“I can’t believe you’re so scared of flying,” Buffy said, a slight grin on her face. There wasn’t much that could make her laugh anymore, but seeing the Big Bad sitting in his seat like a nervous little boy was beyond amusing.

“Yeah, well, ‘s not like they had planes when I went all bumpy,” Spike snapped. His declaration was accompanied by an uncomfortable squirm that made Buffy grin.

“You are so pathetic. What happened to the Big Bad?” She shouldn’t be taunting him and she knew it. Taunting vampires was definitely not prescribed behavior for a Slayer. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to stop.

“Shut the bloody hell up, Slayer,” Spike growled, gripping the seat so tightly that the little metal ashtray bent inward.

“You shut up,” Buffy retorted, cringing when the words left her mouth. She sounded like a child, and a petulant one at that.

“I’ll shut up if you will,” Spike said, sounding disgustingly hopeful.

“Fine,” Buffy snapped. “Be glad to.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“You’re not shuttin’ up yet,” Spike pointed out, grinning gleefully when Buffy growled at him. “Spike, I swear to God, if you don’t shut up—“

“Can you both shut up?”

Buffy looked up: an irritated businessman was glaring at her. “Oh. Sorry, sir,” she said, bobbing her head. Always be polite to humans. Common Slayer etiquette.

“Just keep quiet,” the man advised, turning back round with a muttered, “Kids these days…”

Spike grinned and then leaned closer to Buffy. It was only by a few inches, but it made her tense. She trusted him about as far as she could throw him.

No, scratch that. She trusted him about as far as that man could throw him.

“You know, pet,” the vampire said in a conspiratorial tone, “’f you want, I can just bite ‘im.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know what sick, twisted part of you found that funny, but I can assure you that if you ever try to bite anyone while you’re anywhere near me, I will stake your sorry ass, world-savage be damned.”

It should have been an intimidating speech. It really, really should have. But he just twisted his lips a little. “Like you’d defy your precious Slayer Handbook enough to turn your back on your duty.”

“Actually, according to the Handbook, I should be killing you,” she said coolly. “So be glad that I’m not.”

Spike didn’t respond. She wished he had, not because she enjoyed talking to him—she really, really didn’t—but because when he didn’t talk, she was alone with her thoughts. And the longer she thought, the more unsettled she became.

According to the Handbook, I should be killing you. The brutal truth behind that statement shocked her...she was defying the Handbook. She was defying the Council, the men who’d been in charge of her since she was fifteen...and for what? A vampire, an evil, soulless being, who apparently wanted to help her save the world?

She really couldn’t believe she was doing this again.

“So...you really follow that thing by the letter, don’t you?”

Buffy sighed. Why was he still talking. “Follow what?”

Better question: why was she still talking back?

“That Handbook of yours. ‘s like your Bible, innit?”

“No, it’s like a rulebook,” she said testily. “It has guidelines for stages of Slayerhood and how a Slayer should live her life.”

“And I’m guessin’ that includes bein’ ripped away from your family and friends?”

How could he make it sound so sinister? Being a Slayer was a calling more glorious and more difficult than any other on the face of the earth! “Isolation is a necessary part of a Slayer’s life,” she snapped, not the slightest bit unsettled that she was now quoting the book directly. “Emotion is weakness.”

Spike snickered. “’s that what they tell you? Bloody hell, Blondie. Seems like the Council of Wankers are tryin’ to off you, or something. Emotion makes you stronger.”

“Bullshit,” Buffy hissed. “And I’m not listening to any more of this.”

What, afraid it’ll start making sense?

“Last Slayer I killed damn near killed me first,” Spike said in a low voice. Buffy couldn’t tell if he was trying to be persuasive or sexy—and the problem was, they were both working.

Wait—Spike? Sexy? A world of no! God, my Watcher would have a heart attack!

“She had a kid,” Spike continued. “She wanted to live. That’s what made her so damned hard to kill.”

Buffy sighed loudly. “Whatever,” she said impatiently. “Can we just...not?”

“Oh, was that a request coming out of the Slayer’s bitchy mouth?” Spike inquired quietly. He tilted his head at her. “Say it again, pet, an’ ‘ll see what I can do.”

She sneered at him. “You are so full of yourself, you know that?”

He snickered. “You better believe it, baby.”

They were both silent for a moment, Buffy because she was wondering if the seats were made of wood and if they were, how mad the airline people would get at her for ripping an arm off and staking Spike with it. Spike was silent because—well, Buffy thought, because he was Spike. Who the hell knew what he was thinking?

“Did it hurt?”

She was shocked that the next bit of conversation came out of her mouth. Since when was she more talkative than Spike?

He cocked an eyebrow. “Killin’ the Slayer? I think it hurt her more’n it did me.”

“No—that’s not what I meant. I meant...” she hesitated. She knew what she’d been asking, but having an emotional conversation with a vampire? Her Watcher would have a coronary.

Rupert Giles’s image floated into her head. Different...better...

Screw it. She was already breaking so many rules she wouldn’t be surprised if the Council decided to lock her up. “I meant—with Drusilla,” she said quietly, avoiding the vampire’s eerily serious gaze. “When she broke up with you—did it hurt?”

“Remember that time you poured holy water on m’ balls?”

The tiniest of smiles graced her lips. “Yeah.”

