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Chapter 38
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Spike stared at Buffy in amazement. Could it be that she had somehow finally seen him … really seen him? Years of misunderstandings and misconnections couldn’t
just fall away like that, could they? Spike felt the beginnings of something foreign lodge in his belly … hope.

"I don’t know why you went all Mime!Vamp on me, but I can just look at you and know what you’re trying to say. Only Spike is that big a loudmouth." Buffy looked into those now obviously familiar blue eyes and smiled. She moved forward quickly and took his bruised face between her soft, tender hands, staring deeply into the pooled windows to Spike’s soul and continued her surprising reassurance.

"When we get back to something normal and nice, we need to talk about improving our communication skills." She kissed him then, tenderly and carefully yet still with authority and need. Buffy then leaned back, still caressing the precious face she had thought to never see again and laughed slightly. "Then again, this whole mess we seem to be in IS normal for us! Gotta tell you, Spike, as sexy as you are in bondage, I’m not loving the battered and pained look. Wish you could tell me why you’re not running your mouth. Duh! If you could tell me, then your mouth would be running… and I’m babbling as bad as Willow ever did!" She kissed Spike once more before going to work on freeing him from the manacles.

Spike tumbled free and fell at Buffy’s feet. The poison in his system, thanks to the Ram, still made verbal skills impossible. He was not really able to move any of his limbs voluntarily. He silently cursed the flying sheep for taking away his best asset at this particular moment. Here was the woman he loved and had been keeping himself in exile from, ready to hear his vows of undying love and, for once in his long unlife, he couldn’t speak!

Buffy could tell her vampire was not able to move on his own and was in dire straits physically. "I think we’d better get you away from here pronto, Tonto. For some reason Giles is sure you aren’t you. He said Angel confirmed you’re a fake Spike. Pffft! Angel and his ‘I know Spike better than anybody’ crap didn’t know the real you when you hadn’t even dusted yet! Nope, this is leap-of-faith time for Buffy. You’re the one who convinced me my instincts were dead on, buster, so it’s time to put my money where my mouth is."

Buffy gently scooped up her inert love and moved quickly into the hallway. She planned to handle Giles later, after she had hidden the strangely silent vampire somewhere only she would know about for now. The General had made a decision!

With her precious cargo, she moved as rapidly and silently as a stealth bomber to the end of the hallway and toward the stairs to the lobby. Behind the check-in desk was a door. Buffy nearly tripped over the bound and duct-taped Dilby, who was still writhing on the floor of the closet. "Shoot! Never a vacancy when you find a good hiding place! Oh, well. Spike I hope you won’t mind a roommate for a while. It’s a little cramped, but I think it will be safe enough." To make sure her vampire wouldn’t have to deal with the wriggling clerk’s gyrations, Buffy neatly cold-cocked the man, adding to the lumps left by Spike earlier.

"No snoring! Vampires need peace for healing time here," she ordered the unconscious clerk. Buffy was getting a bit silly. She felt giddy at the realization that she was actually in the same room with the man she loved. She placed Spike on the floor as far from the clerk as possible in the small area.

Spike was giving her frantic looks, first making sure to have eye contact and then looking down towards the place where the Oracle’s revealing orb was sewn into his clothing. He could only hope that Buffy would follow his gaze and use the orb to see the Partners for what they truly were. He wasn’t in any condition to fight the fight as yet and he couldn’t imagine Buffy snapping the neck of the pillock she thought was her Watcher or a baby slayer with toxic spit.

Buffy teared up just looking at Spike. "What are you trying to tell me, handsome? I can see you’re trying, but I’m not that good with charades. I mean you can’t even tug your ear for a ‘sounds like’ clue or anything?" Buffy was nearing the end of her patience with the vague visual cluage.

"Okay, I’ve got no money to buy a vowel here, so I gotta go with what I do know. You’ve been seriously fucked up, first with the fight and then whatever cat got your tongue. Not sharing that tongue either!" she whispered, off topic. "First things first, then. We get a mostly functional Spike and then take it from there."

Spike looked on with shock as Buffy picked up a letter opener on a shelf and opened a vein in her wrist, holding it to his lips. "A. You are a vampire, Spike or not. B. Slayer blood is of the major good for vamp owies … so … . drink up, Spikey, and just call me Bossie the Moo Cow."

Spike wasn’t sure if he would be able to swallow the nectar he had never imagined tasting; the muscles in his throat weren’t any better able to work than the rest. Buffy seemed to realize he was having problems and tilted his head back, allowing the healing blood to dribble down his throat without him having to actively swallow. "Hey, good thing you can’t gag or choke, huh?"

Spike could feel the blood begin to help; no quick miracles, but at least he began to have a reason to expect one might be in the offing. He still needed to get Buffy and that orb together and fast.

