“Eight ball, corner pocket,” Spike drawled around his cigarette. A carefully aligned cue and a flicker of golden irises later, and he suited words with actions. The vampire straightened and took a long drag off of his cigarette. Xander’s woeful face made Spike chuckle at the young man’s dilemma. “Tell you what, one more game. Double or nothing. You win and the slate’s clean.”

Xander twirled block of chalk in his hands, staining his fingers with blue. “I win this game, and I don’t owe you squat?” At the vampire’s lazy nod, he grinned widely. “Alright! My luck’s gotta change some time!”

The boy didn’t even notice the predatory gleam to Spike’s eyes as the vampire ground his cigarette into the glass ash tray he had balanced on the side of the table. “Since I seem to be in a generous mood, I’ll even let you break.”

In all fairness, Xander’s abilities had been steadily improving, but the game of pool had been around for a very long time, and Spike had decades of experience on the boy. After this game, and assuming the boy ever paid up, maybe the vampire could afford those concert tickets Dawn had been sighing over. Some hideous boy band or another, but it would be worth it to see the Bit smile.

Xander broke, rather poorly, and Spike found himself sinking two solids in his next turn. As he lined up his next shot, a familiar cleavage appeared right above the corner pocket. The next thing he knew, the cue ball was spinning off wildly to the right.

“Hey guys, how’s it going?” Buffy asked in a perky voice, but when Spike met her eyes, they held an evil glimmer. She knew exactly what she had done.

“Better now, Buffster.” After jabbing the vampire impatiently in the ribs, Xander took his place at the table. After sending a striped ball careening into one of the side pockets, he paced around the table, looking for another shot. “Spike here’s agreed to ditch my debt if I win this game.”

“Oh, really?” the slayer asked, arching an eyebrow at the vampire over her girly umbrella drink. It only took one look at the slayer’s flushed face for Spike to know that the game had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. A drunken Buffy was a wily and unpredictable Buffy. He wondered if he was being punished for the unspeakable crime of sneaking a drink to a minor, but she had looked like she needed a pick-me-up, especially since they had not had the kind of privacy required for him to talk to her more about the dream.

Xander missed his next shot, opening the table for the vampire’s perusal. He walked around it slowly, but to his consternation, Buffy mirrored him, always remaining in his direct line of vision. Spike lined up his next shot, but at the last second, he couldn’t help himself and looked up at Buffy’s face…

And drove the tip of his cue into the felt, leaving a long tear in his wake. Buffy grinned and finally popped the cherry from her drink into his mouth and licked her fingers clean. “That’s not fair,” he growled.

Buffy batted her eyes innocently. “What?”

Xander, as clueless as ever, kept on playing in his usual manner: sinking a ball here, scratching there, but every time Spike tried to line up a shot, Buffy was there, laughing, teasing, saying things that sounded innocuous to the boy, but held double meanings for the besieged vampire. Sometimes he still managed to make his shot, more often not, and beneath it all, the silent laughter of his serpentine watcher added insult to injury. Meret, who was coiled in the rafters, seemed to be finding the whole scene quite amusing.

Finally able to marshal his concentration, Spike sank the remaining solids. “Eight ball, side pocket,” he announced. Again, Buffy took up her position opposite him, but he would not look up and blocked out her voice. He would show her.

The cue slid back effortlessly in his hands, but as the stick started forward, a detailed image of Buffy taking a shower was inserted into his mind. The end of the cue snapped off in his suddenly fisted hands, sending splinters into the green felt and his exposed palm. He watched in disbelief as the white cue ball swerved drunkenly around the table before teetering into the far corner pocket.

You deceitful little minx!

“I won,” cried Xander. “No money for you, Fang Face!”

Spike scowled fiercely, but nodded. He took some consolation in the dark red color staining Buffy’s cheeks. Apparently Meret’s little message had not been on a private line. Maybe that would convince her to respect the sanctity of a fair bet. He was willing to bet that the dark set of the slayer’s mouth translated into a mental tongue lashing for the little serpent. Sure enough, he soon felt a trickle of contrition through the bond.

