Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and his ilk own all the characters and recognizable dialog and all that.

Thanks so much to all my readers and reviewers! Here is a little holiday gift for you, whatever winter holiday you celebrate!


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Chapter 10
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The rest of patrol was lively, and Buffy was glad for the activity. Hours of research made her twitchy even when there wasn’t a demon inside her. With the demon, she found the fight exhilarating, and she vamped out and roared, enjoying the battle. The two of them were a perfectly matched team, tossing each other stakes, ducking and weaving in concert, and terrifying their opponents. They staked the last two fledges in stereo, sending matching plumes of dust scattering through the wind. “That was fun,” Buffy commented, pocketing the stake.
 
Spike grinned. “That it was. Although I’m not used to getting sweaty and breathing hard. Well, at least not having to breathe hard.”
 
“I was actually thinking it was kind of fun not to have to breathe, around the time that one guy had his hands around my neck,” Buffy remarked.
 
“I’m not used to getting so thirsty either,” Spike said. “Want to call it a night?”
 
Buffy suddenly realized she really didn’t want to go home and face the Scoobie Inquisition. “You want to go get a drink at the Bronze before we go home?” she suggested.
 
Spike’s eyes widened in surprise. “You sure about that?” He was amazed that she would risk Scoobie disapproval by prolonging their time together.
 
“I’m sure. Besides, I think I’d like to enjoy this vampire constitution for a while longer.” The two of them moved off companionably toward the Bronze.
 
When they got there, Spike was about to go order drinks when Buffy stopped him. “Do you have your, I mean my ID with you? They always card me.”
 
Spike checked his pockets. “Um, no. Forgot that detail.” He fished a twenty out of his pockets. “I did get some cash from the crypt earlier though. You get the drinks, I’ll find us a table.”
 
“I take it you don’t get carded,” Buffy said with a smirk.
 
“Given that I died before these inane drinking laws were invented, I can definitely say that I have never been carded,” Spike said, smirking back.
 
Buffy turned toward the bar while Spike found a small table in a corner. Buffy ordered two pints of beer and joined him. “Now remember, you’re in my body,” she warned. “I don’t have nearly the alcohol tolerance you do.”
 
“Don’t worry about me, Slayer,” Spike said, toasting her. “I promise not to embarrass you.” He took a sip of beer, reveling in the taste. He half closed his eyes and sighed contentedly. Oh yeah. Better than I remembered.
 
“You’re having another orgasmic taste experience, aren’t you?” Buffy said with amusement.
 
“Damn straight,” Spike replied, taking a good long draught. Stifling a belch he said, “So tell me, what happened to you last night. You said you got beat up, but I didn’t get the whole tale.”
 
Buffy launched into the description of the tall demon and his human henchmen. “I didn’t think anything of it until they swung at me and I tried to kick them.”
 
Spike shook his head. “I’m sorry you had to put up with that. That’s Grev’lan. I’ve been soaking him in poker for years. A couple weeks ago he soaked me good and I still owe him. He tends to hold a grudge, if you hadn’t noticed.”
 
“I noticed,” Buffy said, finishing her beer with a long swallow. She raised the glass questioningly to Spike, who nodded as he finished the last of his pint. She went to get more as Spike contemplated the beginnings of a buzz. One beer? The Slayer gets a buzz on from one beer? Good lord. Buffy returned and handed him the glass, then settled down to continue her tale. She told him all about her sojourn at Willy’s and the fight that had broken out there. “So once Willy kicked me out I decided to go to the Magic Box, and you know the rest,” she concluded after a while.
 
“Yeah, shit like that happens all the time,” Spike said. “Itsh… It’s part of the territory.”
 
Buffy laughed. “You’re getting drunk. I told you to slow down.” Her glass was still nearly half full, but Spike’s was getting very close to empty.
 
“What?” Spike said indignantly. “I am not drunk.” He realized that he needed to go to the restroom and stood up. Suddenly the room seemed to tilt just a bit. “If you will excuse me, I need to visit the facilities,” attempting to sound as proper and British as was possible in his current form. Buffy had to suppress a giggle as she watched Spike endeavor to cross the room without weaving.
 
Spike reached the bathrooms and had his hand on the door when it opened and a large, burly football player from Sunnydale High came out. “Hey, looking for someone?” he said suggestively.
 
Shit, wrong door. I’ve been a man for a hundred years! How am I supposed to remember to walk into the ladies’ room? To the football player he said, “Sorry. You’re not my type.” He turned and marched with all the dignity he could muster into the ladies’ room. The bathroom was full of girls touching up makeup and gossiping, and Spike felt strangely self-conscious. Feel like a bleeding peeping Tom. He made his way into a stall without stumbling and used the facilities, only then finding out there was no toilet paper. Great. This is rather unpleasant. He managed to find a used tissue in the pocket of Buffy’s jeans, but he could see why girls were so particular about the state of bathrooms. He washed his hands and escaped back to the table, still slightly unsteady on his feet.
 