"Bu … or … shows," he attempted to communicate orally as his eyes still tried to get her to follow them to the orb. Buffy finally noticed the direction of his gaze and her eyes grew huge.

"Um, Spike…" she said as she took in the bulge near the area of his right pocket. "Much as I’ve missed you, I don’t think now’s the time! Good to see you’re getting that muscle control back though." She was blushing deeply as she stared at the firm, tented area of his trousers.

Spike rolled his eyes at her assumption. The girl had developed quite the dirty mind since he’d seen her last. As endearing and promising as that information was…
she was right, now was not the time!

The blood was finally making more of a difference at last and his tongue loosened enough to make it useful. "No, you sweet dozy bint! It’s sewn in my bloody pocket! It’s a magic orb that’ll help you see these soddin’ bastards for what they are. Can’t fight ‘em if you aren’t sure what you’re seein’. Use that post opener and cut it out. You can use it better than me for a bit, love. That tasty bit o’ Buffy has lots of work to do before I’m a hundred percent and we don’t have time to wait."

~~~

Ram had the struggling Eduardo a.k.a. The Immortal pinned to the wall of the room he had shared with Buffy when they had first arrived. "Marcello, Marcello, I am so very disappointed in you. All these centuries we gave and we gave. We opened our arms, our hearts and our deep yet not endless pockets to you. Did we once ask for anything from you to disturb your play? Did we ever interrupt your enjoyment of our bounty as you scampered all over the globe in pursuit of pleasure and amusement? No, we did not. And we finally, after all those long years, asked for One.Simple.Favor. One tiny task to ease our burdens and how did you respond? You were supposed to neutralize the overly ambitious vampire with the slayer fetish, a vampire the walking blonde joke thought to be dust already. You assured us that you had handled the matter to our satisfaction. Clearly you underestimated both the vampire and our needs. Just how is it that this reformed dirt pile is HERE, in our own home dimension, bleeding on my favorite lotus-patterned, privately commissioned Persian Gabbeh carpet as we speak?"

Buffy’s latest boyfriend could only gurgle in reply. His windpipe was nearly crushed by the infuriated uberdemon. Eduardo desperately tried to remember the original terms of his agreement with the law firm from hell. He was pretty sure the immortality clause could be overridden by one of the Senior Partners and at the rate Ram was going, he was about to meet his maker at long last. The endless party was coming to an abrupt end.

"I told Wolf you were a buffoon, a waste of our time, a leech bleeding off our precious resources to no good purpose. The pretty party boy enjoying a neverending adolescence at our expense. Sure enough, the time came to pay the piper and you used Spanish coin for payment. Dealing with one lovesick vampire and one perpetually blind slayer should have been child’s play for you, Marcello. You had no difficulty dealing with a much brighter slayer in the last century with fewer of our resources at your disposal. Clearly you have become complacent and therefore are of no further use to us. I have made an executive decision to cut our losses with you at long last. Consider this a foreclosure." With that, Ram snapped the neck of the formerly immortal being.

Wolf entered the room of his long-term ally and laughed at the sight of the corpse rapidly turning into a skeletal heap on the floor of the quaint hotel room. "Guess Eddie came up a bit short on the repayment part of the deal, eh? Pity. He was always a hoot to watch. His way with the dames and the fellas was pretty impressive, you have to admit. Wish I’d gotten a peek before you got rid of all the soft tissue parts. Come to think of it, he’d have made a fairly tasty meal. You should have let me have a chow-down if you wanted to pull his ticket."

"It needed doing, Wolf. I usually don’t like dirtying my hands this way. It’s unseemly and not at all in the way of a gentleman. You know how his antics have annoyed me for years though. Really! The silly way he conducted himself! A representative of evil should never be held up to lewd jokes and playboy lifestyles!"

"You’re a weird one, Ram. Seems like ‘lewd’ and ‘playboy’ are right there in the ‘how-to evil handbook’." Wolf laughed out loud at his Partner’s affectations of gentility in the face of the murderous truth at his feet.

"Those acolytes of yours haven’t reported back yet. I think it’s time to send a couple of my boys in. I keep trying to tell you: use muscle to get the job done, forget the ritual and crap." Wolf had taught those principles to several of his favored clients over the years. His prize pupil, John Gotti, had managed to get a bit too cocky, but Wolf’s methods were usually quite effective.

"Fine. Send your goons to clean up this mess. I have a vampire to finish off in my room I’m fully intending to charge the corporate account for replacement of my carpet!" Ram started for the door and a return to getting his hands dirty with a bit of torture.

"Nah. Vamp’s gone. That nutty slayer’s got a mind of her own. Don’t know where she’s stashed him, but they couldn’t have gone too far. You know the motto, ‘you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave’." Wolf began to whistle the tune of the song their little world had inspired in the wild 1970s.

"This just keeps getting messier and messier. Felric! Get in here!" Ram shouted for his second highest minion to attend their needs.