Rating: NC-17 for sex and angst

Summary:Their stares penetrated him the way he'd penetrated them, and sucked him nearly as dry.

Pairing: Spike/Buffy, Spike/Other

Spoilers: For all of season 6. None for season 7.

Author Notes:

1. This is a sequel to "What She Deserves," which veers off from "Grave." If anything in that story squicked you, this one may too.

2. When I saw "Grave," I honestly assumed that Spike was not in Africa to get a soul. The dialogue suggested to me that he had in mind a chip-ectomy, but was going to get more than he bargained for because the language he used to speak to the demon was imprecise and emotional. Subsequent information indicates I'm mistaken. I accept this for the show, but in writing "What She Deserves" I went with my first reaction to the dialogue on the show, and necessarily have carried that through here in the sequel.

3. The details of Spike's past given here differ from those in "The Bittersweets." Because this is a different story in a different AU, I took the opportunity to make up something else. In fact, I don't really think of that Spike and this one as the same character. For one thing, "Bittersweets" Spike wouldn't have laid a hand on Buffy that way, damnit.

4. To hear the song featured in the story, click here

Dedication: As always, for Kalima first and foremost. Also for Chase. Thank you both for being such tireless appreciators and instigators.

Completed: October 2002. Revised extensively November 2002

Acknowledgements: Herself wishes to thank Kalima, Chase, Wisteria, Mustang Sally, Kita, lovesbitca, Elena.

Disclaimer: Joss creates, I borrow

First patrol of autumn. Reminded her of when she was in high school, and she'd gone away those summers—the one time to her father, and the other to anonymous toil in the big city. This time she was back from big travels—big character-building, mind-expanding travels. And it was true, everything in Sunnydale looked slightly smaller now that she'd experienced New York.

Still, she thought, swinging along with a sense of pleasure at being out, alone, fortified, in a soft misting rain that made her feel clean and silvered, never a good idea to imagine there was anything small about Sunnydale. Not so long as it sat on top of that big ole hellmouth. Things that came out of that, or to it, large or small, were never trivial. In that department, New York had nothing to boast of in comparison.

She checked the alleys around the Bronze for drunk teenagers and the predators who fed on them. Here was where she'd first seen Spike, where he'd vowed to kill her.

Seemed so long ago. She was still a beginner then. Those days when there was only one vampire with a soul, or ever would be. Only one vampire who claimed to be in love with her.

She remembered his burning gaze when he confronted her here, a gaze that stripped her naked and had her, a sneer that killed her afterwards with an offhand gesture.

She'd not been scared of him at the time, but recalling it now, she felt a chill.

He was a stranger then. How much more, she wondered, did she really know about him now?

His body. Top to toe. What his hands taste like, and his cock. How he grunts when he fucks and cries out when he comes. His bravery. His astonishing impatience. His astonishing patience. His tongue in my mouth, my clit. His arrogance. His laugh. The yellow nicotine stains on his fingers. His singing voice, right hook, favorite brand of cigarette. The smell of his hair gel. His hatred. His desire. His pig-headed, helpless, immovable, worshipful, desperate obsession with me.

All that, she knew thoroughly.

His soul?

That, she thought, not so much.

The nightmares didn't stop. He tried not to sleep. Not that he had to try very hard. Even while he was awake, driving through the night enroute to Sunnydale, they were there. So he was alone and never alone. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd see them one at a time—the child-whores, the co-eds, the newsboys and potboys, the hustlers, the taxi-dancers, the carnival riders, the clerks and barmaids and tweenies, the hippies, beatniks, flappers, fast girls, freaks, all of whom loved their lives, loved breathing and seeing and eating and sleeping. One by one they appeared to him, sitting in the passenger seat, sprawled behind him in the back, reflected in the rearview mirror. None of them ever said anything, but their stares penetrated him the way he'd penetrated them, and sucked him nearly as dry.

All of this made him afraid. Afraid he wouldn't be equal to this new soul, equal to the job it thrust upon him.

Equal to her expectations.

He was going back for her. She was what he wanted, to do right for her, to be right for her.

Maybe, if he could do that, and if she would go on being a little kind to him, her presence would help dispel those haunters.

Her presence would make him into a good man.

Now he had to work for a living.

Well, not a living, obviously—ha ha ha—but he couldn't come by his blood and smokes and fresh black teeshirts the way he used to—by scaring humans on dark streets into giving him money, by taking on little jobs for demons who wanted no questions asked. So the first thing he did when he got back to Sunnydale in the DeSoto was hunt down a job.

He lucked out and found one the very first day.

The Kickstand wasn't a demon bar. Which was just as well. Whatever benefit there might be to the White Hats from what he could overhear in a place like Willie's or Lovecraft's was more than offset by his spiritual nausea at having to be there constantly to hear it.

Anyway, he wasn't a demon like other demons anymore, and most of them knew it the minute they got a whiff of him. It was easier to pass in a place like this—humans were so much less discerning. The owner, a slow-moving man with a squint and psoriatic forearms, thought nothing of him, except that he was neat and agile and with his looks might get more girls in for Ladies Nights, once word got around. There was even a crummy "convenience" flat above the bar that he was willing to let Spike have for almost nothing. It was noisy all night and so hard to rent. He owned the whole building. He engaged Spike for Tuesdays through Saturdays.

It was still under-the-table work, pay-wise, but bartending, bouncing—they were legit. He got the hang of it within a day or two. While he didn't exactly love the customers, he didn't mind the work so much; it had a roteness to it after the first few days, yet kept him busy enough that he didn't have to think too much. And the atmosphere of a dive-bar had a home-like quality to him. He could be himself there.

Whoever that was. More and more he found he didn't know.

Spike covered the apartment windows with thick curtains. Days, it was silent as the grave; nothing but his own thoughts to stop him sleeping soundly from dawn to late afternoon. The thoughts were enough, though, to make sure he'd never rest well again. The last good night he'd had was the one in Alabama, when Buffy had shared her bed with him, fed him by hand. He'd slept then. Under her protection.

Well, the best night was the one in Indiana, before he'd dropped her off. They'd stayed up all through it. She'd made love to him—real love, or something very like it. They'd talked, and she'd listened with sympathy. Said she liked him, said she respected him. He'd believed her, and he clung to the memory of that now, the tone of her voice still resounding in his mind, the shine of her eyes. She'd let herself relax against him, let him hold her without reserve. Thinking it over gave him a hard-on, made him yearn. Not just to possess her that way again, but to be possessed by her, to be her creature. Her good creature.

He wanted to go see her. Wanted to lay his aching head in her lap and tell her his troubles. She hated what he'd been—what he was—but she'd comforted him before. With her blood and her kiss and her body twined around his. Just touching her was a comfort.

He postponed that day by day for the first week. Told himself it was because he didn't want, somehow, to turn up at the Slayer's house with empty pockets. She'd laid out money on him during their trip; he meant to pay her back. So he amassed his tips, and waited for the first pay packet, an envelope stuffed with cash.

He got it on Saturday at closing time, and went to see her the very next night.

"Okay, I've got something to say."

They were meeting in Buffy's living room, because obviously the Magic Shop wasn't a very welcoming place for Xander. Anya wasn't with them, but Dawn was. They'd thrown open the windows and the front door on the warm September evening, and Buffy served them all lemonade she'd made herself.

They all focused on her. Willow, since her return a few days ago, never gazed straight at any of them. Her head was constantly dipped, so that she always looked up through the web of her eyelashes. Giles held his glasses in his hand, as if waiting for a point in which to interrupt, even though Buffy hadn't started speaking yet. Xander, despite his long holiday in England, seemed nearly as tired as he'd been the last spring. Only her sister turned on her a face that was wholly interrogative and open.

"We've all been through a terrible time." She paused. The argument she wanted to make, which she'd laid out in her head so carefully, seemed now to be skittering away from her. She knew she'd say it all wrong.

She pressed on. "Last year, none of us were at our best. We all behaved badly, all did each other serious wrong in a bunch of ways. I'm not saying we're not still hurting from it, or that we should pretend it didn't happen. I want us to talk about it as much as we need to. But I need us to still be a team, and not get hung up amongst ourselves on blame and grudges and all that. Because if we start that, we'll never finish, and as a group we'll be finished."

She glanced from each to each; all nodded.

"Good. Because you know I love you guys so much."

They all murmured at once, the close atmosphere filling up with whispers of affection.

"Okay. One other thing. Dawn knows this already."

Her sister's eyes met hers then, and she looked hopeful.

"When I was in New York, I ran into Spike."

They all moved as if to speak, but Buffy held a hand up. "I saw him, spent time with him. A lot happened between us. And he's going to be coming home, and he's going to work with us, like he did when we went up against Glory, and after I was dead."

Xander slid forward on the sofa, clasped his hands together. "Buff—"

"He has a soul."

This was Dawn. The other three looked at her as if she'd sprouted a second head.

"It's true! Ask Buffy!"

Now their gazes slid back to her. Willow's was hollow, yet with the beginnings of a curiosity that shone more fully from Giles' face. Xander's closed up like a box snapping shut.

Quietly, she said, "It is true. He's souled now . . . . He needs to be put to work. I'm not sure when he'll be here . . . I thought he'd be here already."

"Put to work?" Willow said.

"He needs to fight the fight with us. Otherwise the soul is just a waste. He wasn't going to come back here—he meant to stay far away. But I think that's why I found him, because he's supposed to help me. He gets that, that's why he agreed to come."

Giles blinked. "Intriguing."

"So I want it understood—the same goes for him as for all of us. No grudges, no blaming, no backbiting—"

"What about neck biting?" This was Xander.

"That's what I'm talking about. Please. We can't have that. We can't afford it anymore."

"I just can't believe you're still buying his bullshit." Xander started forward, gesticulating "Look, tell us the worst— You're back with him, right? Your would-be rapist? Buffy and Spike, sittin' in a tree, kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee?"

"No! No, of course not. How can you just assume— Don't say that." She dropped her eyes. The way he looked at her, the way he flung that word around. She hated it. Yet Xander's words, his fierce gaze, shot through her like a bolt. A bolt pulling in its trail not just that tussle in her bathroom, but everything else Spike had attempted on her from the first. His sneers, his threats, his blows, his duplicity. Raining down like hot lava. "We . . . we agreed we'd be friends."

"Oh yeah," Xander said. "Because vampires make such good friends."

You'll never be friends. You'll fight, an' you'll shag, an' you'll hate each other—

Had he remembered those words himself, when she'd asked him to be her friend, when she'd promised to be his? A shiver of fear went through her—not of Spike, but at herself. How had she managed to get so confused, to let him influence her to—

She remembered the soul. The soul, which, for Angel, changed everything. As it must—would—did—for Spike. Why couldn't she hold that in her mind? He had a soul, he would never hurt her again.

"You say you expect him—?" Giles put in.

"I thought he'd be back already. I let him take the car, because he wanted some time to get his head together. But he promised me he'd come straight here."

"We've only been back a few days ourselves," Dawn said.

"Maybe he burned up in Death Valley—wouldn't that be a kick?"

"Xander—" Giles said.

"Pardon me for living! I'm just not eager to hang out the Welcome Home banner for the monster that tried to rape you!"

Buffy cringed. "Stop saying that!"

"Why should I, when it's true?"

"He's not—I'm not—I'm not asking—"

"Who cares if he has a goddamn soul? Whatever little bit of help he's ever given us—for money, let's not forget—doesn't begin to balance what he—"

"Xander, I know, only— Jeez. He hasn't asked for money from us in a long time. C'mon. He didn't take money when we were up against Glory."

"Glory was two years ago, Buff. What's he done for you lately? Besides the R thing, of course."

"He—"

"And when I think of you being with him. My God, Buffy, I can't imagine how you could stand to defile—"

She flew to her feet. "Stop it! Just stop it! Things were fucked up—okay? I was fucked up . . . I wasn't . . . I wasn't myself."

"Damn straight. But you're yourself now, right? So what're you so anxious to make nice-nice with him for? We don't need him!"

"Let me be the judge of that!"

"Xander." Giles rose. "A word, please. In the kitchen."

When the men walked out, Buffy glanced around wildly, but neither Dawn nor Willow would look at her. Crap.

She went to Willow and put an arm around her. "How're you doing?"

She'd returned, with Xander and Giles, two days ago, but so far they'd managed not to talk much. She was staying with Xander until she found a place of her own. It was understood she couldn't come back to live in Buffy's house. Anya had moved out at the beginning of summer, taken her own place on the other side of town.

"Classes start in a few days. I'm looking forward to being busy. Got a lot of stuff to make up."

"It's good to be busy." It's good to talk about something else.

Willow glanced at her from under her eyelashes. "Y'know, I think Xander is right. About Spike. He told me what happened."

"Will, Xander doesn't know what happened. He knows about one one-thousandth, and he's made the rest up."

