Spike thrashed violently against the figure on top of him.

The water was just deep enough that his face was completely submerged. Water leaked into his nose and mouth, leaving behind a foul coating. He couldn’t see, and the dank liquid stung his eyes. He got one arm free long enough to rip away the strong hand pinning his right shoulder. He twisted violently and his head finally cleared the rank water. Spike’s eyes cleared and he finally saw his attacker. The vampire snarled in betrayal, demonic features springing to the surface, teeth bared in rage.

“Get off me!” he roared in the slayer’s face. He was so angry that he could no longer feel the coatl’s mental touch at all. The vampire took a swing at Buffy, but between the chip’s weakened zap and his awkward angle, she was able to easily bat his fist away.

Buffy’s response was jerky, broken as she attempted to maintain her hold on the struggling vampire. “Spike! Stop it! What are you…”

“Meret!” he bellowed, suiting his words with even greater efforts to escape.

Despite his best efforts to escape her, Buffy managed to keep a hold on him, even as flaming drips of fatty ooze started raining around them. “Spike!” she screamed in his face. “Look above you!”

The frantic vampire, still fighting against the slayer’s grip, finally threw a glance over Buffy’s shoulder and saw what she had been trying to tell him. Meret fluttered, safe and sound, if a little singed, just above them. His muscles relaxed in sudden relief, face melting into smooth lines again. With the subsidence of his panicked rage, he could feel her thoughts again. The little coatl dropped her burden, the demon queen’s still steaming crown. Her voice was meek and apologetic.

Hot.

Spike’s disbelieving bark of laughter split the air. He had trained her too well. Lootin’s in that one’s blood for sure. Buffy finally let go of his arms, and the vampire would have reached out to his feathered companion if he hadn’t been engulfed by a grip of another kind.

Buffy’s wiry arms wrapped around the vampire’s chest in a rib cracking hug, one that would have broken the bones of a human. Spike froze, unsure of what exactly was going on, and what he was supposed to do with his arms, which were dripping and soaked from the slime of the sewer. When he heard the first sniffle, he decided to hell with it. They were both covered in filth; there wasn’t any helping that. In seconds he had one arm wrapped around the slayer’s waist and another running tentative fingers through the girl’s soaked and matted hair.

“What’s all this about?” Spike asked, honestly confused. He would have more easily understood a ranting tirade, maybe even a busted nose.

“Don’t scare me like that,” Buffy whispered, her voice harsh and shaky.

It slowly sank in that the slayer had been scared for him, terrified that he might have died if he had succeeded in throwing himself into the flames. “Uh, sorry?” There was a weird lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to swallow.

Buffy smiled tremulously and sat up, straddling the supine vampire. She poked him in the chest, hard. “You better be, mister.” She scrambled to her feet and wiped a hand across her face, which did little to dislodge the grime marring her features. “Get up blood breath, we need to…” She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at her hand.

Spike pulled himself up out of the muck and looked at the slayer, curious to see what had distracted her.

A long string of yellow slime connected Buffy’s suspended knuckles to her cheek. The slayer’s eyes were wild and horrified. Spike just chuckled and wiped some of the fatty goo off of his own sleeve. Meret fluttered above, refusing to light on either of their soiled shoulders.

The vampire scooped low and fished the now cooling crown out of the water. Behind him, the fire continued to rage.

“Come on slayer. My place isn’t too far away. We can clean up there.”

*****

The sound of running water from the lower level of the crypt felt like drops of electricity on Spike’s frayed nerves. He couldn’t sit, because he was still dripping with filth and slime. As tattered as it was, he was kind of fond of his set up, and he had no interest in getting stinky plaster of cellulite all over the place. He couldn’t drink anything for the same reason. He was pretty sure he had already swallowed enough of the water during his pseudo-fight with the slayer to make him feel queasy. Jack with a waxy goo chaser just didn’t sound very appetizing. He couldn’t even go downstairs, because Buffy was down there.

Taking a bath.

Naked.

And soapy.

And had he already mention naked?

