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Author's Chapter Notes:
As usual, I take full responsibility for my mistakes.
*Next evening, The Expresso Pump*

He’d been nursing a coffee and some biscuits for more than half an hour, his restlessness not allowing him to wait even a minute after the sun had gone down before he plopped himself down in a booth to wait for his Slayer. The time’s getting closer. Maybe I should clear up the table first. I think that’s what proper manners call for. He snorted at his own thoughts.

It had been years, decades even, since the last time he’d given a second thought to ‘proper manners.’ His Dark Princess considered the height of sophistication to have tea parties with her dolls and her victims, while Spike provided the intimidation meant to keep the humans in place while they were drained as they drank their tea. Not exactly keeping track of spoon and fork placements, was I?

Now there he was, using a napkin to clean the Formica table after he’d cleared it, all in order to not offend—

“Slayer!” The whisper escaped his lips as a prayer.

There she was, in all her glory, looking so utterly bitable in her low-cut blouse. He allowed his eyes to drink her in, from the loose hair cascading down her shoulders, to her fashionable yet battle-ready boots. Glorious. As he moved his eyes back up her body, his attention was grabbed by the fading scar he’d left on her neck, the memory of what had happened making his dead heart ache in his chest. I hurt the girl.

Then her dad and Watcher walked in behind her, throwing a warning look his way before saying something to Buffy and taking a seat at the counter. The message was clear: they were to give Spike and Buffy their privacy, but without taking any chances of anything like what had happened in the cemetery repeating.

The vampire almost smirked when another thought came unbidden to the forefront of his mind: she’s so young. Of course he’d known she was sixteen, a Slayer for less than two years, and still in high-school, but seeing her at that moment it really hit him. He’d only seen her play the seductress, or the Slayer, but now she actually looked the part of the teenager going to a coffee shot to meet her—what am I to her?

Maybe the things he’d said to her father as a joke the first time he’d met him weren’t so far from the truth. He’d have to take things slow, bide his time, and let her blossom before he made her his.

“Earth to Bleached Wonder!”

She was wearing an annoyed look on her face and she was snapping her fingers in front of his eyes. How long was I day-dreaming about the Slayer while she was right in front of me, able to stake me at any time?

“You said we needed to talk, so talk.”

She was now sitting ramrod straight, her hands crossed across her chest, looking the picture of annoyance.

Young but gorgeous. He snapped out of his musings when he realized how close to Angelus’ way of thinking he was going. “Yeah, pet, I did.” He knew he had to get his thoughts in line and concentrate on the talk with the girl, otherwise he could muck up his best chance of getting her to see him for himself.

“Well?” She was being cold and distant, which only made Spike want to try that much harder.

“Give us a sec, will you? We haven’t even ordered.”

Her nostrils flared slightly in annoyance, but when the overly-chipper waitress came over, she asked for an expresso—no doubt a signal for him to make it quick—while he asked for a cappuccino. He was in it for the long haul. While they waited for their respective beverages, he decided to take the bull by the horns.

“I’m really sorry I hurt you, love.” He could see the hurt and anger build up, so he tried to soldier on through the rough part, hoping they could reach the good parts later. “I was angry, confused, and trying to be something else than I was.”

“A vampire looking for a snack?”

“You’re not a snack, and I’m not just any vampire. That’s exactly our main problem.” Okay, so it was very ballsy to point out problems when he wanted her to focus on giving them a chance, but all’s fair, right? “You threw me for a bloody loop and I was fighting with over a century’s worth of conditioning just by being near you.”

“So that’s supposed to make it all better?”

“No, of course not.” This was getting him nowhere fast.

“We had this discussion before, about the signal mixage. You can’t just beat me up, almost drain me dry and then turn around and claim you love me. That’s not how it works.” Her tone was calmer than he’d hoped, so at least that was something.

“I know, I know how it works, but I’m willing to throw it all out the sodding window for you That’s why I came up with the idea of this truce even before I realized I loved you.” There, that should get the ball rolling in the right direction.

“You don’t even know me, how can you sit there, all cool as a cucumber, and say you love me? We haven’t even spent time together for more than a few minutes at a time, so how can you say that?”

He almost told her he’s staid by her side until she woke up in the hospital, but decided against it. No use hammering home the idea that he’d almost—. “Look, I may be a lot of things, but one thing’s for sure: I’m Love’s bitch! I fall hard, and I fall fast, and when I do it’s for good.”

