Spike stood impatiently in front of his microwave, waiting for the blood to warm. He had not slept well on the sarcophagus, he was too accustomed to a soft bed, and had woken up stiff and groggy. It was not a feeling that he was used to or liked in the slightest.

Gettin’ soft.

Tara had long since gone to campus when the vampire had risen. Meret was still asleep in her brazier downstairs and Spike was bored and cranky, a bad combination.

The microwave buzzed and Spike retrieved his meal. He sipped the blood slowly and wandered over to the television. There, resting on top of the screen, was a note. He passed his mug to his right hand and scooped up the slip of paper.

Dear Spike,

I hope I didn’t wake you when I left this morning. I have a few classes that I have to attend, but I’ll be back before dark. I’ll know more about the dorms tonight, hopefully.

I took your jacket to get the sleeves fixed, so don’t worry about it when you don’t see it downstairs. I know how you are about it, but trust me on this. I know a great alterations place on campus.

If it makes you feel better, consider it rent.

See you this evening. I’ll bring hot wings for dinner.

Tara

Spike’s eyes widened as he read the letter.

My coat! She’s lettin’ someone cut on my coat!

The fact that his trench coat was so badly burned as to be unwearable did not enter into the vampire’s line of reasoning. All he knew was that his precious jacket was in the hands of a stranger. A stranger wielding scissors.

Unable to retrieve the coat for himself and unwilling to stand around wringing his hands like an expectant father in a delivery room, Spike did the next best thing. He collected a still sleepy Meret and headed into the sewers.

Nothing burned off nervous energy like a little death

*****

Two dead fledglings later, Spike felt that he had gained enough perspective on the situation to face Tara without completely panicking. After all, the coat had nearly been destroyed. In fact, unless the person given the task of fixing the jacket was the most ham handed, fumbling seamstress ever cursed to wield a needle, there was very little that could be done to the garment that would make it worse than it already was.

Coat’ll be all right.

He repeated that mantra over and over on the return walk. He had not ventured far from the subterranean chambers he called home, so he beat sunset back to the crypt. Finding it empty, Spike decided to take the time to wash away the vamp dust and assorted types of filth from the sewers.

Calling Spike’s bathing area a “shower” was being very generous, but it suited the vampire well enough. A ruptured water pipe, probably leading to one of the small fountains that graced the cemetery, jutted from the ceiling of one of the adjoining rock chambers. The water was quite cold, but clean, and looked more like the stream from a garden hose than an actual shower. The naturally porous rock allowed some of the cool liquid to collect in a depression in the floor, maybe shin-deep at most, but it drained quickly enough that the pool continuously circulated clean water.

While Meret sported in one of the smaller puddles, Spike dropped his clothing on the far side of the small chamber and waded under the stream of water. In addition to the fluffy, white towels he had swiped from the local Holiday Inn, Spike had also managed to lift a large quantity of tiny soaps and shampoos as well. It took some effort to get the shampoo worked into his gelled hair, and the standing water soon turned cloudy with soap, dust, and grime.

The bath revealed a latticework of faint scars. Some, like the crescent-shaped line across his shoulder, predated his death. When he was nine, he had fallen from a tree onto a sharp rock. If he tried, he could almost taste the candy his mother had given him after bandaging the cut. Sweets had never tasted the same after he had been turned; they were still good, just different. There were others: a small circle from the tooth of an angry dog, a long stripe from a bully’s signet ring, a rough patch from a fall from a horse.

Some had come after his rebirth. Contrary to popular belief, vampires could scar; it just took more effort. The long tear across his eyebrow from the Chinese slayer’s ensorcelled blade stood in mute testimony to that fact. Other faint marks had been collected over the years. The starburst pattern on his hip came courtesy of a poisoned dart in Indonesia. Dru had pulled it out, taking a great deal of flesh with the barbed tip, and the toxins had been laced with holy water so the wound had never healed correctly. There were many others, some bearing good memories and some bad. The faint spider web across one side of his chest was a ghostly reminder of a time when he had pushed Angelus too far, and had ended up chained in a closet for three nights with a stake touching, but not quite piercing, his heart. Like the post from a new earring, Spike’s body had tried to heal around the shard of wood before Angelus had finally freed him from the punishment: just another reason to hate the older vampire on a long, long list of grievances.

The scars covered Spike’s body, like veins in a marble statue: imperfections that made the whole stronger. He often wondered what his back looked like or the changes his face underwent during his transformations. Drusilla had played for weeks with a Polaroid camera when the device was first invented, but the images were small and could only capture brief moments in time.

In recent years, he had thought about swiping a digital video camera, but without a lair full of minions, he did not have the means to use one, much less transfer it to a viewable format. It was one of the few instances that Spike regretted avoiding learning much about modern technology.