She seemed puzzled at this. "I'm just saying—" She paused, emitted a sick giggle. "Look, Xander's got this bug up his ass on account of Anya, but I know you're not proposing to do—to do that with Spike again. I mean—of course not! But even so, maybe it's better not to encourage him to hang around too much. Less volatility that way. 'Cause we're all, you know, so volatile right now."

Oh yeah. There was no use discussing it any further. Buffy kissed her forehead. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dawn look away. The trust there wasn't just bent—it had broken off. Maybe never to be reinstated. Dawn wasn't making any sort of fuss about having Willow visit in the house. She was merely refusing to engage with her. Yet she couldn't blame her sister. So many threats she'd had to endure in two years . . . and still she was flexible, still hopeful. When Buffy told her about Spike, she'd cried and said she hoped Buffy was through with him because what he'd done was unforgivable, but then in the next moment, sobbing, said she'd hated having to hate him, that she was so glad she didn't have to anymore.

Giles returned then from the kitchen, Xander trailing behind. His voice was low, patient. "Let's go out to the porch." They sat on the swing, he took her hand. "Buffy. Have you really thought this through?"

"Yes, I mean— Look, it's no big, you're all making much more of this than—can we talk about something else?"

"You say he has his soul—"

She didn't want to go on about this, but she'd started to learn, this past year, that her clamming up instinct was something she had to overcome. So she told Giles how she'd found him, what she'd learned about his trip to Africa, and his sojourn in New York, aware that Dawn and Xander and Willow were right there on the other side of the open windows, listening too. But she didn't address them, stayed focused on Giles, on his mild willing expression.

She described their car trip, his suicide attempt. Told how she'd preserved him, fed him, cajoled him. Couldn't speak, though, about the man she'd seen with him, kissing him. The marks on his body. Or their own night of lovemaking. She'd told Dawn it happened, but apart from her sister, it was nobody's business but her own.

" . . . I think the reason why I found him like that was because things between us aren't finished."

Giles sighed and leaned back, stared out into the dark yard. "I don't entirely disagree. But I wonder if one particular thing is finished."

She wondered too. When she thought about him, which happened at least once an hour, her cells seemed to quiver, her mind boiled, and she didn't know if that was good or bad. She desired him, deeply and unswervingly. Anticipated the next time she'd have him, even as she told herself she didn't know what her intentions towards him were. The phrase Meet my boyfriend, Spike just didn't lie easy in her. When she tried to parse out the feelings that didn't involve lust at all, she just got confused. Lust was inextricable.

"Are you telling me it has to be? Is your good opinion of me in the balance here?"

"Buffy . . . no. I'm saying . . . well, what am I saying?" Giles paused. "That I want you to be safe. That I want you not to strew your pearls before swine. That you deserve to be loved by a fine man, not by . . . ."

"You get no argument there." She set the swing rocking gently beneath them. "You got any fine men lined up, serve 'em forth."

Giles chuckled. "You're so young."

"Not in slayer years."

"You're just one year old now. Think of it like that. I know I do."

He'd parked the DeSoto across the street and come up to the house like any other caller—it wasn't his fault if they were too concentrated on their discussion to hear him approach. And it wasn't his fault if, hearing himself discussed in loud voices, he'd paused in the yard to listen.

But it was nobody's fault save his own that he heard what he heard. Things were fucked up—okay? I was fucked up . . . I wasn't . . . I wasn't myself.

That was when he took off.

Pierced to the heart. Yet not really surprised. She was acting no differently than she had all along. What passed between them in New York, on the road, that was the anomaly. He'd anticipated this, even before he parted from her in Indiana. Once back amongst her friends and her routine, she'd revert to her practiced attitudes.

She wanted him as a warrior, and that was all. The soul wasn't going to make any difference to that.

Not her problem, that her words consigned him to be all alone with those looming silent faces that stared and stared at him. That was what he deserved.

Tears burned the backs of his eyes as he walked away. Crying made him feel like a ponce, so he went to Willie's, got drunk, started a brawl, killed two demons and another vampire with his bare hands.

And ended up weeping in his bed anyway.

Buffy saw the DeSoto in the morning when she went out to pick up the paper from the walk. It glittered in the morning sun. She rushed over to it. The dent she'd made in the front end was repaired. The whole car was clean and gleaming. She found the keys in the glove box, and popping the trunk, saw that all her luggage and shopping bags of loot were just as she'd loaded them in.

So Spike was back. He must've dropped the car here some time in the night—why hadn't he called first? Knocked on the door? Left a note? She felt around in the glove box again, went back to check the mailbox and under the welcome mat, but there was nothing.

Still, he'd returned. She raced towards the cemetery—he'd be asleep in his crypt at this hour, she'd surprise him. Get to talk to him alone, and . . . .

When she burst in, the place smelled of mildew and urine. The floor strewn with beer empties, used condoms, pizza boxes. The furniture and candles were gone.

So he hadn't been here. Where, then?

He borrowed the electric bill from the bar and used it to get a library card in the name of Hollis Mahoney, his employer. All these years later, and he wanted to grapple with poetry again. Not to write it, but to read it. Of course, he'd read it all along, kept up pretty well with the big twentieth century developments. Not in any serious methodical way, but at odd times, when Drusilla was otherwise occupied, when things were slow. Now—maybe it was the soul that made poetry feel potent again. He wondered if the soul was the same one he was born with, whether it had William's personality attached to it or was just a generic thing, an imposer of conscience and remorse and suffering. Except that he'd known conscience, he'd known remorse, before he went to Africa. That was why he'd gone. And neither was William ever very far away from him. What else was Spike, but William turned inside out? So he didn't quite get what this soul thing was, exactly, except that it made the remorse enormous, made it about everything and not just Buffy.

It also seemed to make him want to revisit the poets of his youth, the ones he'd tried so fruitlessly to imitate. Keats and Wordsworth and the Brownings. John Donne and Andrew Marvell. He checked out as many books as they'd give him, and spent the next week of not-sleeping trying to find out what these had to say about what he was now. How he was supposed to live.

But mostly they made him remember the past—think of himself before he'd been turned. As Spike, he'd done nothing with these memories but heap ashes on them. William was a foolish pathetic twat, he hated him. Everything he'd done as Spike was about denying William, defiling him.

Now—was it the soul again?—he thought of his living self with gingerly compassion, a hopeless, melancholy understanding, as of a very old man, full of knowledge but no energy to do anything with it anymore, considering the young one who is puissant and thoughtless.

He was a very old man. And William had been such a very young one. Too young, at twenty-eight, a mama's boy with ideas he should've discarded before he began shaving. Somewhere he'd read that it was impossible to truly be good unless one fully understood what it was to grapple with temptation. William thought himself good because he'd never done anything wrong. He'd never done anything at all, except fill pages with a lot of ignorant pious scribble and imagine he understood Truth and Beauty. Oscar Wilde had said that all bad poetry springs from genuine feeling, and he was bloody right. He'd been composed of feeling and nothing but.

The men who mocked him, who talked about the grisly murders reported in the penny papers, who went down to the police courts for an evening's amusement—they knew more about life than he had.

Yet William was full of love, trembling with it, eager to spend it like a profligate—and no takers. As a little boy he'd adored his nurse and his mother, it seemed, far more than they ever did him—he cared for nothing but pudding and their attentions, two things which were inextricably linked—while they had all kinds of rustling, creaking, sighing, dripping concerns above his head, beyond his grasp.

At Harrow he'd loved every boy he fagged for, loved them more the crueler or more thoughtless they were. Felt their attention like thick glistening drops of golden syrup between his lips.

At Oxford it was the same. Everybody seemed to know it, that he was helplessly hungry for a warm glance, a linked arm, a conversation. That he could be gotten to meet one's maiden aunt's train and entertain her to tea, or outline one's essay on Milton, or lend one anything up to five quid at a time, just for asking him to remain behind a half hour after the others had gone back to their rooms, and looking into his eyes while talking about the sonnets of Shakespeare.

This made him ridiculous. He knew it and could find nothing to do about it. He could not yearn less. For a while he'd wondered if there was something wrong with him, was he a shirt-lifter, a sport of nature. One evening he'd let some of the fellows drag him to a house they knew near the railway station. But once shut up in a room with the dull-eyed grinning girl, he'd been too frightened to do what she expected.

His level of intensity never seemed right. Even the other sensitive souls in the common room kept him at a little distance, as if his oddity would stain them by association.

When he saw a young man and woman arm in arm in the street, the longing sometimes nearly burst his chest.

And at night, when he lost control of his thoughts—what images appeared in his sleeping head, what wet dreams awoke him swimming in his own spunk! Vivid dreams about a thing he really knew nothing about.

He just wanted someone who'd see him, who'd take what he wanted to give. Why was it so complicated? Other fellows—fellows more stupid and less comely than he—seemed to get sweethearts as easily as they got pipe tobacco. But he couldn't discover the trick of it.

Until Drusilla took him, and killed him, and started him to life.

God, he was still haunted by the first glimpse he'd had of her quim. How she'd knelt in the middle of that red-draped bed, her stark white body clad in nothing but loose black tresses and her black stockings. Knelt with her knees parted so he could see all her neat patch of surprising hair (girls never had hair there in the paintings and sculptures he'd seen) and the red bit beneath, and she'd touched herself, opened herself with her taper fingers, saying Come my William, come and kiss your new mistress. He'd known she hadn't meant him to kiss her mouth, but instead the other mouth that she showed him, that he'd never seen before. He was horrified and amazed, but he'd crawled up on the bed and buried his face between her legs, and it was like coming home again.

She'd taught him to eat pussy even before she taught him to hunt, and long long before he was allowed to fuck her. He'd relished both. In those few nights between his rising and the first appearance of Angelus, who clamped down on him like a mighty vise, he'd fallen in love with Drusilla, wholly, helplessly. And she'd inspired him to do all the things William hadn't dared dream about. To take—not what he'd once wanted, but what he now could so easily get—from all those people who'd once found him such a nuisance.

Dru hadn't been his friend. She was his Grand Passion. He'd smashed and bashed to please her, been her stallion and her knight, her son and her brother. But she'd always had a roving eye—liked to pick magnificent fights with him so she could flounce off and fuck anything else she fancied until they came back together again in a hail of blows and recriminations, kisses and promises. He was her dog, and he glowed with angry pleasure when she kicked him. Getting her back from one of her rebellious liaisons, he'd tie her up and spank her, use the chains and the whip she liked so much to punish her, and when they were both bruised and fucked out he'd bury his head in her lap, weep and beseech her never to leave again, while she combed his hair with her fingers and cooed.

Nothing was more important than his mistress and her caprices. That's what being a lover was. He couldn't be the slayer's lover, not as he wanted to be, making her his alpha and omega, knowing himself to be her heart's delight. Even when she'd given him her blood, her body, and her forgiveness a couple of weeks ago, still she'd held back what he wanted most. She'd never have that to give him, because she'd never see him as a real man, even with the soul. When her friends challenged her, she denied him without hesitation. He was still her shameful secret.

Knowing that, how could he present himself now, as a friend? Didn't believe, really, that he could be friends with a woman he loved.

In the days after he dropped off the car, he thought about phoning her. Thought he owed her that, at least. Sometimes he fantasized about telling her it was all right, he understood, he'd be there when she needed him in a fight. Others imagined telling her she was a two-faced bitch who wouldn't know real love if it swooped out of the sky and bit her.

He'd pick up the phone, but the conversation he'd overheard would flood him, so he was afraid to hear her voice.

All he was, with his heavy new soul, was a useful soldier in her war. When the next crisis came, he'd be ready to assist. Until then, he'd leave her be. Leave her to her real friends.

"Um, hi."

He was kneeling to get a better look at the books on the bottom shelf when a pair of orange sneakers appeared in his peripheral vision.

Spike looked up into the glum, drawn face of the witch, clutching a looseleaf binder to her chest as if it was a teddy bear. What was she doing here? Why wasn't she at the far-superior university library?

"Readin' poetry?"

Her gaze shifted, and he knew she was looking at the stack of books he'd already grabbed.

"Find I fancy it now, yeah."

"Me too. I sort of thought it might be nice to—that's why I'm here. All the way down here, I mean."

Indeed, the poetry stacks at the Sunnydale Public Library were buried about as far away from the front entrance as it was possible to get without going out the back fire-door.

"What are you looking for?"

"In England Giles showed me some Philip Larkin."

Spike rose slowly, hefting the books. Again he wondered why she was here and not at the U. From the center of the thick stack under his arm, he pulled out the Collected Larkin and handed it to her. "I got here first, but go on, you have it, if it's what you came for."

"Thanks." She stared at the book cover for a moment. "So, um . . . I wanted to congratulate you."

"Congratulate me."

"About the . . . you know. Buffy told us how you went and fought to get it."

"Fought to get the chip out, actually. Soul was more like a dirty trick with purchase."

