Specifications:

1. a keyword/ situation/ line you want to see: Spike's slayer obsession
2. Three other requests for your fic: Souless Spike, Faith, a good punch up
3. Up to three restrictions for your fic: no human matamorphisis, no other character bashing, no requirement for comedy.
4. Rating preference: Whatever



+ + +

She sits in the back garden, on a small bench that her mother bought the year before, reading and sunning herself. The book she reads has her partially absorbed but she is never fully immersed. Constantly aware of the feeling of tiny insects crawling across her bare feet, the sun slowly heating her skin and turning it pink – she should put cream on but is too lazy to contemplate moving – she feels his eyes on her, too. It doesn’t unsettle her; it doesn’t bother her much at all. She’s come to expect it. It’s almost part of her everyday routine now.

Buffy sits in the middle of the lawn bathed in bright sunlight and knows he cannot touch her. For a while at least. There’s some power in that, a power which she has been lacking in recently, but there is also something terribly forlorn about the whole thing. She feels almost guilty that he cannot join her. He must remain in the shade simply watching. No touching permitted. Not until dark falls, anyway. For her it’s a temporary respite. When the sun cools and descends beneath the horizon he is free to pursue her. And he always does. She doesn’t even attempt to fool herself, though. She is as much a part of it as he is. Even if she isn’t sure what it is.

Sometimes they meet in the cemetery both on their way to each other but neither admitting it. They trade jibes and circle each other with faux menace before colliding brutally – each trying to get the upper hand. Sometimes she lets him win.

As she reads she listens through headphones to Dawn’s music. Not that she’d confess to it. The weakness she has for crooning boy bands and slushy ballads is something she’d prefer to keep to herself. It occurs to her in that instant that Spike can hear exactly what she’s humming along to. Her cheeks colour for a brief moment and she is glad she has her back to him.

He’s always had a thing about watching. About watching and learning everything about a person. About girls. About Slayers. It’s what made him so good at killing them. Because he knew them. He knew what made them tick. He knew when that moment would come. The moment they’d just let him win. She thinks maybe that’s why he still watches her so intently. Maybe he is waiting.

She knows that he would stand there for hours content with letting his eyes skate over the bare skin of her shoulders if she was so inclined to sit that long for him. Maybe one day she will. Or maybe she’ll tell him to go. She hasn’t decided on that yet. Buffy finds herself more and more indecisive since coming back. Especially about him.

About them.

Buffy never expected there to be a ‘them’. An ‘us’. A ‘we’. Buffy and Spike. It just sounds wrong. Well, no, actually it kind of rolls off the tongue…but that was hardly the point, and it was never a good idea to think of tongues when he was near. She’d never expected there to be anything between them and she guesses there still isn’t. It’s just sex. She’s pretty sure of that. It makes her feel all kinds of dirty to think too much about it. Since when had she become one of those people? She wasn’t the kind to just fuck and run. Or, she hadn’t been at least. Ever since their first time she could swear she was channelling her inner Faith. Want. Take. Have. It was a philosophy that had excited her at the time and still does. And now she’s living it. When she wants Spike she has him. He never says no. He never says no, even though she thinks that he should. If he did, would she even listen?

It scares her to admit she isn’t sure.

And maybe she’s wrong, anyway. Maybe even Faith wouldn’t go this far. She’d screw Spike but she’d also stake him in a heartbeat. And Buffy finds she can’t do that. She’s wanted to a lot of times but she’s never gone through with it. She thinks that makes her a coward. And it isn’t right to compare herself to Faith because that’s almost like she’s trying to allay the blame. To distance herself from it all. It isn’t Faith doing this, it’s her. Buffy Summers.

She isn’t sure what to do with that.

Spike speaks suddenly and it almost makes her jump. “Didn’t take you for a bookworm.”

She’s startled. He doesn’t usually speak to her when he watches, trying to uphold some illusion that she’s unaware of his presence.

“You don’t know everything,” she answers and is aware it can be taken a number of ways.

“No, s’pose I don’t,” he concedes, his voice carrying from her kitchen doorway.

She doesn’t even bother to wonder how he got there in the middle of the day. Spike always finds a way, and with Dawn at school and everyone else out, he lets himself into her house with a brazen surety she doesn’t think she likes. Or maybe she does.