“I thought I was going to have to send in a search party,” Buffy commented.
 
“My god, what a circus in there,” Spike said, taking another swig of beer. “Like a flock of hens, all primping and chattering. And there was no bloody toilet paper either!”
 
“Now you know our pain,” Buffy laughed. Spike finished his second pint and raised the empty glass questioningly. Buffy smiled and soon came back with another round. They drank their beers in silence for a while, taking in the crowd around them.
 
“You know,” Spike said after a while. “After all thesh years of vamp taste buds, even thish godawful Yankee piss tashtes pretty fucking fantastic.” He was halfway through the third pint, and was starting to feel the effects.
 
Buffy laughed at him again. I haven’t laughed this many times in one night since before I died, she mused. Aloud she said, “You are totally wasted, my friend.”
 
“Your fault,” Spike said, attempting to point an accusing finger at her. “It’s your shtupid body that can’t h… hold itsh liquor.”
 
“I guess I haven’t had anything to drink at all since that night I got drunk at your place,” she said.
 
“No wonder. Out of practice, Shlayer,” Spike slurred.
 
“You downed those pints in like fifteen minutes. You need to pace yourself. Remember, I weigh about a hundred ten pounds soaking wet.”
 
“You should definitely eat more then,” Spike said solemnly, before bursting into a fit of giggles.
 
Buffy finished her beer and stood up. “Come on. Let’s get out of here while you can still walk.”
 
“Right. Good plan,” he said, belting back the last of the beer. He stood up and was a little astonished at how unsteady he felt. “This human lack of… tolerance ish highly annoying.”
 
Buffy put an arm around Spike’s shoulders to steady him. “Ok, Spikey, you’re cut off,” she said good-naturedly. She guided him out of the bar and into the cool night air.
 
Spike shook her arm off his shoulders. “I’m alright. I can bloody walk,” he stated, before boldly tripping over a curb.
 
Buffy laughed and caught him. “Sure you can. I think we’d better get you home.”
 
“Whose home?” Spike wondered.
 
Buffy’s grin failed. Shit. If we go home like this there’ll be questions and all the usual bullshit all freaking night. She wondered if Willow would be mad at her body or her mind for daring to go out drinking with Spike. “Maybe there would be fewer questions if we sobered up a bit first,” she suggested.
 
“We could hang out at the crypt for a while,” Spike said. Buffy agreed, and they made their way toward Restfield, with Buffy’s arm wrapped around Spike’s waist to steady him.
 
“Bloody embarrassing, this is,” Spike muttered after tripping over a tombstone. “William the Bloody, Shlayer of Slayers, wasted on three bloody beers. ‘S a crime.”
 
“Oh quit your whining, Mr. the Bloody,” Buffy said good-naturedly. They reached the tomb and made their way inside. Spike flopped into the armchair while Buffy shut the heavy stone door. Buffy took off the duster and draped it on a sarcophagus. “How’re you doing?”
 
Spike fixed her with a goofy grin. “Just ducky. You’re a cheap date, Slayer.”
 
“I guess I’ll have to play catch up,” she said. She spied a half empty bottle of whiskey that she had neglected during her stay at Spike’s, and took a huge swallow.
 
“Hey! Leave some for me,” Spike yelled.
 
“Uh-uh,” said Buffy, chugging more whiskey with a grin. “You’re cut off, remember?”
 
Spike got up and tried to snatch the bottle from her, but she held it over his head. He tried to jump for it despite his intoxicated state and missed, eliciting more laughter from Buffy. “How the hell…” he jumped again and missed. “Do you manage to slay anything…” jump, miss, “When you’re bloody three feet tall!”
 
“I’ll have you know I’m five foot two!” Buffy said indignantly. “Just for that, no whiskey for you.” With that she polished off the bottle.
 
“Hey!” shouted Spike. He tried to scale her body to get at the bottle, and succeeded only in knocking them both on the floor. Spike lay on top of her as they both laughed and panted. The laughter died away gently as they realized their position. Spike’s head cleared somewhat as he became aware of the contrast between their body temperatures, so much more evident from the human side. Spike looked down into his own blue eyes to the girl inside his skin. She was laughing, playful. Have I ever seen her that way? Ever? Hesitating, searching the face below him for permission, he slowly lowered his lips to hers.
 
