Chapter Thirty-Three

She had fallen asleep around three in the morning, and Spike started looking for a place to stay. He missed her active involvement in the process and settled on a Hilton largely for the room service. He had given her time to pull herself together in the bathroom, smoking a cigarette until he had decided that she had had long enough. She had been ready for him, holding a plunger that had probably been left in the bathroom for emergencies in a two-handed grip. She managed to pin him between the door and the wall with the business end of the plunger, which had made him laugh until he saw her eyes bleed black and a pencil arrowed at his heart while she pivoted away from him.

He had a nice pencil sized hole in the center of his palm. He was pretty sure that it was going to leave a scar and, while the last person that had left a scar on him was dead, he hadn't even spared a thought to killing her. After he had yanked the pencil out of his hand and crushed it for good measure, dripping blood all over the filthy tile floor, he had blocked a few increasingly wild swings with the plunger, fascinated by the darkness that he could practically smell, crackling like ozone, pouring off of her. Black for rage. Black for grief. It wasn't her wolf boy she was mourning. It was the loss of herself.

"I don't hate you anymore," she said. She was supposed to hate him. It was the natural order of things.

In the confined space of a stark public bathroom, under a bare light bulb, she backed herself into a corner between the toilet and the wall, stumbling over a floor drain. It was probably hurting her hands and arms more when one of her swings connected. That was why he hadn't hit her. That was why he let her fight until she was swaying on her feet while he examined his hand and asked her if she got the irony of a wound that could be mistaken for stigmata.

She slid down the wall, crouching in the corner while he rinsed his hand off in the sink, waiting for him to do something. The contents of her purse were strewn over the floor. The wallet that she had been trying to get to was open. He had left the identification, her library cards, her pictures, but he had removed the credit cards a long time ago. If she had thought to grab his keys and wallet when the idea started forming in her head, she would have made the right choice.

He tugged the plunger out of her hands and before she could cringe or shy away from him, he pulled her to her feet. "I'm not mad at you, but if you start crying, I'm not sure I won't be," he warned her, giving her a little push toward the sink. "Go on. Get yourself cleaned up."

He probably should have insisted that she do it, but he picked up the crap that had fallen out of her purse, shoving it back in while she stood at the sink, breathing hard, probably trying to obey his injunction not to cry. She took off the shirt and started using it as a washcloth, and then the bra came off, followed by her jeans that got tangled up in her tennis shoes. She lost her balance trying to get them off, her efforts becoming increasingly frantic, pitching forward without any way to keep from falling. He caught her before her forehead hit the edge of the sink. He found himself with a face full of damp hair as he hauled her against his chest. The rapid beat of her heart couldn't have summed it up better, though it felt weird to identify alarm with a heartbeat.

He shook her a little. One of these days, she was going to fall and crack her stupid skull open, or break her neck. "What did I tell you about paying more attention to your surroundings?" he demanded.

He left her on her side of the car when she fell asleep. She reeked of cheap soap and cleaning solvent, and it was giving him a headache. "It doesn't suit me to have you die just yet. Don't read too fucking much into it," he muttered.

It was excellent advice he thought, with a bitter laugh. He ought to take it since it was lost on Willow at the moment.

The hotel he chose had an indoor garage. He parked on a lower level and, just to be on the safe side since, left to her own devices, she was likely to wander off into heavy traffic, he retrieved the handcuffs from the glove box and handcuffed her to the passenger side door of the car before he went in to secure a room without a view. Standing impatiently at the desk while the night clerk re-keyed plastic door keys for him, he worked out the amount of time he had left to hunt before sunrise.




Buffy was asleep in an armchair. Oz had, much to nearly everyone's surprise, decided to go home to sleep in his own bed. He had left them while they were still at the Summers' residence, walking off alone with his hands shoved deep in his pockets even after Xander reminded him that he had left his van parked outside Giles' apartment.

Xander was sleeping on the couch that had become Angel's temporary bed while he was in Sunnydale. He might have stayed just because Giles' phone would eventually ring and he wanted to be there for that. Angel felt like Xander was fighting his own distaste to play chaperone. He could have stayed at the mansion, but it was too much a part of what he had decided to walk away from. It was odd that he was getting ready to go there now, but he had spent too many mornings watching the sun creep into the garden not to go there now and see it from the other side of the shadows.

There was one last container of pig's blood in the refrigerator. He got it out and poured the contents into a mug before carefully opening the microwave, trying not to make enough sound to wake Buffy or Xander. He had been at Giles' long enough to feel like he had a relationship with the microwave, albeit one based on suspicion and mistrust on his part. Electronic devices still frustrated him to some degree. He would get used to one, and then it would be replaced with something similar but not the same, and the learning process would start again.

The effort to master these constantly-changing elements of his environment irritated him. He watched the clock ticking down the seconds, prepared to open the door before the chime went off. He missed it when Buffy walked into the kitchen, looking half-asleep. She opened the refrigerator door and stared blankly at the contents, startled out of her staring by the microwave chime.

Their eyes met. He smiled at her. She smiled back.

From the living room they heard Xander, who was starting to wake up. "Huh? S'not a school day?"

Angel remembered the microwave and opened the door to cut off the electronic beep that was sounding.

"It's not a school day!" Giles grumbled from upstairs. So much for his plan not to wake everyone up, Angel thought with a wince.

Buffy shook her head at Giles' refrigerator and shut the door. She moved to lean against the counter. "Is this the beginning of your day or the end?"

Angel shook his head, letting his blood cool. "I don't know. It could be a beginning of the day," he conceded. "That feels strange to even say."

He had some ideas about what he could do in Los Angeles, but none of them included being part of the daytime world and the night-time world had very limited employment options. All-night convenience store clerk. Bartender. Something like that, except that the idea of doing any of those things was kind of ridiculous. He was a vampire. A vampire with rent to pay in a town that unlike Sunnydale, didn't have a lot of places for people to appropriate as it suited them. Like abandoned warehouses and mansions with slightly nebulous ownership or basement storage rooms converted into a cell-like apartment.

He had an actual apartment with a landlord that expected to be paid rent and the money he had saved wasn't going to last forever. Building a nice nest egg without being able to steal was a problem.

