~*~

Spike wasn’t entirely sure how long he held her. Might’ve been ten minutes, might’ve been sixty. To tell the truth, he was more concerned with the fact that the famous Slayer was having a nervous breakdown than anything else.

She was still cradling her gruesome, blistered hand. Rocking her back and forth, Spike shot a glance at the witch still standing off to one side. “Can you fix this?”

She knelt down, examining the hand as best as she could. “I think so,” she said hesitatingly. “Gimme a sec. And make her sit still.”

Spike complied as best as he could. “Buffy, luv? Goldilocks, you’re gonna have to stop rocking for a minute.” When she didn’t respond, just kept on rocking like her brains were addled, Spike sighed and stiffened his arms, creating an immobile cage.

She didn’t even fight it. That scared him more than anything else. The Slayer he knew would have fought him tooth and nail if he tried to restrain her, but the second he tightened his arms, Buffy grew limp.

“Nice work,” the witch said approvingly.

Spike glared at her. “Just get on with it,” he snapped angrily. He didn’t like how the witch was looking at the Slayer—like a cat with a sodding mouse, she was.

“I am,” the witch said irritably. “I’m Amy, not Merlin!”

“Oh, that’s your name,” Spike drawled sarcastically.

Amy didn’t even bother to acknowledge that he was being sarcastic. Spike sneered at her bent head. Stupid bint.

“Okay, I’m going to do a healing spell,” she said, not looking at Spike, “and it’s going to hurt like hell, so do me a favor and hold her, okay? I’m not in the mood to get my throat ripped out by a pissed off Slayer.”

Spike couldn’t help it. He needed to make a threat. “In the mood to get it ripped out by a vamp?”

She only raised an eyebrow.

“You so much as hurt a hair on the Slayer’s head, ‘ll rip your sorry head off,” Spike promised, trying to ignore the fact that he was discouraging physical harm to the Slayer.

“Whatever.” Apparently the teen didn’t find that worth examining, if the way she dismissed it out of hand was any indication. “Okay. Hold her tight.”

He obeyed, tightening his arms still more around the Slayer. She still didn’t fight him.

Amy held the burnt hand in her two healthy ones, muttering under her breath. He thought it looked pretty damn ineffectual and was about to call her on it when Buffy’s hand began to glow green. Spike watched, nonexistent breath held, as the burns slowly healed and the blistered skin knit itself back together.

“There.” Amy dropped the hand. “She’s done.”

He nodded curtly, more concerned about the near-catatonic Buffy than the witch. “Buffy? Buffy, pet, it’s Spike…c’mon, Buffy, enough of the shock syndrome shi—“

Buffy came awake suddenly. Her eyes landed on Spike’s own—for a second he felt a sensation as sharp as a stake to the heart—and then she’d backhanded him and he was slamming against the other wall in the hallway.

It was a pretty weak blow; he leapt up immediately, wiping blood away. “Fucking hell, Slayer, me an’ the witch just saved your arse!” he snapped.

“Yeah? Well next time, remember this: I don’t need your help.” Buffy glared at him. “I don’t need anyone’s help!”

Spike watched helplessly as the door to their room slammed shut. He should’ve been angry—hell, he should’ve been so pissed off he couldn’t see straight. But to tell the truth, he was more relieved than anything. The Slayer being so unresponsive was like the world turning upside down.

“Damn. You got burned,” Amy remarked.

The vampire stared at her, stunned. “You’re the oddest bint ‘ve ever met, did you know?”

She smiled sweetly. “What can I say? It’s a gift.”

“A bloody irritatin’ one,” he grumbled. “Don’t you have someplace to be?” He couldn’t wait till she hauled her ass out of the hallway. Being around one human, even if she was the Slayer, was bad enough. He didn’t want to have to put up with two.

Amy shrugged. “Not really. Want me to go in there and talk to her?”

Damn honor. It was a holdover from his human days, and it was the thing stopping him from draining the witch dry right then. It wouldn’t do to kill someone who’d just saved his partner’s life.

He settled for snapping at her. “We’re allies, not sodding mates.”