There’s that indecisiveness again.

Buffy continues to stare at the pages before her but the words now seem far away and unimportant. “What do you want, Spike?”

“What do I always want?”

She knows that he silently answers his own question with one word – you. But she does wonder. Surely he wants for more. There are a number of things she thinks he might want. The chip out. Warm blood sluicing down his throat. To feel a neck crack beneath his hands. But then, maybe, she oversimplifies him. Spike has never seemed entirely controlled by his demon. Maybe he longs for a mortgage. A dog named Limey. To dance in the rain.

She laughs at the thought. She knows that annoys him. He always seems slightly confounded by her when she laughs. Not entirely sure if she’s belittling him or just amused. She likes it when he’s unsure. Likes to steal his bravado for a minute or two. She knows soon enough he’ll come back, composed. And then he’ll find a way to render her uncertain. It’s a constant battle of theirs to be on top – both figuratively and literally.

She hears the flick of a match before he speaks again. “You’ll burn.”

He’s right. Often she’ll feel it, late at night. She lies awake staring at the ceiling and feels her skin start to hum. That old familiar ache. The urge to just be consumed. By him. What a lovely way to burn.

His comment is probably casually directed to the sun exposure but she doesn’t doubt Spike knows the other connotations. Maybe she’s just being melodramatic.

“Maybe,” she answers, tilting her face upwards, eyes squinting at the light. “If only there was someone around who could help me put my sunscreen on in all those hard to reach places. Is Xander around?”

Spike growls softly. “You know full well he’s not and if he was I’d shove that sun cream up his arse before I let him touch you up.”

She laughs again but this time he laughs along with her. It’s odd. Them laughing together. She finds herself starting to think of him more and more as someone she could get along with if only she gave him the chance. The idea of them as friends seems absurd but her life is just one long series of absurdities anyway.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” Buffy sighs, finally glancing over her shoulder at him.

He’s shrouded in the darkness of the kitchen doorway, eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. He shrugs offhandedly taking a moment to take a hit from the cigarette perched between his fingers. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

The Slayer quirks an eyebrow. “Hate to break this to you, Spike, but…”

“Yeah, yeah,” he smirks. “I’m dead already, I know the deal. Then again death seems to be in vogue right about now, so I’m not too bothered. You patrolling tonight?”

“I am. And by that I mean actually patrolling. Nothing else.”

Spike nods, smiling. “Right. I’m sure.”

“I’m serious, Spike. Strictly business.”

“You should always mix business with pleasure,” he assures her. “And who’s goin’ to blame us if we should happen to have a little knee-trembler whilst in-between slayings?”

“Uh, how about everyone in the whole world ever?” She scoffs.
He waves a dismissive hand. “Sod the world.”

“Wish I could.” She looks down at the grass dying off in the heat.

Spike goes silent for several moments, chewing his bottom lip. “You know what? Sod patrolling, too. You need a proper night out on the tiles.”

“Spike, no.”

“Buffy, yes.” He almost takes a step out towards her, forgetting himself, but jerks back quickly. “You need to get royally trashed on cheap booze. It’s really the only cure for the daily grind.”

She eyes him. “I haven’t had my daily grind, yet.”

Spike grins. “Step into my parlour and we can rectify that one, Slayer.”

Buffy rolls her eyes and pretends to be morally outraged but in reality she’s tempted. She finds herself so easily caving into him. Only minutes before she had been ironclad in her decision to cool things off between them for a while and now she was back to the wanting, again.

“You’re paying?”

Spike holds his hands up, eyebrows rising. “Hang up, you’re charging for your servicing these days are you?”

Buffy gives him the finger as she stands up, smoothing out her skirt. “For the alcohol therapy you’ve demanded I need.”

He nods in assent and she nods back, although mostly to herself, as she turns and walks further up the garden, her back to him once again. The grass feels dry and spongy beneath her soles and she enjoys the feeling with simple pleasure.

“Spike?” She calls out, intending to ask him something.

When he doesn’t answer Buffy turns to look back at the house and finds he has gone. She sighs and thinks.

+ + +

They go to Willy’s Pub so Buffy can at least pretend she’s there for work purposes. It’s been a long time since she walked through those doors and a wave of nostalgia hits her suddenly. The multi-species patrons of the bar gaze at her in fear and wonder and hatred or drunken bemusement. When they see she’s there with Spike they look even more perturbed.

