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/Chapter 2: Action/

"Get out," she said to Harmony, without preamble.

"But, what, I don't..."

"Go, Harmony. I don't need you in here as a distraction for what I have to do. Plus, I don't trust you. Don't make me stake you...because I will."

"Fine!" Harmony threw up her hands. "Just be that way. Jeez, guess you woke up on the underside of the mattress this morning, huh?"

At Buffy's glare, she huffed and went downstairs, presumably to spend her day in the sewers. Buffy took a deep breath and swung herself gracefully up onto the sarcophagus, sitting cross-legged next to the still-comatose Spike. "I hope you appreciate this," she muttered. She took a paring knife out of her belt, grimaced, and stabbed herself in the wrist. No vampire suckage from her neck this time. That had been all kinds of bad, and she didn't want a repeat of the experience.

Blood welled up from the wound, and she placed her wrist over Spike's mouth, glad that his vampiric reflexes were still working. As he drank the life-giving liquid, his wounds began closing, and the bruises faded from black to purple to /gone/. The broken bones knit, visibly. It was almost magical. No, Buffy corrected herself--it was magical. She was grateful for the small favor of not needing to be drained to unconsciousness for this to work.

When he seemed almost totally healed, she took her wrist away. "Spike?"

His eyelids fluttered, and he licked his lips. "Oh...that was...bloody lovely..." His eyes snapped open. "Slayer?" He rolled off the cement casket to his feet, his posture and expression wary. "What in sodding hell is going on?"

"Well, that's a long story..."

When she got to the part about her dream, Spike stopped her. "I was there for that." He tightened his lips apprehensively. "Before I dusted, did I say anything?"

Buffy considered. "You got cut off in the middle of a word. Why?"

"No reason." His shifty eyes told her otherwise, and she determined to pursue it. Later.

"This doesn't mean I like you, or that we're friends, or anything."

"Oh, heavens no. God forbid the Slayer soil her lily-white hands by associatin' with the likes of me. Not that I'm not grateful and all." And just like that, they were back to throwing barbs at each other. He picked up his duster and hunted through the pockets for his cigarettes. "What're you gonna tell all your little Scooby friends? Riley in particular? Captain Cardboard don't strike me as the type to approve of you feedin' yourself to a vampire. Least of all me."

"I don't need permission from them to do what's right," she snapped.

He tilted his head and gave her a contemplative look. "Since when is helping me stay non-dusty 'right'? I mean, I know you keep me around because of my devilish good looks and because I give you information...but I never thought I'd hear you say /that/."

She glanced away from him. "It just was, okay?" Her voice was low; he barely heard her. "If anyone's going to dust you, it's going to be me. Just...don't give me a reason to do that, all right?"

"Sure, Slayer. Whatever you say."

###

Buffy leaned against the wall in the Magic Box that night, arms crossed defensively over her chest. Spike skulked in a corner, hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his mouth. Willow and Tara looked sympathetic, but Giles, Xander, and Riley glowered furiously at her.

"I cannot believe you took such a terrible chance--again," Giles began.

"Especially for...him." Riley gestured in Spike's direction.

Spike yanked the cigarette from his lips and started to say something, but Buffy silenced him with a look. "Like I have to explain myself to you!" she said. "I had a Slayer dream, okay?"

"A Slayer dream. That told you to save Spike." Riley wasn't buying it.

"In a manner of speaking. You got a problem with that, Finn?"

"Yeah, Buffy." He slammed his hands down on the table and stood up. "I got a big problem with that. What the hell is it with you and letting vampires bite you? You're supposed to kill them, but it seems like every time I turn around, you're letting them live instead. Or actively saving their lives." His expression changed from outrage to hurt, tinged with fear. "One of these days you'll let it go too far, and then where will we all be?"

"Riley." Buffy stepped up to him and hugged him. Reluctantly, stiffly, he hugged her back. "I know you worry about me. But Spike can't hurt anyone, least of all me. You all know that."

Willow frowned a little. "Yeah, about that...why didn't his chip fire when he bit you? I'd think that Spike should have one heck of a migraine right now."

Buffy rubbed at the bandage around her wrist. "He didn't exactly bite me."

"Here, now." Spike stepped forward, tossing his cigarette away. "I'm not going to let this go on any longer. You lot let her alone. She did what she thought was proper, and you got no bloody business second-guessing her like you're doing."

Riley disentangled himself from Buffy and walked over to Spike, standing over him threateningly. "Shut up. If it wasn't for Buffy protecting you all this time, I would have dusted you long ago."

"I'd like to see you sodding try it," Spike answered, not intimidated in the least.

Riley released his pent-up stress in a massive punch to Spike's jaw. The vampire was rocked slightly by the blow, but a sardonic smile crossed his lips as he rubbed his chin. "That all you got, Soldier Boy?" He cocked his fist and slammed it into Riley's nose, knocking him back into a bookcase. Then he suddenly remembered that he shouldn't do that and grabbed his head, ready for the chip to fire.