"Oh." She frowned. "Oh. Does . . . does Buffy know about that? The Goodbye Mr Chips part?"

He wanted to growl. Instead he whispered. "Yeah. She knows. An' knows I'm not gonna harm anybody. Haven't got the stomach for it anymore."

"Spike, why haven't you been to see her?"

He froze.

Willow edged closer to him. "We know you don't live in your crypt anymore. She's been looking for you."

"No need of me for now, is there? No new big or little bads arisen yet that I've heard of. Can handle the patrolling on her own."

"But . . ." Willow's mouth made a tentative, wobbling smile. "You've missed two Scooby meetings so far. That means you have to bring the pizza next time."

Amazing. Red was bought in. She'd heard what Buffy said, about him being on the team, and she'd swallowed it.

And now she was looking at him, out of that young-old face, that lovely intelligent face. Just looking at him, the way his silent victims stood around and looked at him. She'd have been one of the horde, if he'd had his druthers.

"Willow. I'm sorry about what I did to you."

"What?" She gave a little jump, glanced around. "What did you do? When?"

"You know—when I came to your room at the dorm that time. And before that—when I stole you out of the high school. Wasn't right."

Her eyes went wide. "You really do have a soul."

"And listen, I want you to know . . . about your Tara. She was a good . . . a sweet . . . beautiful thing. I could tell, looking at her . . . how delicious she must've been to love. It's a damn shame what that wanker did to her."

"Oh—"

And now here he was dripping empathy like a runny nose. "An' I'm sorry for what happened to you. When Buffy told me about it, I wanted to tell you . . . not that you'd care . . . I know how it is. Being that hurt, that angry. So you make a temper tantrum that'll . . . well, I never tried to end the world myself, but . . . I know what it is, to be that bereft. At least you did for Warren. That was proper."

"No it wasn't. I mur—"

Spike shrugged. "Wouldn't convict you."

She made a little sound, and melted against him. Arms suddenly around his neck, soft hair under his chin, the same Willowsmell he remembered from years ago when he'd wanted to have her in all the ways he could. She trembled, but it was a couple of moments before he understood that she was sobbing, and he shoved the books in one arm onto a shelf so he could hold her properly. Because suddenly that's what he was doing, he was comforting Buffy's distraught best friend next to the A through L poets.

She knew he had a soul now, and because of that she trusted him enough to hide her face in his neck and soak his shirt with her tears.

Of course, he had to trust her now too. Holding her, he clearly felt the power crackling in her body. Plenty there.

Suddenly she thrust him away. "Oh—sorry about that. Shouldn't have—I just—sometimes I get all—overwhelmed."

"S'all right." Since he'd parted from Buffy he'd had no physical contact with anyone. He'd felt so empty.

He walked her through the dark streets back to Xander's. On the sidewalk, she asked him in for coffee, a courtesy neither of them thought he'd take up.

"Dawn talks about you every day, and Buffy never does. That means they both want to see you."

"That so?" He supposed it was true, but what was the use of them seeing each other, when she didn't feel anything he wanted her to feel? That just put them back on her bathroom floor. He never wanted to be there again.

It wasn't until she'd gone inside and was looking through the Larkin poems that Willow realized she'd forgotten to ask—and Spike hadn't volunteered—where he lived now. She picked up the phone to tell Buffy about their encounter, then hesitated. He hadn't told her not to. Yet it struck her as not playing fair, to give him away. Obviously he was trying to lie low. And he'd been so kind to her just now.

Anyway, nice as he might appear now, he was still Spike. It was better for Buffy not to get involved with him again. He seemed to know that, so who was she to interfere?

Days and days had elapsed since Spike brought the car back, and no word from him. How could he do this? She replayed their parting in Indiana over and over. They hadn't kissed, but he'd said that weird thing about not washing. Which certainly seemed to imply that when he got back they were going to . . .

. . . and the way he'd made love to her that last night. God, if that wasn't love, she'd have liked to know what was. Slow, sweet, tender . . .

. . . like the first time with Angel.

After which he'd turned on her like a rabid dog.

Christ, you couldn't tell anything about a man's intentions by what he did in bed.

Buffy kicked at the fallen leaves strewn across the Restfield grass. The trees were turning early this year; it was still warm, yet the cemeteries she traversed were thick underfoot with crisp brown discards. Curled and crackling, crumbling as she closed her hand around them. Like my chances.

She should never have let him go off alone with the car. Should've insisted he stay with her—face up to her sister, take the rest of the trip home with them.

Except, what was that saying? If you love something, let it go, if it finds its way back to you . . . Shit.

She shook herself. Get a grip! She was the Slayer, not some sighing teenybopper. She didn't need him to be effective on patrol. And she wasn't in love with him; she couldn't, and shouldn't and wouldn't, and what was this, anyway, except a fit of pique because he wasn't stalking her anymore in that creepy way he used to? She ought to be grateful for that. He must've gotten a grip himself.

Oh yeah. Like he had in New York. A tight, hot grip on that weird guy.

He'd been fucking a guy.

Okay, kind of ick. Not that guys together was icky, she was totally supportive of guys together, in fact she halfway suspected Xander was about guys together and just didn't know it yet. But Spike. Spike who supposedly loved her with every ounce of his being.

He got a soul and what was the first thing he did?

He'd let that guy beat him and burn him, but it was more than that. She'd seen them together, so she knew it. Sitting there in the coffee shop at four in the morning, just necking in a booth. Going off together arm in arm.

She thought she knew all about him. Now she was realizing he could do all kinds of things she wouldn't have credited him with.

Including leave her the hell alone.

Damn damn damn. He couldn't really believe she didn't want him to come around? Hell, when had he ever failed to do what he knew would tease and annoy her?

No one at Willie's had been able to help her. He'd been there once or twice, sure, but not lately, and he'd not told any of them where he was living, either. She tried the old poker game, but his trail there had gone cold. Clem, she was told, had left town to look after a sick aunt upstate.

She kicked hard at the leaves, in the absence of anything else to kick. It was quiet that night. If he wasn't showing up, it must be because he didn't want to.

Unless he'd gone away again.

Unless he was dead.

Oh no—what if he was dead? She'd never know for sure. He'd just be gone. Disappeared.

The thought of it made her stomach flipflop. Never see him again, never touch . . . .

Then a rustling behind her. She wheeled around, stake raised.

"Don't shoot! I'm only the piano player."

"Xander." She smiled at him, and realized at that moment how tense she was, how tight. This was wrong. Things were supposed to be different, she was feeling herself again, and not supposed to be taking things so hard. This wasn't last year, last year was over.

She was just horny. That's what it was. Horny and Spike had become entwined in her mind, and she'd just have to un-entwine them, because there were lots of other guys in Sunnydale and she was cute enough to just take her pick. Faith's voice floated up in her head. Want, take, have.

"Glad I found you. I was over this side of town to see Anya."

"How'd it go?"

"Oh fine. Talking to her through her apartment door is really preferable. Can't see the whole veininess thing, that way."

"Ouch."

"Buff, when am I going to accept that it's over? She didn't answer my mail or pick up my calls all summer. Now I've been over there three times since I got back, and she won't open the door."

She looked at the ground. "It doesn't feel over to you. If both people don't agree a relationship is finished, how can it be finished?"

"That would be an excellent point . . . in Cloud Cuckoo Land. As they call it in the Land of Eng. Here on Planet Reality, we get the Unilateral Ending Thing all the time, and there is no mojo that works against it."

She kicked some more. "I guess."

"Speaking of things that are so over, I guess your idea about Soulful Spike being all ready to get down to Scooby business was a bit premature."

"Well, there hasn't been any Scooby business, has there?"

"How would he know? He doesn't call, he doesn't write. Not, uh, that I'm complaining."

"Xander, I wish you didn't hate him."

"I wish he hadn't tupped my fiancee. I wish he hadn't—"

"Tupped?"

"Many new vocabulary words were learned in Eng." Xander paused. "I can't help hating him, Buff. He's hateful." Another pause. "I wish you hated him."

"I really don't want to hate anybody. I don't think it's—"

"—good for your mental health, I know. The slayer should be pure of heart."

"Xan, last year I hated being alive. Now—"

"I just don't want you to get hurt. I just don't want you thinking the best you deserve is an undead freak—"

"Oh please." She hastened her pace. "Let's not get into who deserves what."

Things at the Kickstand were all right. He actually started to rather like the two waitresses, Kelly and Kristen, who treated him like a human being, made no secret of their opinion that he was a hottie, and yet didn't invade his space. Kelly was married and Kristen had a steady beau; their flirtations were comradely.

And the jukebox was amazingly good, mostly r'n'b sides from the late forties through the mid-sixties, some of them quite rare, so that Spike wondered how they got here, this bar in a stupid little suburban California town. Hollis must have unplumbed depths. He heard, for the first time in decades, regional hits he remembered from the years he and Drusilla spent so much time in Tennessee and Louisiana and Alabama, when he prided himself on knowing the best jukes, making himself at home in places where theirs were the only white faces. We dance here, pet, he'd tell her when he'd found a roadhouse where the band was consistently hot, we don't feed. Don't crap your bed, right? We'll eat the other side of the tracks.

Drusilla was a good dancer—always was. She only had to observe for a few minutes whatever the move of the moment was, and she could do it like a born one. Back before the Great War, watching them do the Turkey Trot, Darla used to sneer that the two of them were a regular Vern and Irene Castle.

Dru could Cakewalk, Ball the Jack, Black Bottom, Charleston, Tango, Jitterbug. They'd dance for hours, then he'd take her out to the car for a slug of hooch and a quick fuck, or just put her up against the back wall outside the joint for a knee trembler, and she'd laugh and gasp and growl—always thrilled by him, his cock and his kisses and his swivel. She'd bite and drink from him while he screwed her, and then they'd go inside and dance some more, until the place cleared out, the last die-hards staggering off as the musicians wiped their brows, packed up.

He really missed her sometimes, still. She was a good time, was Drusilla. Game for anything.

Aw, fuck. Who was he kidding? He didn't miss her. He wanted to. Wanted to miss his glory years, the violence and debauchery and utter freedom. But the soul wouldn't let him. The soul insisted on turning all his delicious memories into horrors, and grinding his face in them day after day.

He wanted Buffy.

Righteous, vengeful, luminous Buffy, his queen. He wanted to go to her and kneel and say I am not worthy of you, my love defiles you, but please touch me, I need you to hold me, I need to make love to you.

He knew if he sought her in secrecy, she would open.

He just couldn't bring himself to do that to her anymore.

Or maybe it was that he couldn't do it to himself.

In the shifting blue TV light, late at night, Buffy and Willow huddled together on Xander's couch. Huddled, Buffy thought, or cuddled. Willow probably thought they were cuddled. But they both were aware of the absence of people they might've preferred to be hugged up with, and also of all that was yet to be spoken between them and maybe never would be now. Willow had tried, very seriously, to kill her. She'd voiced resentments while doing that which Buffy knew to be real, festering. And now she was back, her powers supposedly benign now, and they'd made the noises of forgiveness and forward-going to each other, but still the memory of that sat between them, like the popcorn bowl. If the popcorn bowl was a maw of darkness whose bottom was yet unplumbed.

She wondered if Willow was aware of how tense she was. She kept trying to lean on her more heavily, and Buffy was afraid to move. To offend her.

On the screen Jen Yu was riding after the bandit Lo, demanding the return of her stolen comb. For miles and miles, across boundless rough terrain, they played cat and mouse. She was tireless, furious, imperious, while he laughed at her, taunted her, teased and flirted. Willow watched this with complete absorption, her eyes shining. They ended up in the bandit's crypt—no, his lair—whatever . . . there was a lot of back and forth smart-mouthing and innuendo. All that trick riding and fighting, it was nothing but foreplay. Buffy closed her eyes. She didn't need to see the subtitles to know what it meant, where it would lead. She could tell just by listening. Lovemaking in Chinese sounded just like . . .

She started up.

Willow didn't pull her eyes from the screen. "You okay, Buff?"

"Yeah, just sleepy. I'm gonna go home."

"But—"

"I'll watch the rest of the movie some other time."

She fled out into the night.

The things she wanted to enjoy remembering were not the memories she actually had. She wanted to recall when they'd gone to the movies at that new place out by the mall where you could put up the arm rests and sit with nothing between you. Wanted to be able to think of all the times when she'd danced the late slow dances with him at the Bronze, her arms round his neck, her head against his chest, the promise between them of kissing and skin and slow prolonged touch. Wanted all those mornings of waking up with him in her bed, both warm and indolent under the covers, chatting in whispers, the sun shut out. He'd ask her questions about herself, what she'd been like when she was a little girl, what she dreamed about, and she'd tell him. He'd tell her the same. About being a little English boy at the same time that the Civil War was starting in America, which was a mind-bending thought. Wanted to think of how he'd taken showers with her, how he'd brushed her hair.

Wanted memories replete with lovemaking and conversation. All she had was fucking and blows and insults.

