The one Called after Caridad. Did Willow say anything about her?”

“Oh. No. I haven’t heard anything.”

“Okay. Thanks. I... I should go,” Buffy said into the handset.

“If you have to,” Cordy said. “But call again soon, okay? I… I’ve really missed you, Buffy.”

“I’ve missed you too,” she said, placing the phone down.

Spike looked down at her. “So what does that mean for us?”

Not too far away, in a nice house in the Upper East Side, Kennedy’s watcher passed her a folder filled with pictures of a dead girl with green eyes and a shiny blonde hair. 

Kennedy examined the photos. “You want me to take her out?” 

“Soon,” her watcher told her. “But first, what do you remember about the Order of Tetraites?”