“So you’re the little bird that sang to Red,” Spike said as he messed with the things on Fred’s desk, having been banished to her office while the poof and witch had their little powwow with his slayer.
“There was no singing involved,” Winifred put her papers back in order as quickly as he disturbed them with that annoying new ability he had to actually interact with the world around him physically. “I needed to bounce some theories off someone with knowledge of the supernatural and you made it clear Wesley was off limits, so that left Willow.”
“Had you been paying attention, pet, you would have realized I was asking to keep my problems strictly between us,” he pressed a few keys on the keyboard of her computer and stood back to admire his work as she started shrieking at the data he’d lost with his playing. “Is that what that key does? Never really learned much of the tech stuff myself, bloody headache I’ll gladly leave to you mortals.”
“Go bother someone else,” Fred’s neat bun came undone when she righted her glasses and ran her hands through her hair in frustration. “Lorne’s afternoon is free, I believe.”
“You’re wanting to pawn me off on the big green guy with horns that likes those around him to hum him a little ditty? I thought we were mates now.”
“You say that like you don’t like Lorne. Everyone likes Lorne.”
“Fine, I’ll leave you to it,” he began leaving the room. “By the way, pet, even I know enough about computers to hit save before messing with your work. I believe it’s a simple matter of restoring the saved version, so no skin off your back.”
His chuckles as he phased through the wall off to bother someone else Fred did as suggested and flopped down in her chair with a relieved sigh at seeing all her work still there.
~*~*~
“Tell me again why she’s here,” Buffy ordered as Harmony strolled into Angel’s office with a mug of blood for the brooding man.
“She works here and is perfectly capable of answering such questions herself,” Spike’s ex-vampire lover huffed. “Not, that I really want to talk to you. I mean … still the whole you and my blondie bear thing is just … yecch.”
“His name is Spike, he is not your anything and the only thing ‘yecch’ here is you and that outfit. Crimson only goes to show how little sun you get now, but feel free to try for a tan again to pull the look off,” the slayer glared at the other woman before glancing longingly at the lovely sharp objects gleaming invitingly on the wall behind Angel’s desk.
“Only I get to kill the hired help around here, it’s one of my few perks, so get that look off your face,” Angel told his ex firmly as he drank some of his blood. “Harmony, go type or answered phones or whatever you do between filing your nails.”
“That is just the kind of hurtful statement from you that has crippled the morale of all your employees,” his assistant turned on him with a pout. “Would it kill you to just thank me for the blood and dismiss me with a wave of the hand or a smile?”
“Thank you for the blood, Harmony, now please leave before I start admiring the sharp shiny things behind me,” the boss said with a slight glare.
“I repeat,” Buffy repeated when the other woman left, “why is Harmony here?”
“I was just as surprised to see her at first as you are, but she’s been with the firm for a bit now and she’s good at her job,” Angel finished his blood. “As long as she doesn’t feel the need to chat it works.”
“Does Spike - ” the slayer broke off and bit her lip.
“I really don’t like seeing your eyes that green over Captain Peroxide, so put any jealousies to rest. He avoids her like the plague as I wish I could avoid him.”
“Are we going to get to see him anytime soon?” Dawn asked from the sofa where she sat catching up with Willow. “It is kinda why we’re here.”
Willow looked up and exchanged a few pointed glances with Angel before getting to her feet and moving to stand in front of his desk.
“We kind of have something we need to tell you about Spike before you see him,” the redhead fidgeted a bit then looked at Buffy. “I guess beating around the bush would just make it all confusing so … I’ll just,” she looked to Angel for guidance and he shrugged as if to say he wasn’t touching the topic, “I guess I’ll just come our and say it. Spike is a ghost.”
She said the last in a rush that took the sisters a minute to figure out.
“A ghost?” they both said in surprise as they sorted the truth out of Willow’s statement.
“I keep telling you all that he’s more that just a common spectral disturbance,” Winifred Burke said as she came into the office with her arms weighed down with books and papers.
“What are … isn’t he …” Willow stammered at seeing the brunette enter.
“With Lorne,” Fred waved off the redhead’s concerns then paused, “I think.”
“You think?” Angel rose. “I thought you were keeping track of him.”
“He’s a free spirit and babysitting him is not necessary. He knows to stay clear of here until they been filled in and I think, being the one to know the most about his exact situation, that I should have some part in the filling them in.”
“I think you filled in enough people when you brought Willow in knowing I wanted this kept under wraps. Here I’d been worried about Harmony spilling the beans.”
“There were no beans spilled by me. I simply approached Willow with a few hypotheticals trying get some ideas and I can’t be blames if she put two and two together and then told others.”
“Hey, you never told me it was a secret and I only told Giles,” the witch interrupted with a touch of hurt in her tone at being blamed by the scientist for the current situation.
“Enough,” Buffy got to her feet and waved them all into silence. “You say you’re the expert on this situation you start explaining it to me,” she told Fred. “Now.”