Blows and insults that she'd tried to erase that night in Indiana, when she'd been gentle with him, let him be gentle back. He couldn't have been lying to her—not with his whole body—about what that meant.

He couldn't not want more of that.

She leaned on the sill of her bedroom window. Angel used to leap up there and come to her that way. Spike never had, but she imagined him doing it now. Any moment now his slick blond head would pop up over the edge of the rain gutter, and he'd creep across to her open window, smiling at the sight of her. Lean in and kiss her. She'd bring him inside, undress for him, and he'd kiss her breasts, his hands on her arms, her back, her thighs, caressing her. He'd tell her that he'd not meant to hide from her, that he would never leave her again, or hurt her, and that it didn't matter if this was all she could give him, this stolen time behind everyone's back, because he loved her and loved her and loved her.

She was naked now, sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes shut, touching her breasts with moistened fingers that she imagined were his lips. He'd kneel on the floor between her knees, his mouth on her nipples, on her ribs and belly. They'd kiss and kiss, she'd slide off the bed, crouch over him, put him inside her. There she'd be in his lap, looking at him, kissing his mouth, feeling him inside for a long time before he'd finally rise, set her on the bed, wrap her legs around him and move on her. They'd keep their eyes on each other the whole time, he'd talk her to her climax, his soft blue words exciting her as much as what he was doing to her body. Telling her how his cock felt to be in her quim, how hot she was, how she belonged to him. She'd let him talk, she'd listen.

Buffy lay back, her hands between her legs, eyes squeezed shut. Concentrated on feeling the tickle of his speaking breath against her ear, the weight of his body on hers. She sighed and spread her legs wider, stirred her hips as her fingers moved on the slick taut flesh. He'd say I love you, I love you, and she wouldn't try to make him stop, wouldn't tell him he was an idiot and a monster and a dirty thing.

She stiffened, shook, opened her mouth up and moaned. When it was over she turned her head towards the open window. For a second she thought maybe he'd be there, watching her bring herself off, laughing silently because he knew what she'd been thinking about.

There was nobody there.

A Thursday night, the joint was packed, the jukebox grinding on Allen Toussaint and Lloyd Price, and Spike was in the groove of doing the job—setting them up, wiping them down, pocketing his tips, smiling for the girls. While he was so busy, the massed witnesses of his evil were lost in the press of living bodies wanting beverages. He tried to keep his mind off bad subjects, and only every third or fourth small blonde girl who made her way to the bar looked like her just long enough to jar him.

God, if she came in, he'd stop everything. He'd walk out of there with patrons three deep at the rail, if she'd just appear and give him her look. Which look? Any of them.

She'd need him eventually, wouldn't she? There'd be another apocalypse soon—there always was, round these parts—and she'd call on him then.

Around eleven, there was one of those inexplicable lulls that happen once or twice an evening. For a few minutes more people had left than come in, and someone wrested control of the juke. The next record was a low slow one. He recognized it, and paused for a second to listen to the honeyed purr. Ruby Johnson singing The love of my man . . . keeps me safe . . . an' warm . . . .

He closed his eyes for a moment, while the music sent a tingle through him. When he opened them again, a face emerged from the haze of smoke and low colored lights, with a hungry gaze, a half-smile, that he knew.

Spike's stomach dropped, his hand arrested in the act of wiping down the bar.

"How the fuck did you find me?"

The other sidled closer, edged onto a stool. "Asked around."

"Asked around?"

He'd left Jack on the other side of the continent, sent him a Dear John letter on a postcard, and now here he was. Having asked around.

"You're famous, Spike."

He leaned closer, and without realizing it, Spike leaned in to meet him. He could smell him now; and the smell nearly floored him.

Jack was alive.

He'd asked around, amongst the kind of creatures who'd know a thing or two about him, he'd crossed the motherfucking country to find him, and he was still breathing. How in the HELL—?

Jack's smile widened. His eyes were humid. "They all know your name. They all know your . . . mark." He fingered the most prominent of the overlapping scars on his neck. "When they saw I belonged to you . . . they backed off."

Softly, Spike said, "But you don't belong to me, pet."

Jack's hand reached out—it hadn't far to go—and opened against Spike's cheek. The palm, the fingers, barely touching. But the thumb laid against his lower lip, with just the slightest pressure, pressure that was matched by the gaze, Jack's soft helpless needing gaze. "You look good to me, Spike. Are you good?"

"You can't have come here. How did you—"

Jack blinked. With his fingertips he traced the line of Spike's jaw. "Had nothing to lose. Once I found out about you . . . learned who that blonde girl was . . . was obvious where you'd be. Quit my job. Traded the lease on my apartment for a used car. Threw my books in the trunk. Here I am."

"Your books."

"No way I was gonna give those up."

The poets. A few times they'd read to each other in bed, when they were through with the rest of their rituals. Jack had a voice for poetry, a low sibilant chant that sounded strange at first and then was perfect. Tracing lines of silver from Spike's ears to his spine, making him vibrate, making him hard. Poetry like blood.

Jack's hand on his face. "You liked my books."

Spike's eyes closed. He shivered, but wasn't surprised, when Jack's mouth was suddenly against his mouth. A kiss more breath than flesh. When he looked again, Jack was sitting back, eyes lowered, wiping the sweat off his upper lip with his thumb. Spike felt himself glow.

"What time are you done here?"

"Close at two, then I've got to clean up. You'd better wait for me in my room." He brought him to the backstairs that led up to his flat, put the key in his hand. "You must be tired." He could see it in the lines of Jack's body, his drooping hair. He'd been driving for days. He'd come to Sunnydale and asked around again in the lowest places, not resting until he found him. Nothing more important than finding him. "Go upstairs and sleep if you can. It's not gonna be quiet, right over the dance floor, can't help that. Are you hungry?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know. No."

"I'll send someone up to you with a burger. Go on now. You look done in."

Jack started up the stairs.

"Christ, you really shouldn't have come here." Spike shook his head, their whole affair barreling through him again, every event saturated with feeling, from the time their eyes first connected at a bar a lot like this one, through every ritualized exchange of painpunishmentpleasure, to the moment he left him blissed-out and half-dead from that final bite.

He'd marked Jack . . . and Jack had marked him, in ways that hadn't faded yet, although the whip cuts and burns were healed now. Spike could hear the thub of Jack's heart, inhale that sexy roasted corn smell of his sweat even as he slowly took the stairs.

Then Jack turned to look back at him, said his name, and seemed almost to float back down in the close darkness; the wide span of his bony shoulders suddenly in Spike's hands, mouth nudging his, then connecting, both breathing hard. Under his breath he murmured, I found you, I found you, as he pressed the length of his starved slender self against him, groin to groin, pushing and grappling, and then the kiss thrust words and breath, both, aside.

They were two deep at the bar when Spike hastened back, still reeling from the heat of those hands, that mouth, and it was ten minutes before he had a chance to get Kelly's attention, order a burger with everything and a bottle of Sam Adams to go upstairs.

"Got a friend up there?" she said, her eyes lighting with a little smirk.

"Yeah. Just got in. Too tired to sit at the bar."

She shrugged. "I'll take care of it."

For the next hours he worked and thought about the man waiting for him above, about what it meant that he'd left his whole life—cramped, dispirited as it was—to pursue him. Imagined him amongst the vampires, the demons, negotiating his way, negotiating for his life. The life he was saving up so he could thrust it, all at once, at him.

Oh, he knew what powered that kind of move. He understood it perfectly.

But all that was over. Over for him, and over for Jack.

He walked in to candlelight. Votives on the low nightstand, flickering in the draft from the slightly open window, throwing long crazy shadows.

He'd decided, as he got rid of the last patrons, polished the bar and locked up for the night, that he'd tell Jack, as gently as he could, that he was mistaken, he couldn't stay.

But he hadn't counted on that candlelight, or on Jack being clean and naked, his damp hair curling on his brow and neck. Hadn't counted on him standing up from the bed when he walked in, and being so eerily pale and beautiful in the yellow glow. Hadn't counted on the sight of Jack's cock stirring and rising, like he'd conjured it with his stare, although Jack's gaze was having the same effect on his own.

"Come here Spike," he said. "I need you."

When he touched him, the flesh of his palms jumped, as if the other man's skin was a holy thing. Jack wrapped around him, his mouth opening Spike's mouth. He radiated heat. Moaned as they kissed.

Hands grabbing at clothes, until Spike shucked them.

"Fuck . . . fuckfuckfuck . . . need you to fuck me—"

The way he trembled scared Spike. Jack was so fragile, his body, his psyche, laid open to him gleaming and delicate as an alabaster goblet, nearly as translucent. Spike was hard for him, stirred up and alight, and the demon was trying to surge forward on the path of that longing, the fangs tingling to descend. He knew what this man tasted like. The sweetness of live blood, freely given.

They'd heeled over onto the rumpled bed, Jack was beneath him, legs akimbo, their cocks pressed together between their tense bellies, and they could not stop kissing.

Then Spike dragged his mouth away, raised up on his arms. Jack's breathing was ragged, his lips swollen. He blinked, and a sultry smile formed on his face that made Spike's breath catch.

Had anyone ever looked at him like that? Certainly not Buffy. Not even Drusilla on her palmiest night. That look pierced him.

Gaze still hooked to his, Jack slipped a hand between them, heated palm wrapping around both their cocks, rubbing the slick heads together, making them slicker. He squirmed and bucked, murmuring his hunger. Spike lifted Jack's knee to his shoulder, spit into his hand and wet his cock. Pushed into him slow and steady. There was no resistance. Jack fit him like a glove one size too small; sighed and groaned when he sank into him. Never took his eyes from Spike's.

He knew this was going to be a frenzied, grunting fuck, that they'd maul each other's mouths and necks, strain the bedsprings to the limit. Before that began, when they were merely lashed together as tightly as two men could be, so that Jack's heartbeat, his breathing, the pulse pounding in him felt as if they belonged to him too, Spike took in that light of welcome in the other's eyes, paused to notice its effect on him, how it made him feel as if he'd just fed on the richest blood there was.

"Have me," Jack whispered.

"Oh, I'll have you, my lamb. I'll have you all."

Jack was asleep, and Spike wept.

He shook, as if with fever, bent over the sink, the tears spattering the porcelain. He wished to vomit, but his physiology betrayed him—Jack's blood didn't nauseate him, it sang through his body like fine liquor, made him feel warm and real. Only his soul rebelled against it. He did not know how to suffer scruples, how to dissect right from wrong in a bath of yearning and lust. It was all too new and confusing, and made his head ache.

Jack had offered himself, and cried out when he bit him, cried out in pent-up release, drenching their bellies in his cum, pressing Spike's face into his neck. As he drank, Jack wept too, wept with relief and pleasure. When he lifted his mouth away, Jack tried to hold him to the wound. I told them I belong to you. He'd known before the bite and knew even better after, that he shouldn't have done it, because there was a thrall in that kind of biting that was beyond his volition, and Jack wanted it the way he'd once wanted the needle. He shouldn't hurt this man, who was so essentially gentle and lost, and who was, above all, innocent. Yet he could not help desiring him, seeing the look that was in his eyes, knowing the hurtful thing was just what he longed for most. Spike's soul said you must not do this wicked deed to this weak creature, even as it acknowledged—as all of him acknowledged—that Jack wanted him more fully and grandly than anybody ever had before.

The wanting went both ways. Still replete, he left the bathroom, crept back to bed. Jack was awake now and drew him into his arms.

"Don't cry," he murmured, and kissed Spike's eyes.

"Shouldn't have hurt you, mate."

"You didn't. I needed it. I feel fine now I'm with you."

Full of Jack's blood, his demon plucked at him with greedy fingers. Nestled in his depleted warmth, he was hard again, and ashamed, and ashamed of his shame.

God, the soul was turning him back into the worst sort of prat. He knew he'd blush if he could. But Jack smiled. Whispered, "You want me, Spike. I'm home." Wrapping a hand around the insistent cock, he lowered himself to nose around it, to kiss Spike's navel, and the smooth skin of each sacral arch, tracing a tongue along the crease of the thighs, and then enveloping each ball in the wet astonishing heat of his mouth so that Spike heaved and grunted. He was generous, he lingered, playing the while with the tight cock, flicking a maddening moist thumb across the spot just below the head that sent a ripple of joy through him, ripples that began to overtake each other, as of stones shied into a pond one after another. And then Jack's other hand slipped lower down, rubbed hard at the taut skin behind the balls, and then, fingers slobbered on, crept back further, introducing first one, then two, then three digits into the opening that flexed to take them in.

His head snapped back, he convulsed, and then Jack's mouth was on his prick, catching the spunk as it flowed, sucking, swallowing. Everything in Spike let go, and when it was over he was like a rag flung in a corner.

He slept in Jack's arms without dreaming.