For what felt like the thousandth time that night, the witch in front of him rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Okay,” she said sarcastically. “If you need me, I’ll be in room 425.”

She stalked off before Spike had a chance to get in a last word.

Bloody women. He growled in frustration and banged on the closed door. “Slayer? Let me in.”

“No.”

“You want me to bust down the door? I can do that—it’s sure as hell no skin off my bones.”

Silence. Then: “Okay, fine. Hold on a second.” He heard a faint rustling noise coming from the other side of the thin door, and then it was wrenched inward.

Almost before he had a chance to blink, the Slayer was walking past him. “I’m going patrolling,” she tossed over her shoulder.

Spike stared after her. Did she have any idea what she was doing? This was New York, for Christ’s sake. Even the Slayer wasn’t safe here all alone, not with the various people and things out to kill them right now.

Stubborn little chit, he grumbled inwardly, before hurrying off after her.

~*~

“You honestly never went patrolling with that wanker?” Spike yelled at her, staking the vamp he was fighting.

“No!” Buffy tried to ignore the fact that she was having a heart-to-heart with her mortal enemy, instead opting to get rid of the vampire who was currently babbling about killing her and satisfying the Great One. She was getting really tired of vampires on missions…

She finally staked him. Turning to Spike, she continued, “He said that it was mixing work and play, and he was right.”

Spike snorted. “Soldier-boy was an idiot.”

Funny how he could get away with making comments like that now and she didn’t want to kill him…”How so?” she asked, falling into step beside him as they headed off to another deserted alley. And conveniently ignoring the fact that you’re working in tandem with a vampire who watched you sleep, held you while you cried, and helped a witch save your life.

“Well, lookit us.” They turned a corner and encountered what Buffy instantly recognized as a vengeance demon. Not in the mood to try and find the stupid thing’s power center, she kicked it hard and sent it reeling away. Vengeance demons weren’t the most dangerous things out tonight, and the Slayer Handbook said Slayers should always look at the big picture.

“Workin’ together, fightin’ the forces of darkness an’ all that rot,” Spike continued, twisting the head off of an anonymous green-scaled demon. “Two heads ‘re better than one, right?”

“I think that sort of implies that each head has a brain,” Buffy shot back sarcastically.

Spike placed a hand over his heart. “Well, bless my nonexistent soul,” he said mockingly. “Did the all-mighty Slayer just make a joke?”

She raised an eyebrow at her companion. Vampire. My vampire companion. The First Slayer is rolling in her grave right now… “Don’t let it go to your head,” she said finally, not quite managing to inject the proper amount of venom into her warning.

“Or my head’ll be the first thing to go, right?” Spike said sarcastically. “I got it, Slayer.” They left the alley and started walking along a fairly crowded street. True to its name, the City That Never Sleeps was still crowded with latenight shoppers. “Hey, you wanna go buy stuff?”

Buffy stared at him in disbelief. “You want to go shopping?”

He shrugged. “Beats arguing, dunnit?”

He was, without a doubt, the strangest vampire she’d ever come across. “And what money are we going to go shopping with?”

He held up a credit card, grinning. “Compliments of some sorry sod back at the motel.”

Logically, Buffy knew she should have been outraged. But after nearly dying and being rescued by a weird witch and the vampire next to her, she was too tired to summon up more than a simple, “You’re really evil, you know that?”

“Yep.” He tilted his head at the boutique they were currently standing at. “C’mon, Slayer. You know you want to.”

Don’t you want to find out what it was like? She hadn’t then. She’d been content with robotic slaying. But now, much to her surprise, she was finding out that she did want to.

Wanting fancy clothes and nice accessories was a frivolous impulse her Watcher had beaten out of her before her first year of training was done. The Handbook expressly forbid personal gratification in the form of too many worldly possessions.

But then, she wasn’t exactly living life according to the handbook, was she?

It was at that moment that Buffy, the Slayer, the girl upon whom the fate of the world depended, threw caution to the wind. She smiled—a genuine, happy, aware smile—and took the hand the vampire offered, letting him draw her into the store.

And that, she thought succinctly, is that.

~*~