“Shyeah, like you did with that Drusilla chick.” At his frown, she smirked lightly. “I can read the Watcher’s diaries, you know.”

“Yeah, I loved Dru for as long as I was a vampire, but it’s not that simple.” He took a deep breath and got ready to tell her everything about his life, death, and unlife, hoping that she’d see him as worthy when he’d be done.

~~~***~~~

She sat looking at him, her coffee long gone and replaced with a soda, his still half-full and as cold as him. She’d listened while he explained about who he’d been as a man, his—what was that word he used? Unrequited—love for a woman named Cecily and how that led to him being turned in an alley by Drusilla.

She could tell he’d left out very large parts of the story, what with him jumping over entire decades at times, but then again she didn’t have a century to hear him talk about himself. But he does.

“So you see, I had to come to this God forsaken town to look for a cure. It was a long shot, but I was willing to put up even with old Bat-face in order to cure her.”

Okay, so she must have zoned out a bit after he’d described killing his second Slayer, but who could blame her? It wasn’t something that she got to hear every day, so her attention span, especially when it involved stories of his Princess—and no, that was so not jealousy—was pretty short.

“And that’s where you came in. Or better yet, I came in on you almost dead by the hands of that over-pompous prick.”

That was much better, he was getting to the part that would finally clear stuff up between them. “So you decided to play lifeguard.”

He ducked his head slightly and managed a pretty good impression of looking sheepish. “It was partially just so as I could piss the Great Poof off, but yeah.” He was back to looking really proud of himself. “I swooped in and saved the damsel, while he just looked on in envy.”

“I know the rest: I kill the Master and get shipped off to LA, you use Angel’s blood to cure your—” She had to stop herself from calling Dru a ho-bag. What could I use: skank, bitch of a Sire, crazy ass ex? Sheesh, and I haven’t even met the—“vampire.” Lame much?

“It’s what I’d come to do.” She felt another pang when she saw how wistful he looked. “Then she had to go and kick me to the bloody curb for the Poof. Again.” Then almost so softly she almost didn’t catch it, he added “still.”

“If this is meant to make me actually believe me you have feelings for me, let me just give you a newsflash: not working. In fact telling me all about your great lost love with your crazy ex of a Sire is so far in the opposite direction of working, it’s not even funny.” She was feeling mean and petty and she was getting ready to get up and walk out of there and—

He grabbed her hand and the touch sent a shiver up her arm, down he back and set butterflies loose in her stomach. She retreated from his touch as if burned. “Stop that! Every time you act like a jerk and I hate you and then you touch me and I can’t think. So stop it!” She could swear his smirk made her panties melt. Focus, damnit!

“It’s not my fault you’re so bloody irresistible.” He was practically purring the words out and it was doing all kinds of twisty things to her insides. “I tried to fight it, tooth and nail, I did. Fought it right up until I saw you bled almost dry. By me. I will never let that happen again, not after I realized what losing you would do to me.” He placed his palms on the table and looked at her with such conviction that she couldn’t help believing him.

“You still don’t even know me.” Her voice was hoarse and weak, but she was too shaken up to do anything about it.

“You’re right, but that didn’t prevent you from crawling under my skin and making me feel for you more than I thought was possible.” He then smiled at her, such an innocent smile that she almost forgot it hid behind it a demon. “And if you’re worried about knowing each other, there’s a simple solution for that: dating.”

There was no air. Someone had come in the Expresso Pump and sucked up all the air that humans needed to breathe. That same someone must have made time crawl at a snail’s pace and set fire to her skin. Wait, wouldn’t fire need air? Maybe it’s just like putting hot coals on your hand. Do coals also need air to burn?

It took a lot of effort for her mind to stop going off into La-La-Land, but she finally managed to focus enough to realize that she could breathe, the time hadn’t stopped, nobody had dumped hot coals on her head, and Spike was waiting anxiously for a reply. Or at least I think that’s what his hands drumming on the table and his eyes looking at me like he wants to drink me in mean. It took her another few heartbeats to realize that she still hadn’t said anything out loud, and that what he said called for an answer of the not-mental kind.

“You can’t date me!” Denial, much?

He seemed unfazed, which kind of wigged her out. “Is it the vampire-Slayer thing? You and I both agree we’re not exactly from the same mold as the rest of the pack, so going against the grain, dating from the other side of the proverbial tracks, and all that rot comes like second nature to us.”

“But you drink blood.”