"So you tend bar, and—"

"And that's about it," Spike said. "Keep the library books current."

"I understand this is the hellmouth."

"Do you understand, pet?" Spike said quietly. "Not many do."

"Heard plenty when I was searching for you. Some of them said you'd been neutered, but I knew that was a lie. I showed them it was a lie." His fingers brushed the fresh bandage on his neck. "But they all knew your name. And I heard some other names with yours. Angelus. Drusilla."

"All in the past now, mate." He sighed and sipped his beer. "All in the past."

"And what about the slayer?"

Oh, he'd definitely asked around. Still, Spike wondered how much he knew. That is, how much the vampire underworld in general knew. Jack snapped up a shrimp in his chopsticks and ate it, but never took his eyes from Spike's. The restaurant, one of those Susie Wong type joints cast in amber since 1948, was nearly dark, their booth illuminated by a candle in a glass set between them.

"I heard you were one of her busier enemies."

He shook his head. "She saves the world, Jack. That's the thing to know about the slayer. I've no quarrel with her. Keeps things safe for egg foo yong." He reached across the table and snagged a piece off his plate. Licked the salty sauce from his fingers.

Jack's eyes flickered. He wanted to hate her if Spike did, couldn't see why he didn't. He'd explained to him, back in New York, how he was a vampire with a difference. It looked now like he'd have to explain again.

"You said—on that postcard—that you were her slave."

Now it was his turn to drop his eyes.

"So where is she?"

"Not so simple."

"You were lovers. Are lovers?"

In quick succession, Spike nodded, then shook his head. Paused, then shook it again. "We were never what you'd call lovers. Or what she'd call lovers, more to the point."

"So why'd she take you away from me?"

Aw fuck. The way Jack looked at him filled him with dread and arousal. He'd done this. Made Jack crave him, crave the bite. Thoughtlessly, because he'd been so focused on his own need to be punished. Jack did it so well. So sweetly. The sweetness, the love and pity, made the punishment more exquisite. And Christ, he was an amazing piece of ass, and Spike may've been a monster, but he was still a man. All the weaknesses of both. Horny, lonely, hungry.

"She wanted me where she could keep an eye on me. So I'd be there to help her."

"Help her?—what? You help her kill other vampires?"

Spike exhaled. "Yeah. That's about the long an' the short of it. Switched sides a couple years back, for practical reasons. Then this summer, 'fore I met you . . . got my soul back. Now I'm on the side of the bleedin' angels pretty much permanently, I reckon."

Jack frowned. "Why?"

He'd never thought to be asked this question. "'Cause the other way just hurts too fucking much."

Jack was quiet for a minute then, eating. "I meant, why'd you get a soul? How does a vampire go about getting a soul, anyhow?"

"With great difficulty, pet." He winced. "I don't recommend it."

Jack started to smile, but Spike added, "And when you've got a perfectly good soul to your name already, I don't recommend letting it go. Don't recommend it at all. You hearing me?"

"Gotta look for a job," Jack said, as they headed back.

"Not much call for bike messengers 'round here."

He shrugged. "Sold the bike to get out of New York. I'll look around tomorrow afternoon while you're sleeping."

"Hollis's got a sign out for a short-order cook. It's dirty work and there's no tips."

"I've done it before. Would it be the same hours you do?"

Spike nodded.

"Perfect then. Fuck, man—it's perfect." Grinning, Jack shoved him against a storefront, ground into him, kissed him hard.

"Whoa," Janice said. "Hey, check out those two freaks doin' the freaky-deaky in public. Talk about P.D.A. Not to mention T.M.I."

Dawn and the others followed her pointing finger. One lean black-haired guy in a leather jacket was kissing another up against the front of Manny's Musical Instrument store.

"Aww. I think it's nice," Rachel said.

"I think it's nice," Danny repeated in a high voice.

"Shut up, you! It is!"

Dawn, squeezed into the backseat between Danny and Rob, jumped. "Oh my God. Follow them!"

"Follow them? What am I, the FBI?"

"Janice, follow them! I wanna see—I wanna see where they go."

"Uh . . . okay. Why? They're just two skanky guys."

"I think they're kinda cute," Rachel said, squinting.

Dawn kept her eyes riveted on the pair. They walked fast, kept their heads close together, talking. She wished she could hear them.

Janice crawled along in their wake, followed them through the warehouse district, across the railroad tracks, to the older, more derelict Sunnydale business district, given over now to thrift shops, bars, pool halls and check cashing storefronts. The pair disappeared into the alley beside The Kickstand.

"They're gone. So, can we go to the mall now?"

"What is this place?"

"Some dive," Danny snorted.

"Where they card, like, obsessively," Rachel sighed.

"Let me out."

"What? Here?"

"I need to see something."

"I don't think we should just leave you here," Rachel said.

"Then wait for me, okay? I'll just be a couple minutes." She climbed over Danny and got out. The dark façade of The Kickstand looked like it was shut up tight, but when she pulled at one of the heavy wooden double doors, it opened easily enough.

Inside it was all darkness. She paused, listening, waiting for her eyes to adjust, then started down the corridor towards the bar. The only light in the whole place was the hurdy-gurdy glow off the jukebox.

"We're closed," a voice said. "Don't open for another hour. So run along."

"Spike. I know it's you." She stalked across the big room, scrambled up onto a barstool in front of him, and dealt him a blow across the face that snapped his head back.

"Oi!"

"That's for what you did to my sister!"

"Yeah, all right." She'd caught a nail on his cheekbone. He smelled blood well up in the stinging gash.

"And I'd hit you a bunch more times for running out on us, except ouch—and—and—where have you been?"

"Here." He filled a glass with ice, set it on the bar. Filled it with Coke and slid it over to her. "Minding my own business. Look, apologies are lame. But I'm sorry for what I did to Buffy. She knows that. And I'm sorry I pulled back from you last year. I know you missed me. We missed each other."

His words—low, seemingly sincere—startled her. She felt her face grow warm. Buffy had said he was different now, but she'd not been prepared for this formal gravity. "If you were really sorry, you'd come see us. Spike. How can you think Buffy doesn't want you to—"

He turned his back, began slicing up lemons. "You know where to find me now, if she needs me. I'll come running the second I can help."

"She told me you two had agreed to be friends. She told us you were a part of the team." She heard herself becoming strident. "Spike, I—"

"I can be a member of the team from here, sweet bit," he said, his back still turned. "Needn't be underfoot every—"

"Who is that guy? I saw you just now—"

He put a slice of lemon in her untouched Coke, and met her eyes. "His name's Jack. Your sis saw him with me in New York."

Dawn blinked. She couldn't believe this. What was happening here? Buffy had told her that she'd forgiven Spike. Told her that they'd been lovers again on the trip to Indiana, and that she was looking forward to being reunited with him soon back home. That night at the Scooby meeting, when Xander was making all those ugly insinuations . . . well, who could blame her for not leaping up and saying yeah, he was her boyfriend? It was a little soon to say that.

And she didn't really think Spike was great boyfriend material for her sister, but the idea that he wouldn't be around, trying to be her boyfriend . . . was shocking.

"Don't . . . don't you love her anymore?"

He sighed. "Look, I've got to open in half an hour, an' I'm not ready. I'll call you a cab."

"Don't try to get rid of me, Spike. I thought we were friends! What are you doing?"

He popped a yellow wedge into his mouth and bit down, the sour juice shooting down his throat. "Guess I'm makin' lemonade."

It was a long evening. The place wasn't as crowded as Spike liked it, so there was too much time to think.

God, she'd looked well, the Niblet, and feisty! Marching right on in and giving with the right hook. A true Summers girl, no matter who'd made her out of what, or why.

Seeing her made him miss her, as if he wasn't missing her already. He didn't want to let her go so quick. Should've said something to her about Tara. Should've questioned her about her summer, what she was up to. Should've taken her in his arms.

The way she'd looked at him just now! Don't you love her anymore?

How could she imagine he didn't? Some things never changed. You could add to them, or take things away, but the thing itself, if it was solid, was solid. And Spike-loves-Buffy was about as solid as his immortality. As his soul.

She knew that, and yet she lacked the courage to speak of him to her friends the way she'd spoken when they were alone.

He didn't want to be her back door man. That would be too painful for both of them.

Finished for the night, he went upstairs. Once more the room swam in candle-glow. Jack, naked, head thrown back to expose his throat, was asleep. His cock was half-erect, chest rising and falling evenly. He'd pulled off the bandage, exposing the puffy wound, 24 hours old. Standing over him, Spike trembled, weak-kneed, weak-willed. Back in New York he'd thought how possible it would be to just stay with him, let years go by in that easy, symbiotic relationship. Blood and blows, verse and sushi, fucking and sleep. They'd both get night jobs. They'd muddle along, the vampire and his human consort, until time forced the situation. It always did.

There were tales of such, he'd heard them. Heard about vamps who'd kept a live lover for months, or even years. It always ended in the human's death. Sometimes a turning, sometimes a killing out of anger or misadventure. Or a suicide, the human in despair about what he'd become, or what she'd failed to attain. Once he'd met a vamp who was nearly as crazy as Dru—driven melancholy mad with grief, or so he claimed when he was lucid, because the woman he'd adored for thirty years, who had finally allowed him to turn her, ran out into the sunlight after the very first feed, too horrified to go on.

"They say we're soulless, but I swear it's something we learn," he'd said. "Turned out my Emmelina didn't want to learn."

Jack, he thought, would learn well enough if given the chance.

Just as William had.

Something like that was going to happen here, unless he stopped it. Unless he found the strength.

Jack's eyes opened, and his hand curled caressingly around his cock. "You're wearing too many clothes."

End this, William. End it now. You can't afford this, boy.

But oh, how much more alone would he be, after sending Jack out into the night, than he'd been even two days ago, before he arrived!

The vampire's tears, like his spunk, were tepid. But tasted, Jack thought, just as salty as his own. He kissed Spike's closed eyelids, where the dreaming orbs flickered ceaselessly and the moisture seeped out between the lashes.

They're right here, Spike had told him, back in New York, they are ringing this bed at this very moment, standing in tiered rows, they watch everything I do out of their hollow eyes, they remind me that I took them and left nothing in their place. I can make love but they watch me. They wait. When you punish me, it pleases them, a bit. Never for long. He'd laughed, a bitter little laugh like a cough. I'm never alone, me! Never alone . . . never not lonely . . . .

He'd looked at the close peeling walls of his bedroom while Spike talked, and tried to imagine all those people crowded round in the tight space, just 8 by 10, nearly filled by the bed they nestled in. Who they were. It didn't seem real. Spike was so gentle. Even topping in their bondage games, he was so careful. His bites were . . . well, perhaps because he wanted them so . . . the opposite of fierce. They felt like home-comings.

Now in this larger room in California, Jack sat up in bed with Spike's head in his lap, overseeing his sleep. This was what he'd journeyed all this way to find. The first positive desire he could remember having in years, a longing that stirred him up out of apathy so as to change his whole life. A life heretofore disconnected; organized—disorganized—around pain and its substitutions, its postponements, but which had disgorged this amazing creature into his bed, like a burnt angel tossed down from the sky. How could he not want him? Love beat through him like the stiff breeze off that angel's stirring wings.

Buffy was fine. Buffy was great. She had her salary from the council now, and not having to do crap minimum wage work, not having to worry about the house bills, had lifted such a weight from her mind that she looked, Giles thought, two years younger. Her smile had come back, the one he remembered from her high school days, wide and shining and sugar-edged. They trained, mornings, in the rear room of the Magic Shop, and she was good. Better than good: extraordinary. Even for her. Focused, graceful, with an ease in every move that showed confidence without arrogance.

She was meditating too, and even reading some of the books he'd always wanted her to read, the demon guides, the histories. He noticed that apparently new-found ability to sit still, to take things in. She was maturing, mellowing. She'd survived, and Giles began to think that she might last. Maybe—and he knew a Watcher oughtn't to think such thoughts, entertain such hopes—maybe she'd even attained the skills and finesse that would let her survive it all. Live to age out of the slaying, to become a woman like other woman. Free to marry and have children and a life.

Then he remembered that she was still only twenty-one, and anything could happen at any moment.

He pushed that thought away when it came. Damn it, he would be an optimist. Buffy had taught him to dare that.

When he came to the house that night for dinner, Dawn came to him at the dining room sideboard as he was making the shaker of martinis he'd share with Willow—a habit begun that summer. For a moment she just stood silently by him, watching. He knew the process of concocting, and the silver shaker, held a fascination for her, although he'd been glad, the first time she'd watched him do this, that the taste of the finished product made her grimace and mutter about machine oil.

A few feet away, in the kitchen, Buffy was cooking, banging pots and pans, singing along with the radio. When Dawn spoke, she pitched her voice low under the noise.

"What do you think?"

"Think?"

"About Buffy?"

His favorite subject, and a question that now held no terrors. Giles grinned. "She's splendid."

