Author's Chapter Notes:
Once upon a time, Schehrezade told me that she absolutely cannot stand the phrase "Tiny Hands." She said they made her think of little demonic hands, which of course made me think of Scary Movie II ("Take my good hand!" Eek!) Needless to say, a borderline crack!fic was born. Schez got it for Christmas (I made her beta her own present, how crass was that?), so the rest of you get it for... a very, very belated Christmas. Yeah. Anyway, the name of the game was to either say or reference the words "tiny hands" as many times as possible within the bounds of an otherwise sane plot. Enjoy!
Buffy didn’t know much about the Havershams. She knew their names were Edna and Maxwell. She knew when they were born and when they had died. She even knew that they had been Christians, or so the carvings seemed to indicate. Past that, she was pretty much clueless.

Well, there was one more thing.

She knew that the Havershams had the best tombstone in Restfield Cemetery.

It was tall with a broad top, curved gently and flanked with stone urns that usually held fresh flowers. Buffy could sit in the smooth dip separating the two names, leaning against one of the urns or swinging her feet lazily in front of the carved crosses and ivy. It was even well tended, free from the moss, dirt, and lichens that covered the older grave markers and crypts in the graveyard.

The fact that it was on the tallest hill in the cemetery, and that it sat square in the center of a wide clearing was nice too. No sneaking surprises for this slayer. A demon would have to be pretty small to be able to creep up on her unawares.

Comfortable, with roses and a commanding view of the high ground: that was the Havershams’ grave.

Usually, she would sit on the tombstone for a quick rest during her patrols, but this night, she had been perched there for pushing a solid hour. With her life seemingly crumbling around her, it was as good a place as any to sit and think.

And boy howdy, was there a lot of thinking to do.

It was Christmas Eve.

She should have been home, helping her mother wrap presents and keeping Dawn out of trouble, but the holiday spirit just wasn’t with her this year. Every time she looked at Joyce, her eyes were drawn to the scarf her mother used to cover the bald spot from her surgery. Whenever Dawn’s antics started to drive her around the bend, Buffy remembered the uber-skank who wanted to jam her pseudo-little sister into some kind of mystical lock. Giles was being stressful in his normal, the-sky-is-falling, watchery way. Her friends weren’t being any help either. Xander just looked at her sadly, and Willow alternated between sympathetic silence and overly enthusiastic suggestions that talking about Riley might make her feel better. Anya, on the other hand, seemed to go on for hours on her ex’s absence, while Tara just blushed and avoided the subject altogether.

And the less said about Spike’s part in the whole affair, the better.

Buffy didn’t want to talk about Riley. She mostly hoped he developed some kind of fungal infection down in South America. Maybe Montezuma’s Revenge, or trench rot, or whatever. Something itchy and incurable.

And so she had run, grabbing her jacket and fleeing her house. After a few dustings, she found herself in Restfield, left leg swinging slowly over the side of the Havershams’ tombstone while she gazed at the stars, which seemed unusually bright away from the street lamps and innumerable Christmas lights decking the streets of Sunnydale.

She twirled her stake in her right hand, spinning it and rolling it between her fingers. It felt comfortable, familiar in her calloused hands. Suddenly, the smoothly carved wood flew out of her grasp, clattering loudly against the carved marble of her seat before falling onto the wet grass. Buffy glared at it, as if the polished bit of oak had betrayed her somehow.

She never dropped her stakes, well almost never, and only when she was really distracted.

Grumbling, the slayer dropped down off the headstone and bent low to pick up her weapon. When she stood again, stake safely in hand, she caught a glimpse of something moving through the forest of stone monuments down the slope of the hill.

She was immediately on her guard, eyes trying to pierce the darkness. Whatever it was, it had been small and pink, or was it flesh-colored? Her night vision was keen, but colors were sometimes iffy with only the moon to light them.

Buffy crept down the hill, keeping her eyes trained on the tombstone where she had seen the flash of color disappear. When she caught sight of it again, a few rows down and moving fast, she broke into a run. Whatever it was, it was seriously booking it across the cemetery.

And it slithered.

Slithering was never good, and Buffy scowled to herself as she ran. With her luck, this thing was some kind of mini Spawn of Sobe, or whatever that snake demon had been called.

The slayer caught her first good glance of the little demon when it crossed one of the lit trails in the cemetery. It was about as long as her arm, peach colored with little brown spots, like freckles. There were things sticking out of its front that looked kind of like tentacles, but when it pulled around, rearing up like an angry snake, Buffy realized they were fingers. Perfect little fingers with tiny fingernails.