The daytime world was a bit intimidating. He knew about it second- and third-hand, from books, television, and contact with humans. The only adults he had had a lot of contact with were Rupert, Jenny, and Joyce. A librarian, a teacher, and the manager of an art gallery. He had spent a good part of the night thinking about the possibilities that the Gem of Amara opened. Spike wasn't going to get it, so that meant something had to be done with it.

"It will be sunrise soon," Buffy said. "We could sit outside, by the fountain, and watch it—unless you want to be alone," she wasn't sure how to read the uneasy expression on his face. "It'll be your first sunrise in—"

"Not such a long time," he reminded her. He had meant to greet the sun not so very long ago and had been given a kind of reprieve in the form of snow that had piled up almost to Buffy's knees while they walked through Sunnydale past dawn and into early morning. California born and raised, the only snow she had ever seen was on television.

"I thought I'd go to the mansion," he told her. "Do you want to come with me?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she ducked her head to the hall. "I'm just going to brush my teeth and we can go."

When she left the kitchen, he drank his cooling blood. It had a disgusting skin on top and he shuddered a little as a piece of it separated and oozed down his throat. He made himself finish it and rinsed the coffee mug out with hot water before scrubbing it with a sponge that Giles had put out for that purpose. He would need to pick up more blood today, which he could do himself, in person. For a moment he considered stopping at Willie's and getting human blood. The look on Willie's face as he strolled in through the door in broad daylight would be well worth it.

Blood. In bags. Like flash-frozen dinners that came in bags that were boiled in water to heat up.

Not sure where the stray thought came from, he grunted. "Yeah, just like that," he muttered to himself, annoyed with the juvenile fantasy.

"Just like what?" Buffy asked when she returned to the kitchen. She had run a brush through her hair. His brush. He could smell the two of them mingled in her hair. "I borrowed your toothbrush," she confessed, her nose wrinkling. "That's gross isn't it? But, we've kissed, so it's the lesser of all grossness. Morning breath, borrowing Giles toothbrush, or borrowing your toothbrush," she explained. "And, I figured that we could stop on the way back, get donuts, and toothbrushes."

"It's okay," he told her. Probably unsanitary, but not a big issue for him. "We can do all of that," he agreed.

It was still dark when they set out, but he realized that they weren't going to make it to the mansion in time.

Not that it really mattered where he saw the sunrise. It was a sunrise. There weren't a lot of them that he had participated in, even when he was alive. The servants rose before sunrise, and he lolled about in bed, behind tightly shuttered windows, usually hung-over. There was a time before that. He hadn't been born with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a busty tavern wench in the other. He had been a boy once, but he could barely remember not being an adult. It was impossible to even begin to imagine Darla as a child.

Drusilla shed incoherent bits of a corrupted childhood in her dolls, her wide-eyed stare, and her mannerisms, but it was a fantasy childhood. It was the princess' childhood that she never had that she was faithful to. He was willing to bet that Spike was the only one of them who had any real memory of a sunrise, and it wasn't just because he was the youngest, or more willing to endure some discomfort to witness the end of the evening. He was probably the only one of them that assigned any value to a sunrise while he was still alive. As for remembering his childhood, he hadn't really left it before he died.

"I always thought that this would be a good time for a walk," Angel said as they crossed the street. "It's quiet? Vampires all heading for the sewers or a lair, but no one is up yet," he explained.

In the winter they were. When the sun rose much later in the morning, people were up. Newspapers in Sunnydale were delivered by car. No one was foolish enough to attempt a route on foot or on a bicycle. Buffy's eyes were moving back and forth. It was something she was probably unaware of.

He had to tell her. This was a good time. They were alone, and she could decide what she wanted to do with no pressure. He could make his case, also minus the pressure and suspicion that Xander would bring to it. Except that he knew Xander could no more talk her into something that she didn't want to do than he could. That was the afterglow of her experience with Angelus. Giles would tell her. Angel was surprised that he hadn't done it yet.

"Promise me that when this is over, you don't just leave," she interrupted his train of thought. "I mean, if you have to just leave, if that's how it has to be, I understand, but I don't think it does. I'm glad that you came to help us. But not in a 'I needed you and I can't do this without you way'" she clarified. "More in a 'we can still help each other way,'" she looked up at him to see if he was following her reasoning. "I know that we can't be together," her voice thickened a bit, and she laughed nervously. "Should I try that again?"

He looked at her. "I didn't do it to hurt you," he started to say that he thought it would be easier.

"I know," her voice firmed up. "But this is who we are now. And it is not a drama. You and me? We aren't together, and we aren't tragic. I won't have it be that we are just a sad story. I miss you," she admitted. "Not the you that I was in love with, because," she ground to a verbal stop and out of the corner of his eye he saw the tears that were filling her eyes. She ducked her head, giving herself a moment to finish the thought that obviously pained her.

He could fill it in for her. "Because no matter how many times I came back, you knew."

And it was that simple. His soul was returned and she still had to kill him. He came back from hell and she still couldn't have him. He tried to explain all of this to her and she refused to accept the terms. He left her. But he would come back when she needed, and she needed him to know that she would go to him when he needed her.

The light was changing. It was something he could feel as well as see. He caught her hand. They were near one of the parks they sometimes lingered at on patrol. There was a park bench by a low stone wall. That was the place. That was where he wanted to be. They had sat on the bench and talked before.

"Come on," he said.

"When she saw the bench, she got it, and for a moment he wondered if this wasn't such a great idea, but she rubbed their joined hands against her leg, and nodded to herself. "I miss this." She smiled. "The Dutch boy and his duck?" she reminded him.

When he smiled, he looked so much younger. It was almost possible to pretend. She took what he was anticipating for granted. Sunrise made her feel like a vampire. She saw too many sunrises at the end of a late night, sitting on the back porch cleaning weapons or standing in the bathroom dabbing antiseptic on a scrape or cut.

They weren't tragic. It was a big idea for Angel to absorb, and he thought that she was wrong, but she was eighteen and a Slayer and odds were that she would not live as long as he would with the loss. There was nothing stopping her from finding someone else to love. He had that feeling again, the one that reminded him that he was a vampire and she was human. He was over two hundred; she was under twenty. It was the same feeling he had about her senior prom.

