Chapter Notes:

Warning: questionable sexual content

SPIKE: Yeah, you know what I prefer to being hunted? Getting caught.
        Fool For Love


    Spike was amused. “You dance now, do you?”

    “Come on! I’ve been stuck in that damned apartment for days!” She got up and danced alone, twisting her hips and tossing her head.

    Spike got up and caught her in his arms, and moved with her, unable to keep the smile off his face. God, what was she? Dragged out of his sodding dreams? Spike had always loved to dance, battle or no. She seemed to actually be having fun, and he could hear her heart pounding – pounding a little too hard, actually. Her blood was weak. But she seemed to enjoy getting some exercise that wasn’t shagging.

    Suddenly she stopped, staring in horror at the radio. “Is that Barry fricking Manilow?”

    Spike laughed and flicked stations. “You see why I like CB’s?”

    “Ugh.” Sarah shuddered. “What is he doing poisoning the airwaves?”

    “He’s always on the pop stations.” How did she not know this? “Where have you been living? Alaska? In a cave? Under a bear?”  Sarah laughed. “Seriously, I know centuries old vampires who are more up-to-date than you are.” He flipped until he recognized a heavy base line. David Bowie. He’d do. “A small jean genie, snuck off to the city...”

    Spike came up and took her into his arms. “Really. Where’d you come from, pet?”

    Sarah took in a breath. “Well. I walked out of a hospital not twenty-four hours before I came to find you.”

    Spike gazed at her, quizzical. “What were you there for?”

    “An overdose.”

    “Of what?”

    “To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure.”

    It was sad. She didn’t even know what she’d been taking? Spike pulled her close and ran his lips over her skin, sending shivers through her entire body. He kissed her neck, nibbling at the spot where it met her shoulder, squeezing her tightly to him until her heart beat wildly, and she gasped. “Am I better than a drug?” he asked in her ear.

    “Ah!” She seemed unable to find her voice. “You are my drug,” she whispered. Spike realized she was more than a little drunk.

    “Then I guess I’d better bite you.”

    Sarah blinked up at him. “I didn’t say your bite. I said you.”

    Wow. Just wow. He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes soft. Then he laughed. “You,” he said, grinning wide, “are such a manipulative little bitch!” He said it only because it had almost worked. He had sworn not to be on his guard anymore, and damn was she taking that to its limit! He kissed her hard. “I’m tempted to kill you now, just to teach you a lesson.”

    Sarah shook her head. “I am getting bored with the constant death threats,” she said. She pulled away, and danced across the roof, her hips shifting with the music.“She loves him, she loves him but just for a short while,” Bowie sang, “She'll scratch in the sand, won't let go his hand....” “Are you really so hungry for my death?”

    “You know I am.”

    “Oh, I know you’re a killer,” Sarah said. “And I know the idea of killing me excites you. But I don’t think you really want my death.”

    “You don’t know a thing about me.”

    “Don’t I?” Sarah unbuttoned her jeans and danced out of them, letting them fall to the ground. The long t-shirt was barely modest, a little black mini-skirt under the spiked jacket. She looked great. Really great. Spike salivated, she looked so great. The moonlight caught her brown hair and made it shimmer, and her skin glowed in the yellow light from the candles. She seemed incandescent. There she was, all by herself on the rooftop, surrounded by light, wrapped in black leather and spikes, tossing her head provocatively. The base line continued to thump, and she moved her hips to it. She danced over to the edge of the building. There was a fire escape there, broken, rusted, completely unusable.

    “You can’t get down that way,” Spike said. He didn’t know if she actually meant to.

    “Not trying to,” she said. At the very top there was nothing but a ladder, long railings arching up over the side of the building. Sarah hooked one leg around it, placed one hand on the rounded top, and let go, dangling precariously over the street.

    Spike jumped forward and caught her, and she laughed. “Bugger. Are you trying to commit suicide?”

    “No,” Sarah said. “I’m flirting with danger.” She tipped back, shifting her weight so he had to adjust, and she grabbed his belt.