But it didn't. And as comprehension dawned on everyone in the room, Spike turned around and ran out of the store.

###

"Sodding. Bloody. Hell." Spike was nearly giddy. How had the chip stopped working? Must have had something to do with the demon venom. Of course, now Buffy would feel obligated to stake him, since he was essentially unleashed. That uncomfortable fact put a damper on his enthusiasm--and was the reason he was currently hiding as far from his crypt as he could, knowing that the Slayer would look for him there first.

So. Now what? No way would Buffy give him a chance to prove that he could be good. And did he want to be good? Why? He was a vampire. He ate people for a living.

But...he was honest enough to admit to himself that, deep down in the dark recesses of his heart, he loved the Slayer. And going back to killing humans would hurt her--which he didn't want to do.

Crap. Rock, meet hard place.

###

Buffy sat in a corner in the training room, her forehead resting on her bent knees. The litany kept repeating in her mind. Spike's chip had stopped working. Spike's chip had stopped working.

That meant she had to kill him. She'd just saved him, and now she had to stake him. It seemed like a terrible waste, and she began doubting herself, wondering if she'd misinterpreted her dream. Maybe Glory was a messenger from the Powers, and maybe they'd wanted her to take the directive literally.

Oh, God. She didn't want to kill him. He was an ally. He'd been loyal to her, in his own way. How could she possibly turn her back on that? Sure, soulless, evil thing...only he wasn't, not really. He didn't have to help her on patrol. He could have done any of a number of things to make her life harder, and he hadn't.

After Spike had bolted, Buffy had retreated to the training room, unwilling to deal with the judgement she knew the Scoobies would bring down on her head. Xander and Riley had started loading for bear, while Willow and Tara prepared the ingredients for a locator spell.

Dammit. Buffy raised her head, resolve face on. She hadn't saved Spike just to have him killed right away. She needed to find him before the others did.

###

She stopped at Willy's first, but no one there had seen him, so she decided to go methodically through the cemeteries of Sunnydale. She knew he wasn't dumb enough to go back to his crypt, so she decided to start at the graveyard farthest away from his home and work her way towards it.

Xander and Riley wouldn't be far behind; they would hit the streets as soon as Willow and Tara finished the locator spell. She needed to find Spike, and fast. She breathed a sigh of relief when what she called her "Spidey sense" started tingling--and it was the particular tingle she got when Spike was around.

"I know you're here, Spike."

He stepped out from behind a mausoleum. "What of it? Come to dust me? We'll have a fine old dance before you do, I can tell you that much."

She sighed. "No. I'm not going to stake you unless you give me a reason to."

Head tilt. "You're willin' to take the chance that I'll still not eat humans, now that sodding piece of plastic's quit working? Why?"

"I don't know, okay? But if Glory wants you dead, I have reason enough to keep you around." She pointed a warning finger at him. "As long as you stay on an animal blood diet and get your violence on with demons instead of people."

"Tchah. People. No bloody challenge to beating up humans." He curled his tongue behind his front teeth. "'Cept you, that is. Reckon we can do a spot of sparring now and then?"

"I'm--"

"Look out!"

He charged past Buffy, attempting to distract something behind her. Horrified, she spun around and watched as a nightmarish creature with many legs, sharp teeth, and huge claws swatted Spike across the grass. He fetched up against a tombstone, unconscious and bleeding. The demon was at least nine feet tall, and it stood over her and roared in triumph.

Belatedly, she remembered that she'd run out of the Magic Box with no weapons.

Well, hell. She was the Slayer. She was a weapon. Nothing in Willow's book had said that these things were venomous to humans, so she just needed to avoid being eaten by it. She delivered a spinning kick to where its solar plexus would have been, knocking it back a few feet, and followed up with a backhanded punch to its jaw when it struck down at her.

It reared back, roaring in pain this time, and tried to bite her again. She avoided it by sliding sideways, then leaped. Climbing up its back, she wrapped her legs around its shoulders, grabbed a horn in each hand, and wrenched its head sideways. With a grunt, it collapsed and lay still, its neck broken.

"Spike?" She jumped down and ran over to him. /Ohshitohshitohshit/, she thought. /Not again/...

Yes, again. It had caught him across the face this time, and his cheekbone was laid bare, glistening white in the moonlight. She reached out to touch it, but pulled back. Steeling her resolve, she stripped the bandage from her wrist. She knew what she had to do.

###

Xander and Riley burst out of the woods, weapons raised to strike. They skidded to a stop, appalled at the tableau before them. Buffy sat on the ground, Spike's head in her lap, his lips fastened to her wrist.

