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Spike: Love isn't brains, children, it's blood... blood screaming inside you to work its will.
                Lover’s Walk


    “If you didn’t need my blood for this spell... would you still be here?” 

    Spike had his feet on the table, leaning back with a cigarette. He was watching her eat again. He seemed to really enjoy feeding her. He probably didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t as if he knew her as well as her Spike knew and cared for The-Actual-Buffy. This relationship was short, hot, confused, unequal, and filled with deeply unpleasant mysteries, so there was a lot less common ground. Buffy had realized that he was treading on completely foreign territory when he wanted to be genuinely nice to a human being. Vampires were the quintessential demon of hunger. Feeding her was probably a step down from screwing or biting her.

    Drusilla had gone out again. Spike had told Buffy she was probably safer now. Dru had gotten what she needed, and seemed to be less unpredictable. She’d been perfectly sweet to Spike after she’d woken, and her mood had seemed considerably lighter. She’d invited him out hunting with her. Spike surprised both Drusilla and Buffy by declining. He’d said he wasn’t hungry. Buffy actually believed it, as he’d had the girl last night, and however much he’d taken from Buffy that had made her completely pass out. But neither Dru nor Buffy believed that was the real reason.

    “Are you still playing with your new kitten?” Dru asked.

    Spike smiled. “She’s fun.”

    “She’s unbreakable.”

    “She’s just a human, love.”

    “Part of her.”

    She hadn’t said anything more coherent about Buffy after that, and Buffy was glad. Buffy had been asked to play handmaiden again, and helped to dress her, and then do her make-up. Dru let Spike brush her hair out. She petted Buffy like a dog, but didn’t seem keen on feeding from her at the moment. She seemed to find Spike’s interest in her amusing. Hell, it probably was. The whole thing seemed a sick, macabre joke.

    Dru had gone off after that, and Spike had run out to get more food for Buffy. He’d brought back burgers and fries. They were even still warm.

    “Would I...?”

    “Would you still be here?” Spike asked. “Would you still be my pet?”

    Buffy regarded him for a long moment. “I don’t know if I am your pet. Not the way you think of it. And you don’t think I am, either, do you.”

    “Not really,” he said quietly. “But... would you?”

    “I think you’re asking two different questions,” she said. “If you’re asking do I really love you, blood or no... yes. I love a lot about you. Even some of the darker things.”

    “Such as?”

    “Well, how you’ll beg for flattery isn’t top of the list,” Buffy said with a grin. If he could have blushed, he would have then. “But it’s kinda cute. I love how you never give up when you set your sights on something. I love your passion. And your cheesy romanticism. I love how you get hooked on silly things, like supernatural soap-operas. I love... I love the way you make love to me, as if the whole world was in me.” Most of the other things she loved he didn’t have yet. Like how he’d write crappy poetry, and spend hours studying before changing a single word, and then refuse to let anyone ever see it. And how he’d stare in wonder at an infant, as if he’d never seen one before, when he’d eaten them for decades. And a lot of other things that came about once he was no longer a cartoon character of violence and need, which was how he frequently seemed to her at the moment. “And you fight well,” she finished. “Very well. And I think you’ve fished up enough compliments, Spike.”

    “All right,” he said with a smirk. “But would you be here?”

    “Would I be with you, you mean?”

    He nodded.

    Buffy took a deep breath. “Probably not,” she said. “At least, not right now.”

    He looked more confused than hurt. “Why not right now?”

    “Because if you hadn’t noticed, between your temper, and Drusilla, and everything else, I’m walking a razor’s edge.” She looked down at her burger wrapper. “Prison is difficult, even voluntarily.” she looked back up at him. “And you had to know that was the answer when you asked. But again, that’s not really the question.”

    “What do you think the question is, then?”

    Buffy looked at him. “Yes,” she said. “Is the answer. Yes, I always want you. Whether it’s safe or not, whether it’s right or not, whether I should give in to it or not. But loving you... and wanting you... that doesn’t mean it would be safe to be here. Or right.”