    He nearly lost his balance. “Okay, this–” he tried to pull her back in.

    She did not let go of the rail. “Look around,” she said. “Anyone could look up, couldn’t they?”

    Oh, bollocks. She... oh god! A second later, she’d gone for his jeans. She dangled like a worm on a hook over the edge of the street, and went and manipulated his cock out with one hand. It came out like an arrow, hard as stone already, and she twisted one leg around his hip. The angle was wrong. He was pressed up against her warm belly, but she flexed against him anyway, and his breath caught. She trembled, and he was afraid he might drop her. It was a very real danger. “You get off on the danger, do you?” he asked. “I could drop you. Death is just a slip of my fingers away.”

    “It always is,” Sarah said to him, still rubbing against him, clenching her stomach muscles against his smooth, hard shaft.

    “You like the fear?”

    Sarah chuckled. “I’ll bet there’s only one of us scared right now,” she said. “And it sure isn’t me.”

    “Why not?”

    Her eyes were bright with mischief. “Because I trust you.”

    “You’re daft.”

    “I don’t trust you not to kill me. But to drop me?” She shook her head. “Nah. You wouldn’t give my death to mere gravity like that. Just like you don’t go driving around hitting random pedestrians with your car. You don’t hand the death away to something else. You want it for yourself.” She inched backward until she dangled even more precariously over the edge. “You want to drop me, Spike? You want me to die four stories below, too far away to hear my heart stop?”

    Now Spike was trembling. He didn’t know if it was fear, but god he fucking wanted her! “Don’t tease me,” he said.

    “Why? Isn’t that what you like? To be teased and tormented? To be tripped up and beat down?” She suddenly let go of the rail, and he cried out, unsure he had the right angle to keep her. But she caught herself a foot lower, and her back was arched down, her head below her shoulders. She slipped her leg off his hip and twisted until she went to her knees, her head hung forward over the street. Gripping onto the railing, she raised her hips toward him, still dangling over the edge. The invitation was impossible to ignore. He followed her down and went to his knees, grabbing hold of her hips, trying to drag her back toward him, and onto his straining cock.

    She wouldn’t go backwards. She gripped that railing tightly and pulled herself back over the edge, and used the edge of the wall to push against him. Her hair hung down, free in the air, and he gripped her hard enough to bruise, suddenly terrified – yes, terrified – that she was going to fall. God, no. She could not escape that way. Her death was his, just as her life was! But he had to admit... the terror charged him like a lightning rod.

    Her heart beat, so tiny, so fast, so beautiful as it pulsed the heat through her. He thrust in her, each thrust seeming about to throw her off the building and into the alley, where her sweet body would lie still in the shadows, hidden from the face of the moon. But so long as he held her, so long as he didn’t let her go, there she was, shining in the moonlight, against him, surrounding him, moving with him, again and again and again. It was electric. Spike felt like he was the one on the precipice, the one dangling over the edge. She cried out, and it wasn’t with fear. She was so tiny, so delicate, so breakable, so very much at the edge of death, a butterfly he was going to crush. He couldn’t possibly let her fall. He’d go over the edge with her before he’d let her fall....

    The thought raced through him and he groaned as he came, his cry echoing around the street. Anyone could look up and see them, the vampire and his stupid, suicidal victim screwing half in midair over brutal and unforgiving pavement. “Ow!”

    Damn. He’d hurt her again. Gripped her hips too hard. She’d have more bruises on that pale flesh.... She finally – oh, thank god, finally – pulled back from the edge and turned to him. She hadn’t come yet. She lay him down and straddled him, and he stared up at the night sky, gasping. She rode him like a hobbyhorse, even though he didn’t know if he was still hard. He reached up for her clit, pressed his knuckles against it, and it didn’t take long before he felt her clench above him, heard her tiny little “ung!” of release. She lay down, warm and soft and perfect, nuzzling his throat with her smooth red mouth.