"Buffy..." Riley felt like he'd been clobbered in the gut. Intellectually, he knew she'd done this once already, but to see it right there in front of him? It was too much for his wounded psyche to bear. He dropped his battleaxe, turned, and ran into the night.

He pounded along until his legs couldn't hold him up anymore, and fell to his knees in an alley in town, gasping. She was lost to him. He'd known for a long time that she was holding back, that they'd missed a connection somewhere along the way, but he'd never expected to have that fact thrown at him so blatantly.

Raising his head, he looked around to see where he was. His subconscious must have led him here, he thought. He opened the door into the building and walked in. The shadowy goings-on in this place were fairly well-known to him, and he walked up the stairs with the practiced ease of someone who'd been here before, ignoring the vamps feeding from their willing victims.

The dark-haired vampiress was in the room with the bathtub, just as he'd known she would be. Stripping off his shirt, he threw a twenty-dollar bill at her. "Make me forget."

###

Drusilla pouted and sighed. "No longer my Dark Knight. You've put a white hat on now and I'll never get you back. Your burning baby fish have gone out, and you're the Slayer's wether, with a bell on your neck, and bound round the heart by silver chains." She gazed at him sorrowfully. "I've failed you, my sweet William."

Dru faded out, while the real world faded in. He could hear Buffy's voice, as if from a long distance away.

"Don't say it," she said. To whom? He didn't know. "I don't even want to hear anything at all you have to say right now." Pause. "He saved my life, Xander. I'm not walking away from that."

Oh. The whelp. Mr. I'm Dating an Ex-Demon, But No One Else Better. Spike opened his eyes, and Buffy took her wrist away and gave him a little smile. He smiled back, enjoying the sensation of his head in her lap and her blood coursing through his body. He thought maybe he'd lie here for awhile--at least until Buffy noticed that he was milking this for all it was worth and punched him in the nose.

She looked up at Xander. "Well?" she challenged.

He spread his hands and squatted down. "Your decision, Buff. I'll respect it for now; I just hope you don't regret it later. Say, when he's snacking on all your friends." /Screw you, Harris/, Spike didn't say.

Buffy's lips tightened. "Riley. I should go after him." She pushed at Spike's shoulder, and he reluctantly sat up. "You two? Play nice."

###

The problem with going after Riley, Buffy grumbled to herself two hours later, was that he apparently didn't want to be found. She'd searched the many graveyards of Sunnydale with no luck, thinking maybe he'd gone patrolling alone to blow off some steam, but he seemed to have disappeared.

She could understand why he'd been disturbed. She was a little weirded out herself, after all. Saving Spike was the last thing she'd ever imagined doing--and she'd just done it twice in two days, in a pretty intimate way, too. So, yeah, major wiggins. But they needed to talk, and they couldn't do that if he ran away every time the going got tough.

Buffy made a frustrated noise. She had class in the morning. She couldn't spend all night looking for him. He'd either turn up, or he'd vanish completely. It was up to him. If he couldn't handle being the boyfriend of the Slayer, then maybe she was better off without him.

Her breath hitched in her chest at the thought. She didn't want to lose him. He was solid, comfortable, an anchor in a wobbly world. Safe. /Normal/. Giving that up would be like being cast adrift.

On the other hand, she had way too much on her mind right now to deal with Riley's insecurities. Her mother's illness and Glory, not to mention school and Slaying. So, if he turned up again, they'd deal. If he didn't...

Then she'd deal by herself. She'd have to.

###

"Harder," Riley gritted. The vamp whore ground her teeth deeper into his forearm, increasing the suction and growling a little.

But it wasn't helping. The image of Spike's lips on Buffy's wrist was burned into his memory, and no amount of whatever this was seemed to be able to erase it.

Well then. Time to ramp it up a little. "Stop." Feral yellow eyes gazed up at him, and fangs worked their way loose. He tilted his head a little, exposing his throat. "There. Bite me there."

"Dangerous."

"I don't care. What am I paying you for, anyway?" He laughed bitterly. "Here for the thrill, right?"

"Okay." She leaned over him and sank her canines into his neck, drinking the spurting blood down in gulps, while he tangled his hand in her hair and held her there.

Oh...much better. Yeah...getting...a bit...woozy...Should tell her...enough...But, no...it will never...be enough...

His body was sending all sorts of alarms to his brain, but his brain wasn't listening. His heart sped up in a panicked attempt to keep pace with the blood loss, adrenaline pumping into his veins and making the blood all the sweeter for the vampiress. His mind had zoned out into its own universe--but it wasn't long before dizziness slid into an unconsciousness that he wouldn't recover from.

The hand on the back of her head relaxed and fell away, and she realized that she had gone too far. This was one that wouldn't wake up again. Shit. Well, one way to fix that.

She sliced a sharp fingernail across her wrist and held it over her client's mouth.

TBC...


A/N: In case anyone's wondering about Dru's reference to a "wether," it's a castrated male sheep.