“Woah!” She skidded to a halt when the ‘palm’ of the tiny hand split open vertically, exposing rows of needle-sharp teeth. Buffy danced back when the thing struck at her, spitting saliva from its maw. The pavement sizzled where the spittle hit the concrete.

The slayer squeaked in indignation when a little glob of spit landed on her chunky leather boots. She shook her foot, and dragged it awkwardly against the grass. She got the caustic goop off of her shoe, but not without scuffing the slick leather around the burned spot. In the meantime, the snaky arm thing had taken off again, slithering into the next section of tombstones.

Buffy was livid. The last thing she needed to cap off the holiday season was to have her third, no second, favorite boots destroyed by a Lubriderm model from hell. “Hey!” She took off running after the thing again. “Get back here so I can kick your… cuticles!”

The fact that she was literally talking to the hand was filed away for future mockery.

Buffy took up the chase again, dashing through the rows of graves after the fleeing demon hand. She soon found herself entering a part of the cemetery she would have rather avoided. Spike’s crypt was nearby.

When the hand demon took a sudden turn to the left, Buffy’s scowl deepened. ‘Nearby’ was starting to get closer with every step. She was forced to pull her chase up short when the wriggly arm-thing slithered through a crack and disappeared into the bleached menace’s crypt. If Spike had something to do with these tiny demons, well, paying her back for her ruined boots was going to be the least of his worries.

That line of reasoning stopped dead when she started noticing the ground around her. Bits of paper, everything from thin book velum to brightly colored magazine print, littered the ground. Strewn amongst the shredded scraps were sizzling pieces of torn flesh. The slayer’s stomach clenched. The torn flesh could belong to anyone, from the Thing clones to Spike himself to… Oh no, Dawn.

The crash of broken furniture and an explosive curse from inside of the crypt sent the slayer into action. With her usual tact, Buffy kicked in the crypt’s door, ready to kick either vampiric ass or slithery knuckles, whichever the situation demanded. She skidded to a halt, mouth dropping open, at the sight that met her.

Spike, armed with only a ridged mallet that looked suspiciously like a meat tenderizer and his own bared fangs was fighting off a small army of grasping, tiny hands.

The vampire looked up, yellow eyes wide in surprise. “Slayer, what’re you doin’…” He cut off with an angry growl when one of the demonettes struck at him, latching onto the ankle with its vertically slit mouth, grasping fingers clinging to the laces of his much abused combat boot like obscene mandibles. He shook his foot violently, dislodging his tiny attacker and sending it sailing across the room. It hit the far wall with a sickening splat. “Never mind, jus’ help me kill the damned things.”

Buffy bristled at his commanding tone, but on the other hand, demons… slayer… She sighed in melodramatic irritation before jumping towards the closest tangle of slithering demons, which seemed to be attacking an old TV Guide. “What did you do to piss these things off?” she demanded, stabbing at them ineffectually with her stake.

“Manubrians eat paper,” he said between emphatic stomps. “Can’t help it if I’m the only literate resident of Restfield.” Down came the meat tenderizer, splattering one tiny hand across the rock ledge framing one of the crypt’s barred windows.

“I don’t think Penthouse counts as literature,” she snapped, sucking in a sharp breath when one of the little menaces spat stinging venom on her wrist. Her booted heel finished that one. Changing tack, she dropped her stake and spun to grab an ornate wall sconce, four of the five candles lit and flickering in the crypt’s low light.

She twirled and jabbed, using the wrought iron pole like a quarterstaff. The metal curlicues that made up the base started to look pretty worse for wear as the fight dragged on, edges melting and pock-marked by the Manubrians’ acidic saliva.

Spike’s hammer fared even more poorly.

He finally had to abandon the thing, and why he had it in the first place was beyond Buffy’s reasoning abilities, and instead picked up an empty bottle of Jack Daniels. It shattered loudly when he struck two of the closest demons, fending them off of a pile of magazines and record albums that the vampire was steadfastly guarding in the far corner. The broken neck of the bottle was put to even better use, chopping and stabbing the tiny hands into submission.

Buffy twirled the sconce around, bringing the guttering flames to bear and smiled nastily when she noticed that the Manubrians shied away from the lit candles. She thrust the top at the largest concentration of writhing hands, noticing as she did that two tiny eyes reflected red in the light from the tips of what should have been their index and ring fingers.

Ug, gross.

“Why couldn’t you have called a demonic exterminator?” she asked Spike, who had grabbed a pair of the slithering arm-snakes by their tails and was swinging them against the wall with probably more vigor than was strictly necessary.

He grinned, arching an eyebrow at her without ever breaking pace. “Didn’t know you’d hung out a shingle, Slayer.”