She eyes them all, a silent warning, and slides onto a vacant barstool. The dark-haired vampire on the next seat quickly turns and leaves. Wise vampire. Spike takes his place, pulling a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket and placing them on the bar.

Willy approaches, anxious. “Hey, Slayer. Long time no see. We’ve sure missed you around these parts.”

A few demons snort.

“And Spike! Wow! What an old-school reunion, huh?” Willy’s already sweating.

“Whiskey for me and –” Spike starts.

“A coke.” Buffy interrupts. “I’m feeling wild and impulsive tonight.”

The vampire removes a cigarette from the packet. “If only that were true.”

She rolls her eyes and wonders what exactly he means by that. As if fucking him for the past few weeks isn’t wild and impulsive enough for him. As Spike goes to light the cigarette Buffy snatches it from him. Masculine laughter erupts around them and someone whispers ‘Slayer’s pet’.

Both Buffy and Spike pick up on it. The vampire growls and starts to stand. Buffy grabs his arm and pulls him back down. This serves only to give the demons another reason to laugh.

Spike yanks his arm away from her and downs his drink as soon as it arrives. It’s pretty clear to her that he’s pissed off at her for belittling him in front of his fellow demons. She doesn’t really care. She’s so not in the mood for a bar brawl.

Willy scratches his head. “So, uh, what brings the Slayer to my humble establishment tonight?”

“Maybe I missed you, Willy.” She shrugs. “You’ve always been so good at snitching on demons.”

She speaks the last part loud enough for the whole bar to hear.

Willy’s eyes bulge and he laughs nervously. “Aw, man, Slayer, you’re a real joker. Aw, man.”

Spike orders another drink, still sore from being put down by the demons all around him. Buffy watches him covertly out of the corner of her eye. His jaw is clenched, a line of tension running all the way down his neck. He drums his fingers impatiently on the countertop and taps his boot against the stool leg. Anger thy name is Spike, in other words.

“So,” Willy leans forwards on the bar trying to engage them in a feeling of false privacy. “Is the word on the grapevine true? Are you two, uh, you know? Dating?”

Buffy is horrified. Spike turns to her to gage her reaction and rolls his eyes at the apparent shock and embarrassment registering on her face. Clearly he expects her announce they are ‘courting’ or whatever they called it in his day.
She goes for righteous indignation instead.

“Me and him? No way! He’s…Spike!” she protests loudly.

The vampire snorts. “Not like I’d want to dirty my hands with you either, love. Not too much up top – intelligence wise or other, if you catch my drift.”

Buffy punches him hard on the arm and he yelps, followed by amusement at her immature response. It’s only later that she’ll realise what a pre-school ‘I have a crush on you’ action that was.

Willy’s eyes jump back and forth between them. “Well, for what it’s worth I think you’d make a very handsome couple. Really.”

“It’s worth very little, Willy.” Buffy scowls.

“Yeah, do us a favour and sod of elsewhere. Leave the bottle,” Spike instructs as the barman shuffles off amiably.

An awkward silence settles over them. Buffy is trying to figure out how it is Willy found out about their ‘dating’. If Willy knows then it’s a fair bet to assume the whole demon population of Sunnydale knows. Buffy glances around at the patrons trying to discern if they’re watching.

Spike sighs wearily. “I take it from that little fit you’re still not ready to go public with this then.”

“Spike, there is no…this,” she turns to him, voice low. “And no one is ever going to know. About the non-this.”

The vampire glares at her. “Newsflash Slayer – people already know about this. If you think a Slayer fucking a vampire isn’t goin’ to make the news in the demon world you’re more naïve than you look.”

“Will you keep your voice down!” she hisses.

“What’s the point?” he asks. “They all know!”

Buffy’s fists clench. “Then you must have told them.”

“Not bloody likely,” he scowls. “We’re not exactly discreet once we get into it, love. All it takes is for one beastie to catch a glimpse or whiff of us and we’re front page Demon National Enquirer.”

She starts to say something then pauses. “There’s a demon National Enquirer?”

Spike gives her a look.

“Oh, screw this. I’m going home,” Buffy starts to stand. “And don’t think you’re getting any.”