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “That’s just nutrition. There are couples out there that have different eating habits and they work just fine.” He perked u even more, if that was possible. “And I’m not like Peaches, for example: I also eat human food with just as much relish, just that I need to gulp down a liquid lunch from time to time. Just think of it as soup.” He was grinning.

He put way too much thought into this. “You can’t walk around in the daytime, so any dating would have to be done at night. When I usually patrol. To kill vampires.” If she could just make him see how ridiculous of an idea it was—

“I always liked a bit of rough and tumble with my scratch and tickle. Thick as thieves, us. And don’t forget, my truce means we’re not actually enemies anymore.” He drew his brows together for a second. “In fact with all the idiots out there wanting to take me on for a shot at the title, we might even be allies.”

Blink. Blink again. Breathe. “What?” Her voice was reduced to almost a squeak, but he was a vampire, so he had no problems hearing her.

“Think about it. All those nasties out there, wanting to take me on to take this town over—they’re in it for the death and destruction, coming here to snack on the populace, or do nasty buggering things to the Hellmouth under this God forsaken place. So that means that my wanting to off them before they off me, and your wanting to stop them from causing damage works quite nicely as a neat little packaged alliance.”

She was getting a headache. Or she was hyperventilating. If only she could remember what she was supposed to do to stop her head from imploding. Breathe!

“Aren’t you sworn to protect everyone, as Master and all?”

He snorted and made a dismissive hand gesture. “Nah! If they have big enough bollocks to take you or me on, they don’t need my protection, so they don’t have it. See?”

Actually she couldn’t see. Everything in front of her was blurry, except for the widely grinning vampire. Is this what tunnel vision is? She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. “Still, my parents, friends, and Watcher would never go for it.”

“It’s not a matter of others approving of who you date, it’s a matter of who you want to be with. The rest can either support you or go to bugger themselves.” He raised a finger to stall her coming protest. “Except your Mom. I like her, and I think we can persuade her if we try.”

“I can’t tell my friends to ‘bugger off!’ They, they’d—”

“If they’re really your friends they’ll understand. I can’t believe they never made any choices you didn’t agree with, and yet, there you are, still chums and all.”

That brought to mind Xander’s admission about what had really happened while he was possessed, or more exactly after. Putting that thought out of her mind for now, she still had to concede that Spike had a point. That didn’t mean he was right, though. “You’re too old for me.”

He shrugged. “And the Poofter is ancient compared to me, yet you were still making the doe eyes at him until you caught on to how much of a perverted, sick fuck he is.” At her raised eyebrow he smirked again. “He told me stuff before he left.”

She almost wanted to ask what Angel had said, but changed her mind. Whenever Angel was mentioned Spike became unpredictable. So unpredictable that he even saved his arch nemesis just to piss him off.

“Anyway, as a human I was just ten years older than you when I was turned, and as for you being jailbait, I’m willing to put in the time. All I have is time.”

The way he said—in a lower tone that was full of a promise she didn’t want to decipher—it made something within her vibrate. She wanted to believe him, and at the same time she wanted him to go away and leave her alone. “I don’t have time. I’m a Slayer and that comes with an early expiration date.” Okay, so this point was kinda at odds with her previous one, but she couldn’t be expected to respect the rules of logic when it came to who she dated.

His eyes lit up in anger, his nostrils flared, and his jaw muscles were twitching. “Not if I have a say in it. I’ll make sure you live to be the oldest Slayer ever. You’ll be filling my ear with complaints about aching joints and the like, but you’ll live a long and happy life! No death wish for my Slayer.”

His vehemence almost made her wish it could be so, but at the same time she was frightened that he thought she would grow old with him. “What about when I’m too old, or too frail for you, or what about when I’m gone? What will you do then?”

He shrugged casually, although his eyes were still as intense as they had been when he’d been talking about protecting her. “Don’t bloody know. But we’ll have years and years to suss all that out, now won’t we?”

“You kill people.” And isn’t it funny how it wasn’t my first problem, or the second. Actually, if he talks his way out of this one I have no idea what I could hide behind next. I mean not hide, use. That doesn’t sound much better. Point out?

“I’ve been a vampire for more than a century, luv, so yeah, I’ve killed my fair share, but shouldn’t my being willing to stop killing for you count for something? I haven’t asked you to stop killing my kind, and vampires aren’t even your food source.”