    He was still shaking. Good god, what the hell was she doing to him? He put his arms around her and snuggled, caressing her soft hair. She felt so good to him. This wasn’t fair. She was a victim, just a little victim, with that low voice and those deep, dark eyes, and that hair that shimmered like watered silk.... “Thanks for taking me out tonight,” Sarah said. “In so much as this counts as ‘out.’”

    He smiled. She was pleased! “Having fun, pet?”

    “Well, I was getting a little bored. As nice as feed me, fuck me, rinse, repeat, is, it’s not exactly the most intellectually stimulating chapter of my life.”

    “Are you telling me you don’t like being my pet?”

    He was teasing, but she stopped. A heavy moment passed. “I hadn’t meant that to be a real question,” he said into her hair. “I know the answer’s no.”

    “Actually, that wasn’t what I was thinking.” She sat up and looked down at him. “I do, actually. I shouldn’t. And... god, I really shouldn’t.” She looked down and shook her head. “Well, I like parts of it,” she amended. “If we took the constant death threats off the table, and I wasn’t walking on eggshells with you, Drusilla, her doll, and your boys, and I could leave if and when I wanted to then, well yeah... if all those were gone, bits of it are... kinda nice.”

    He frowned. “You like being chained up, bitten, left hungry...?”

    “The chains might as well be a game,” Sarah said, “and the bites you make fun. You’re not leaving me hungry anymore. In fact, you’re coming up with inventive ways to feed me.” He chuckled. “You like taking care of people,” she told him, though how she knew that, he had no clue. “Truth to tell, sometimes I like being taken care of. I spend so much time trying to be nothing but strong, and making decisions for everyone, and it’s nice to take a break from it. It’s kind of fun to just fall into each other. With all the fighting and the army, we don’t really have much time for that.”

    “What army?”

    She looked embarrassed. “Nothing, I’m drunk.” She fondled his neck. “What are the dog tags from?”

    “Hm?” She was deflecting his question, but he let her. It was one of those things she let slip, which he thought might give him a clue as to what she actually was. She’d dropped a few of those, here and there. He was storing them up, but they weren’t enough to make a coherent picture. He looked down and shrugged. “Dunno. Took ‘em from a victim one time. They looked cool.”

    She looked down at him. “That’s sad.”

    “For the victim, or me?”

    “Well, both, but I meant you.” She got up off him and went back to the picnic blanket. “Something that’s supposed to be an identity, and it means absolutely nothing.”

    Spike had never thought of it that way. “I have an identity.”

    “Do you?” She picked up her glass of wine.

    It was an odd question. Who was he? “William the Bloody,” he said. “Bit of a rebel. You know, one of my... sires, grand-sire something once invited me to join up with her ‘Master’, after I’d killed that slayer. She hadn’t thought me worthy before. Seemed to think it a real honor and all that rot. I laughed in her face. Didn’t even go. Struck me as stupid.” He shook his head. “Was never gonna be anyone’s sodding minion.”

    “Not anyone’s?”

    “‘Course not!” Spike said. He settled down beside her.

    “Not even Drusilla?”

    Spike blinked. He had never, not even once, thought of it that way. The pet was gentle and innocent and looking down at him with true curiosity, not accusation or contempt. He still felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Shut up,” he said darkly.

    She looked away. She didn’t dare say anything more for a long time.

    Unfortunately, what she had just said made him feel so cold and so confused that after a while he wanted to hold someone. He wished Dru were there. He grabbed Sarah instead and pulled her into his lap, snuggling up to her without looking at her. Bitch. Manipulative little bitch. God, she felt good. He opened his mouth and bit at her throat above her collar with his human teeth, just holding the warm flesh against his tongue. The salt tasted good. “You are the most confusing pet I’ve ever had,” he said after he felt a little better. “Pets aren’t supposed to act like you.”

    “Why not?”