The sun was coming up. It was a flash of white light. There were other colors, though the most entrancing to him was the blue. It was a tricky color. Sky blue, baby blue, pale blue, shades of blue in stained glass or oil paintings, it was in some ways the easiest thing for an artist to represent and the hardest to capture the formless depth of it. He noticed the sky. He noticed the smell—wet and cold, but warming. He noticed the way colors changed in the light, rendering a place he knew fairly well slightly unfamiliar.

He noticed that Buffy was still holding his hand, not taking anything away from the moment no matter how ordinary it might seem to her.

Later, in the grocery store—and how weird was that, as Buffy would have said, that they were pacing the aisles of a grocery store together? The sharp-eyed gaze that Angel was accustomed to seeing applied to the dark margins of alleys and cemeteries was scanning shelves in a predatory way. But later, he wondered if there was more to her idea that they weren't tragic than not wanting to hear it.

The girl who was the descendent of a long line of mythical warriors who had been called to be heroic and were destined to die because of it, executed a hair flip. "I'm not done," there was in her gaze a hint of stubborn self-awareness. It wasn't a good answer, or the right one, but it was the one that she would live by. "I can't be tragic. I have to go to college."




The hotel bar had closed at two in the morning, which was just annoying. The room that he had rented came with double beds, which Willow was likely to take as a great moral victory. Both beds came with the requisite headboards bolted into the wall, leaving no obvious way to handcuff her to an immovable object. He settled for a heavy chair.

Trying to escape was expected, but her new fondness for trying to kill him was getting on his nerves. Hadn't he made it clear that he wasn't going to leave her that way? It wasn't like he ran around offering immortal life, fantastic sex, and mayhem to every chit he shagged. The dead teenager that he had drained in a bus shelter had nothing to offer in the way of an opinion, so he used his cell phone to call Georgia.

She sounded moderately pleased to hear from him. "Jeannie says that you know that we know—"

"Gem of Amara," Spike rolled his eyes. "Yeah. You know, Colin knows. Covered that already."

"I had this whole 'you know that we know that you know' speech," she complained. "Katherine Hepburn. The Lion in Winter? And then she says—"

"We're very knowledgeable people. I like the part where John says that if he caught on fire, no one would piss on him to put it out."

"Me too. It's a good line for a vampire," Georgia pointed out.

"It's a good movie for vampires. All the fucked up family dynamics and politics. Makes me feel nostalgic about Darla, and I hated that bitch. In a good way," Spike said.

Spike heard her telling someone that she was talking to him. "Colin?" he guessed.

"You want to talk to him?" Georgia guessed.

"Not particularly," Spike muttered. "Probably ought to," he allowed. There was no response from Georgia. "Am I talking to myself?"

"No," she said slowly. "Um . . ."

"He wants to talk to me and I've put you in an awkward position?"

"Exactly!" she drawled.

Spike heaved a sigh. "Sod him. Tell him Red keeps trying to dust me, and I'm drunk and in a foul mood."

She repeated this. Colin wanted to know if she had drawn blood. "I'll find out," Georgia told him. "Okay. So? Are you serious?"

"I'm not drunk," he withdrew that one. "And . . . she scratched me, so yeah she's drawn blood, but—" he didn't bother going into the near-staking by pencil.

She giggled. "You go, girl!" she sounded impressed. "That's so cute, and spunky!"

"She put you on the ground, love. If she had slowed down to stake you, would that have been cute and spunky?"

"A year from now you'd be bragging about how she bagged a vampire while she was still human," Georgia scoffed, "and you're like a . . . ."

"Triple word score?" he suggested, preening a bit.

"Or the Jeopardy Daily Double," she substituted. "You don't think if she manages to dust you that Drusilla will come looking for her in a crazy revenge way, do you? That would be inconvenient."

"I think it will be moot, because you won't know how to find—" he didn't complete the thought. Harmony. Georgia would know where to find Willow because Harmony would tell her. "Yes," he snapped. "Drusilla, whatever thing she's shagging, a Slayer, Angelus, and a Werewolf will come gunning for you," he predicted sourly.

"Since they are all after you already, and you seem to be one step ahead, I think I can deal," Georgia was complacent. "Anyway, Pete saw your Slayer. He says she's a real cute little girl," she teased. "He came home from Sunnydale with tales of your ass-kickings."

"Sod off," he growled.

"So . . . what are you going to do? I'd really prefer to get her in one piece, but I get that you can't let her keep trying to dust you. That's too much to expect."

"You're bloody right it is," he agreed. "I don't know. I threatened to beat her, and she hit me."

"Did you hit her back?"

Spike rubbed his eyes. "No," he said slowly. "Shagged her rotten, told her I'd get around to killing her, and I wasn't planning on leaving her dead," he grinned at the absurdity of it. A century with Dru had left him ill-equipped to deal with one not-so-insane mortal girl. "I was giving her something to think about."

Georgia chuckled appreciatively. "Not a bad plan, but the wrong stuff to think about," she scolded. "People are funny about the dying part. It freaks them out."

Spike glanced over at his dead bus shelter companion. "Yeah. I suppose I'll give her something else to think about." He rifled through the kid's backpack before getting up and strolling off toward the hotel.

"Good plan," Georgia complimented.

"It's not a plan, it's a theme. A plan has—" he shook his head. "Never mind. I'll figure out something."




Willow woke up twice. Spike shook her awake and made her get out of the car. She had a vague memory of trying to pay attention to a new set of bland hallways. Her aunt Carol lived in a gated community in Scottsdale that reminded Willow of the episode of the X-Files when Scully and Mulder went undercover in a gated community to investigate mysterious deaths. Hotels and gated communities had a creepy uniformity. Set her down in one of those places, and she would be a monster magnet, unable to resist fudging the rules for the sake of principled rule-breaking. Or not. She tended to be a rule follower.

Maybe she would have been one of the creepy neighbors?

The next time she woke up she was lying on her stomach across a double bed with her wrist handcuffed to the arm of a chair and she needed to go to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom was not impossible; it was just complicated by having to take the chair with her. Once she wrestled the chair into the bathroom she wasn't in a hurry to leave. That left her sitting on the toilet with her jeans pushed down to her thighs and the chair she was handcuffed to positioned in front of her.