“Well, actually—”

“The truce doesn’t stop you patrolling, keeping the denizens safe and sound in their little beddy-byes. It only protects the vampires and whatever other demons abide by our rules and don’t harm the human population.”

“What about the—”

“Criminals and the like have it coming to them, and are no better, if not worse than the bleeding vampires.”

She was getting pretty fed up with his answering her questions before she had time to actually ask them. “So what, killing them doesn’t count? I can’t have that. I can’t start considering who deserves you draining them dry.” She was getting angry, although she wasn’t sure who she was angrier with: him for treating the death of someone so casually, or her for almost giving in.

“I didn’t say that. We have the truce to sort all that out, and Dalton with your Dad and Watcher spent bloody forever on it, but that’s not what I was saying.” He was looking straight at her so intensely she thought she was the only person in the world. “I haven’t killed anyone since before Dru left. Every time I came close, all I could see was you down in that bleeding church.”

Her heart was never going to beat normally again, from all the skipping and the cringing, and the jumping it was doing. She did feel a weight she hadn’t even been aware of being lifted off her chest when she realized that the fighting with a big slice of making out she had been doing with Spike for months now hadn’t cost anyone their life. In fact, if what he was saying was true—and she didn’t really have any reason to not believe him, since brutal honesty seemed to be his shtick—she was responsible for keeping him in line. She almost rose from her seat to kiss him then and there, her Dad and Watcher just a few feet away be damned.

Almost.

While her heart was doing its happy dance thing, her brain had caught a fleeting though and put all its hopes—for what she wasn’t entirely sure herself—on that single idea. “We can’t keep—” She felt a blush blossoming in her cheeks and spreading further when she remembered some of the highlights of their encounters. “The touching has to stop. I already told you that. I can’t have you trying to twist my head with the touching and the kissing, and the—” She could swear her face was on fire by that point. “If you want us to start dating, you’re going to have to work for it, buster!”

His face lit up like a little kid’s on Christmas. “So that’s a ‘yes.’ If you want, I’ll be happy just holding hands and looking meaningfully in each other’s eyes and all that rot. The only thing I ask is for you to give us a fair chance.”

Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod. “Deal.” Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod. She couldn’t exactly understand what he started babbling about after that, but it sounded like something about worshipping, romance, flowers, and other sappy things that she found sounded really nice all of a sudden. Her attention snapped back into action when he stopped speaking and looked expectantly at her. “What?”

He laughed, short, sweet, and genuine. “I asked if you were free in a couple days’ time.”

“Yeah—no! I have the parent-teacher night and that troll, Snyder, decided I’m on the arranging committee.” She just couldn’t help herself when he saw the almost comic way his face fell. “I’m free on Saturday, though.”

“Saturday it—bollocks!” He was back to sulking. “Saturday is that blasted Saint Vigeous day. Was gonna warn you about it.”

“What’s a vigorous saint got to do with anything?”

“Vigeous, pet, and he’s as far from saintly as you can get. In fact, it’s a vampire feast day, as opposed to human.” He must have read the complete lack of understanding on her face, so he elaborated. “On this night, once every few centuries or so, vampires can perform some rituals, chant some lunacies, and are rewarded with power even greater than the Slayer’s. Only trick is the ones taking part become mindless killing machines, not even interested in feeding, just all-out destruction.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s more than that, because if the ritual is performed on an active Hellmouth it is that much more powerful, so not only will I have to take care that none of my minions gets any uppity ideas, I’ll probably have to fend off some invaders too, probably thinking that once they get all juiced up they can take you and me on.”

“So happy times all around.”

“You bet your sweet, scrumptious ass happy! It’ll probably be more fun than when I took over as Master of this place. Wanna come with?”

She took a moment to analyze what he had said. She looked down at the long-since glass in front of her and then made her decision. “So you want me, the Slayer, to come with you, a vampire, out on a night when vampires get their version of steroids, to hunt other vampires that might get in your way?”

“That’s it in a bloody nutshell.” He was going for glib, but she could see he was tense, probably preparing himself for her to tell him where he could stick his idea.

“So when are you picking me up?”

His smile lit up the place.





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