    “A real pet needs me for something.” He let her go and leaned back on the picnic blanket. “A roof, a meal, a bite hit, vengeance, something. Something real. They wouldn’t accept the price if they didn’t.” He shook his head. “You’re too independent. You like the bite, but you’re not hooked on it. You’re not helpless. You don’t need me. That blood thing... I don’t get it, but it’s not the same as a pet. You’re not submissive enough for that.”

    “Why do you admit to the price?” she asked. “Why don’t you promise me you’ll let me loose if I play the good puppy?”

    “Would you rather I did that?”

    “No. I wouldn’t believe you,” Sarah said. “I know vampires too well. You need to kill, or you feel wrong inside.”

    Spike stared at her. She was right, of course. That was why those suckers who didn’t kill usually lived like animals, and why Spike had such contempt for them. They were trulls, nothing more than whores, and they were wounded by it. Just as living without love could wound a human’s heart, living without killing wounded a vampire’s demonic nature. Spike, however, felt he needed both.

    “But I’m me,” Sarah went on. “Other women... Dru’s doll. Do they all think they’ll be changed, rather than just die?”

    “No,” Spike said. “But I’m not going to pretend I’ll let them loose, either.”

    “Why?”

    Spike looked back up at the moon. After a long moment, he finally spoke. “I like them to see death coming,” he said. “To see me as that death. Dru likes playing the change game, promise them eternity. I don’t. I promise them death, and that’s how they come to me. Some try to talk me out of it. Or shag me out of it. Some think it’s part of the game. Some – the really broken ones. They don’t care.” He peered closely at Sarah. “You don’t seem to care, but you’re not broken. And you’re not afraid. And you don’t want to be vamped. I don’t get you.” He sat up and leaned casually against the wall to watch her. He took another sip of his wine. “You know, I had Dru look you over, that day when you were asleep. The three of us. She can read a cancer, or a disease. There are some who are already dying who will come to a vampire. She says you’re fine. The only thing killing you is me.”

    Sarah looked nervous. “She says there’s nothing strange about me?”

    “I didn’t say that,” he said. “She said your mind was a blank picture screen, and there was death in your dreams. But you’re not about to kick it, either. Which leads me to think you’re insane.”

    She chuckled. “Do I act insane?”

    “Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? Is being suicidal insanity?”

    “Says the vampire hunting the slayer.”

    “I’m not suicidal. I might win.”

    “I’m not suicidal, either.”

    He blinked. “Are you saying you might win?”

    She only smiled, wickedly enough that he wanted to bite her. God, she liked to play with fire.

    “You came asking me to kill you,” Spike said. “I got news: that’s suicide, pet.”

    “No. I came asking to take on this role, as your pet. I wanna live. I accept that you might kill me. That’s not the same as wanting you to.”

    What the hell was she thinking? God, she was cute. Yeah. He needed to bite her. “You accept that I might,” he said. He began to crawl over the blanket on his fists, moving towards her like a panther. “Do you accept that I’m going to?”

    “That is... likely,” Sarah said, allowing herself to be distracted by his seductive movement. She leaned forward until her lips were almost touching his. “But I think I’ll get through to you before that.” And she pulled her head away.

    Spike smiled as he pushed her onto the rose petals. “You don’t get to escape,” he whispered into her mouth. “I want you,” he whispered after he kissed her. “I want you so hard. You’ve succeeded that much, you bitch.”

    “I’m not trying to escape,” Sarah said. “Not as you’d know it, anyway.”

    “What is this spell you want to cast?”

    “I told you,” Sarah said. “Dru told you. She’s the one who said I’m not who I am. If I cast this spell, I’ll be who I’m supposed to.”

    He looked down at her. “Why my blood?” he asked. “What is it about my blood that’s so special?”

    Sarah just kissed him, hard, and a moment later he wasn’t up to asking again. Fire was raging through him, and he felt all charged again.  “Oh, god!” he breathed, trembling above her. “What the hell do you do to me?” He kissed her again. “How?”

    Sarah looked about to say something. He was desperate for an answer, any answer, and bit his lip as she started to talk. Then the door to the stairs opened, interrupting her. Spike looked up angrily, expecting one of his boys. Then he gasped. “Drusilla!”

