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Chapter 4

~~~

Willow was getting ready to go to the crypt and unlock Oz. He had been acting all funny lately and she wanted to treat him to some special lovin’ time before classes. She hadn’t liked the vibes she had been sensing between her sweet wolfie and the slutty singer who had suddenly plopped herself down in the middle of their lives. "Veruca! Who names their kid ‘Veruca’? Sounds like the sound a horn would make on one of those old cars…veruca, veruca, coming through!" she muttered aloud. She didn’t notice the odd looks a couple of early risers gave her in passing.

"Um, Will, you might want to keep those inner dialogues inner,” Buffy suggested with a smile. "I don’t think you want Oz to think you’re jealous of that girl or anything."

"I’m not jealous! She’s just pushy, that’s all. Hey, Buffy, want to do the crazy and double at the Bronze tomorrow night? That cute TA Riley looks like he’s interested, if you want to give romance another try."

"Yuck, no with a side of no! Riley grades my papers! It’d be like dating my teacher, or Giles or something. Can I just say ewwwwwww? Besides, I think he’d get fired if he dated a student." Buffy shivered at the thought of going down that road.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot that part. Gee, Buffy, I just want you to find someone who’ll make you happy again. All that stuff Parker said about commitment taking the fire out of a romance just proved he’s the poophead we called him. Just look at me and Oz! Lots of fire there, you betcha. Regular inferno of fiery hotness." Willow sounded more like she was trying to convince herself with her insistence. "Come with us anyway. Lots of guys there to dance with. You’ll have to beat them off with a stick!"

"Thanks, but there’ll be no beating off for Buffy for a while. I have a couple of papers due and the stick I’ll be using will be a stake on patrol." Buffy sighed in frustration. "I think all I am is the Vampire Slayer sometimes. I mean, I’m supposed to have a shorter lifespan than cheese snacks. Maybe I’m not supposed to have a love life? I turn men into demons when I do sleep with them. Okay, I’m the Slayer and I’m supposed to dust the demons, not sleep with them. I get that. Still Angel was so dreamy, so romantic, and then when I finally go for it, he turns into a monster. Then Parker turns into another kind of monster and I can’t even kill his kind ‘cause he’s human…sorta. I’m cursed!" Buffy looked like she was about to cry.

"You’ve just had some bad luck, Buffy. You’ll see, everything will change for the better. Maybe Parker was right about one thing. It doesn’t have to always be serious, I guess. Just have a good time and don’t look for the true love and maybe it will find you,” Willow advised.

Willow headed off in the direction of Oz’s crypt and morning smoochies while Buffy turned towards the lecture hall for another exercise in boredom. Maybe Willow was right, maybe a night of dancing was just what she needed. No strings attached, no hearts engaged…just feeling free and young and alive.

~*~

Several hours later, Willow still hadn’t returned to the dorm room from her trip to see Oz, and Buffy was not in the mood to work on any of her assignments. It wasn’t that she wanted to be like Faith and have no feelings for her sex partners at all, but she had to feel a little jealous at the carefree attitude of her sister slayer. Of course that attitude had led to the coma Faith was currently in, but still…maybe it was time to loosen up a bit herself.

Buffy picked up one of Giles’ musty old reference books that had been left over from a recent research project with the gang. She leafed through the book until her eye was caught by the section dealing with vampire sexuality. "Never had a chance to really find out with Angel. He was so careful and tender and then…,” Buffy sighed.

She began to read the anecdotes about vampire’s stamina and the strength of their sex drive. "Hmm…Watcher porn, who’d have thought?"

She continued reading about rituals and unusual behaviors like claiming and so on. "I wonder if Angel ever claimed Darla? They were together a long time. Okay, not thinking about ex-boyfriends and their vamp-ho sires. Besides, Angel can’t claim anybody now." Part of Buffy was pleased to know the curse would always stand in the way of Angel making that kind of commitment to anyone that wasn’t her.

Suddenly Willow came into the room crying and shaking. Buffy tossed the book to one side and rushed to her best friend’s side. "God, Will, what’s wrong?"