She used it as a footrest to take off her tennis shoes. The bandage that Spike had wrapped around her toe made her nose wrinkle in disgust. It smelled like the inside of the tennis shoes she had been wearing without socks. She picked the tape off with her fingernails and tossed the soiled bandage in the general direction of the trash can.

Where was Spike?

He was out killing someone. She was in a hotel room, with a phone and a possible Internet connection, and how about dragging herself and the chair down to the lobby? Girl handcuffed to chair would be hard to explain. Working one-handed, she got her jeans back up with an inward sigh at recognizing the aptness of having your panties in a bunch and started moving with her chair in front of her like a very awkward walker. She got the door propped open with the chair when Spike strolled around the corner carrying what looked to be a cup of coffee and a white bakery bag.

He shook his head at her. "Foiled again."

Stepping around her, he used the chair as a step and walked over it nimbly to set the bag and the coffee cup down on the dresser before coming back to drag the chair and her away from the door. It shut behind her with a muffled thump. He took his coat off and tossed it on the bed. His t-shirt followed it before he sat to remove his boots. He was in what appeared to be a good mood. Tethered to the chair, Willow sat, facing the door. She tried not to flinch when he came up behind her and unlocked the handcuff. He squatted down beside the arm of the chair, examining her wrist for fresh marks.

"I thought the chair might slow you down," he admitted, looking up at her solemnly, slowly lifting her wrist to his lips to kiss. His plan, worked out over the counter of the bakery downstairs was to be charming and seductive and considerate. Torture worked better with Drusilla, but since Willow wasn't insane or a vampire, he was thinking that working against her expectations would keep her off-balance and distracted, and it was kind of fun to watch her when she was trying to figure something out.

He had undressed down to his jeans. It was distracting. He kissed her wrist, his tongue lazily rubbing back and forth over her skin. Very distracting. Willow tried to treat the room rate and emergency exit information discreetly fixed to the door like it was a vision test, reading past the headings at a distance of approximately seven feet. Possibly not the optimal distance for reading twelve- or fourteen-point type. She had to squint.

He kissed her pulse, not lingering over it in an obvious way. "Do you think you could stand a shower, and then something to eat?" His head ducked into her line of sight, and when she tried to avoid his eyes, he squeezed her hand and reached up to run his fingers over her jaw. "There was a bakery downstairs in the lobby, or there's room service," he pointed out.

It was supposed to be distracting, she realized when she risked a look at him. There was just enough calculation in the way he was watching her to clue her in. She glared at him. "Quit treating me like I'm crazy or broken. I tried to kill you."

His lips twitched. "You failed. It put me in a celebratory mood."

He looked a little tired. The way people looked tired at the end of a good day. She just felt exhausted. Every time she blinked she felt the effort of opening her eyes.

She had probably slept for less than four hours, and she hadn't slept well yesterday either. He eased her out of the chair and pushed it away with his foot. "Come on, a quick shower," he urged.

"Are you trying to get me out of the room so you can call Giles?" she asked.

He leaned against the doorframe, watching as her eyes shifted to the mirror, where she didn't find him, and then away. "Rather I stay and scrub your back?" he made it an offer.

She looked confused. "Go on," he nodded to the shower. "You aren't quite awake, pet."

She was awake enough, Willow thought after she was in the shower. Awake enough to know that he was being inconsistent and weird and it was probably a big setup to something.

There was no complimentary bathrobe, but there was a bath sheet large enough to cover her from her armpits to her knees, and she wrapped that around herself after she got out of the shower and dried off. He was lying on one of the two double beds, propped up against the headboard, restlessly channel-surfing when she came out. He really did look tired, though it worked for him. His preternaturally-boyish face showed lines that were usually not so much in evidence, around his eyes and mouth. He was absentmindedly stroking the scar on his eyebrow.

She padded over to the table to peer inside the paper bag, using the wax paper inside to pick out a flat cinnamon pinwheel Danish drizzled with honey. The cup was hot chocolate, not coffee as she thought when she saw it. She ate the cinnamon Danish and started nibbling on a flaky croissant with raspberry and cream cheese filling between sips of hot chocolate.

He wasn't saying anything. She tried to kill him, and he had nothing to say about that? She hadn't gone into the bathroom thinking that she would try anything of the sort. She just wanted to find her credit cards and her driver's license and then figure out what to do next. She was certain that he would assume that she was heading for Sunnydale as soon as she took off, and he would follow. The Gem of Amara was there. Her friends were there.

She could warn them, of course. She had to warn them. Xander and Oz would be the most vulnerable, the most obvious targets. The list kept expanding. Joyce. Her parents. The Harrisses. Oz's mother. Maybe he would start on the edge and work his way around. Killing people that meant something to her, and then killing the people that meant most to her. It was a horrible idea, but all losses were not equally unbearable.

The only answer was the same one she had come to the night they had left Sacramento, and the number two pencil in her purse seemed to be placed there for no other reason. If she waited long enough, he would come looking for her, and then . . . she would have the element of surprise on her side. It wasn't much, but it was something that made sense to her. She recognized it. The vamp she had staked when the Mayor was holding her hadn't even realized that she had staked him. He hadn't registered surprise or anger or betrayal or fear. It had happened so quickly.

She didn't want to see any of those things. She knew that she should by all rights hate Spike, but for some reason she didn't, and if he was going to disintegrate, to come apart so completely and utterly, she wanted the last thing he felt to be something that was his, and not a part of her staking him. She didn't want to have the memory of his understanding that she had staked him.

And then she went a little crazy. Her hands still felt raw and her fingers were cramping.

"Red?"

He was still sitting against the headboard. She turned to look at him.

He didn't seem to have anything to say. He just stared at her, like he didn't know any better than she did what he was supposed to say.

"I'll go brush my teeth," she said. It was what she did after she ate and before she was kissed or kissing. Could you want to kiss someone that you tried to kill? Oddly, yes. Of all the things that she could do, kissing was not the worst of it, except that the fact that it wasn't the worst of it was wrong.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Her towel-dried hair was a mess. There was a blow dryer attached to the wall, but she ignored it, starring at the girl in the mirror with the fading bruises on her face and the messy hair, wondering who she was right now.

She made herself go back into the room. There were two beds. He had gotten a room with two beds. She climbed into the one that he was in, telling herself that he would move if she didn't, that the other bed wasn't an island or a fortress or even much of a statement of her resolve. She started to move to her side, away from him, and realized that he had all the pillows stacked behind him. Before she could think about it, he leaned forward, surrendering one, and she took it.