In petty revenge, Buffy swung the sconce wide, using the flames to herd one of the smaller groups towards the already hard-pressed vampire.

“Oi! Not funny!” He grabbed the nearest candle and threw it into the mass of writhing, tiny hands, which scattered, little fingernails scratching against the stone floor.

Buffy batted her eyelashes coyly, thrusting the candles at the few demonettes that had already started to flee. “What’s wrong, Spike? I thought you liked a good fight.”

“What’s wrong,” he grunted, hooking one of the tiny hands with a booted foot and sending it flying across the room, “Is that most of these records are a damned sight older than you are. And much more pleasant to listen to.”

The slayer would have retorted, but one of the fleeing demons somehow managed to snare itself in the torn cuff of her pants’ cuff. She squealed in a very unslayer-like manner as the flailing arm-thing coiled around her ankle tightly. She dropped the sconce, hands flying to her foot to tear the thing off. The clattering iron and candles sent sparks flying towards Spike.

“Kind of flammable here,” he snarled, but he didn’t seem too irritated as the burning embers also managed to chase away the closest of the demonettes.

The vampire dipped low and picked up the sconce himself, and used it to finish the rout, herding the final few Manubrians out of the crypt’s door.

Buffy managed to rip the last one off of her ankle and slung it against the television where it made a dull splattering sound before sliding to the floor below. The fingers on the tiny hand clenched spasmodically one final time before going limp.

She looked up and was surprised to find a pale hand waiting expectantly in front of her face. She grabbed it, and Spike pulled her to her feet. “Never a dull moment, eh slayer?” He shook away his vampiric ridges and grinned.

“Well, if the knuckle draggers on campus can throw Christmas parties, I guess the even less human ones should be expected to do the same.” Buffy’s voice was derisive, but the fight had managed to stave off the worst of her depression, at least for the moment. Hell, in comparison to earlier, she was feeling downright jolly. Nothing like a good slay to make the slayer feel benevolent. “Here, let me help you clean up.”

Spike gawked, but when she actually stooped to pick up the closest stack of disheveled papers, he flew into action. “That’s all right, slayer, it’s not so bad.”

Buffy looked around the crypt. Battered and torn demonette corpses littered the room, and it looked like a stationary store and a magazine stand had exploded on one another. “It’s no big; call it a really cheap Christmas present.”

She meant it as a joke, but Spike’s mobile face froze solid at her words. “Demon here. Don’t do Christmas.”

Well, she certainly wasn’t going to have her charity stomped on by the chipped terror. “Fine, be that way,” she snapped, but before she turned to leave, she noticed that Spike had pinned a small red envelope under his left foot and was trying to discreetly push it under his armchair. “What’s that?” she demanded, irritation creeping back into her mind.

“What’s what, slayer?” It was criminal that a vampire could look so sweetly innocent. His wide, blue eyes only managed to irritate Buffy further.

Her hands snapped out, lightning fast, and knocked Spike off balance. While he was staggering away, she grabbed the offending envelope. The names on the front ruined the last vestiges of her good mood. “This is pretty low, even for you,” her voice was ice.

A look of panic, quickly hidden under an indifferent mask, crossed Spike’s features. The expression was nearly as condemning as the words on the paper. To Buffy and Mom, From Dawn. Merry Christmas!

She was about to launch into a long, and probably pointless diatribe on the subject of stealing Christmas presents when something on the envelope made her pause. She snapped her mouth shut and took a closer look at the paper. She had been forced to sit at the kitchen table, taking turns with her mom and sister, signing Christmas cards for long enough to recognize Dawn’s handwriting.

And this looked nothing like that loopy script.

Another dark idea crossed her mind, and she tore the envelope open, ignoring Spike as he scrambled to his feet, sputtering in indignation. The torn envelope fell to the floor, forgotten. Her eyes opened in surprise and confusion. The slip of paper in her hands wasn’t a curse, a death threat, or any of the other things she had expected.

It was a gift certificate for three people to spend the day at Spa Martinique.

Buffy stared in disbelief. Spa Martinique was one of the most exclusive resort spas on the West Coast. She didn’t want to think about how much the slip of slightly chewed, acid pocked paper in her hands had cost.

“What is this?” she asked, her voice trying for threatening, but sounding more bewildered than anything else.

Spike glared at her, clenching his fists at his sides. “Don’t know, don’t care. The Bit musta left it laying around.”

Buffy looked at him with eyes that spoke volumes. “Don’t jerk me around, Spike. Dawn can’t afford this.”

The vampire’s eyes, which could be so expressive, were flat and blank. “Told you, I don’t know.” Each word was ground out slowly and distinctly. Each word was a damned lie.