His hand shots out and wraps around her wrist, yanking her back as she starts to leave. She glares at him and he glares back. After a moment of mutual glaring she pulls her hand back but he doesn’t release her. Her blood begins to boil.

“Spike,” she warns. “Let me go. Now.”

He keeps hold of her a moment longer, as if weighing up his options, before he finally lets go and turns away from her. A few demons titter to themselves and Buffy scowls at them, at him, at the world. She turns on her heel and makes it almost all the way to the door before the shit hits the fan.

As Spike starts to go after her, like he always does, an ugly-as-sin demon makes a comment about him being whipped. Spike reacts as expected. He cracks a barstool over the demons head. Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely expected. It takes only moments for the hordes of the hellmouth to descend upon the platinum haired vampire.

Buffy turns just in time to see him engulfed in a pile of fists and claws. She sighs and goes to help him, wondering why she cares even as she rips a scrawny vampire away from the pack and dusts him with a handy piece of broken bar stool.

A chaos demon turns and charges at her, antlers aimed at her gut. Buffy grabs the antlers and halts the demon’s progress; the slime greases her hands in an entirely gross way. She snaps off one sharp end and slams it down hard into the demon’s head. It collapses to the floor, dead.

She turns to face her next opponent, a green fellow, when she’s brained from behind by someone or something. The Slayer flails to the side and falls against the bar, hitting her ribs painfully in the process. Her vision swims for a moment and she reaches up to touch the back of head. Her hand comes away bloody.

Buffy can’t decide whether to be pissed off or scared. So she settles for blind fury.

Grabbing up a nearby whiskey tumbler she lobs it at the first demon she sees. This just happens to be a burly vampire. The glass hits him square between the eyes making him fall backwards over a body and onto a wooden table which he promptly breaks with his enormous weight.

Buffy hears Spike somewhere to her right let out a joyous battle cry and she resolves to kick his ass once this is all over.

But for the meantime she settles for jumping up onto the bar in time to kick a polgara demon in the head before it skewers Willy in the chest. She’ll wonder later why she didn’t just let it. Then she’ll feel mildly guilty about wondering that. And then she’ll eat a scone.

Buffy struts down the bar, very Coyote Uglyesque, and as she goes she kicks down as many demons as she possibly can. She spots Spike’s neon hair and contemplates putting a boot into the back of his head too. Before she can decide whether to go through with that or not a very enthusiastic vampire grabs both her ankles and yanks.

The Slayer goes down hard. And not in the pleasant way. Her back slams into the bar and she topples backwards over it, landing bone jarringly hard on her head and shoulders. She blacks out for a moment and when she wakes she’s looking at Willy’s shoes.

He crouches down next to her, mostly to avoid a flying bottle of tequila, looking smarmy and scared. “Aw, man, Slayer! Why you always gotta do this to my place?”

“…arghhh…” Buffy rolls onto her front feeling like she might barf. “Willy, you got a weapon of some kind?”

As he scrabbles around looking in the shelves under the bar for his ‘security’ Buffy continues to try and keep down the vomit threatening to rise in her throat. Her head is pounding and her back screaming at her to shut up and die. She would be happy to oblige.

She hears sounds of more glass breaking and screams and shouts and punches and maniacal laughter. The cacophony of chaos, bloodshed and delight. Despite herself, her skin itches with the need to join in and break heads.

“Ah ha!” Willy shrieks gleefully.

Buffy, on her hands and knees, turns to him and wilts immediately. She had been hoping for a shotgun or a baseball bat or something she could actually use. Instead Willy is holding out a rape alarm.

She takes it from him and gives him a look. “Willy, what the crap are you doing with one of these?”

“They’re a woman’s best weapon!” He says then pauses. “Not that I’m a woman…I’ve just heard they’re useful.”

Buffy sighs. “In a bar full of demons?”

“Well, yeah, there’s a whole big group of Gavrols doing a lot of damage to your boy out there.”

“He’s not my –”

A small demon comes flying over the bar towards Buffy.

Instinctively she catches the little guy and the two of them look at one another.
“I do beg your pardon,” the demon says in a deep baritone.

Buffy sets him down and he waddles off and away. She turns back to Willy. “He’s not my boy! And also, so what? About the Gaviscons?”