"Oz. He was all wolfy and she was all wolfy and they were all together. He said he had to lock her up, but why did he have to make it the same cage?" Willow began to steadily weep as she told her story in small pieces in between heart-wrenching sobs.

By the time the whole tale had been told, Buffy was arming herself for a werewolf hunt. This Veruca was toast. Buffy might not be able to do much about her own sorry love life, but this chick was so going down.

~*~

Chapter 5

~*~

Spike woke to a white world of pain. The last memory he had was watching that bitch of a Slayer take down a vamp. His head felt like there was a small man with a pickaxe in the back of his skull trying to dig out. He seemed to be in a cage with one glass wall and nothing but sterile medical white for the rest. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in at least a month and just as his stomach growled in complaint, a packet of lovely red dinner dropped from the sky.

"Don’t drink it! It’s drugged," came a voice from somewhere to Spike’s left as he faced the glass wall.

In a few shared sentences, Spike learned he was a captive being used as a lab rat and that starvation looked to be on the schedule if he didn’t want all sorts of nasties to be done to him. This just would not do at all. No Master Vampire was going to go out like a Rhesus monkey or guinea pig!

~*~

A simple thing to trick keepers when they underestimate your intelligence! Fake a drugged feeding and escape when the pillocks come to take you to Dr. Mengele’s Operating Theater for the Heartbeat Challenged. Having another vamp along to throw to the wolves when needed was a plus.

The only real problem came when Spike popped his head out into the open air only to discover it was still daylight. After a quick dash to the trees nearby and much cursing from the hungry, smoking vampire, Spike was feeling more like himself again. He headed for the caves where he and Harmony had nested before he’d thrown her out. With any luck, the bubble brain would be halfway to bloody Paris by now and he’d have a place to hide out until he could track down the Slayer and get some serious payback.

~*~

“I know, I know, I should have danced with Riley last night. A dance isn’t like dating or anything. I still had a good time. Why are you all ‘go, Riley’ all of a sudden, Will? I thought we decided that whole idea was one big ewwwwww?" Buffy and Willow were going over their memories of the party at the Lowell house the night before.

"I’m not really. He did stop by and ask about you though. You know, ‘what’s Buffy really like’, that kind of thing. I told him you like cheese," Willow admitted.

"That’s why he had that lame pick-up line! I thought he was just stupid." Buffy smiled. "You holdin’ up okay, Will? I wish I could say something that would help with the whole Oz thing. At least he got rid of Veruca so I didn’t have to. He’ll be back, Willow. He loves you."

"I know he does. Just like Angel loves you. And, just like Angel, Oz left for my own good. Stupid men!" Willow looked ready to cry again, much to Buffy’s alarm.

"Chocolate! Lots and lots of chocolate for you, young lady. We’ll fill you so full of Godiva you won’t even remember why you were craving the yummy goodness that is chocolate." Buffy tugged on Willow’s arm and headed for the door.

"Men are such stupid…um…stupids. All ‘it’s for your own good, honey. It’s all for you, baby.’ Then they leave. Like that’s gonna help anything! Put a guy on a white horse and all he does is ride off into the sunset on it!" Willow muttered to Buffy’s full agreement.

The two preoccupied girls nearly crashed into the angry, black-clad vampire as they rounded the corner of the hallway. "Spike! What the hell are you doing here?" Buffy reached into her jacket for a stake only to come up empty-handed.

"Slayer! Thought you’d seen the last of me, didn’t you?” Spike spat. “Ha! The Big Bad is back and mad as hell. What’re you goin’ on about with the secret lab? Honest stakin’ beneath you now? The whole ‘One Girl in Each Generation’ gig get to be more than you can handle?"

Buffy looked at the clearly irate vampire in confusion. "Did you finally lose all your marbles like that old girlfriend of yours, Spike? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t leave right now, I won’t even bother with a stake…I’ll just rip your head off and leave your dust for campus maintenance to vacuum up." Buffy hoped the bluff would disguise her weaponless state from her powerful foe. "I’ll give you a one-time pass because you’re clearly not in your right mind, what with the raving and boinking Harmony and all. Now move it, before I change my mind!"

"Don’t think so, ducks. Got a headache here says you owe me a tussle." With that, Spike lunged at Buffy, only to fall to the ground screaming while he clutched his head.