It wasn't warm, but it smelled of him. She closed her eyes. He tugged the blanket up over her shoulder. The bath sheet wrapped around her wasn't entirely dry, but she didn't care.

"Are you going to call them?" she asked.

She felt the mattress give as he shifted away from her to turn out the light. "Later," he said.

She closed her eyes again. On the edge of falling asleep she felt the covers move over her shoulder again, and his hand, slipping down her arm to her hand, palm down, under her hand briefly. His hand came to rest on her hip. She was sure it was still there when she fell asleep.

He had seen the expression that crossed her face before she climbed into bed with him. She had decided that he would arrange it so that she was sleeping beside him and had either decided that it wasn't worth a fight or that she could mollify him with a well-timed capitulation.

He wasn't anywhere near as justifiably angry with her as he knew that he ought to be. He told himself last night that it was because it was such a weak effort. The slowly closing hole in this hand belied that. Had he been a second slower to react, he would have been a memory.

His injured hand was resting on her hip. It itched something fierce. He waited for it to stir something. Fear, fury, a mild sense of annoyance. Instead, his head whipped toward her at the sound of a sharply-indrawn breath and a soft cry of distress. She was asleep. She was dreaming.

He waited to see if there was more to it, but she settled down again and he realized that he was massaging her hip. Soothing her. His lips thinned and the annoyance was self-directed. He tried to be objective about it.

She wasn't Dru. She couldn't hold a candle to his ripe, wicked plum. If Drusilla walked through the door, he would beg her to take him back and offer Willow up as a snack in half a heartbeat. He wouldn't think twice about it. Sod the Gem of Amara and the Slayer. He'd skip off with Dru with a song in his dead heart and the taste of the witch's blood on his love's lips and consider it a good day.

He frowned. That sounded right, didn't it?

Of course it did. The Gem of Amara was meaningless measured against Drusilla.

He moved his hand away from Willow, pausing to examine the wound before he reached for his cigarettes. It was filling in from the inside out. It was bound to leave a scar and he didn't have a lot of those, but it would be an interesting scar. He reached for his cigarettes. The first drag was soothing. He savored it, smiling a little. I'm evil, he reminded himself. I even have the evil props. Fangs, leather, a pack of smokes, and a slightly corrupted, but mostly pure at heart, girl at his side. The thought made him smirk. That's all it is, he told himself.

He finished his cigarette and got up to rid himself of his jeans, briefly considering foiling Willow's inexplicable decision to crawl into bed with him by sleeping in the empty bed. Even as he was thinking it, he discarded the idea, slipping into bed behind her, spooning into her towel-clad body. His hand slid under the towel, seeking contact with her skin. He closed his eyes.



Years later Giles would remember it as one of the longest days of his life. A day begun with a cup of tea liberally laced with whiskey and lemon because he had a bit of a cold coming on. A day begun with an annoying smell in his living room that he recognized as sweaty teenager. Xander slept until noon. Snoring occasionally. Buffy and Angel came back from their pre-dawn outing with a bag of groceries and blood from the butcher shop. They went back outside. It made sense, and he was just as glad not to have them underfoot.

Xander woke up when they came back in. Angel looked a bit queasy. It was a reaction that Giles felt compelled to examine. The more they knew about the Gem of Amara and how it effected a vampire, the more effective their strategies would be. Angel insisted that he felt fine, aside from a slight feeling of disorientation from being in the sun. Xander listened to the exchange. He seemed puzzled by it, but also grimly pleased.

"Don't get too comfortable with it," he suggested after he had finished stuffing his face with donuts.

Buffy glared at him, and Giles had a sinking feeling. She had already made her mind up that after they got Willow back, Angel should have the Gem of Amara. He wasn't terribly surprised by that. It would be a tremendous gift as well as a burden, and he was willing to concede that Angel was probably capable of bearing it. As long as he was Angel. It was the possibility of him reverting back to Angelus that gave Giles pause. It almost made handing the Gem of Amara over to Spike the more acceptable conclusion.

He had several pages of notes on that outcome. Aside from notifying the Watchers' Council to marshal as much assistance containing Spike as possible, a few other ideas had occurred to him. Sending Angel off to track down Drusilla in the hopes of turning the tables on Spike and forcing him to return the Gem of Amara in exchange for his insane lover was one notion. Raphael's Compendium was curiously silent on the subject of magic resistance conveyed by the Gem of Amara. Vampires and demons had a certain amount of innate resistance to magical compulsion and suggestion, but there were spells and rituals that were specific to vampires, like the un-invite spell Jenny had found for them before she died.

There was the Romany curse. He didn't consider it a course of last resort by any means. The curse, the ingredients required for it, were in his flat, locked in a warded chest against the possibility that they would need it for Angel again. He knew that Willow had a second Orb of Thesela in her possession, probably at her parent's house. If Spike got the Gem of Amara, the first defense against him would be to attempt to restore his soul and hope for the best. There were so many intangibles to the curse, and he had discussed it with Willow at length over the summer when Buffy had run away.

The deep, personal sense of grievance against Angelus felt by the gypsies that cursed him and by Willow after Jenny and Kendra were killed made him wonder if the caster's relationship or feelings toward the object of the curse were not crucial aspects of the curse. Willow had been deeply, desperately afraid of Angelus and what he might do to her and Buffy for months. His concern for Buffy's state of mind had been so consuming that he didn't notice the effect it had on Willow, particularly after Angelus had been inside her home.

He tried to decide if he had the sort of all-consuming anger or fear that had been present when Willow cursed Angelus that could be directed at Spike. There was no doubt in Giles' mind that given the opportunity, he would gladly stake the vampire, but he was a vampire, so that wasn't exactly a revelation. The way that Spike had used Drusilla to violate his memories of Jenny came to him, and he closed his eyes, feeling fury so absolute that it threatened to obliterate the train of thought that had led him to consider just how much he could bring himself to hate Spike.




