"You, no. NO. No no no."
"Dru, pet, you know I'd never do that to you!"
"Okay, why am I here again?"
I turn to Buffy, and snarl, "Shut up a minute."
She grabs my collar and pulls me close to her. "Why don't I just stake your girlfriend right now and be done with it?"
"I'm not his girl, Slayer."
One heartbeat goes past, and I manage to turn my shaking neck around on its axis and stare at Drusilla. She likes to play kitten, get her claws out and latch them into my leg, or my hair, or my balls--
Well, you get the idea. It was one of her favorite ways to pass the time.
So she's not my pet anymore.
I take a breath, crumple my fists up in a dead Slayer's leather jacket. Correction. A hot, dead Slayer's antique leather jacket, that still has bird shit on it.
Which brings me back to Drusilla, who's eying Summers up and down. She's just not mine anymore. She let me bite her, didn't she? Just because she's not my girl, it's not the end of the world.
"So, you can talk normally if you want to. I always thought that the crazy shtick was a little overdone--"
"Stop."
"... yes."
I sit back, light a smoke, and try to figure out how to deal with this. Dru has her fingernails dangerously close to Summers' eyes, and if she hurts the Slayer - what can I do about it? "Dru, don't do anything rash, now."
Drusilla turns her head to me, and looks at me with pity. Lovely feeling, that, being looked down on. I adore my sire, and my sire's sire, he's a fun wanker, and the whole damned lineage. She says, "It's for you. Your mummy will make the nasty girl go away--"
"Don't. Pet."
Buffy stares, transfixed in Dru's eyes, and I wonder, why has she picked today to be weak, to be able to be mesmerized? It's never worked before, so why now, when I'm the only one around to save her?
Dru looks at me with those eyes, just about begging. I make a snap decision. If she says yes--
"Lamb, have you come back to me?"
"The insides of you don't want me inside you. They don't want anything." Dru runs a fingernail down the Slayer's cheek, gently, and a faint line of blood wells up underneath her touch. She holds out her finger to me, and put my tongue out eagerly, quickly... and she moves it away, to wipe the blood, wasted, on her dirty skirts.
She murmurs, "You still taste like ash, Spike."
I-- can't--
She disappears, and I wonder what, if anything, I could have ever done to stop her.
~
"You let her thrall me, and cut my cheek!"
"I. not exactly."
"I don't know why I put up with you, Spike. You're useless, you're self-centred... you can be mean--"
"Please."
She stops, looks at me with wide, disbelieving eyes. "What the hell do you want from me?"
Dangerous question, Summers. Would you like a list of all the things you can do with organs, the way I could snap your neck, deliver you to death, win? Or maybe you'd just like erotic pictures, the kind that come in those perverted sex shops and hang alongside shiney cocks and vibrato-toys. Either or, I'm not fussy.
"I've got a present for you. I said I could teach you." She watches me, and I pull the necklace out of my pocket and thrust it at her, arm outstretched. "This'll do it."
"What the hell is that, Spike?"
When she doesn't take it, I move in closer to her, wipe off her cheek where there's another line of blood welling up. I want to lick my finger so badly, but I'm walking a fine thread with her right now... and she's already looking at me with that look she gets that says, 'You're not good enough for me'.
I hold my finger up close to her face, and raise an eyebrow. "Do you know what this is?"
She says, a little shaky, "Blood. My blood."
And that's when I can see her fear, no, I can smell it, she's yearning so bad to know. She's close, this one. She wouldn't last more than a few more months, probably. People get a rank smell when they're ripe for the plucking; I might have called them happy-meals, but humans are really fruit. And this one is getting close to wanting to fall off the vine.
The sight of her own blood terrifies Buffy Summers. The night is black and endless; I am black and endless. She thinks it's just blood.
Pet, you don't know the first thing about it. And that's what I'm going to prove to you. I finally drop my finger to my tongue, make as little a show of licking it off as possible. She looks disgusted, now, and I stare into her eyes. "Wrong, Buffy. And you'll never know what this is, until you're one of us."
She grabs my wrist, and twists it behind my back, painfully. "You forget, Spike. I've already been one of you."