    “Why wouldn’t it be right?”

    “Spike.” She knew she didn’t even have to answer that question. He had to be capable of finding that answer on his own, or he wasn’t the Spike she would come to know.

    “You can’t trust me,” Spike said eventually.

    “You know I can’t,” she said.

    He stared at her for a long moment. “It’s not just about trust, though. It can’t be. I can’t trust Dru a jot. She’s unpredictable. That’s what I love about her.”

    “And loving doesn’t make that right,” Buffy said. She sighed. “Spike, you’re a killer. I’m a human being. There isn’t always a lot of choice about loving. But there is plenty about what you can do about it.”

    “So you wouldn’t be here.”

    Buffy didn’t even have to lie. “Part of me would want to be. Badly. But no. Not with you as you are, I couldn’t.”

    “You couldn’t.”

    “No.”

    “Not with me as I am.”

    She shook her head, no.

    “And if I changed?”

    Buffy sighed. “It’s not right to demand someone change for you, either. I don’t know. I love you. It tears me apart too, okay?”

    He regarded her. “You know I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you,” he said. “Not really. Not anymore.”

    “No one. Except yourself. And maybe Drusilla.”

    “No, not Dru. I couldn’t bear it.”

    “Not even if she demanded it? Threatened to leave, or go... more insane?”

    Spike looked at the table.

    “And what about you?” Buffy asked.

    Spike regarded her for a long moment, enough that Buffy began to feel awkward. “I’ll kill you gentle,” he promised.

    Buffy gave a sound somewhere between a laugh and groan. “Thanks, I think.”

    He tilted his head. “I suppose that’s cold comfort, isn’t it.”

    “Spike,” Buffy said, shaking her head.

    Spike looked for a moment as he always did when his pain chip had fired. He put his palm to his forehead and seemed to be trying to push something out from between his eyes. “You’re right,” he said finally, his teeth clenched. “This isn’t right.” His head sank, and his hand passed over his hair, until he gripped the back of his neck in confusion.

    Buffy cringed. Here she was trying to inflict upon him in a single week what it had taken him five years of slow progress, the crutch of a pain-chip, and a madness inducing agony to achieve: a conscience. “Don’t worry about it right now, honey. It doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

    “Because you want something of me.”

    Buffy sighed. “Does that mean it’s not love?” she said. “You want Drusilla. You want her touch and her laughter and her devotion and her songs. You want my blood and my body. Does that make it any less real?”

    He looked right at her. “What do you need it for?”

    “Do you really need me to tell you?”

    “Yes!” he said. “Blood is life; a demon’s blood can control, can summon, can destroy. You could erase my very existence. With enough power, enough knowledge, with blood as old as mine, you could erase my sire, and her sire, all the way back to Darla’s freaking Master. A truly gifted witch or sorcerer could mojo up the ghost of any human I’ve ever drunk from. It could reorder time. It could alter the bloody world. I’m not the idiot some people have called me. Magic has consequences. And this is my blood, I can’t just give it away, not for what I can’t understand.”

    “Spike. If you trusted me, it wouldn’t matter.”

    He sagged, and his eyes were heavy. “So, you can’t trust me, so I can’t trust you.”

    Buffy stared back, weight for weight. “Not right now,” she said again.

    He snarled. “I bloody hate you,” he muttered. She knew what he meant, and it wasn’t hate. He took in a deep breath. “I want you,” he said stiffly. “Right now.”

    She realized he was asking. Given the weight of their conversation, she understood. She was glad he was even seriously considering the matter. “I’m glad,” she said. “I don’t want to fight.”

    “Me either.”

    “Do me a favor first?”

    “Hm?”

    She picked up one of the burgers and tossed it to him. “Give that to the doll. I don’t really want to do it myself.”

    “I thought you hated him.”

    “I do,” she said. “But he needs fed.”

    “You said he was evil.”

    “He is,” Buffy told him. “But I’m not.”

 
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