Caffeine wasn't the only substance that had an outsized effect on Willow. Benedryl gave her vivid dreams. Apparently exhaustion and stress had the same effect. All of her dreams were about the same thing. Sex. It was like a feedback loop, only slightly horrifying and gross and oddly funny. It was the sort of dream that had a kind of narrative. In her dream she was married to Percy, which was kind of odd, but she had a minor crush on him in the ninth grade, so not completely without a frame of reference. The little details about her fabulous life in her dream were funny. Apparently her idea of the good life included a chalet that looked a bit like the student center at the University of California-Sunnydale.

In her dream, everyone wanted her, except for Percy who really wasn't around that much or very concerned about the fact that everyone wanted her. Even in her dream he was completely self-involved. Angel wasn't there. She would have felt guilty if he was, but a lot less freaked out than she was by Buffy, who kept trying to hold her in her lap and kiss her.

And that was only slightly less of a complete freak-out than Giles coming on to her and offering to show her what magic could be like when you were writhing naked inside a caster's circle. Okay . . . that was just icky.

Spike wasn't there either, though she was waiting for him to show up.

She kept saying no, because she knew that she was supposed to. Xander wanted to spank her, which was funny and creepy and sexy all at the same time.

And then she was somewhere dark and she couldn't move. At least not a lot, but she could feel. Hands and mouths on her skin, more than one, and she didn't care who it was or wasn't. She just wanted more.

She woke up with a gasp, and for a moment she was afraid that there was something horribly wrong with her. More wrong than she ever imagined. So wrong that it made her usual worries about being a spaz seem ridiculous.

She was alone in the bed and the drapes were pulled back from the window. Her heart pounded and she sat up, feeling the bath sheet tucked around her give way, chafing the skin under her arms where the tape finish on the edge of the towel cut into her skin. Spike emerged from the bathroom, a towel draped around his hips, looking alert and alarmed.

"What is it?" he demanded.

She stared at him, baffled by the question.

She had been asleep for over eight hours. He had slept a bit and watched some television, wondering when she was going to wake up. He had started to wake her up around six, but she hadn't responded to his attempt to wake her. He decided to let her sleep. She needed it.

At sundown he took a shower and started thinking about what was next on the agenda. Calling the Watcher, possibly checking in with Georgia again, and either moving or extending their stay another day depending on what state Willow was in when she woke up. He had just finished brushing his teeth when he heard her. It was a combination of things that all spelled sudden and overwhelming fear and he came out of the bathroom ready to . . . save her.

"What is wrong?" he asked again, seeing no immediate threat.

"Bad dream," she mumbled, finding the bath sheet in the bedding and pulling it around herself before she got out of bed, stumbling a little and steadying herself with one hand on the wall before slipping around him to go into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

"Right. I was done in there," he addressed the closed door.

It popped open and she stuck her head out. "Um, I kind of have to—"

He waved at her. "Go ahead," he said, deciding that he was in favor of staying put after all. He glanced over at the bag of clothing that he had chosen to bring in from the car more or less at random, and wondered if there was something in there that she could wear. The hotel had a restaurant on the twentieth floor. He wondered if that black frock that Georgia had picked out was still in there. When Willow had left the bed he had an impression of her hair, messy and finger combed, curling a bit. He had a sudden urge to see her in the demure dress with her hair messed up.

She'd be naked under it. He had found her knickers and bra on the floor in the bathroom and tossed them in the trash, partly out of spite, but mostly because they were a bit disgusting.

He nudged the bag again with his foot and spied a bit of black fabric. Snagging it, he pulled the dress out. Unfortunately, it was a bit wrinkled he decided as he held it up. She chose that moment to leave the bathroom. She looked at the dress and at him. "It's your color," she commented, her sense of humor apparently restored.

He tossed the dress on the bed. "Put it on," he ordered brusquely, upending the bag to look for the shoes that went with it. He found the pearls too, spilling out in a tangled pile from the bottom of the bag. There was a scarf, and he knew exactly were it was. It was still in his coat pocket.

She picked up the dress and started to go back to the bathroom, probably looking for underwear. "Just put it on," he said, finally finding the irritation that had eluded him for the better part of the day.

With a modesty that was sneer-worthy, she pulled the dress on over her head and released the towel when she was covered to mid-thigh. The dress fell into place, gaping in the back where the zipper had been lowered when she took it off. She tried to find the small metal tab to the zipper to close it, but it kept slipping through her fingertips.

"I think it's stuck," she said, smoothing her hands over her hips and giving the skirt a little shake to work out the wrinkles in the knife edged pleats.

He picked up the pearls, fastening them around her throat. The zipper was stuck, leaving the fabric to gape and he probably could have zipped it up, but his hands slid inside the dress to cup her breasts instead. Dressing her up to fuck was what he was doing. If Drusilla walked in the room he would be inside her, fucking her warm, wet pussy, pulling the front of her skirt up in handfuls to offer her to Dru to share.

Willow was mostly confused. One minute he was barking at her to get dressed like he was in a hurry to get somewhere and the next his hands were inside her dress. It was too much like her dream and she started to panic when she felt his lips on her neck. In her dream, Buffy, Giles, Xander, and even Oz had been vampires. A not-so-little detail that she had tried to ignore.

He shook her. "Don't do that!" he growled at her.

"What?"

There was a hint of semi-hysterical desperation in her tone that reached him. She didn't know what he wanted her to quit doing, but she was willing to do it if he would stop mauling her. For a split second he was genuinely confused. He wasn't sure how hard he was holding her, and it loomed in his head that it was a distinct possibility that he was hurting her. He concentrated as much as he could on the way her breasts felt in his hands and realized that he was just cradling them. It was the way he was mouthing her neck. Even when he became aware of it, he couldn't stop. His tongue was palpitating the artery.

If he bit her, she would be dead in five minutes or less and he would have a day, maybe two, to wait for her to wake up again to discover what she was.

Evil and dead. Like him. Like every fledge that woke before her. He spun her around, the crepe of her skirt brushing his skin. It was a beautiful dress. The kind of thing she could have worn out to dinner or to her grave. "I was wrong," he said. "I don't want you in the dress," his weight carried her down to the bed behind them. "I just want you," he kissed her before she could say anything.

"It's you, okay?' he muttered between kisses, feeling her hands on his shoulders as she tried to put some distance between them. He knew where the scarf was and why he had kept it and he would have gotten it now to wrap around her wrists if he could have made himself stop. "The way you smell," he threaded his fingers through her hair, trying not to pull it as he nibbled on her earlobe. His hips rocked against hers, through the towel that was slowly parting and the crepe skirt that was slightly rough against his skin. "I want—"

Everything.