"She's splendid?" Dawn repeated. A teen-girl frown, more like a dimple, appeared between her brows. "Well, yeah, she mostly is. Big one-eighty since last spring. She's really nice to me now all the time."

"I'm so glad to hear it. She loves you—just enormously, you know." A little driblet of dread started within him.

"Yeah. But the thing is—you don't see everything I see."

He closed the shaker. Concentrated on the smooth cold silver in his hands.

"I know—melodramatic much? But . . . look, I understand that everything isn't all about Spike. You don't miss him. But . . . she doesn't understand why he doesn't come."

"Well, I expect he—I expect that with the soul—" He stopped. He'd already begun to think that every day without the appearance of Spike was a day whose shining hours were thereby improved. He was curious about what Spike was like with a soul, but not that curious. He'd had the idea, vague and comforting as the days elapsed with no sight of him, that the vampire had perhaps come to what passed for his senses, that his obsession with the slayer was at an end. Now that he put it to himself like that, it seemed ridiculous. What had Angel said about him, all those years ago? When he got it into his head to do something, he didn't stop until everything in his path was—

"I saw him just now."

He started. "You saw him?"

"Yeah. On the street. I followed him. He works at a bar on the other side of the tracks called The Kickstand."

"Works?" He chuckled. "Well good for him."

"Giles. I—I think he might be over her. I mean, I don't think he's gonna come here looking for her the way he used to."

"Well, that's fine, isn't it? I think Buffy feels that what took place between her and Spike last year was a—"

She shook her head hard, then placed her hand on her chest as if about to make a pledge. "Sister stuff. She'd hate me for telling you this, but . . . she cries at night. I hear her."

He flinched. "Perhaps—you can't know why she—"

Another determined head jerk. "She . . . thinks a lot about him. She's lonely for him. And yeah, that's maybe not too good, only—"

"Dawn! Help me in here, please!" Buffy put her head through the kitchen door. She was smiling, strands of hair falling in her face, forehead shiny. An oven mitt on one hand. Beautiful vibrant Buffy, restored Buffy. And yet she cried in the night for the touch of an undead thing that spent years plotting her death and the deaths of her friends.

For a moment, his throat closed. It was his fault, really. He'd tolerated the Angel mess. A terrible precedent. Had he stepped in then, when she was still a minor, when she had no business dating a grown man, let alone a vampire, however remorseful and reformed . . . he could have nipped this tendency of hers in the bud. It was a kink. And kinks were habits, and habits could be prevented. Or broken.

So many mistakes.

Dawn went into the kitchen without giving him another look. He shook the martinis, drifting over to the bottom of the stairs. "Willow! I'm pouring."

That's what it took to get her out of her room. Not her room anymore, because she wasn't sleeping in the house. But Tara's things were still there, and Willow visited them every day. She came down now, a fixed smile on her face. He wondered if he ought to offer Buffy a cocktail too.

Dawn's words left him stirred—and shaken.

The kitchen was closed, half the chairs were already up on the tables, and the evening's last patrons lingering near the exit. Spike was cleaning up behind the bar when Jack came through the swinging door and went to the jukebox. Slipped a coin in the slot, pressed a couple buttons, and turned.

"C'mere, Spike."

"In a sec', mate."

"No, now."

The record that started up in that instant was the same one that was playing when Jack first came into the bar.

The love of my man . . . keeps me safe . . . an' warm . . . the love of my man . . . protects me . . . protects me from all harm . . .

Jack met him halfway, touched his shoulder, and drew him into the slow unfurling music. He wanted to hang back, but the groove and the heat of Jack's hand commanded him as surely as a spell. Spike inhaled his warm breath and groaned inside. What was this? Why was this happening? This was not what he'd earned, or deserved. To be wanted, to be romanced. Buffy knew it, that's why she wasn't . . . .

Forehead to forehead, palm against palm, they swayed slow and close.

. . . when his lips his precious lips are on mine . . . gives me a feeling so divine oh oh yes it do . . .

He closed his eyes. They fit together, moved together, like . . . well, like nothing he'd had yet. It wasn't courting , cajoling, placating. It wasn't reaching and failing, it wasn't frustration and withholding and doubt. Wasn't one step forward two steps back, kick me in the head and run on out . . . It was Jack right there, sexy spendthrift Jack, pressing up against him, offering himself.

Late in the evenin' . . . when the sun go down . . . it's that man that man that man . . .

But Christ, what was he offering? Spike remembered the first time he'd gotten him to use the holy water. Jack had looked at him, his eyes full of reluctance and pity. No man, now this is too much. This isn't like the whip. He'd played with whips before, other men, other places. The holy water was something else. But he'd let himself be persuaded, and cried as he did it, cried as Spike writhed and vamped out, as he tried and failed to bite through the gag with his fangs and the air of the tiny room filled up with the smell of singed skin. Later he'd asked Does it help? He understood about penance, though he'd never asked what it was about, which showed understanding too.

And still he'd craved the bite, and with every bite he'd shown, with the crazy surging of his heart, that he wanted to be taken as far as it was possible to go. To death and past it, into what lay beyond death. To join him there. He never asked for it, not in words, but Spike knew.

Jack's mouth against his ear now. "I want you. I want you to belong to me, the way I belong to you."

He opened his eyes, looked into Jack's that did not look away.

He wanted to be bitten, he wanted to be taken. Yet he'd accepted Spike's demurrals in New York . . . he'd not gone looking for other vampires in the meantime . . . and he was here now, alive. Which meant—what?

When he goes away I never . . . no no no I never have to worry . . . oh because I know my man my man thinks of me only . . .

The place was dim; the low lights on his face, from the jukebox and the mirror ball, were all kinds of jewel colors. But vampire sight was best in the dark. He could see right into their sad brown fucked-up depths. Could clock the tiny messages of pulse and aroma, all the signals a live human brimming with emotion could telegraph to a savage hunter. Except he was hunting, not for the chance to tear this man's throat out . . . but the assurance that he wasn't expected to. Fuck, he wanted to be wanted, but not, dear God, for that. He felt Jack blush, but he didn't lower his eyes, just pressed his palms tighter against Spike's, and let him look.

"You came all this goddamned way."

Jack nodded.

"To find me."

"When you left me, I knew. Felt it here." He moved Spike's hand against his heart, pressed it there for a moment. "Knew you were the one—"

. . . and no matter no matter what my friends may say . . . I'll keep on loving him any old way . . . you know my man love me, my man needs me, he's got to have me . . .

He touched his forehead to Jack's, closed his eyes. The mute faces were there, behind his closed eyelids. They stared and seemed to ask him what he thought he was doing. How he could dare.

He didn't really believe Jack wasn't after being turned, despite his failure to get himself turned along the way. But it was hard to care, because Jack's longing for him was palpable, and it was nearly too much, to be desired that way. He knew so much about loving, helpless hopeless total obsession. Being sought after, cherished, was unfamiliar. Jack didn't fear his demon, Jack welcomed all of him into his arms. How could he refuse this? God, he'd never realized it could be so easy and still so damn good . . .

. . . that's why I love him you know I love the love of that man . . . oh early in the morning . . .

The song ended and for a moment they just hung there in the silence, on the cusp of a kiss. Then, from the doorway, the sound of two hands clapping.

"Wow. That was . . . jeez. So romantic."

She broke away from the dark, came slowly towards them. Face scratched and dirty. Her thin top stuck to her chest with sweat, one narrow strap torn and hanging down over her breast. She carried a battleaxe slung over her shoulder. The bouncer must've gone home already, he'd never have let her in the place with that.

"Hello Buffy."

"Hello." She looked at Jack. "I've seen you before but I don't know your name."

"I'm Jack. You're the slayer."

"I am."

They looked each other over, but neither moved more than his or her eyes. Spike thought Buffy looked brittle enough to shatter, although her voice was soft and calm. She turned her gaze very deliberately on him.

"Chased a couple of Hratholin demons to an abandoned warehouse on Sedgewick. Took 'em out, but there's a whole nest inside."

"You want some help."

"If you can tear yourself away."

He glanced at Jack. "I'll be back before sun-up, mate."

He went up to his room to get a weapon; she waited outside. The full moon felt like company. About the only company she could stand now, but she'd asked for his help, and she needed it if she was going to clean out those Hratholins, and besides she wasn't in love with him so what difference did it make.

What difference did it make that she found him doing the dreamy slow-dance of her own fantasy . . . with someone else. The man who'd cursed at her when she tried to warn him his life was in danger. Who'd lashed and burned him nearly into ribbons.

"Here I am, Slayer." He emerged from the alley, wearing his leather jacket and carrying a battleaxe of his own. She rounded on him, and before she knew she meant to do it, yanked his shirt up to look at his chest.

"Oi—what're you playing at?"

"So what kind of scars has he put on you this ti—" But he hadn't. His skin was creamy and unmarked. Spike pulled his shirttail from her fist, but gently.

"I didn't invite him here, Buffy, or know he was coming. He only showed up three nights ago. It was never his idea, those games. I asked, and he gave. We won't be doing that anymore." He didn't seem guilty about being caught out. No, he was just looking at her with that sweet, hesitant look he had sometimes, like before they'd gone to fight Glory and he'd thanked her for letting him back into the house. "And, I dunno if it's what you're thinking, but . . . him being here doesn't have anything to do with me . . . with me deciding to leave you be."

Leave. Leaveleaveleave, that was the word they all said. Something inside made a fist. "Hratholin demons. Many of them. I counted at least five breeding females, and they're the worst. Daybreak's in three hours, Spike, and we're gonna need all three to get the job done."

She twirled on her heel and started off.

She'd said three hours, but they were so good together, fought so instinctively side by side, that it took only half the time. When they were done, she should've gone off towards Revello Drive, but instead she fell into step beside him on the cracked weedy sidewalk, saying nothing. The stars glittered overhead. They passed a coffee truck setting up in anticipation of a factory's early shift workers. Spike paused.

"Fancy anything, Slayer?" He dug in his pocket, pulled out a five dollar bill. Buffy's eyes went wide. He nodded. "Whatever you like."

They sat on the curb with her coffee, his tea, and an enormous honeybun oozing glazed sugar set on a napkin between them. She was afraid to touch it, its stickiness would get all over her, and once she'd scarfed it down she'd just want another one. Some things were like that. You wanted them and wanted them even though in the past they'd left you feeling sick.

Spike glanced at the bun, and at her.

"Go on," she said.

"I'm not so much for sweet things."

The words leapt out of her. "Then I'd think you'd prefer me, because he sure was treating you sweet in there, and you know I'd never do like that with you."

She wanted to rip her betraying tongue out by the roots. Rocketing to her feet, she hurled the carton of coffee with all her might—it hit the brick wall across the street and exploded, just as she exploded into blinding tears.

It took a while, but she outran him. Probably, she realized, slowing down by the movie house on Main, he'd decided after a bit to just let her go. Because Spike on a tear, not so easy to outrun. Panting, she lapsed into a walk. Speed had dashed away the tears, but now her eyes felt dry as pebbles in their sockets.

He let her go. It was pretty clear she didn't want to be caught—she'd have run slower if she meant him to overtake.

He leaned against a telephone pole and lit a cigarette. Recalled how his life had unreeled through his mind while Drusilla drank it . . . and knew it would again when his end finally came. He'd done for enough vamps to know those few seconds between impact and explosion were sufficient for the unfurling of centuries. Buffy's taunt lodged in his chest like a stake in that moment before the collapse into dust; her every look and word and feel and taste from the beginning raced behind his squeezed eyelids as he stood there. God God God how wrong I was. How wrong I was to her. He'd tainted her and that taint still lingered and gave her pain.

He regretted that bitterly, but it wasn't so surprising. He'd heard that amputated limbs could go on aching for a lifetime.

"Do you think Xander has any tequila?"

"He's at Anya's. We could look." Willow headed towards the kitchen; Buffy followed.

"At Anya's? That's good, right?"

"It's not so good. He's getting kind of stalkery. I mean, it's stalkery when you visit a person over and over who's not letting you inside, right?"

"Uh, right."

Together they opened the cabinets, looked through the inventory. Suddenly Willow stopped. "Wait—why are we looking for tequila?"

"I just . . . I need a drink."

"You need a drink?"

"Willow—Spike has a boyfriend."

Her face, Buffy thought, was a cast of thousands, all by itself. Incomprehension, incredulity, hilarity, confusion, and a half dozen other emotions crossed it in the space of a few seconds, before it settled into the expression of sympathetic alarm that was Willow's own.

"A boyfriend."

"When I ran into him in New York, he was with this guy—" She described that first meeting, and meant to stop there, but Willow was listening so hard, and looking so much like her old self, all confide-o girl, that she wound up telling more and more. Everything that happened with him on the road.

Wide-eyed, Willow said, "So—there was Spike kissage, and—"

"There was the full Spike-and-Buffy monty. This was the night before I got to my cousins'. And it was really different, Will. It was . . . it was nice."