“Ok, it all started when we settled into the offices about three weeks after the destruction of the Hellmouth. Angel opened an envelope out fell the amulet Spike used to save the world and then out of the amulet popped Spike, which was really something to see I mean he just like formed out of thin air into what looked like a solid being until you realized that half of his body was stuck in the desk the amulet had been dropped on and the other half was above the desk and then all of him tried to attack Angel and just ended up going right through him, which started the whole ‘he’s a ghost’ story. The tests I’ve run on him indicate that he isn’t a ghost by paranormal standards. He’s fully visible though lacking the ectoplasmic matrix that makes most apparitions that way, has a warm body temperature rather than the cold chill normally associated with spirits and there is also a high level of brain activity, indicating that he’s actually thinking, processing and interacting with the physical world. ‘Ghosts’ rarely realize the situation they find themselves in as they’re usually bound to this realm by their memories of life and cling only to those memories. Non-corporeal is the phrase that best captures what we’ve learned of Spike. He’s here, but he’s not touchable.”
“I’m hoping there’s a version of all that for normal people to understand because the bulk just went way over my head,” the slayer said with confusion all over her face.
“Sorry, I get a little carried away,” Fred smiled at the other woman. “The last bit is the most important one for you to understand. He’s here, but not touchable.”
“If not a ghost then you’re saying he’s like the First? Like one of the First’s mind games?” Dawn asked tearfully.
“No. No mind games. Nothing like the First,” Willow assured the girl. “Well, a bit like that with the not able to touch even though you see him thing, but it’s Spike. Really Spike all he has to do is open that mouth of his and start talking and there’s no doubting that it’s him.”
“I want to see him now,” Buffy said simply.
“Buffy, you do understand what we’re saying, don’t you? You can see him, but he won’t really be there,” the redhead placed a hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“You just said it’s really Spike and that we can see and talk to him and I need to see and talk to Spike.”
~*~*~
“Show time for you, sunshine,” Lorne said with relief dripping from his words.
“Don’t pretend like you aren’t gonna miss me, green,” Spike smirked at having successfully annoyed yet another of his grandsire’s lackeys with only have the day gone by.
“As much as I miss my dear Pylean family,” the host muttered sincerely.
Pleased smirk still in place Spike left the demon’s office via the door and proceeded to take the long way to Angel’s office.
He wasn’t scared, he told himself firmly.
He was already the dead undead how much worse could it get seeing her again?
Only pain a thousand times worse than that he felt at the end of Sunnydale when his skin and muscles burnt away from bones crumbling to ash as his internal organs exploded inside him and his eyeballs melted in their sockets if she’s only here to thank him for doing the good deed then go back off on her merry way, he answered his own question.
“Would you just go in already?” Harm groaned from behind her desk. “Trust me she’s so eager to see you it’s nauseating so stop pacing and just get in there, get it over with and try not to do anything that makes me require even more therapy. My master vampire ex-boyfriend mooning over the slayer,” the git typed away disgustedly at her computer. “I cannot fully express the yecch factors of it all.”
“She’s really anxious?” he asked with a touch of nerves showing.
“Yes and disgustingly possessive as well. All I did was call you ‘blondie bear’ once and she was looking to cut my head off.”
“Can’t blame her for that, twit, I have the same bloody urge when I hear you say it,” he smiled then laughed at the book she threw at him going straight through his body to thud loudly to the floor.
While she began muttering about ‘ghosts’ and ‘idiot boyfriends’ as she clicked and clacked away on her keyboard he took a deep unnecessary breath and went to face his beloved Buffy.
~*~*~
Buffy knew the very second he stepped into the room behind her as she stood awaiting his arrival.
It wasn’t the telltale signs from the other’s in the room that tipped her off. It was her own body.
Even with him however Fred had described him to be, she still knew without looking or being told that he was near from the way her skin tingled and her heart did a little lurch in her chest.
Swallowing convulsively past the knot of nerves in her throat she turned to face him and her heartbeat slowed to a complete stop upon seeing him again before it picked up a rapid rhythm as she fought the urge to rush into his arms.
“Leave us,” she ordered without a hint of her extreme emotions showing in her firm tone.
“This is my office, Buffy, there’s no way - ”
“Then tell me where we can be alone,” she interrupted Angel with a glare.
Obviously feeling awkward in the tense situation Fred gathered up her materials and quickly left the room just as Eve entered to remind Angel of a meeting should have started in the main conference room five minutes ago.
“Fine you can use my office,” the vampire said begrudgingly as he stood and fixed his suit to go attend the forgotten meeting. “Don’t even think of trying anything with her in here,” he warned Spike on his way out.
“I’m Casper, remember you git?”
The two men glared at each other until Eve forcibly urged her boss along.
“I guess I should go see how Kennedy’s holding up in the lobby,” Willow said with nervous glances at Buffy and Spike. “Maybe I can convince security to let her up here now. Dawnie, wanna come with?”
Just then Buffy looked at her sister and saw that she was just as affected by seeing Spike again as the slayer was.
“Hey there, nibblit,” he said quietly with a smile at the girl he’d just noticed.
Dawn gasped at the endearment she hadn’t heard in so long and her eyes watered as she rushed forward to hug the man as Buffy was longing to do. When the rushing teenager rushed right through her target and clutched only air Willow and the slayer both gasped.
“Sorry about that, pet,” Spike watched the girl whip back around to face him with a look of horror on her face. “Wasn’t expected a hug.”
“I,” twin tears began rolling down from her eyes, “I forgot I couldn’t touch you. I didn’t think you’d look so touchable and I’d forget you’re not touchable.”
Before Willow could try comforting Dawn or the girl could flee as she clearly wanted to, Spike reached out and wiped at the tears on her face.
“Let you in on a little something, nibblit. You may not be able to touch me, but I can touch you so how’s about we try that hug again?”
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