    Suddenly he was ashamed of himself. This wasn’t the kind of thing he usually did for his pets. This form of romantic interlude was usually reserved for his beloved, and suddenly here she was, and he was giving it to someone else.... Some one? God, some thing, this pet wasn’t supposed to be real. Playing with a pet wasn’t supposed to count... and somehow... Sarah did.

    He felt he’d been unfaithful. No other pet had ever made him feel that way before.

    The only thing he felt he could do was to see to it that Dru didn’t feel the same way. “There you are, my darling. Come here, poodle.” He reached out for her. “Come and have some wine.”

    
***

    Buffy sighed. She’d been getting somewhere with him. That moment when she’d half accused him of being Drusilla’s minion had been powerful for him, she could tell. His realization that he was frightened of Buffy’s death. That was key. If things had gone on as they were, she’d been hoping she could get home before sunrise. Now she felt as if she’d have to start all over again.

    “How charming, the nights of wine and roses,” Drusilla said. “You left me a bouquet, and the boys said you’d brought dinner upstairs.”

    Buffy realized this meant she was suddenly dinner. Her head sank.

    “Not really enough to fill us,” Spike said. “But a nice glass of wine.”

    “Has she had enough?”

    “Plenty,” Spike said, quite honestly. Buffy knew she was still a bit drunk. Her blood alcohol content was probably pretty high – most likely, she’d taste great. She tried really hard not to sigh too loudly.

    Spike grinned and pulled Drusilla down into his arms. She giggled and rolled her shoulders into his chest with delight. Buffy moved away a bit. Her movement drew Drusilla’s gaze. “She smells bright,” Dru said, staring at Buffy.

    “It’s the moonlight, love,” Spike said.

    “I want some wine.”

    Spike flicked his eyes up at Buffy and kissed Drusilla’s throat. “Now there’s not much in her,” he said carefully. “She’s a tiny little thing.”

    “Bonbons and pomegranates,” Drusilla said. “Tiny bites of sweetness?”

    “Promise?” Spike whispered.

    Buffy looked down at the blanket. This was not how she wanted this evening to go. She didn’t quite catch how Drusilla responded, but Spike crawled over and took Buffy into his arms. “Spike...” Buffy whispered, but she couldn’t figure out how to ask him not to make her.

    “Please,” he whispered. “She won’t take much. For me.”

    Buffy wanted to argue, but she knew it wasn’t safe. He looked so helpless, suddenly. God, sometimes this was so much fun, and sometimes....  It might not be so bad if he did it. “Would you...?”

    He understood what she was asking. He slid into his fangs and kissed her hand, over and over, slowly inching up to her wrist, which he turned, kissed deeply, bit, and then kissed again. The pain faded quickly, and... boy, he was giving her a lot, suddenly. She hoped being drugged would actually make it better. It felt good, anyway. She sank against him, her body crying out for his cool hard flesh.

    Spike pulled Buffy into his lap, hugging her against his chest, and then invited Drusilla with a flick of his chin. Dru crept up, and Spike took her hand, pulling her to the rose petals. He pulled Drusilla’s head into Buffy’s lap, took another swallow from her wrist, and then held Buffy’s hand over Dru’s mouth.

    The blood dripped, running down her arm in cracks of vermilion before it trickled, drop by drop, between Dru’s waiting lips. Dru opened her mouth and took each drop as it came, catching it with her tongue, shifting her shoulders in comfortable excitement, always waiting for the next droplet.

    It was teasing. It was seductive. Buffy knew it was probably just the bite in her system – god, she hoped so – because the whole thing was kind of tantalizing. For one, she wasn’t actually being fed from. She was just bleeding, and Dru was only catching it. Moreover, Drusilla was, in fact, quite beautiful in the moonlight. Her eyes did not currently have the vicious cruelty of her darker moments, but the distant delirium that made her so childlike, so innocent in her madness. Spike held Buffy close, and Drusilla’s head was cuddled in her lap. Buffy didn’t feel like food. The closest it came to food was maybe as a bunch of grapes, but she was more of a seductive game the two vampires were playing, a link between them. It wasn’t really dehumanizing. Maybe it was the drug, and again, maybe she had more fellow feeling for Drusilla than she should have. But it was kind of hot.