"Huh."

"The thing is, I try to tell myself, with Spike, that it's just—me with the hot pants. The sex with him, it's . . . intense. He reaches the parts of me that other guys . . . don't even guess are there. But there's more than that. I keep thinking . . . about him . . . when he's not all horizontal. We can talk to each other. Potentially. He makes me feel . . . stuff."

"I thought you said all that was over."

"I did. It is. But I thought—when we were together on the road, it felt like something fresh was starting up."

"You wanted that? Buffy—Spike."

"I know. No! It's just . . . he understands me, Will. He . . . he's got this sweet way with me, that just . . . ." She stopped. I'm not so much for sweet things. "Doesn't matter what I want, does it? That guy followed him out here, he's all with the lovey and the dovey, so they're hot and heavy again." She frowned. "I don't even get . . . I mean, Spike's such a ladies' man—"

"People . . . swing. Different ways," Willow murmured.

"I guess. It's just, before we parted, we . . . . This guy is such a skank, though."

"I thought you said he looks a lot like Spike."

"Yeah, but—"

"Maybe . . . maybe it's for the best, Buffy. I mean . . . you and vampires—really shouldn't be happening."

A little voice twinged in her at Willow's words. Who the hell are YOU to tell me what should and shouldn't be happening? But she shoved it aside. Willow was her best friend. She had to stop with this score-keeping. "I know. I know. He's all kinds of inappropriate. I could never love him. I know that."

But people . . . like you said . . . swing.

"You're in love with her."

"I am. Doesn't matter, pet. It's a dead letter. Don't trouble yourself on that account." Spike moved around the darkened room, putting the weapon away, pulling off his torn shirt and getting out a fresh one, washing his chest and arms and face. He didn't need to turn on the lamp to see what he was doing. Or to see the glitter of Jack's eyes from the bed, the intent way they followed him.

"She's in love with you."

"That she's not."

Jack leapt up, came to him as he turned out of the bathroom doorway, thrusting him back against the wall. They were just of a height.

"Don't lie to me."

"Haven't. Won't. Didn't I just tell you I love the girl?"

"Yeah. Yeah you did."

Spike caught his shoulders. "There's nothin' there, mate. She doesn't want me."

"Except that she comes in with an enormous axe, and you just drop everything to go with her."

"Well yeah. That's my job."

"So you just—what did you just do?"

"Slaughtered about fifty Hratholins. Enormous red stinky things they are, with these tusks like—I'd have brought you one back as a souvenir, but they liquefy once they're dead. The whole demon, I mean, not just the tusks." Spike moved his hand. "Speaking of tusks—or what's hard as one, anyway—"

Jack let out a nervous bark of laughter. Spike sank to his knees. Nothing to undo, he was already naked; he buried his nose in the crisp curls and inhaled the musky scent of his cock. How warm it was, against his cheek and then his mouth.

His own, he knew, was not warm. His own did not give off that lively play of aromas. He could do things with it that living men could not, and he certainly knew he had the power to please. But that which animated him was not the life force. And the blood that stirred him erect did not come from a beating heart. He nuzzled Jack's cock, kissed the underside, and the tip. Felt the insistent pulse in it as he squeezed the base. He wanted to tell Jack not to hold those things so cheap, not to imagine that what he himself was, was anything to aspire to. He couldn't find the words, though, so instead he took the cock into his mouth.

Jack made two fists in his hair now, dragging him closer. "Shit—that's good—no one's ever sucked me off like you can."

Taught by experts. Angelus had kept him at it enough, and been exacting enough, for anybody's standards. Seemed like he'd spent the whole winter of 1880 to '81 on his knees. After him, anyone else was comparatively easy to take on. And Jack was a most satisfying mouthful, but no Angelus.

He paused, let the cock radiate its heat in his mouth. Then withdrew, slowly, his tongue leaving a trail of wet along the vein. Jack gasped.

"D'you want me to finish you now, or shall we have a nice fuck instead?"

Jack bent over him, his hands still in Spike's hair. "You want me to fuck you?" His thumbs softly traced Spike's eyelids, his brows.

"Yeah," he breathed, "fill me up, pound me into the mattress, an' kiss me while you do it. . . ."

Jack grinned in the dark, and yanked him up by the hair to grind their mouths together.

"What's that stink—what are you doing?"

"Bleaching my head."

"Yeeuw—why?"

"Just . . . because. Been blond for the last twenty-five-odd years." He paused. "S'how I think of myself really." He felt around for the towel; Jack handed it to him.

When he emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later Jack glanced up from his book and whistled.

"What?"

"Oh man. It looks strange."

Spike fished around in one of his boxes, pulled out a Polaroid camera. "Here, take my snap. Need to see myself."

Jack came and leaned against him as they waited for the little square to reveal its secret. Spike's only thought in taking the picture was to see if his hair looked proper. But when the image came through, he realized, This is me with a soul. And wondered if he could really see it—if there wasn't something in the eyes that was never there before—or if he was just full of his usual self-dramatizing shit.

The hair was all right. The hair was just as it should be. As if nothing at all was any different from what it was last spring. He put a hand through it.

Jack took the picture from him. "Gonna keep this."

"Sure pet. It's all yours.">

"How old are you?"

They were lying in an exhausted tangle, passing one cigarette back and forth.

"Was born in 1852."

"Fuck me."

"Gimme a minute—"

"Eighteen-fifty-two? Then you remember—"

"Christ, I remember it all." Spike took a deep drag of his smoke. Averted his eyes from their audience. Not that he thought they were really there, he wasn't that far gone—yet—but they were omnipresent. Watching him. Watching him live what he'd robbed them of.

Of course he knew they weren't what Jack was talking about. He was imagining his witness to the march of progress. Boer War, Great War, Spanish Civil War, World War Two . . . .

"And how old were you when—"

"Not yet twenty-nine."

"Like me." Jack was quiet.

"Know what you're thinking," Spike said on a sigh. "Nice work if you can get it, never having to turn thirty. Watch your youth an' brio dribble away."

"Yeah."

"Thought so myself for a hundred twenty years. But it's not worth it."

"Easy for you to say."

"It's all about this." He placed a hand on Jack's chest, above the thudding heart. "Bein' alive . . . s'precious. Didn't think so at the time, though, because I was a miserable twat. Being alive, and warm, and inside of time . . . s'precious. I've lost that forever."

"Time destroys you."

"Yeah," Spike agreed, as if it was a good thing. Jack took a hit off the cigarette, covered his mouth with his, and sent the smoke down Spike's throat. They kissed for a minute, slow, pensive. Spike broke it first.

"Doesn't it—doesn't it bother you? Me being . . . ."

It should bother you. It should revolt you. But don't leave me.

Jack rolled more tightly against him, his breath making a moist oasis on Spike's neck. "You're so fucking beautiful. So strong. You're not dead."

"You don't get it, though, do you, my Jack? You never met a vampire before me. If you had, you'd be dead." He pulled back a little, looked at him. There was a tiny pinpoint of dread in each of Jack's attentive eyes. Afraid of what he might be told. "I'm a monster. A stone killer. For over a hundred years, I killed whenever I was hungry, or bored, whenever I fancied a spot of violence . . . I only loved my mistress, who was like me, hell, fiercer than me. Everyone alive was fair game for our appetites. I was wicked, I delighted in wickedness. All vampires do. No—don't smile. Don't smile. That's real, that is, wickedness. It's real and it's terrible. Once you lose your soul—" His mouth worked, but the words had dried up. The horror of that, of being a thing without a soul, and knowing it, and reveling in it! Crashed over him again, kept crashing, over and over, shaking him to his core.

All that crap Angel was so sunk into, that he'd thought was such bullshit— No. It was true. The horror was real.

"But you loved one girl for a hundred years. Loved her."

"Yeah."

"So you must've had a—"

"No. You're not gettin' it. Don't need a soul to love. An' loving one's mate's got fuck-all to do with virtue." The word nearly curdled on his lips. He couldn't believe he cared about it.

William had. A great deal. He'd even written sodding odes on the subject.

"What changed, then? You won't tell me how you got the soul. Not that I even know what a fucking soul is."

"What changed was . . . my mistress left me, an' I fell in love with the slayer. Or maybe it was the other way 'round. Been trying to parse that out ever since. Makes sense though, because I loved death, and she is my death. But two years later, after I told her I'd never hurt her—I went berserk on her and forgot my promise. Needed to make a change after that. Thought it would be—"

He shook his head. Suddenly he couldn't quite remember what he'd thought it would be. Blamed it all on the chip, but what did the chip have to do with what went on between him and Buffy? The chip no longer worked on her. He was as free to twist her head off her spine as he'd ever been before he became Hostile 17. So what had he really wanted from that trip to Africa?

Relief. Freedom. To be made into—

". . . it's the biggest mind fuck imaginable, what I am now. Always knew I was a monster, an unclean beast . . . but now I mind it. I mind it so I—"

"I get that." Jack's hand traced lines on his chest, where the whip cuts had been. He whispered. "I know all about what it is to hate yourself."

"Maybe. But you can't know what it is to be a hateful thing. It's not that I went bad, my Jack. I am bad. The thing . . . that I am . . . is filth."

"Not now," Jack said, caressing him. "The thing that you are is beautiful. Beautiful Spike."

"Don't deserve your company, the solace of your—"

"Shut up. Don't push me away. I need you."

Again the need to kiss outweighed everything. They rolled back and forth, asserting dominance and conceding it, until Jack was left gasping.

"What about you, pet? Where'd you go wrong? Your mum didn't bring you up to the needle and fucking vampires."

He stiffened. Spike stroked his arm. "Nah," he whispered. "Didn't mean that like it sounded. Lovely boy you are."

"Some people's mothers . . . some people's mothers are too busy trying to bring themselves up, or down, if you know what I mean."

"So who taught you to read poetry?"

He felt Jack smile against him. "Oh, there was a teacher I had once—fourth grade. Miss Kaplan. She liked me."

"Did she, pet?"

"She gave me books to take home . . . showed me that escape hatch."

Oh yeah. Know all about. Down the rabbit hole we go when things get too rough. 'Cept that wordy escape wasn't enough. Not for me, not for you.

"So what was it like, the nineteenth century?"

"In the nineteenth century . . . it was very important to wear a hat."

Jack chuckled. "C'mon . . . tell me something real. Tell me . . . ."

"Two gents caught out doing what we're doing right now would be clapped in prison if they hadn't the money to hush it up—or even if they had."

"Did that happen to you?"

"No."

"You've had men before."

"Course. Don't get good at this without practice, my Jack."

"You are good. God—you're so good."

Even as Jack kissed him again, he braced himself for what was inevitably the next question.

"So . . . how did you . . . ."

"Was in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the wrong frame of mind."

"You're not really telling me you regret it?"

He still didn't get it, because he obviously didn't want to. Some realities were too hard to look into.

"Wouldn't be here having you, otherwise." God, he thought, with an inward shudder, I can be so fucking smooth. He gathered him closer, as if the slight rocking of his heartbeat might do for them both. He tipped Jack's head up and pressed his mouth to his, inhaled his breath. Jack's hand found his cock, which grew, as they fed on each other's mouths, to overflow his palm.

Did he regret falling to Drusilla? Before the chip, he'd never given regret a thought. Even after . . . but now. What else was it, but regret, that made him start awake sobbing in the afternoon?

He'd tried to end it, but she'd said no.

She'd said . . . .

"C'mon. Time's not running backwards around here."

"More Hratholins?"

"Not tonight. C'mon, hurry up."

"What then?"

"You know. Faster pussycat, kill kill."

Jack came through the swinging doors from the kitchen.

Buffy didn't even glance at him.

"Scoobies aren't with you?"

"Scoobies are busy living their lives."

"Sleepin' their sleeps, more like."

"You and I don't have anything more pressing to do at two-thirty in the morning."

That's when Jack came up behind him and draped an arm around his chest.

"Suit up, Spike. It's late. Your stupid straight job is dicking with my slaying schedule." She jerked her chin up, then walked out. She'd be waiting, like last time, under the streetlight.

"She says jump, you say how high?"

"Yeah."

"What if—"

"Look, pet. I like having you here, I like fucking you and the way you warm up my bed. All that helps keep things right. But I also really like pulling the heads off demons, an' you'll just have to bide your time while I do."

They didn't walk like two heroes on their way to battle, but like a man and woman who were maybe casual friends, on their way to something not particularly pressing. Jack stayed as far back as he could without losing sight of them altogether. He didn't know Sunnydale very well yet, didn't know what route they'd take. The place was lousy with boneyards.

He'd heard, as he searched for Spike, about the slayer. Slayers. Part of his fame was that he'd murdered two of them. The whole thing didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. One girl—girl? Why a girl? And such a scrawny one at that—at a time, against a whole planetful of vampires. For what? Probably it was a hoax. A myth the vampires told each other, to scare themselves. The boogeywoman. The whole thing seemed too improbable.