She was trying to catch her breath and wriggle out from under him and she was looking at him like he had said out loud what he had been thinking. It scared her? Well, of course it did. Evil soulless demon loves slightly tarnished good girl. It was the stuff that launched a thousand sappy romance novels that conveniently ignored the fact that the complete inability to share a single goal made a relationship a non-starter. Even if it wasn't precisely love, since he loved Drusilla.

He loved Drusilla, he reminded himself. Willow was just convenient and interesting and she said that she didn't hate him anymore.

"You are blaming this on me?" she wasn't scared. She was furious. "I didn't do anything! You said to put on the dress. I put on the dress," she huffed. "And then you—" she seemed to be at a loss for a way to describe what he had done. "I don't smell like whatever it is that you want."

That made him laugh. It was funny, the way she said it, the stubborn set of her mouth, the way her nose wrinkled. All of it. He lifted himself off her a bit and held her face in his hands, kissing the tip of her nose.

"You smell exactly like what I want," he told her, good humor restored. "Warm and creamy and delicious, like—"

"Pudding?" she frowned at him. "Because I'll bet the snack pak pudding was right next to the fruit cups unless you mean some kind of really gross English pudding. Giles tried to make us eat one once at Christmas," she babbled nervously.

He covered her mouth with his fingers. "Shut up," he grinned at her. "Sometimes when you start prattling, I feel like I have to do something to get you to stop."

He bent one arm to let his elbow take more of his weight and ran his index finger over her upper lip, tracing the edge of it. She started to say something and he tapped his finger lightly against her lips. "No," he shook his head. "You'll start on about the pudding again," he grumbled. "I slipped. Given your own verbal excesses, you'd think you'd give a bloke a break, but no! You taunt me with my pudding comparison," he lowered his head to nuzzle the inside of her arm, nipping at her skin with his lips.

He lifted his head. "I was going to suggest that we go out to dinner," he told her somberly. "Thought you'd like someplace posh, with a view," his eyebrows lifted. "Don't know what I was thinking. You would be worried about whether anyone could tell you weren't wearing knickers, and I'd be thinking of little else but the fact that you weren't wearing knickers."

She frowned at him, and he lifted his finger off her lips, pretty sure that he knew what she was going to say.

"I would so be wearing knick—underpants," she amended.

"I threw them out," he kissed her, thoroughly, taking his time about it, chasing her tongue with his, sliding his arm under her neck and rolling them over so she was sprawled across his chest, her bare legs tangled in his. Shoving the skirt aside, he ran his hand up the back of her leg.

When she lifted her head he used his fingertips to tickle the inside of her thigh, grunting when she squirmed and almost kneed him in the groin to get away from the tickle.

"You threw them out?" She managed to sound outraged, appalled, and worried all at the same time. "I don't have any underwear?"

The dress had ridden up and slightly to one side and her lips looked just warmed up for kissing. He put one arm behind his head, smiling at her. "Feel a little naughty?" he asked, sounding hopeful.

She frowned at him. "Not the way you mean," she grumbled. "I have more shoes than underwear. Do you have any idea how weird that is? For me?" The last she added hastily.

He shrugged, "Kidnapped by vampire," he pointed out. "The underwear situation, while dire, doesn't quite measure up."

"I wear underwear, and socks, and—"

"Right," he drawled. "You are nothing if not relentlessly wholesome. It's kind of desperate, isn't it? Who are you trying to convince? Me?" He shook his head. "Even if you tried, even if you stood in front of mirrors for hours practicing unwholesome expressions, I'm actual evil. Hmm? I'm the kind of bad that doesn't need to find a good reason to do a bad thing. Unlike you."

Willow felt like she was bracing for impact. There was a cruel comment waiting in the wings. A cutting reminder of how she had sold herself? An unwelcome observation about Oz? She didn't want to hear it. The half-unzipped dress was slipping off her shoulders. She tried to put the dress to order instead, plucking at the waist until it was more or less lying properly.

Spike's eyes narrowed. His hand moved over his chest, drawing her attention back to him. Their eyes met and held. There wasn't a lot of light, just the light from the bathroom that was spilling through the half open door and the spare light of day fading to night that managed to get in around the draperies. When his gaze moved from hers to her mouth she was in the odd position of watching him watch her. She didn't understand it. She was never going to understand how he could look at her like she was an interesting problem. His eyes closed and his hand moved lower. The towel he had wrapped around his hips had fallen open.

"Ah-ah," he scolded when he felt her uneasy movement, like she was gathering herself to bolt. His eyes opened. "Let's stay here tonight," he suggested, as if he had to talk her into it.

Willow found herself nodding. As if she had a choice in the matter. She started to open her mouth to share that idea, but he lifted an eyebrow and gave a spare shake of his head. It wasn't a lot to go on but she got the idea that he understood what she had been about to say and that he didn't want to hear it any more than she wanted to hear him say something unpleasant.

She took a deep breath. "That sounds like a good idea," she said instead.

He responded with a lazy smile. "Want me to give you a good reason to do a bad thing?"

"What kind of bad thing?" Willow shifted her weight more to her knees, on the mattress near his hip. She could push with one hand and roll and then she would be on her side of the bed.

"Me, of course," he shook his head at her, "keep up."

She had a crazy desire to laugh, and it wasn't that funny. He was making her nervous, his voice low, pitched for her to hear, as if they were at the movies or in a library.

"So pretty," he teased. "Come here, baby. Ever had a man at your mercy? Have you ever been on top, riding his cock, giving him what he's supposed to want but keeping your body covered? Cheating him of seeing you? Making him crazy for the want of seeing you? For watching his cock fill you? For watching your hips rock forward and your pretty tits sway as you arch your back?"

She stared at him, not knowing how to answer. It was sort of a question, and she knew it was an invitation as well. To do those things, with him. She wanted to break it down into parts. She had had sex without taking all of her clothes off more often that she had had it with all of her clothes off. But not the way he made it sound, like she was doing it on purpose or to make it more exciting, and it had never occurred to her that when she was having sex with Oz that he wanted more than to be close to her.