So he used moments like his baths, when his callused fingers scrubbed away the dirt and blood of his enemies, to keep stock of himself. For a creature with no reflection, such rituals kept him sane. He had no picture albums, no tedious family slides with which to torment guests. His memories he kept in the marks on his body. When he rinsed out his hair, his fingers trailed along the scar on his eyebrow, remembering the Boxer Rebellion. When he attacked a particularly tenacious smear of mud on his shoulder, he thought about the long-ago fight with a Thernese demon that had ended with the scaled creature dead and Spike’s right arm chewed beyond recognition and covered in stinging acid. When he rinsed his left hand off under the stream of water, he pictured the broken teacup he had cried over when he was six.

By the time his body was clean, his mind was clear as well. He dried off quickly, leaving his hair in a riotous mass of curls, and made his way back to his bedchambers, dirty clothing in hand. He would have to see to his laundry sometime soon, not a task he anticipated enjoying.

Thankfully, the crypt remained empty. Spike traded in his wet towel for a clean outfit and started digging around in his dresser for gel and a comb. While styling his hair went against Spike’s credo of avoiding “nancyish” behavior, anything was better than sporting his natural curls. It was relatively difficult to play the big bad when your hair wanted to hang in soft ringlets that would have made Shirley Temple proud.

While Meret moved her water sports to the copper birdbath in the corner, Spike set to work taming his unruly hair with the help of a half-full tube of gel and a ridiculously bright yellow comb. After working a generous portion of the gel into his scalp, the vampire started running the comb through his hair, pulling it straight back and tightly severe. He remembered Drusilla performing the same task countless times. She had sometimes used a comb, sometimes her long, perfectly manicured fingernails, but she had always been surprisingly gentle, as if she was handling one of her prized dolls. Spike had used to sit for hours, humming with pleasure under her ministrations. He had left those tender moments behind with Dru in Brazil.

Ever since his return to Sunnydale, Spike had avoided letting anyone get too close to him. Buffy had restarted the short list of people whose touch he would not avoid, and Dawn soon joined it. Tara had recently added herself to the group, but even Harmony, with the notable exception of their screwing, had been kept at arms length, both physically and metaphorically. Closeness would have implied some level of affection, and try as she might, the bubbly, vapid vampiress could never escape from Drusilla’s shadow, or the love hate relationship Spike had developed with regards to the opposite sex. Any small tasks that carried memories of his sire became very private to the vampire, including fixing his hair.

He knew what his hair should feel like, and his sensitive fingers could find stray strands with ease. He could find no joy in what had once been so sensual a process, but he could find some measure of peace. The repetitive motion and the slide of the comb through slick locks of hair would often put the vampire into a trance-like state.

The sound of a closing door and the distinctive scents of Tara and Dawn registered in Spike’s mind as he concentrated, eyes closed, on the texture of his hair and the motion of the comb. The fight, the bath, the grooming: all had put him in a much calmer state of mind. He would deal with his precious jacket when he saw it again, not before. After wiping off his comb and stashing the incriminating evidence of his hair styling, Spike scaled the ladder to meet his guests.

*****

“Okay, garlic?” asked Dawn.

She was sprawled on the ground, feeding Meret little bits of spicy chicken. Tara had spread out a blanket under one of the cemetery’s shade trees, and the three were staging a rather bizarre picnic in front of Spike’s crypt. The vampire had complained loudly at first, citing the need to uphold his reputation with his demonic neighbors, but his objections were soon smothered by the combined power of two sets of wide, hopeful eyes.

Bloody doe-eyed chits.

Spike, who was leaning against a nearby headstone, pointedly stripped another bite from the hot wing in his hand and chewed it slowly with an arched eyebrow.

“Yeah, see?” Dawn gestured with the half eaten remains of a hot wing, “You eat it, but I’ve seen garlic in Buffy’s weapons’ chest, so what’s the deal?”

“Allergic,” Spike mumbled around his bite of food.

“Huh?”

“Vampires are allergic to garlic, some more than others. I’ve got a pretty weak case, dunno why. I like how it burns on the way down. Adds to the spices,” replied the vampire.

“So then, garlic is like vampire fugu?” interjected Tara from her seat on the blanket.

“Yeah, guess so.”

Dawn’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “What’s fugu?” she asked.

“Poisonous blow fish. The Japanese like it raw, say it makes your mouth tingle or some such rot,” the vampire waved his hand dismissively. “People die eatin’ it all the time.”

“That’s stupid,” commented Dawn.

“Yeah, especially since it tastes like rubber,” Spike caught the younger Summers’ look. “What, ‘s not like it could hurt me.”