I'm suddenly facing the opposite direction. I stare off into the distance, notice the black woods get a little blacker, flicker - that's a flashlight. Someone's probably out there either burying bodies or digging them up. The usual, around here.
I say hoarsely, and god does she have a strong grip. "But did you bite anyone?"
She lets me go, shaking her head. I mutter, "Listen up, Summers, and listen good. See that street? There are a thousand things out there that you have to kill. And blood? It's the key."
While she's not looking I put the chain around her neck quickly, doing up the clasp. She looks at me in confusion, then in slowly growing horror as she feels her face change into a monster.
She's beautiful, and when she bites me, I moan.
~
"I had no idea that this was what a demon was like."
I didn't know this was what you'd be like with that bauble on either, but it's beginning to be one fucked up bizarro night for both of us. Guess that necklace did something to your body; what it did to that empty little skull, I don't get.
We're walking; she has her hand wrapped posessively around my upper arm. I don't know whether it's to make sure her meal ticket doesn't run away, or to make sure I know I belong to her. Not much chance I'll forget that, you snake in beautiful skin. You bit a while ago. I'm not bloody going anywhere.
I light another cigarette, puff on it instantly, urgently. I'm chain smoking, now, because - I was bitten. By Summers. By the Slayer.
By, by Buffy.
"I know you didn't, pet."
"Know I didn't-- oh. Why did you give it to me?"
"Because--"
"I mean, I know Dru wanted it, right? That's what she was here for?"
Buffy, pet, you've got a lot to learn about keeping your mouth shut, for chrissake. I flick the butt away, into the bushes. The black, forbidding bushes, and nod to myself. "Yeah. She was."
"I can hear things. Moving. Everywhere."
I trudge along, slightly behind her. "Yeah. That'll be the heightened senses."
"Do you have to go through the entire day, listening like this?"
I want to sigh inwardly. Here's Buffy, given the biggest gift in the world, a chance to play around and still get a tan the next day - and all she wants to do is play twenty questions. I bet it's nancy-boy's influence on her. Ask first, play later. get so wrapped up in asking shite that you never actually DO anything...
"Not really. You can block it out, with practise."
She stops, turns to me. Her face is normal, beautiful as ever, damn her. "Can my body do that? I mean, without the whole demon thing."
"Pet, I don't know what your body can do except fight, and fuck--"
"Okay! Enough."
Strange. Normally she would have clouted me a good one. Must be that necklace has given her a sense of humor along with those sharp little fangs.
We keep walking, like we're out for a nice summer stroll. She's heading, I notice with interest, to a graveyard. Buffy, old girl, you seem to have habits ingrained so deeply that even on the day you've been handed everything on a silver platter by your arch rival, no less, and you're prancing around, wanting to go to work.
Bugger that. I'm not standing around watching SuperGirl kill things. I pull away from her, grab her hand to tug her up another street. "Come on."
She pulls her hand out of my grasp, and I stomp a little harsher - course she wouldn't have let me keep her hand. She's high and mighty. I'm gutter trash. "We're going to the Bronze."
My strides are long, angry, and she's jogging to keep up. She says, "Why?"
"Because I'm hungry."
~
There's a band tonight, even though it's pretty late already - not a bad one, either, for this crowd - and we take my usual table under the stairs. It's a wonderful place for watching people parade around like idiots who have a clue, and an even better place to watch all the girls in their short skirts and lack of brain capasity strut around like peacocks.
If any peacocks had an ass like the redhead that just walked past me, I'd spend more time at the zoo.
"Why are we here?" She sits across from me, face impatient, tone impatient, neck pulsing.
God. Don't think that way. "Because, I'm hungry, and you were going to go to work."
"So?"
"So, learn to have a little fun, Slayer! Don't the kids go clubbing anymore? Don't they gather in horribly lit places like this to play the dating and mating game?"
She crosses her arms across her chest, and scowls. "If you haven't noticed, I've been busy nights, and I do have a boyfriend."
I wave to a particularly cute waitress, who rolls her eyes and goes behind the bar. Bitch. "That you don't really love."
Her eyes go wide, saucers, and she even starts to snarl a little. Good girl, Buffy. Feel that primal energy flow down, into you. "What the hell are you talking about, Spike?"