“That was heaven compared to what she put me through,” Spike said. Buffy glanced over at him. Both his knuckles and his lips were white; it was obvious that that question was a painful one.

Before she even realized what she was doing, the words left her lips. Forbidden words. Words that she could be killed for, did the Council know she’d spoken them. Because pity—empathy—it was forbidden to feel towards anyone, much less a soulless vampire. “I’m sorry.”

He glanced at her sharply, his expression unreadable. “You don’t have to apologize. I know you don’t exactly hate makin’ me hurt.”

“That wasn’t why I asked!” Buffy all but yelled. “I asked because—because—“

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Because?”

She sighed. A year later, and in a way, it still hurt. “Nothing,” she ground out. “Just—I’m sorry, okay?”

A few seconds passed—Spike just looked at her and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, for some reason unwilling to look away from him.

Then he smiled. “Apology accepted,” he said. And for once, he didn’t sound smug. Instead he sounded...grateful.

Neither of them spoke after that, and as time passed, Buffy began to drift off. It was nighttime, but she was going to have the jetlag from hell once they reached New York. She shouldn’t relax her guard, not out here in the open—that was one thing the Slayer Handbook was extremely strict about.

Yet some part of her trusted Spike to watch her back while she was sleeping. And it was that (completely insane) part of her that closed her eyelids and sent her off to sleep, with Spike awake and watching at her side.

~*~

The Slayer was asleep. Spike tilted his head and studied her.

Fancy that.

Her head was lolling to her left side, exposing her neck to the window but not to Spike. He found that faintly ironic; even in her sleep, it seemed, she didn’t trust him.

It was odd how they could go from fighting to having soulful talks in just a few hours. He knew that he was off his bird, bantering with the Slayer constantly, but he didn’t really care—he was having more fun than he’d had since the last time he’d been in Sunnydale.

That was the thing about vampires. He hadn’t analyzed a damn thing since he’d been turned more than 100 years ago, and he didn’t care to start now. He had fun pushing the Slayer’s buttons, therefore he’d keep going. Simple as that. The Slayer, now—that chit analyzed anything. He could almost see the cogs turning in her sleeping brain. She was probably going through self-flagellation even while she was resting, beating herself up for associating with him—and then doing it a little more for enjoying herself.

The Slayer let out a little sigh and shifted. Her head fell onto Spike’s shoulder, her warm breath caressing his shoulder even through his shirt. Spike stiffened automatically, getting ready to push her head away, but even as he moved she let out a little mewl of protest and burrowed closer to him.

It was the mewl that did it. Suddenly Spike was very aware of certain parts of him that were stiffening entire too much, yet at the same time he couldn’t force himself to get rid of the thing that was disturbing him.

She looked so damn feminine, almost childlike—and for once she looked peaceful. Only the slightest furrow of her brow implied that her life wasn’t usually all sunshine and rainbows. The rest of her was peaceful. Perfect, the poet in him thought.

Spike shoved him away viciously. Evil vampire, remember, mate? You’re not enjoyin’ the Slayer touching you. You sodding well can’t!

She sighed again and wrapped her small hands around his arm. Spike grimaced. For a bloke who couldn’t enjoy the Slayer’s touch, he was doing a damn good imitation of it. Who’d have known that she’d have such soft hands? She spent most of her time slaving away in that fast food joint or beating up on demons, but he’d never felt anything as soft and warm as her hands circling his bare bicep.

He really, really should’ve worn his duster.

When the flight attendant came by after about fifteen minutes and smiled indulgently at them, he had to fight not to rip her throat out. Sodding bint, just assuming that they were a couple. He ought to torture her—or at the very least take her to the tiny bathroom in the back and drain her dry. Which, given how much that thing stank, would probably be torture in and of itself. Spike could smell the damn thing from where he sat.

And there he went again, off on an irrelevant tangent. What the bloody hell was wrong with him? Evil creatures didn’t go off on tangents. They murdered and they danced in the blood and then they murdered again. Turning him soft, the Slayer was. And the killing blow of it was that she was so tough and so bitchy that the idea of her turning anyone soft was almost laughable.

Key word there being almost…

“Mm,” Buffy murmured, shifting slightly. Her cheek was pressed against his shoulderblade, and Spike suddenly realized that she couldn’t possibly be comfortable. She’d wake up with a bruise and probably come up with some idiot story about him hitting her. That’ll never do, he thought, glancing up at the ceiling. Sure enough, the little seatbelt signs were off. Spike unlocked his and Buffy’s seatbelts and raised the arm that separated their seats, pulling her towards him and shifting till her head was resting in the crook of his arm. She might be ticked with him when she woke up, but they were in a crowd, so she couldn’t dust him—and anyway, at least she’d know that he hadn’t hurt her.

It was night and he should have been wide awake, especially given that he had an armful of Slayer—yet even as the lights overhead began to dim, Spike felt his eyes close. Some part of him noted that he ought to be off luring hapless airplane passengers to their deaths, or at least agonizing over being half a million feet in the air with nothing holding him up but bits of metal—but the part of him that was William seemed to have finally grown some balls, because he was telling the demon to sod off. Soon as they found Red there’d be plenty of carnage. Right now, he just wanted to rest…

With Buffy in his arms.

~*~