In the meantime, Xander was either having a particularly strange seizure, or was performing a victory dance around the table. When he finally stopped strutting, he turned to the sulking vampire and embarrassed slayer. “I’m gonna take my newly safe moolah and get some nachos. You guys good?”

“I’m just peachy,” Buffy said, but her voice had lost some of its bouncy edge.

Spike simply glowered in response.

Xander shrugged and made for the bar behind them.

The slayer and the vampire stood in uncomfortable silence for a second. Spike finally looked at Buffy, waiting for an explosion. “No, I didn’t send her to spy on you,” he muttered.

She looked up from her drink and shrugged, eyes too bright. There was no way the slayer was this sloshed from the one drink he had brought her. She must have gone back for another, and maybe another. The bar tenders must have been getting lax with their carding, or maybe she had pouted her way into the extra alcohol. “I don’t think she’ll do it again, since I just threatened her with wallethood. I guess turn about’s fair play, for all the inside info I’ve been getting.” She smirked knowingly, swirling the yellowy drink in her glass. “Remind me to never borrow your lotion.”

Spike balked. He didn’t even want to think of the various implications of that statement. Wallethood wasn’t sounding like such a bad idea.

What’ve you been tellin’ her?!

It didn’t take him long to find the twin pinpricks of red light up in the rafters, but the little coatl shrank behind a support beam under his angry scrutiny. He knew, even without the flash of feathers against the dance floor’s strobe lights, that Meret had fled, and the last thing he “saw” was a flash of her little bed back in the crypt. Part of him was terrified. He’d never really been angry at her before and had no idea how she might react. But part of him was glad too. He was furious, damn it! Between the others’ knowing looks, freakish shared dreams, and Meret’s interesting take on tact, he was about to rip out his own hair.

Xander chose that moment to reappear with chips in hand. “Whoa! What just freaked Meret out?”

“Gah!” Spike slammed the already broken pool cue down on the table, hard enough that the splintering of wood could be clearly heard under the felt covering. Without another word to either the confused carpenter or the slayer, he stormed into the night.

Xander’s surprised “What’s eating him?” followed the vampire out into the alley.

Surprisingly, it was not the slayer who eventually followed him out. He was well into his fourth cigarette, muttering and pacing furiously when Xander appeared in the alley. The vampire turned and faced him, waiting for the questions, waiting for the censure, waiting for whatever reason it was that the young man had seen fit to join him in the alley.

Xander tossed him something silver. Spike caught it midair, and immediately recognized it as his own lighter. He looked at the boy in surprise.

“You left that next to the ash tray. Thought you might want it back,” Xander said by way of explanation. After Spike’s grunt of thanks, the boy gave him a funny look. “Can I ask what just happened?”

There it was. Spike could almost hear the accusations coming. He had wondered how long their truce would last. Before he could give voice to the defensive, insulting responses that came to mind, Xander continued, “Because Anya’s in there giving Buffy the kind of piece of her mind that makes me feel safer running into a dark alley to find a not-so-fangless, pissed-off vampire.”

Spike was blind-sided by Xander’s comment, so much so that he found himself answering the boy’s question before he had time to stop himself. “Look Harris, how would you feel if Anyanka and the rest of your little Scooby gang could know anything you had ever thought, done, or said on a whim? Think that’d put you in a fantastic mood?”

The boy looked at him awkwardly, and ran a hand through his curly mop of hair. “Well, I guess if I had something I didn’t…” he hemmed. “I mean, I’m sure she… Okay, that does kind of suck.”

“’Kind of suck,’” Spike repeated, voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s bad enough that you lot can peek in on what I’m doin’ at any given moment, but you’ve got no idea the kind of stuff I did… before, do you?”

“Sure. Giles read up on you back when you first crashed town with little Miss Loony McNuts. We got all the gory details, complete with replays and side-line commentary.”