She was also appalled and fascinated by the way he talked about sex. It was about power and craving. It was politics and psychology. It was complicated. It was the unvoiced needs that she wished that Oz would just figure out that she suspected that she would have to tell him about. Not that it would be bad, to tell him, just a little embarrassing and less exciting than if he figured it out on his own. It was like a test without actual questions, and she knew it was unfair.

She was thinking about something. He could see it in the way her gaze became inwardly focused. It took her away from him for a moment, but he found that he didn't mind. The disordered bed was full of her scent and he swam in it.

She was sitting with her legs under her, knees parted, the skirt falling like the bell of a dark flower around her. He sat up. He didn't mind it that she tended to get lost in thought, but that didn't mean that he couldn't bring her attention back around to him. He slid his hand up the inside of her knee.

Her eyes flew to his face, and he nodded. "Welcome back," his hand moved up higher, feeling her tense a little. "Dinner," he reminded her. He had been talking about taking her out to dinner before they got sidetracked about her lack of underwear. "Table? Candle? Near the window," he set the scene for her. "I'd want so much to be touching you like this," he breathed. "I'd drive myself crazy thinking about how you feel in my hand,"

He sat up, uncoiling really, Willow decided as she watched him move. His shoulders rolled forward and he bent at the waist. She had plenty of time to scoot away from him. His fingers had reached the apex of her thighs, plucking at the soft curls there. His eyes closed and he ducked his head. "So soft," his tongue stole out to wet his upper lip and she found herself wetting her own lips.

His fingertips moved over her, gently slipping between her legs to be met by a rush of thick, heavy fluid that made her shift to slip away from him. She looked startled, as if she hadn't understood that she was wet until he touched her. His eyes opened, gleaming with something too close to triumph, but mitigated by pleasure. "No one is watching," he told her, and then smiled a little, picking up her hand and bringing it to his cock. His eyes narrowed as he rocked against her palm.

"I'd want you so much, but I wouldn't want anyone to see you. Wouldn't want anyone to see the way you look when I have my fingers inside you," his fingertips were pressing lightly at the opening of her body. His thumbnail scraped over her clitoris and she bit her lower lip to keep from moaning.

His eyes were warm. "Like that," he nodded. "I'd kill anyone who heard the sweet sounds you make when I'm fucking you," his fingers were entering her, and she wanted to open her legs wider and bear down on them. "Can you hear that, baby? Hear how wet you are for me?" he asked.

She wanted to cover her ears and utter nonsense sounds to drown out the wet sounds muffled by the layer of fabric that hid what he was doing from her view. His thumb moved back and forth over her clitoris, and suddenly she understood what he meant about feeling cheated.

Her hand had grown still on him and he covered it again, showing her how he wanted to be touched.

"I'd want to rip that dress off. Lay you back on the table with it spread out around you, and I'd cover your eyes, love. I wouldn't let you watch me. Couldn't bear it. It would be too much to feel you watch me while I fuck you."

She wasn't even sure how it happened. One minute she was trembling on the verge of an orgasm, trying to keep from moaning or to grab his hand and hold it as she pushed herself down on his fingers, and the next moment the dress was over her head, the half open zipper scratching her skin as it was pulled over her head, and no more than that. He left it to her to free her arms as he kissed her stomach.

She froze when she realized that he was moving her up to his mouth as he was sliding down between her legs. One of his arms was under her left leg and the other was wrapped around her hips, urging her down to his mouth. Her mind rebelled against what he wanted. It wasn't a matter of right or wrong. It was just mind bogglingly . . . rude. The chorus of a Monty Python song threatened to get stuck in her head, possibly forever.

Feeling her try to wriggle out of his grasp, he looked up at her, seeing the blush and the frank distress. "Come on," he coaxed. "It's not like I have to breath."

Seeing the resolution forming, he gave up and rolled them over so she was on her back. "Right, then," he drawled, "not the sort of girl that goes about shoving her twat in a bloke's face. Very considerate of you," he grumbled.

She finally managed to free herself from the dress and she threw it at him, annoyed at the way he was making fun of her. "Get off of me," she yowled, trying to kick him. "You are a pig."

He wrapped his arm around the leg she tried to kick him with and kissed the inside of her thigh. He paused for a moment to admire the picture she made. Messy, rumpled, disgruntled expression, and a double strand of pearls pooled against her throat, glowing against her skin. "Pearls," his tongue danced over her clitoris. "The single most erotic jewel," his tongue flicked over her lazily, making her wonder if he was really commenting on a necklace.

The thought made her squeeze her eyes shut and grab the necklace, holding it to her neck in case he got any ideas. That was not going to happen ever again. The fact that she could think of it as an ever again rather than an ever made her grimace and then gasp as he quit teasing her and did something with his mouth that made her hips lift as she looked down, unable to help herself. He changed the angle of his head and did it again. It was like a hard open-mouthed kiss with suction and one of his fingers rubbing her clitoris between flicks of his tongue. How did he even know or figure out, or think of these things?

He could tell from the way that she was lifting up and opening her legs wider that she wanted his fingers in her. She could have them, as soon as she figured out that she would have to ask. He wasn't in any hurry. It was going to go exactly as he told her, with her on top, skin shimmering with a fine sheen of sweat as she worked herself up and down on his cock, and even with her eyes shut, she would know he was watching her, watching them, joined together.

Only nothing worked out like that for him. It was all to specification. A lot of delicious work breaking down her reluctance to tell him what she wanted and then giving it to her until she was on top and moving in a way that was less about driving him insane with lust than her cramping muscles and his frustration, rapidly collapsing into her awareness of how very sweaty and uncoordinated she was.

So he sat up, and guided her arms over his shoulders, not unaware of the way she steadfastly avoided his eyes. His arms slid under her thighs, feeling the tension quivering under her skin. She was hot and wet, so he grabbed a part of the sheet and used it to blot the parts of her he could reach, kissing her shoulders and throat, rocking her against him until he could feel her clutching at him inside of her. That was when he looked at her. Really looked at her while she tried desperately not to look at him, and saw her for what she was. She wasn't confused. She wasn't in love with him. She was barely eighteen and overwhelmed and she didn't know what to do anymore.

There wasn't a damn thing he could do that wasn't going to hurt her in the end.