Buffy used the opportunity to grab Willow’s arm and run from the hallway back to their dorm room. Spike would need an invite to get in there and she had plenty of stakes in the kit under her bed.

"Not playin’, Slayer. I’m done with tapdancin’ around you. Next time we meet up, I’m plannin’ a Buffy buffet of all I can drink. You’d best watch over your shoulder, pet." Spike got to his feet, hit the dorm room door with his fist, then swirled around, a blur of black, and headed out of the dorm.

"What was that all about?" Willow was terrified and confused at the same time. "I mean, why was Spike all ‘aghhhhhhhh’ and writhing on the floor? Why’s he so mad at you, for that matter? I know you guys are all mortal enemies and all that, but usually he’s not actually mad."

"I have no clue. He was really weird, huh? Yeah, we’re always talking about killing each other and then usually just fight to a draw. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this mad at me though. Maybe he really has gone crazy. We’d better warn Giles." Buffy loaded up on stakes, just in case, and they headed out once more after making sure Spike was really gone.

~*~

"Bloody slayer, actin’ all innocent! Bitch had to be behind this. Can’t even kill a soddin’ wimp like that…,” Spike grumbled as he watched his intended dinner run screaming down the alley to safety. Spike looked down at the bag of comic books the pimple-faced boy had been clutching and sneered in distaste. As he kicked at the sack he noticed one and picked it up, tucking it into his duster’s inner pocket. "Least his taste wasn’t all bad. That Wolverine’s bloody brilliant."

Something was terribly wrong. Every time Spike tried to feed, he was brought to his knees or worse with what felt like enough current to light a small city ratcheting about his skull. He wasn’t completely sure how long he’d been held captive underground, but the last meal he remembered was that streetwalker in L.A. he’d drained on his way out of town. He consoled himself with the legend that vampires could not really starve to death, even though he remembered watching Angelus exsanguinate one minion back in the day. "He bloody dusted, now didn’t he?" Spike muttered in horror at the thought. "Gotta find some bloke to eat before I become the second vamp known to go that way."

To a hungry vamp, this particular night was as endless as it was frustrating. In all his years as a vamp, he’d never had any problem feeding himself. Even in the sodding wheelchair he’d had to do most of it himself, Dru being all preoccupied and all. Something was radically wrong now and it was looking more and more like a permanent situation.

~*~

"Giles, it was weird. Spike was really pissed off about something. He was ranting about some secret lab I supposedly had." Buffy brought her Watcher up to speed on the hallway meeting with Spike from earlier.

"Indeed, while Spike has tried to kill you often enough, the extreme anger is unusual. I wonder if this secret lab he was going on about has anything to do with the camouflaged soldiers that have been plaguing you here of late? Pity we can’t have a civil conversation with him on that." Giles looked pensive.

"Spike and civil are just not mixy in the best of times. Just when you think you can have a nice sympathetic conversation with him, he holds a broken bottle up to your face!" Willow reminded the pair of her past encounter with the drunken vampire.

"Quite. I must say that it makes me more than a bit nervous knowing that Spike got as close to your dorm room as he did. With him knowing your room, he could wait to ambush you in the hallway at any time. Perhaps we can find a way to put up wards on the building itself to prevent his access." Giles knew that Buffy was not always on alert and that Spike could easily take one of her friend’s hostage to lure her to his clutches.

"Well, I’m on to him now, Giles. No more surprises in the hallway from him! What about that fit he threw though? He was grabbing his head and screaming like a banshee. What kind of crazy causes that?" Buffy asked.

"What you’ve described doesn’t fit any behavior I can easily call to mind. I agree he appears to be highly unstable. Perhaps you should avoid him for now until we know a bit more. He has always proved to be difficult to kill, much more so now with the unpredictable behavior you’ve described." Giles headed for the bookshelf to begin researching mental disorders in the undead.

Buffy looked at the calendar on Giles’ desk and zeroed in on the red-lettered holiday coming soon. "So…Mom’s out of town for the holiday and I’m thinking we all can use one of those warm Hallmark moments in our Thanksgiving memory book this year. How are you with roasting pans, Giles?" Buffy asked her bewildered Watcher.