“You’re really weird for a vampire. You know that, right?” teased Dawn.

“Think I’m an uncommonly manly specimen, if that’s what you mean.”

“You eat food, and hang out with humans, and you kind of suck at the whole evil thing,” the girl elaborated, mischief twinkling in her eyes.

Despite the obviousness of the bait, Spike sneered at her comments. “Jus’ bidin’ my time 's all, lullin’ you all into a false sense of security,” he snarled in false anger. He had given up getting genuinely offended over such comments, but he still liked to talk a good game.

“Riiiight,” drawled Dawn, tearing off another piece of chicken for Meret. The little coatl made the most ridiculous faces while she ate the morsels. After gulping down the slivers of meat whole, the little serpent would open and close her mouth repeatedly, cocking her head this way and that as if she couldn’t decide what to make of the odd flavor. The only way Spike could describe the sensations emanating from the coatl was a feeling of intense concentration. Her antics threatened to destroy the vampire’s carefully constructed front of irritation.

“Dunno why I should care what you think about evil and such. You’re what, one and a half now? And where are all these questions comin’ from anyway? Plannin’ on steppin’ into Big Sis’ shoes?” The vampire crossed his arms and pinned Dawn with a pointed stare. He had already covered a wide array of vampiric mythology, from fixations on counting things to sleeping with the soil of his homeland. Before that, he had been grilled for information on some of the historic events he had witnessed: the Boxer Rebellion, the Bolshevik Revolution, both World Wars… He had even talked at length about the Kangra earthquake of 1905, a disaster that had more to do with Darla hiring a witch to summon two unstable gates than any geologic processes. The mere memory of the resonance the portals had created before tearing each other apart could still make him queasy. It was all getting rather boring and his expression echoed that opinion.

Irrepressible as always, the teenager only shrugged. “I’m allowed to do research now and I’m curious. I’ve already read about all kinds of neat stuff. Oh, did you know that demons from the Miquot clan can pop knives out of their arms? Isn’t that gross? And Sefrian demon families share a common eyeball...”

Spike glanced at Tara to find the quiet witch struggling to keep from laughing out loud at the younger girl’s continuing litany of new demonic discoveries. The domesticity of the situation struck Spike in that moment. Even though their little scene certainly had aspects of Salvador Dali in it, there was enough Norman Rockwell to make the man in Spike warm and the demon resigned.

Right and truly house broken, I am.

“… Slime was marketed in the sixties as an ‘all-natural moisturizer’ until some people started growing green whiskers, so the company had to do this big recall and cover up. It was a whole big thing.” Dawn paused in her recitation and looked hard at Spike. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Yeah, um, whisker growin’ facial cream. Very nasty, should be avoided at all costs,” the vampire struggled to regain his grasp on the conversation.

Dawn rolled her eyes expressively, “Very funny,” suddenly Dawn shifted gears again, “Are you coming to the Magic Box tomorrow?”

“Guess I should, missed my paycheck from the soon to be Mrs. Whelp during all the excitement last night. Why?”

“’Cause they’re having a big research party about Meret here. Apparently everybody can hear her now, which kind of sucks,” Dawn paused to pet Meret’s head when the little serpent hissed in indignation. “Only because I wanted you to ourselves silly, and because I don’t like listening to Xander complain. You’d think Willow at least…” Dawn clapped her hands over her mouth suddenly and turned to Tara with a stricken look on her face.

It was the first time Willow’s name had been mentioned all evening.

Tara’s face was drawn, but she managed a pained smile and reached forward to pat Dawn on the shoulder. “Its okay, Dawnie. It’s not like I can avoid talking about her forever.”

The blond witch fell silent again, staring at her hands where they rested in her lap, and Dawn looked ready to run or cry, maybe both. Before Spike could come up with any clever ideas about how to smooth over the situation, Meret took matters upon herself.

One sauce covered, messy hot wing dropped into Tara’s upturned hands. Before the quiet witch could respond, the coatl was back, fluttering in front of Dawn with another piece of chicken hanging from her mouth. Spike snorted.

No doubt about the way to this one’s heart.

Meret settled back down on the blanket, flipping her wings tightly against her back and projecting a “well that’s that” attitude, which earned a wan smile from Tara and an awkward giggle from Dawn. Even though the two girls looked at the offering dubiously, they both ate the wings and soon reached for more. Glad of the distraction, Spike cleared his throat.

“I’ll be at the meeting after we get Tara situated in her new digs. Shouldn’t take too long,” he commented.

“Great! I’ll tell Buffy,” Dawn chirped.

Spike’s eyes narrowed at mention of the slayer, but he held his peace. He would check on Buffy, and her reaction to Meret, soon enough.