Buffy paused just a moment before closing her eyes and returning the gentle kiss. With her eyes closed the weirdness of kissing her own face faded and all that was left was Spike’s amazing kissing technique. Regardless of whose lips were whose, the kissing was amazing, electric and sweet. The kiss went on and on, and Buffy realized that the body she inhabited was responding. As the bulge in her jeans reached painful proportions she broke off the kiss and gasped, “This… we can’t do this.”
 
Spike was panting and gasping as well, having nearly forgotten that he needed to breathe in his current form. He felt the erection beneath him, and moisture was flowing like a river between his legs as well. He knew she had a point. There was something incredibly, indescribably wrong about essentially having sex with yourself. Despite this incontrovertible fact he searched the face below him, stroked it tenderly and said, “Tune out the others for a minute. Don’t worry about what they will say, or think, or do. Tell me what Buffy wants.”
 
She had no idea her own voice could sound so low and sultry, and it aroused her even further, if that were possible. What do I want? Her brain whirled with imagined voices, of the Scoobies, her Watcher, her dead mother. She looked into her own green eyes and saw admiration, love, and frank desire. Have I ever looked like that at anyone? Summoning her courage, she answered, “I don’t want to use you. I don’t know exactly how I feel about you. But I need…” Words failed her and she reached up to kiss him again.
 
Spike moaned softly at the kiss and the permission it implied. He buried his hands in her hair as he plundered her mouth with his questing tongue. When he broke it off to breathe he said, “Bed… downstairs… please.”
 
Buffy nodded. Spike climbed off her and offered her a hand up. They practically flew down the steps to the lower level. They kissed again, shedding clothes all the while. Spike broke away long enough to light a couple of candles while Buffy wrestled with her boots. Finally they faced each other, naked, breathing hard, suddenly a bit shy. Buffy was aware of her own jutting erection, and wondered how it was that she was so turned on by the sight of… herself. Then like a bolt of lightning the thought hit her. It’s not just the body. It’s him. Heturns me on. His words and the way he treats me. The way he loves me. Stunned by the realization she moved close and kissed him again.
 
Spike grabbed her ass and pulled her close, and in a few minutes they had tumbled onto the bed. Spike knew his own body, and caressed and pulled until Buffy was practically begging for release. She ground into the body beneath her, knowing just where to apply the friction to drive Spike to the edge as well. “Take me, Slayer,” he moaned. “Want to know what it feels like from your side.”
 
Buffy felt like she was going to explode. Fuck. Is this what blue balls is like? Her body was screaming for satisfaction. She fumbled a bit, but Spike reached down and helped guide her. She sank slowly in, closing her eyes to both alleviate the weirdness and concentrate on the sensation. It seemed like all her most sensitive nerve endings were enveloped in a perfect radiant heat. The feeling of being inside, truly connected at the most primal physical level was so overwhelming that she had to stop moving to regain control.
 
Spike had closed his eyes as well. He felt filled, stretched, and his eyes rolled when Buffy touched a bundle of nerves deep inside him. “Oh God, Buffy. Feels so good,” he breathed. He couldn’t quite figure out how to clench those muscles, the ones that had made him scream the other night, but the cock felt like such a tight fit inside his borrowed quim that he figured it was good enough.
 
Buffy began to move, tentatively at first, then falling into a rhythm. Almost like being a virgin again, she thought. This wasn’t the sexual acrobatics of their previous encounter, but every touch was so different and new that it excited her just as much. She groaned into a kiss as she reveled in the heat of her own body.
 
Spike grabbed the hips of the body thrusting into him, pulling Buffy closer and deeper. He felt the orgasm begin deep inside, where the tip of his own cock was slamming deliciously into him. Unable to control himself he screamed, “Buffy!” and convulsed, shaking and writhing. The feeling of the inner muscles rippling brought Buffy over the edge as well. “Spike, God, Spike!” Buffy cried, quivering all over as she spilled inside him.
 
They lay there a long moment, both shuddering and gasping, their minds in a whirl. Finally Spike said, “Buffy? Can’t breathe, pet.”
 
“Sorry,” she said, rolling off of Spike. “Easy to forget, isn’t it?” She lapsed back into silence, laying on her side, staring into her own green eyes.
 
Spike broke the silence first. “Interesting experience, that,” he mused.
 
“You can say that again,” Buffy agreed. After a few more moments of biting her lip and wrestling with her thoughts she said, “I’m sorry, Spike.”
 
“Sorry?” Spike said, confused. “What for?”
 
“For how I treated you in the past. I had no right to be such a bitch,” Buffy said, not meeting his eyes entirely.
 
“Slayer, you’ve got nothing to apologize for. I know my place,” Spike replied, stroking her face, trying to get her to look at him.
 