~*~

Chapter 6

~*~

Thanksgiving was turning out to be as traumatic as a Buffy birthday party! Maybe it was just Buffy and ALL special occasions that didn’t go well together. Willow had single-handedly ruined the entire holiday by reminding them all about the horrible treatment endured by the Native Americans at the hands of their conquerors. Buffy hated having to think of the gray areas that opened up when having to fight the angry Chumash spirit.

Speaking of gray areas, Spike had shown up on Giles’ doorstep asking for asylum…and not the mental hospital kind either. It seemed that the lab he had ranted on about was a real one and they had put something in Spike’s brain that wouldn’t let him kill. He was looking more like the walking dead than ever by the time he swallowed his pride and came to them for help. Since pride was all he had to swallow in a very long time, he was willing to let them tie him up until they felt safe in his presence. With Spike now the non-kill variety of vampire, Buffy was faced with confusion in how to treat him. Gray areas sucked!

It was hard enough remembering vampires were evil undead and in need of a staking when they were hotties like Angel and Spike, but when they weren’t a threat anymore, it got really confusing. Buffy shook her head to clear it of the thought that she had put hottie and Spike in the same sentence. Still, seeing him there all tied up like a pretty, sexy present DID give a girl a stray thought or two.

Buffy had the feeling that this truce might just lead to a whole new world of bad! The sooner Spike was grade A certified safe and sent on his merry way, the better for Buffy’s comfortable black and white world where the only good vamp was a dusted vamp and the only exception to that rule lived in L.A.

~*~

Spike hated playing nice with the children. The sickly boy was annoying as hell even as he lay there with every disease known to modern man! And as for the waffling about how to fight off the ghostie, Spike was still rolling his eyes over that. You couldn’t win a war when you sympathized with the enemy! How did these people stay alive?

They had fed him pigs’ blood and he had been hungry enough to get past gagging at the taste of it. He was so empty it was going to take a while to get back to full strength.

He finally realized that the Slayer and her little crew of wannabes had not been involved with the underground Nazi camp. 'Actually,' Spike thought, ‘seem to remember some plans in German when those goose-steppers captured me during the Second Great War. Something about experimentin’ on the undead. Wonder if this lot’s just a continuation of that bit of nastiness. Lots of Sig Heil boys made it over here when all the shootin’ was done. Play nice with the enemy and see what happens? Underground secret labs and vampnapping!’ Spike kept his thoughts to himself, knowing he’d find precious little sympathy.

The only thing worse than watchin’ the little group play at being the Walton family was listenin’ to the redhead go on and on about the soddin’ Indians. Then again, that was better than her going on about her missing boyfriend. Humans were a pain in the arse. If he could just figure out how to score enough blood to feed properly, he’d snap the stupid wooden chair they had tied him to thinking it would stop him from attacking them. ‘Bloody idiots, like a chair and rope’d do the job! Good thing for them I need to fill my empty or I’d show them what a royally pissed off Big Bad looks like,’ he thought with a smirk.

Of course, seeing them all hiding Peaches being there from the Slayer was worth the price of admission alone! Spike would have told her himself if he’d known how hard she would have taken it. ‘Stupid pillock to turn his back on a sweet package like the Slayer,’ Spike thought, then tried to erase that thought in horror. He was going to have to find a way to get far from these humans or he would become completely corrupted!

~*~

Just one week later, Spike was willing to be anywhere but where his blonde tormentor was, food or no food. He couldn’t get the look on her face out of his head as she had leapt up yelling, “Spike lips! Lips of Spike!" as if he had some contagious disease. To overhear her in the kitchen later had put the icing on the cake. “The bad boy thing? Over it! I totally get it. I’d be really happy to be in a nice relationship with a decent, reliable….”

‘Well,’ Spike thought, ‘I’m bloody reliable, been known to be decent a time or two as well.’ He was surprised how much Buffy’s reaction to the spell’s ending had hurt. He really hated the witch right now.