"It's just, I see the way you look at him, and you don't love him."
"Change. The. Subject. NOW."
I shrug, wave my hand with a scowl at the waitress again, and reply, "Fine, fine. Let's talk about--"
"I don't wanna talk. I want to patrol."
How can she make a pout look cute? "You've got lots of hours to patrol later, Buffy. Just, deal with the Bronze for a bit."
She stares at me, obviously not biting. My beer finally comes, no thanks to that idiot girl, and I take a deep drink. She's still staring belligerantly at me when I finish, so I say, "You know, I thought that changing my whole priorities, morals, and limits would have a great impact on my life. I mean, look at nancy boy. He stopped biting people - became a loser right away. Homeless."
"You were a loser before you lost your bite."
"I, that's not the point. Nothing's changed. I'm still in this arsehole of a town, still fighting you, only now it's watered down. Everything's just watered down, but nothing's different."
She has no idea how much it took to say all that shit, because she's just looking around the club as if it meant nothing. She's bored, about to leave, when who comes towards us but Anyanka, and Faith's ex sweetie, Ryan O'Reily.
Shit.
As if my night couldn't get any worse, now I have to listen to Anya's vapid ramblings - and I'm sorry, no, as nice a body as she's got, it doesn't make up for it - and try and explain why Ryan O'Reily and I have already made each other's bloody aquaintance.
~
"Fancy seeing you two here together."
Buffy leans over the table, and whispers, "Can I bite her?"
I snort, trying not to laugh out loud. "If you like, pet, but you'll end up in hell."
"Oh. Then I probably shouldn't."
"Oh, no, go ahead. There are a lot of motherfuckers in hell right now, I'm sure one or two of them are fun and dandy. Angelus spent some time there, I'm sure you'll learn to enjoy it. Live now, think later, and all that rot..."
She crushes my knee beneath her hand, and I gasp. Ryan saves me from several broken bones, with, "Spike. Hey. What are you doing here?"
I turn to him, standing behind Anya and - gee, there's a guy that really doesn't look happy with his lot in life. And I hope to god I never piss him off. "You know. Trying to get between the Slayer's knees."
"HEY!"
"Just kidding. Humor. Try it sometime." I swivel around to face Ryan again, and mutter, "What are you doing here?"
"Anya and I had the poker game set up. Y'know. Thought we'd go for drinks first." He rolls his eyes. "What the fuck do you think I'm doing here?"
I offer him a cig, then light us both up. "Killing time before something happens?" Without waiting for him to lie about what he's got going on, I lean over, and murmur to O'Reily, "So, is your girl...?"
Shakes his head. Whether it's to say, 'not here,' or, 'she's dead, fucker, let it lie', or just, 'I'm a space cowboy, whoopdido', I don't care. Intent clear. Shut up. Yeah, I can do that. He replies, "Listen, about Cyril--"
I eye Anya and Buffy, the latter barely hiding her fangs. "Later, mate. Okay? Later, I'll do something about God's gift to the white man. Maybe tonight. More likely tomorrow."
"Good, fine. I'd hate to spoil tonight's game."
In a normal voice, I ask, "You're really playing tonight?"
"Yeah, gonna try. Got bored. Cyril's--" he waves his hand, "--out there, somewhere, so I gotta day to relax a bit."
Anya and Ryan decide that's enough, and go back to whatever they were trying to do. I'd bet, ten to one, that it's dig law boy out of whatever bottle he decided would make a good home for the next five years, before Keller goes mental. I like Keller. Good, foul citizen. Little too Catholic, but we can't be perfect.
"Spike, I'm bored."
"Well, pet, I'd take you bowling, but--"
"Let's get out of here."
"And do what?"
She smiles, and tries for a sweet and innocent face. Oh, lord... "Kick some ass."
I wonder-- "You ever heard of Adebisi?"
She blinks. "Sure. Why?"
I grab her hand again - and this time, she doesn't pull away - and drag her to the exit. "His buddy's ass. It needs kicking. Hard."
Ol'Vern Shillinger is gonna wish he never set eyes on the free world. And Buffy's gonna be the one to hand his head to him on a plate. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
There won't be that much of him left by the time she's done.