    Why she should be so aroused by it, she had no idea. Again, she didn’t like to think of herself turned on by vampires and evil. But, though Dru was very much a vampire, she wasn’t being evil at the moment. She was just being herself, catching tiny drops of blood between her red lips. Whatever it was that Buffy was feeling, Spike clearly felt the same. He shifted beneath her, and she could feel his erection. He kissed her throat above its collar, nibbling at her ears, breathing tiny endearments. “Sweet pet. There we are, love. Got you.” She wondered if Dru thought they were all for her. She knew, as far as Spike was concerned, it had to be for both of them. He was holding her too closely. His hand slid down the collar of her shirt, inside the jacket, and found her breast. He fondled the nipple, gently raising it with his fingers, pinching it gently, twisting and caressing. She gasped and shivered, clenching her buttocks against his erection, as Drusilla stuck out her tongue and caught drop after drop after drop, as if they were snowflakes.

    Buffy grew more and more heated, gasping and shivering, pushing herself down against Spike, and she became more and more aware of the fact that she hadn’t put her jeans back on. Drusilla’s head was just an inch from her groin. Spike pinched at her nipple hard, and Buffy groaned. She clenched her legs tight, and Dru’s head slipped, and it wasn’t really anything, and it was still enough to send Buffy over the edge. She was startled by how hard she came, wanting it, but not wanting it, and... she hadn’t felt like this since her first affair with Spike. It was that dark feeling of, I shouldn’t be wanting this. But she did.

    She was a slayer, and she wanted the vampire.

    “I’ve a taste for a game,” Drusilla said after they’d been at it for Buffy had no idea how long. Long enough for the hit to be fading. "Would you play with me, pretty Spike?”

    “You know I will, sweet.”

    “Partners dance? I’ll play the music.”

    Spike went very still beneath Buffy.

    “I’ll go get everything ready,” Drusilla said. She rolled away, leaving the last droplet of blood to stain the blanket. “She can clear up here, yes?” She gave a truly angelic smile as she stood and looked down on the two of them. “So very sweet.”

    She headed back downstairs.

    Buffy shook off the high as well as she could and pulled away from Spike. She put pressure on her wrist. “Spike?” she asked.

    “Help me get the candles,” he said. “This whole neighborhood will go up if a fire starts. Fire engines will not come promptly.”

    Buffy knew he was avoiding the issue. “Spike, what’s this game she wants to play?”

    “No worries,” he said. “I won’t let her hurt you.”

    Buffy stood up. “You already told me you’d let her kill me.”

    “This won’t kill you, all right?” he said. He started blowing out candles.

    “Spike?”

    He ignored her.

    “Spike.”

    Silence.

    “Spike!” She came up and took hold of him, turning him. “What is it that she wants to play?”

    “We’ve played it. You and me.”

    Buffy frowned. “What?”

    “You know how I’ll bite you just at climax? The blood is very hot, hormones rushing, it’s like a hit. She enjoys it.”

    “So...” Buffy already wasn’t really down for this. “You’ll have sex with me, and she’ll bite me?” No matter how irrationally okay Buffy found herself with being a sexual blood link between Spike and Drusilla, this was getting a bit much.

    “Sort of,” he said.

    She did not like the cold look in his eyes. He was retreating. He’d gone down inside himself somewhere, was hardening. “Spike, what does sort of mean?”

    “Sort of. It’ll be fine, I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt.” He turned away again.

    “Spike! What the hell aren’t you telling me?” He didn’t answer. He just went back to blowing out candles.

    “William.”

    He looked at her then. His blue eyes were cold and dead as crystal. “She just wants to play at dollies,” he said.