“I mean, I dump all my troubles on you, kiss you and… and other stuff,” she said, going on as if she hadn’t heard him. She was embarrassed but she had to get it all in the open. “Meanwhile my friends are rude to you, I’m rude to you, half the demons in town hate you. Why do you even stay? I’m not worth the bother.”
 
Spike propped himself up on his elbow and shushed her. “Don’t you ever say that. I’ve never known anyone like you – woman or Slayer. You’re the only person in all my years that even comes close to making me wish I was human again.” Buffy met his eyes then. Even though Buffy was looking into her own face, the tone of voice and the look in her eyes conveyed the feeling behind his words.
 
Buffy wrinkled her brow in confusion. “I’m… not sure I follow that last part. I thought you liked being a vampire.”
 
Spike gently stroked her face as he spoke. “It’s like this,” he explained. “I was a complete wanker as a human. Weak, pathetic – I was an absolute nobody. To go from that to having supernatural strength, plus having all that Victorian reticence removed at a stroke? Best thing that ever happened to me. Never wanted to be a real boy again.”
 
“But why would you want to be one now?” Buffy wondered. “I figured after a few days of being me you’d be screaming to get back into your vampire suit.”
 
Spike looked away. “Because if I was a human I might have half a chance with you,” he mumbled. He looked back at her with eyes full of pain. “I know I’ve got no bloody hope, really. I’ve got no soul, nothing in particular to recommend me. When we were… together, that first time, I knew you were just using me. And yeah, it pissed me off, because I love you, God help me. But if the alternative to being used by you is to have nothing of you, I’ll take what I can get.”
 
Buffy was stunned. He loves me. If what he just said is true, there is no other word for it. Oh God, what does this mean? “Spike… I don’t… I don’t know what to say,” she stammered out.
 
Spike sighed and lay down again. “It’s okay, Slayer,” he began.
 
“No it’s not!” Buffy cried. She got up and paced as she spoke, heedless of her nakedness. “It’s not okay! Nothing is okay!”
 
“Easy, love,” he said, sitting up, trying to reach for her.
 
“You have to live with this,” she said, indicating his body. “No sunlight, pig’s blood for every meal, can’t defend yourself! And you have to do it alone! How do you do this alone?” She was almost crying at this point. It was as if all his words, all his actions since before she had died were all crowding into her brain at once screaming to be recognized for what they were: signs of his deep, fierce love for her.
 
“Told you, don’t mind being a vampire. The little hardships are worth it in exchange for all the benefits,” Spike said, trying to soothe her.
 
“I’ve got Dawn and the others and I can barely deal with it all!” Buffy went on, wrapping her arms around herself. “But you have no one…”
 
“I have you.” Spike’s quiet statement cut through Buffy’s near hysteria and she stopped to stare at him. He got up and came over to her, grasping her shoulders and looking up into his own blue eyes. “Whether you’re shagging me or punching me, I have you. As long as I can be around you, fighting, helping, whatever you’ll take from me, then I’m not alone.”
 
Tears started rolling down Buffy’s face at that point. “I feel so dead inside, Spike,” she said in a soft, quavering voice. “You’ve been dead for so long and you’ve got so much life in you, but I feel like I left it all behind.”
 
Spike’s heart broke for her, but he cupped her face and spoke to her with an intensity she couldn’t look away from. “You’re not dead, Buffy. Well, not anymore,” he said with a crooked smile. “You’ve gone through something I can’t even imagine. I don’t know if I went anywhere when I died – don’t remember. I’m pretty sure of where I’m going when I die again, and I don’t think I’m going to enjoy it. But you’ve lost so much, and yet you’re still standing. You’re shaky, and you could use some help, but you’re still here. You’re not curled up catatonic in a corner, and you haven’t flipped out and killed anyone, and you haven’t let any baddies get their one good day. You’re an incredible woman, Buffy Summers.”
 
His words sank deep into her brain like a soothing balm. The concern, admiration, and genuine affection in his words touched her deeply. She took a deep, unneeded breath and made an effort to get under control. “I don’t… I don’t know what’s going to happen. When all this gets sorted out, I mean,” she stammered, looking off over Spike’s shoulder. “But I can’t… I won’t go back to the way it was. You… I understand you, now, better. I can’t treat you like a thing anymore. I promise you, I won’t.” Her voice broke as she wrestled with the shame and the fear and the constant surge of emotions.
 
“Shh, Slayer,” Spike said. He pulled her down to sit next to him on the bed and put his arms around her. “All I need from you is to let me help you. Let me be on your side. Anything else is icing on the cake.”
 
“Thank you,” she whispered. They stayed where they were for a long time, comforted by each other’s presence.

TBC