Spike couldn’t remember ever being as happy and fulfilled as he had been under that bloody spell. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was why it had felt so much like love, real love. The Slayer had felt it too. According to the witch, the part of the spell that affected them called for them to get married, not fall in love. There was not a question in Spike’s mind that he had loved Buffy at that time, more than he’d ever loved Dru even. He would have willingly died for her then.

The feeling had left him on a high, so high that the fall back to earth when Willow ended the spell had nearly crushed the life from him. He hadn’t stopped thinking about how bloody good the Slayer…Buffy…had felt in his arms. She had the most kissable mouth he had ever tasted and had shown signs that she would be a passionate lover given the time and right circumstances.

Her buddy, the boy with the insulting attitude, kept making comments, making it sound revolting how he and Buffy had been so in love and in tune with each other. Everybody got on board that particular train! Even Spike had pretended to be disgusted with his spell-induced love fest. Truth was, though, Spike missed the warm bundle of Slayer on his lap.

Had her hair always been that soft and golden? Had she always had such expressive eyes? He remembered growing hard watching her dance that first time he saw her. "Okay, part of me always knew she was a looker," he admitted to himself. "Still, never knew she’d be so perfect a fit. Bet she’d be a perfect fit in every way too. Damn Willow for casting the spell and double damn her for ending it! Coulda at least let me try the Slayer out first. Get the bint out of my system and all." One good shag and Spike was sure he’d get over his new interest in all things Buffy.

At least the Watcher left him untied now. Those chains in the tub were more than uncomfortable, they were degrading. Spike remembered Buffy coming into the bathroom, cup of blood in hand, and flaunting that neck of hers…that long, beautiful, neck. Suddenly Spike shook his head in horror to realize his desire had been to kiss and lick that neck instead of ripping it open and draining her even then. ‘God, Dru just CAN’T be right about this,’ his inner Spike wailed in panic. ‘It’s just physical and after the magic engagement, I’m just all revved and ready with no place to race.’ Spike headed to the Watcher’s bathroom, planning on a much needed wank.

~*~

Buffy was having similar problems but would never have revealed them to a soul. She had always been aware of Spike on some level. She remembered being saddened to discover all those years ago that the hot guy she had seen at the Bronze was a vamp. After that, just remembering what he was had been enough to stop any thoughts along that line. Now, however, she kept remembering those ‘lips of Spike’ she pretended to hate. He had tasted wonderful and no one had ever kissed her the way he had, not even Angel. She could just imagine the other things he could do with that tongue of his! Buffy felt herself blush and pretended to have to fan herself from the room heat as Willow looked at her with concern.

"I know it’s fall and all, but the heat’s up way too high. This IS California, after all." Buffy bluffed.

"Maybe it’s the flannel jammies you’re wearing. I’m fine in my tee and jeans. I’ll turn the thermostat down if you want though," said Willow. She was still eager to please her friends and feeling guilty about the results of her ‘Will Be Done’ spell. No one acted like they blamed her. Well, Spike did look at her with angry eyes from time to time. ‘Everything worked out okay in the end,’ she reassured herself.

Buffy knew that Willow was already overstressed about Oz cheating on her and then leaving town. Her friend’s distress had been largely ignored by all of them and had led to the disaster that was never to be spoken of again. Buffy really did feel bad for Willow. She knew how it felt to be left behind, hurting. Maybe it would be a good idea to try to cheer Willow up a bit.

Buffy went to the phone to call Anya with a plan. Time for a girls’ night out. The Bronze was just the place for mending a broken heart, or at least hiding it for a few hours.

~*~

The Watcher was expecting a houseguest, one that he was obviously not planning on having sleep on the sofa during her stay. He’d tried to pawn Spike off on Harris, of all people. Well, damned if Spike needed a babysitter! The Scoobies had finally realized Spike’s Big Bad days were over, so there was no reason to just meekly follow the boy to his basement hovel. It was clear Harris didn’t want him there any more than Spike wanted to be there. What Spike needed was a night out to blow off steam. Knock a few balls around a table, seein’ as how he couldn’t knock a few heads around like he’d like to. Make a few quid and get pleasantly buzzed. Wipe that taste of Buffy right off his lips with plenty of Milwaukee’s finest. He might have to room with the whelp for a few days, but for tonight he was going to be his own vamp.





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