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Chapter 26 – On Edge


Propping her head up on her hand, Buffy struggled to keep her eyes open as Angelus continued to drone on about himself.

Being in his presence for the past few weeks had Buffy ready to pull out her hair from listening to his repetitive stories. After their initial meeting, Angelus hadn’t hesitated to ask her out to dinner, believing her to be a young girl alone in the city who needed protecting. She didn’t bother to inform him that her life was very unsheltered, knowing that she would be able to get closer to him this way.

Buffy readily accepted the invitation to go to Los Angeles with him, but the easy acceptance also placed her in the tricky position of avoiding his bed.

“What do you think?”

Snapping out of the daze that she seemed to be in, Buffy cleared her throat and decided to stick with her standard answer. “That sounds great!” she said in an enthusiastically chipper voice.

“I knew you’d feel that way,” he said, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Buffy had easily trained herself to react when he got within close proximity to her. It wasn’t the same type of relationship she’d had with Spike, where she could relax whenever he put his arms around her, but then, this wasn’t a relationship at all. She’d made sure to keep her distance with unsurprising ease. Angelus was nice to look at, but Buffy would never dream of crossing any invisible lines with him.

Her attention was drawn away from her comparison to Spike and back to him when his hand covered hers on the linen tablecloth. “Stay with me tonight,” he said.

Buffy looked into the deep brown eyes that seemed to give him a more soulful demeanor than he actually had. Hearing his soft words, she nearly closed her eyes as she remembered a different man saying the same thing to her not so long ago.

Stay with me… please.

“I can’t,” she said, putting a harder edge behind her voice than she originally intended. Offering him a smile when he pulled away with a wounded expression, Buffy took a deep breath. “Angel, you know how I feel about that.”

“It’s been weeks, Liz,” he said in a pleading voice that nearly had her rolling her eyes.

“I know,” she said, leaning back in her chair to put a little more distance between herself and the man in front of her. Taking a moment to look around the restaurant, she redirected her gaze back to Angelus. “And I don’t think this is the place to be having this discussion.”

Knowing that he was irritated with her, Buffy couldn’t bring herself to care as she stood up with him. Allowing him to lead her from the restaurant, Buffy slowly turned toward him before they could reach the limousine.

“Maybe I should go to a hotel tonight,” she said, widening her watery eyes and letting the smallest pout form on her lip, nearly smiling when she got the desired affect.

“I’m sorry,” Angelus said, not sounding apologetic at all. “I don’t mean to pressure you.”

“Maybe…if I got to know you a little better,” she said, biting her lip for a moment. “Like you said- we’ve been together for weeks and I still don’t feel like I know you.”

Brushing a kiss to her lips, Buffy tried to pass off her uncomfortable shiver as a more pleasurable reaction.

“I suppose that would be okay,” he said with an easy smile. “We’ll go out tomorrow night.”

“Great,” Buffy said in a cheerful tone.

* * * * *

Sipping a cup of tea, Rupert Giles idly read his newspaper as he sat in the quaint outdoor café, not bothering to pay attention to his surroundings.

“Well, well… fancy seeing you here, Ripper.”

Looking up at the sound of the accent, Giles half-expected to see Ethan Rayne standing in front of him. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Spike Reed take a seat across from him, pulling his leather duster more firmly around him as he leaned back in the chair.

“What do you want, Reed?”

“Tsk tsk- manners, Ripper. Hasn’t anyone ever taught you the finer points of conversation?”

“I don’t think the finer points apply when I’m talking to a known thief.”

“Known?” Spike repeated in mock ignorance, leaning even further back into his chair. “If that was true, don’t you think I would be behind bars right now?”

“How about a known murderer?” Giles replied, throwing his newspaper down on the table. “Does that suit you more?”

“I’m not the one with the nickname ‘Ripper’,” Spike said, his tone hardening as he stared at the other man. “I find it hard to believe that your acquaintances know the origin of that particular name.”

“They know what they need to know. I never did anything illegal,” Giles said, glancing around the open area.

“Says you.”

“What do you want?”

“Where is she, Rupert?”

“Who?” Giles asked, raising his eyebrows and barely suppressing the smirk on his face.