“Gah!” The vampire’s pacing picked up, back and forth across the front of the crypt. The slayer had made him promise to stay upstairs with the coatl. It was just his luck that the second the slayer started throwing some slightly less mixed signals his way, his hands get tied with his new white hat tendencies.

Spike wanted to curse the Watcher for getting them all into this mess, but he couldn’t. He knew that if he could just stop thinking about the slayer’s recent actions and focus on the matter at hand, they’d be out killing things soon enough. But he couldn’t do that either.

It was maddening.

Meret just laughed at him from her perch around Dave’s base. She had stolen the T’kinian queen’s crown back upon reaching the crypt and had dropped it around the little stone figure’s neck soon after. Spike didn’t think the saint would approve.

“You’re a bloody menace to society!” he finally snarled at the coatl, but even in high dudgeon, the vampire couldn’t keep his all encompassing relief at her safety from thoroughly soaking his thoughts. The serpent flattened her feathers in contrition, but her thoughts were a mix of amusement and speculation.

The vampire heard sounds from below: the soft pad of bare feet, opening and closing drawers, and the slide of fabric. It was the scent that really captured his attention though, even before she appeared at the top of the ladder.

She smells like me.

The floral undertone and confection topping of her usual perfumes were absent, but in their place was something new. His shower, his soap, and when she came into view, his clothes. She had grabbed one of his black t-shirts, small enough to maybe be a survivor of Xander’s house of pain slash laundromat. She also wore a pair of his jeans slung low across her hips. She had cuffed them to free her feet, which were decked out in her soggy but clean sneakers, but otherwise the fit was hopeless.

Spike didn’t care. He thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Gods above, her scent…

He blinked, and realized that she had been talking. “… another t-shirt. Xander sent this chain letter around about making a ninja mask that way.” She tugged at the hem of the t-shirt. “It’d definitely fit with the rest of the ensemble.”

Her teasing sparkle turned into a baffled huff when Spike just walked past her.

Cold shower. Now.

Not that it would help much. Being room temperature did occasionally have its downfalls.

*****

Spike felt like a fool.

Buffy had broken her own command and come down stairs to find him digging out his comb and tube of gel. She had thrown a huge fit, citing her own sloppy twist held up with a pencil. So Spike had found himself being dragged out of his crypt and across town, drying hair twisting into ridiculous curls.

To add insult to injury, Meret kept playing with the springy mess. She was wrapped around his neck, the vampire couldn’t help than notice that it took a few more coils now than it had used to. She kept poking her snout into his hair, nosing the loose curls. It tickled, but he forced himself not react. He refused to add any more provocation to the coatl’s teasing thoughts.

Buffy was talking rapid fire with Willow on her cell phone. The vampire was trailing a little behind, half listening to the slayer’s one sided conversation. A human would have noticed it earlier; he didn’t have to breathe after all, so it took a little longer to feel the slow tightening of Meret’s coils around his neck. The mind burning vision from the little serpent more than made up for his distraction, grabbing his mind by the lapels and shaking it ragged.

He could see rough, familiar hands stitching up the stomach of a dead Starling. A little dirt escaped the seam, but the fingers were deft and the gaping hole in the skin was soon closed and tied off. The hands cradled the bird, almost lovingly, and placed it on top of a fabric wrapped bundle.

The vision swam, panning across the room. The walls were earthen and rocky, but the chamber was brightly lit with candles. Long tables, the cheap, folding kind, were arranged in a circle with similar bundles of fabric, most topped with stuffed, dead birds, spaced evenly.

As quickly as it had come, the vision broke.

Spike found himself on the ground. Buffy was struggling to sit up a short ways from him. Meret was above them, flying in wide circles, hissing and projecting her anger and worry. She barely gave them time to regain their feet before swooping at them.

Follow! Her mental tone was imperious.

Spike and Buffy shared a look.

“Think the watcher’s driver has dropped her guard?” the vampire asked. The only reason he could think for the slip was if Elaine was too busy concentrating on another spell to maintain her previous ones.

The slayer nodded and grabbed her bag and cell phone from the grass, Tara’s tiny voice calling desperately from the device. “Tara. Giles. Locator spell. Call back.” The phone clicked shut.

Follow now!

They ran.