“Dawn didn’t get this. Mom didn’t get this. I sure as hell didn’t get this.” She waved the gift certificate at him menacingly. “That leaves you and Kaiser Soze on my list of usual suspects.”

“Fine, if I bought the damned thing, then give it back.” Spike reached out to snatch the piece of paper away, but Buffy was too quick, clutching the slip of paper to her chest. It was a ticket to Spa Martinique for God’s sake.

“Why?” Buffy finally whispered. “Why would you get this for us?”

The vampire had the audacity to look embarrassed. “Look, your mum’s been right good to me of late, and your sis at least has to common decency to pretend that I’m scary.”

That had the sound of honesty, twisted as the idea was that Spike had been bonding with her family, but there was still something missing. “And what about me?”

Embarrassment turned into panic, quickly hidden again under that smooth, indifferent mask. “Didn’t want to blow my cover, and the Nibblet has enough sense to keep her mouth shut if an extra pressie shows up under the tree.”

Well, that was plausible, but still, you just didn’t panic like that over re-busting an already busted plan. “Dawn’s not always known for her sisterly consideration, you’re gonna have to do better than that.”

Spike’s jaw clenched, sending his angular cheekbones into sharp relief. “If I said something to the effect of ‘honor amongst enemies,’ would you just take it and go away?”

Suddenly, popping the vampire in the nose seemed like a really, really obnoxious way of dealing with the situation, especially when he was still dusting bits of chewed paper and tiny hand parts off of his much abused jacket. Reasonable then? She could do reasonable. “That’s the lamest explanation I’ve ever heard.”

“Fine,” he snapped, eyes glittering with barely suppressed gold. “You don’t want it? Give it back then!”

“No!” The word was out before she could help it. “Besides, you probably stole it!” The non sequiter sounded silly even to Buffy herself.

“One, what’re you gonna do? Return it?” He smirked when her fingers closed instinctively over the paper. “And two, no I didn’t.”

“Then how did you afford this, you… you… undead freeloader!” Buffy knew she was acting like Dawn on one of her more trying days. The knowledge that she was being immature and unreasonable just made her even more irritated.

“I used my evil knowledge of the dark arts to call in an old poker debt.”

Buffy opened her mouth to voice another objection.

“From a human… Who can still feed his wife and children, and probably a few mistresses on the side… Who doesn’t eat babies, or sacrifice puppies, or whatever else you might try suggesting.” Spike’s face took on a musing expression. “Wait, he is a divorce attorney, so that might not be true after all.”

“But…” Buffy started.

“Are you seriously going to cheat your mum and sis out of a spa day because your gift horse has fangs?” he finally snapped, fists clenched in rage.

Buffy flushed red, though if from embarrassment or anger, she couldn’t tell. “That’s not fair,” she said with a tense, defensive voice.

“Yeah?” Spike kicked at the closest dead Manubrian, sending its tiny hand flopping obscenely. “Life isn’t fair. Unlife either. Figured that out ‘bout a century ago. Seems like you shoulda seen that particular light back when you got yourself all chosen.” He sounded so tired, like all the anger had just drained out of him. “Take the paper and piss off. Got a crypt needs cleaning.”

Buffy looked around the room; it really did look like a war zone. She smoothed the crumpled edges of the gift certificate and bit her lower lip. It was a very generous present. And it was Christmas after all.

“I’ve got fresh envelopes back at my house.” She finally said. At Spike’s confused glance, she continued in a rush. “And mom said she’d wait up with hot chocolate. I bet she’d let you borrow a mop or something…” she trailed off, feeling stupid. He probably had a mop of his own, stashed right behind the… “Um, isn’t that Xander’s lamp?”

“No,” the vampire blustered. “Found it in the dump.”

Yeah right. Buffy let out a long breath. “Look, truce? On account of Christmas and shared paper peril?” She held out a hand, palm up.

Spike looked at it for a second, as if suspecting some kind of trap. He finally took it, cool fingers slipping into her own.

“Truce,” he said as they shook on the deal, but his voice was pinched. There was something new in his eyes. Buffy just knew that if she could figure out what that expression meant, then the vampire’s odd behavior of late would make a lot more sense. Unfortunately, he dropped his eyes before she could put her finger on it. “On account of Christmas and all...”

Buffy realized that she was still holding Spike’s hand, at that the connection was the source of the vampire’s fascination. She slid her hand free and bent low to scoop up her abandoned stake. When she looked up again, that same look was back in Spike’s eyes.

She filed away her questioning thoughts as the two of them left the ransacked crypt. She’d figure out why he was acting so weirdly eventually. Maybe even tonight if she was lucky.

Something about her mother’s hot chocolate made people chatty.





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