“Read up on my dirty little secrets around the campfire, did you? Think that makes you an expert on me? You didn’t see it though.” Spike’s voice dropped to a low growl. “What do you have to be ashamed of? Those Penthouses you’ve got under your bed? Bet the little lady would actually get a kick out of those.”

“One, I don’t want to know what you were doing under my bed…” Xander started counted off on his fingers, before Spike interrupted him.

“Evil. Bored. You do the math.”

“Two,” the boy said more loudly at the interruption, “Meret won’t tell most of us squat. And three, since when are you ashamed of anything?”

“I didn’t say…” the vampire started, angry and indignant. Wait, did I? “I’m a vampire, you stupid ponce,” he finally growled at Xander, eyes flashing gold. “Not ashamed of what I am and what I did. Damn good times.” The words flowed out, like they always did, but they tasted like ashes in his mouth. The idea of Dawn, Buffy, Tara, hell, even the irritating whelp that currently shared the alley with him, seeing him feed, or sport with Drusilla amongst the dead, or any of the thousand other things that had occupied his nights before Sunnydale made Spike’s stomach lurch.

Xander had put his hands up in a calming, or was it defensive, posture, “Hey, all I meant was…”

“Can it, Whelp. I’m leaving.”

“What about Buffy? Weren’t you two going to patrol together?”

“Slayer’s piss drunk, and if I don’t kill something right fucking now it’s going to get very ugly around here,” and with that, Spike threw his smoldering cigarette butt at his feet and stormed off into the night.

*****

The alley was dark, damp, and completely silent now that the two T’kinian drones were dead. He would have to return later, search for the hive and their queen, but for the moment he was sated. For the moment, he needed to be alone with his thoughts.

For a surrogate clan, the Scoobies were a confusing lot. Even before Meret, they had attacked him when he was attempting to make peace and forgiven easily when he had betrayed them all. They could be silly and frivolous, and often were, but they could also present a front of strength, a formidable force to be reckoned with. His own plans had come crashing against that wall enough times for him to understand that well.

Now that it seemed that the Scoobies had truly taken the wayward vampire in, he found himself expecting them to react as a vampiric family might, using their connection with Meret to search for and exploit his weaknesses. Intellectually, he knew that the Scoobies were very different than the demons with whom he had spent the last century, but on a gut level, he was still confused. It was proving hard to disregard the lessons of a century.

And now his own mind was betraying him as well. Looking back, he was shocked at the changes he had undergone in the past couple of years, but particularly in the last few months. If he got any more chock full of the milk of human kindness, he’d be in competition with Angelus for Poof of the Year. He found himself flinching when he was reminded of past kills and, while the scent of fresh blood still commanded his attention, he hadn’t seriously considered feeding from anyone in what felt like ages.

Why?

When had it all started? Had these feelings always been inside of him? Was it the chip? Buffy? Meret? Something about the Hellmouth itself that shot everything he thought he knew to hell?

It was funny. He had embraced his new role, more or less, when he had thrown himself on his alter of love and guilt a month before. And mixed up in all of it, Meret. The vampire wondered what that had felt like to the others. If Spike himself couldn’t figure out what was going on in his own head, he at least had the pleasure of knowing that any eavesdroppers would get to share in his headache.

The simple fact of it was that Spike didn’t really know what the Scoobies could hear through their link with Meret, or what the little coatl had been telling them. He assumed the worse, of course, but come to think of it, if Meret had been doling out information on all of the skeletons in his closet, even his newly minted status among the Scoobies wouldn’t save him from the stake, of that he was certain.

Another thing of which he was certain: there was a mourning serpent back in his crypt that was owed an apology.

And maybe some hot wings.

Before heading back to his crypt, Spike stopped to burn the T’kinians’ bodies, their oily bodies taking to the flame like dry kindling. Before torching the last one, he noticed something sticking out of the demon’s back pocket: a stuffed wallet. He took it and lit the hem of the demon’s shirt. While the last of the bodies burned, he flipped through the folded scrap of leather.

Well, at least the Bit will still get those tickets.