“Gavrols,” Willy points to the alarm. “Very sensitive hearing. Try it; it works like a charm when they get a little rowdy on Karaoke Night.”

Buffy, very sceptically, pulls the pin on the rape alarm and instantly an annoying and painful shrill sound fills the bar. It takes only seconds for the noise of demons in pain to intensify.

The Slayer stands and sees dozens of muddy-skinned demons in leather jackets tumble to the floor holding their ears – which just happen to be in their armpits – and rolling about.

Spike howls in mirth, full vamp face, and punches another vampire brutally. He twirls in an almost dance and kicks a spindly demon in its gut. Buffy watches as he glides around the floor, stepping over fallen Gavrols and other species, effortlessly as he kicks and punches.

She knows she should still be mad at him for bringing her into his little macho pissing contest but for that short amount of time she just wants to watch. There’s beauty in the fighting. She’s come lately to think of pain as something beautiful, in a sense. How pain and pleasure can amount to the same thing in some ways. This she learnt from him.

Spike elbows a vampire in the neck and turns around to face her, his face lit up in happiness – absolute. She rarely sees him this way. Not even when they’re together. And that might be when she realises it. Or maybe she knew before. He loves her but she makes him miserable. And if she’s addicted to misery, like he once told her, then the same goes for him. They’re partners in it.

“Come on, Slayer,” he calls, still beaming. “Come get your rocks off!”

He knows too much about her. About the Slayer. About how she longs to join him in wreaking carnage and laughing wildly while she does. Buffy rocks on the balls of her feet as he holds his hand out to her. It looks like such fun and she knows it would be. Spike knows too. He knows it’s something they both revel in, something they could share. He knows the similarities between the vampire’s need for violence and that of the Slayers.

He knows too much about her.

A long-dormant voice whispers in her head. ‘Tell me you don’t get off on this…’

Buffy vaults over the bar and joins him in the fight. Spike lets out a mad burst of laughter and they fight back to back and she knows he’s got her covered. They’ve always been compatible in life’s physicality’s, in one way or another.

The Slayer’s snap kick hits its target – the chin of a sinewy vampire – breaking the demon’s neck instantly. She watches as he drops to the floor and flops around, still alive but essentially paralysed. She watches and she doesn’t finish him off as she once might have.Instead she turns her back and comes face to face with Spike. His face looks human once again, a trickle of blood running from his lip. He’s seen what she has done but he doesn’t comment.

Buffy reaches up and wipes the blood from his mouth in an oddly motherly gesture.

Spike grins. “Well, that was about the most fun a bloke could have with his clothes on. Don’t you –”

She punches him hard. He reels back, eyes wide.

“Well, that wasn’t nice.” He notes, wincing.

Buffy shrugs easily, winding down from the fight. “I thought you liked your girls bad?”

“Oh, so now you’re my girl?” Spike smirks.

Her eyes narrow. “Yeah, your girl who rammed a stake up your ass if you’re not careful.”

“Sounds kinky,” he steps into her.

When he leans in she goes rigid. He comes closer, their lips almost brushing, and that’s when he hits her with his best right hook. Buffy nearly falls from the force and shock of it but manages to right herself, clutching her cheek.
“You son of a –”

“What?” Spike clasps his hands behind his back, smiling jauntily. “You think I was just gonna let you get away with clocking me one? I don’t think so, pet. Not anymore. If we’re gonna go down the domestic violence route we might as well make it mutual.”

Buffy faces him down. “That suits me just fine. ’Cos we both know who always wins.”

Spike nods. “Yeah, you always overcome.”

She feels her fists clench and his smile widens. Shaking her head she turns and walks towards the exit, stepping on broken glass and broken demons as she goes. Just as she pushes the exit door open she hears the steady thump thump thump of the vampire with the broken neck spasming uncontrollably.

The door swings shut behind her.


+ + +


The walls are white. That’s rarely a sign of a welcoming and homely place. Not that she expected it to be so.

She sits down nervously in the chair and waits. It seems like a long time but in reality is probably only ten minutes. Buffy wants to know how she got to this point. Fucking a vampire, letting the slaying take over. Being someone she never should have been. That’s why she’s here.

“I need your help,” she says softly into the phone.

Faith arches an eyebrow. “Nice to see you too, B.”