This one, with her snooty attitude ten times bigger than her tiny frame, acted like she owned him. But it was absurd, this idea that she was a demon-killer. She must be just a girl . . . who was drawn to dark things. Who had dark appetites. He might say they were never lovers, but it was obvious he'd had her, and she'd satisfied him. He could see that in their eyes when they looked at each other. She'd satisfied him, and he'd satisfied her.

Jack had noticed that bite mark on her neck right off. That gave away her number like nothing else.

They jumped the stone fence at the first cemetery they came to, and walked off amongst the mausoleums. Jack stole over more quietly. They were talking together, but he couldn't get close enough to hear without being seen. Any minute now, she'd yank him down into the grass. That was what she wanted him for. All that about Hratholin demons, the bloody axe from the other night, that had to be some kind of game she liked to play.

They paused in the shadow of a memorial statue. Spike's lighter flared. The girl seemed to be standing on tiptoe then. Jack felt a surge, watching her get into Spike's space. Pain that came up from that no-place inside him, because no matter how small he whittled things: himself, his life, his desires, there was never enough to quiet him. All he wanted now was contained in that man, who needed what he had to give, who could make him feel so damn good, but she—

Four figures coalesced out of the darkness. She sprang away from Spike, and then she was in the air, whirling, and something exploded, and there were three figures, and then there were two, and then there were none. He blinked, not sure what he'd just seen. Spike hadn't even moved.

Holy shit.

She walked back to him, shoved him up against the side of a mausoleum, pulled his head down to hers by the hair.

Fuck. Fuck this.

He couldn't watch.

Pressing herself into him with all her might, her mouth on his, belly wriggling against his groin, she waited for him to yield. She knew, after all, that he always yielded.

Instead his hands closed tight around her biceps. He forced her back.

"Not this again."

"Wh—what?"

He desired her, he adored her, wanted to be her servant, her husband, her protector. But she wouldn't have it that way—she'd denied him to her friends. Said she'd only been with him when she was feeling crazy. She must be feeling crazy again now.

Only wanted him for one thing.

Bitch treated him like a toy, like he was no better than that fuckbot he'd had—too bad Warren was gone. He could build her a mechanical Spike, that would solve all her problems. Fuck it, beat it to a pulp, shove it away into the closet when anybody came to call.

All this blasted through him so he was lit up in a rage. "Sod off, Slayer."

"Is it because I washed?"

"Christ, Buffy!"

She looked at him, her eyes wide and moist. He had to laugh. The things she said sometimes—

She took his laughter as a softening, and moved in on him again. He ducked away. "If this patrol is over, I'm off."

She went still. That look in her eyes was the whammy. He glanced away. He wasn't ready for this from her. Not when she'd change her mind again in ten minutes.

"Spike, what's happened to you? Don't you miss me?"

"Got plenty of company, love. Ranks upon ranks of it, with me all the time. Standing about me and staring. Making sure I never forget myself. Not much for conversation, but then you never were either."

Didn't hang around to clock her reaction to that. Just walked to the wall, vaulted over it, headed back towards The Kickstand. The anger coming back with each step, or was it—not anger. Worse. Despair. Because there was nothing good about him, or about his existence, and even with Jack there, he was so lonely for her he wanted to die.

Jack greeted him with a blow across the face that made him stagger.

"What the fuck are you doing—? Betraying me with that skinny cunt!"

The room spun; he vamped out with a roar, grabbed him and dragged him close. His neck would make the most satisfying snap when he broke it, and the crunch as his jaws fastened on, the hot splash of blood into his mouth—

Spike dropped him. Dropped him, and stumbled backwards out the door, back down the stairs. Out into the night. The tears coursing from his demon eyes burned, as if they were made of holy water. At the end of the alley he knelt and vomited.

When he was empty, shivering, still heaving and sobbing, he became aware of the touch on his back. Raised his head to see Jack hovering over him, tears tracking silently down his cheeks. The streetlight beam made them glisten. Spike rocked back on his heels.

"Oh God—Did I hurt you just now?"

"No, man. I'm sorry. It's my fault. Come inside. Come inside, and let me take care of you."

Jack got into the shower with him. Soaped his back. And then all at once it seemed very important, the only important thing, to wash each other. In silence, beneath the hot needles of spray, they scrubbed at each other's hair. There was an old nail brush in the soap tray; they traded it back and forth, doing each other's hands, kneeling to do the feet. They used up an entire bar of soap, covered every inch, again, and again, and a third time. He felt as if he was still crying, and Jack looked that way too, but probably it was just all the water dripping down from his wet hair. They stayed in until the spray went cold. The water ran off them and for that time he did almost feel clean. Afterwards, wrapped in damp towels, they collapsed on the bed.

He wanted a cigarette, but was too tired and empty to move.

"We don't have to stay here," Jack murmured. "Fuck her—she doesn't really need you. I need you. We can start over. We can be together somewhere else."

The effort to keep his eyes open, to speak, felt like too much. He'd tried that already, escape, and she'd come to find him and pulled him back. Nothing was going to be different anywhere else, because the soul and what went with it was always with him. And he'd love the Slayer wherever he was.

Then Jack rolled closer to him, his breath on his skin before the first touch of mouth to mouth. Jack made love to him like he'd just washed him: every inch thoroughly seen to. By time they were rocking together, groaning in one voice, he'd lost track of the staring eyes, of the Slayer's words and her terrible gaze and how soul-sick everything made him. There was just this, this rhythmic solacing dance.

And after it, the long drowse, his head resting on a gently rising chest, the thub of the heartbeat beneath his cheek. He floated on that, like the innocent little boy he once was, in his mother's arms.

She didn't know what to do with herself. Home was the last place she wanted to go. Whom could she possibly talk to about this? Spike doesn't want me anymore—which of them wouldn't cry hallelujah? Briefly she considered getting drunk, then remembered how sick she'd felt last year when she'd tried that. Sick, and just as miserable as ever.

She went looking for something else to slay, but the balance of the night was quiet. Almost eerily quiet, as if somehow the word had gotten out: the Slayer's frustrated. Frustrate her more.

The sick thing was, a year ago, she'd have talked to him. How many times had she done that? Enough to get the feel of him as a listener. So willing, amenable. He'd sit beside her, his head cocked, and just let her say her piece. Not argue with her, not tell her how she ought to feel. He'd accepted her the way she was.

Loved her the way she was. With that weird superheated black-hole kind of love that half turned her stomach, even as she didn't quite believe in it. The love of a twisted predator, choked back on a short leash, wasn't really love. Not any kind that she wanted, anyway. That anyone sane and alive would want.

The crazy thing was she still felt it from him. It was all right there, in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the way he walked beside her. Yet he went back to that man. That man who touched him like he owned him.

She wandered for hours, then found herself, an hour before sun-up, in front of The Kickstand. Walking through the alley she'd seen Spike emerge from twice before, she found the wooden stairs in the back that led up to a door on the second story. The door had a pane of glass let into it, but this was covered with a thick curtain. She hesitated for a moment. This felt insane. What if Jack opened it instead of him?

Then she knocked.

Just when she thought there'd be no answer, the door opened a crack.

"Slayer. What the fuck—?"

"I'm sorry to wake you up. I just need to talk to someone. Can I talk to you?"

"You're blond again. I noticed it before, but I didn't say anything."

He touched his hair. "Yeah, well . . . you said you didn't like the other—"

"So you changed it back for me?"

He shrugged. He'd changed everything for her, hadn't he? Changed himself into an unspeakable half-breed, neither man nor demon, saddled with a soul that fit him like a hat on a chicken. She ought to know that by now.

She glanced away. They were sitting, facing one another but not close enough to touch, on the cement floor of a loading dock a few buildings further along, where the morning sun, when it rose, wouldn't reach. Spike, in his jeans and boots, sat with his arms around his drawn up knees. She couldn't help noticing how defended he looked, although there was not a mean note in his expression. "It's just, that's how I'm used . . . ."

"Wore my hair dark for, lessee . . .over fifty years. Dark like Drusilla's was. For a while, in the twenties and thirties, I had this thin moustache . . . ." He traced its line along his top lip with his thumb. "Dru thought that was right smart."

She blinked. "What color was your hair before you were turned?"

"It was . . . I don't rightly remember anymore." He frowned. "Haven't seen the roots in decades. A sort of honey color, I expect."

She let her head drop then, and pulled her hair forward around her face. "Spike, I don't know what I'm going to do."

"What do you mean, Slayer?"

"Please don't call me that. Please."

"All right. Buffy."

"I thought . . . I thought things were going to get better. They're better with Dawn. And I don't have the money problems anymore. But. Xander. He's so angry and weird. So judgmental. And Willow. She still has the magic. And she's . . . she's really tired, and I'm afraid of what she's going to be like when she's not tired any more. She tried to kill me, Spike. I mean—she really was going to kill me. We fought like . . . like two slayers. I still love her but I can't stop thinking about that. If Giles hadn't stopped her, she wouldn't have stopped before I was dead."

She looked at him while she spoke, a tense unbroken look. Her words reminded him of when he'd wanted nothing but to kill her, and tried everything he could think of to accomplish that. How glad he was he'd failed! How betrayed she must have felt, when her best friend, sweet timid little Willow . . . .

He recalled how the witch had looked at him in the library stacks, how she'd leaned against him and sobbed. Quietly, he said, "I don't think she'll want to hurt you any more."

Then she dropped her eyes. "We're all broken up. Even though Giles is back, it feels . . . stuff's busted that's never going to be whole again. I wish I had you to help me. Why won't you help me now?"

"I'm here, ain't I, Sla—I mean, Buffy."

"Why won't you . . . ." Her eyes brimmed, her throat worked. She looked away, looked into the greasy cobbled alley, the loading dock on the other side. She wasn't sure what she was asking for. What he wanted to give her, what she wanted to accept, were never going to mesh.

Watching her struggle, a little frisson of pleasure passed through him. Her desire was still intact, even if she was just as ashamed of it as ever. Christ, in the past, how he'd have held this over her! Imagine—the Slayer looking at him like she was right now, asking for his touch. But the part of him that would've taken evil glee in that was in retreat, and the knowledge of her lust, unleavened by any finer feeling, just made him sad.

He was still just convenient.

"Are you in love with him?"

He started. She seemed startled by her own words.

"Because . . . if you are . . . if he makes you happy . . . I don't like him. But I'd like you to have something . . . ."

. . . have something since you can't have me. He finished the sentence for her. If I didn't love you, Slayer, I'd hate you. "Never mind me, I'm okay, pet. Now tell me your worries. Spike's here, he's listening."

She was still talking a half hour later when the alley filled up with grey light, and he was so focused on her that he didn't notice Jack at first, picking his way towards them over the cobbles. But she could tell when someone was coming up behind her. She broke off and turned. He looked up at her as if from the front row of a theater.

"Hey," Buffy said.

"Hey."

Jack stared at her for another few seconds, then scrambled up onto the dock and went to sit by Spike, close, so their arms touched. He was wearing a teeshirt, but Spike's upper body was bare. He didn't shift away from Jack, just accepted his presence like he liked it, like he was used to it. Suddenly she thought of Drusilla. That time in the goth clubhouse, when she'd had her at stakepoint, and Spike dropped everything else he was doing to keep her safe. His loyalties were so thorough. Jack, she saw, was under the protection of that loyalty now. Whether Spike actually was in love with him or not was pretty much beside the point. He was involved, and once involved, Spike never just walked away.

That was one of his good points, if you looked at it a certain way.

He glanced at Jack. "You couldn't sleep?"

"Wondered where you'd gone."

"Buffy was telling me her troubles."

In the past, she'd have bristled at that. But there was something so calm, so unthreatening, in the way Spike said it. As if they were three friends.

Jack stared into his lap. Then he raised his eyes to her. "You want some coffee with those?"

She looked around the apartment. It was one big room, with a bathroom off it and the kitchen along one wall. The walls were yellow, no pictures on them, the floor was green linoleum, and the furniture looked like it came from a motel room in 1955. Pretty much a dump, but, she was surprised to see, clean. There were a lot of books scattered around: big piles of them against one wall, and various volumes on the bedstand, the table where they now sat, and on the arms of the tatty sofa.

The bed—she tried not to look at it, but it dominated the room—the bed was unmade, and bore the signs she knew so well of a sex session with Spike. The blankets stirred around, the sheet coming loose, pillows pounded up against the headboard. She half expected to see a pair of handcuffs or some leather restraints hanging from the posts. Impossible not to imagine what they'd been doing—probably right before she knocked on the door. She could picture them. Jack's body was a lot like Spike's, from what she could see of it. Thinking about that, she was disquieted to realize the idea of them screwing kind of turned her on. Who was on the bottom? She glanced from one to the other. No clue.

Jack made the coffee strong. He didn't off