“You know damn well who,” Spike growled, leaning closer to the older man. “Tell me.”

“Wherever she may or may not be, one thing is clear- she does not want to be associated with you.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” Spike said, nearly throwing his weight back against his chair in frustration. “You’ve trained her to be at your beck and call. To jump when you say how high.”

“I’ve trained her well,” Giles said in a low tone, narrowing his eyes on the blonde.

“What bothers you more, Rupert? That she forgot about doing her job when she was with me? Or the fact that she was screaming my name and not yours?”

Hearing the crashing of a chair falling to the floor, Spike didn’t bother to react as Giles grabbed the lapels of his jacket and threw him against a nearby column. Smirking at the older man, Spike raised an eyebrow as his gaze traveled from the white-knuckled hands that were holding him in place to the enraged eyes boring into his.

“Shut up, you pillock,” Giles said in a rasping whisper.

“Touched a nerve, did I?” he asked in amusement.

“That woman is like a daughter to me,” Giles said, ignoring the looks that the other members of the restaurant were giving him. “And you will not get near her again.”

“And you’d rather her be closer to Angelus?” Spike countered, narrowing his eyes.

Releasing his hold on the duster, Giles took a step away, taking a deep breath. “I would be happy if she would stay inside doing paperwork for the rest of her life… but that’s not Buffy. She needs to be out on an assignment. It’s who she is.”

“Then where is she?” Spike growled, rapidly losing patience.

“You think you’re so smart?” Giles said, narrowing his eyes slightly. “You find her.”

Staying where he was as Giles walked around him and onto the sidewalk, Spike clenched his jaw in frustration before spinning around to follow him. “Think about this, Rupert,” he said, catching up to the other man and matching his stride as they walked together as if they were old friends. “What happens when Angelus finds out who she is?”

Giles’ step faltered as his shoulders tensed. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?” he asked quietly.

“He’s not like me, Giles,” Spike said, stopping to look at him. “It will happen eventually if you keep her on this assignment. He’s not going to give her a chance to walk away.”

“Yes, you’re a real martyr,” he said in a low voice. “Pulling a gun on the woman you care for.”

Glancing around for a moment, Spike made sure no one was watching him before reaching into his coat and pulling out his gun. Seeing Giles take a reflexive step back and reach for his own, Spike threw him the gun, watching the stunned look cross his face as he caught it. “Probably doesn’t mean anything now,” he said, gesturing toward the gun that Giles was inspecting. “But that’s what I had on her that night.”

Turning it over in his hand, Giles’ brow furrowed as he stared at the gun intently, testing the weight of it. “It’s fake,” he murmured to himself in disbelief.

“Knew she’d come armed after… well, the night before wasn’t exactly calm.”

Raising his eyes to Spike’s for a moment, Giles quickly looked away, not wanting to think about the underlying truths in that statement.

“Felt like I needed to even the odds, but I didn’t… I didn’t want to really even the odds.”

“Why?” Giles asked, throwing the gun back to the other man against his better judgment.

“Because I would never intentionally hurt her,” Spike said, looking into Giles’ eyes, letting him see how honest he was being. “There have been times, yeah, when I’ve hurt her… but I never meant to. It just happened.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because Angelus will hurt her, Giles. The second he finds out who she is, he’s going to try and kill her. I know Buffy- I know she can handle herself, but… I also know Angelus.”

“Then why don’t you know where he is?”

“Why haven’t you put him behind bars?” Spike replied irritably. “It’s not that easy to maintain twenty-four hour surveillance on a man who knows that he’s always being watched.”

“You’re willing to help her?”

“I’m willing to get Angelus out of the equation at all costs.”

“She’s been on this assignment for nearly a month.”

“I know,” Spike said, gritting his teeth as his imagination ran away with him. “I’m hoping she’s acquired some information in that time.”

“Quite a bit,” Giles said cryptically.

“I want her away from him just as much as you do, Giles.”

“If you hurt her-”

“I won’t.”

Looking up at the darkening sky for a moment, Giles sighed, not wanting to trust a known criminal, even if he did have Buffy’s best interests at heart but knowing that they were running low on options. “She’s in Los Angeles.”





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