A/N: Thanks to Asya for betaing this, if anything is still wrong it is because I forgot to edit it like she recommended :) The next chapter is done and will be up soon! Keep the reviews coming, please!

Chapter Two
“Sickness”

“Does she know?” Joyce asked, looking up at the stars from her seat on her back porch.

“That I’m here? Probably. She takes pride in letting me know that I’m a pain in her arse just from being near.” Spike smiled as he took a sip of the hot cocoa in his mug.

“I meant, does she know that you love her?”

“Do I? I mean, I know that our demons play well together, but what do I do when that goes away? I try not to think about these things, live in the moment and all of that rot, but I can’t help it. If this suddenly went away and she went back to being Buffy, where would that that leave me? Other than staked by someone I couldn’t bring myself to kill. The lot of you wouldn’t be losing a sodding thing, but I would. I can’t do that after losing Dru.”

Joyce couldn’t help but feel for him. It was plain as day that he loved her daughter. He loved her and there was no hiding it from anyone, other than himself and Buffy. Joyce always knew that wherever Buffy went, Spike wasn’t far behind. Since Buffy had been turned into a vampire, Spike had taken it upon himself to watch over her.

“I wouldn’t worry, Spike. She may have grown a pair of fangs and a yearning for blood and violence, but she is still Buffy. She is still the 18 year old girl that I raised, that is what you need to remember. I’m sure you know how to woo the demon in her, but you also need to appeal to the female aspect of her. You have an advantage, don’t you? Surely, you can remember something from your human days and all of the women you had.”

The days of his human life were never far from his thoughts. William, the good for nothing ponce, didn’t know the first thing about a woman. Poetry? Those lines of rhetoric and rhyme riddled his thoughts more and more these days. He often caught himself about to spout off some wretched lines when he was around Buffy… or in her, as was often the case. Ashamed of thinking such thoughts in front of Joyce, Spike turned his head and lit up a cigarette.

“Those things will kill you.” She smiled, reaching off to the side. She handed him a cheap black ashtray. “Use it from now on. I don’t want to see any more discarded cancer sticks around my trees and flowers. Or at least be thoughtful and send them over to Mrs. Aiello’s house,” Joyce pointed off to the right, “I can’t stand the stench of those awful orange flowers of hers and they attract more bees than I ever care to see so close to my house.”

Spike could hear Buffy talking inside about the day she died. That glorious day that had given him a chance in hell to be with her.

“Have you told her yet?” Startled and wide-eyed, Joyce looked at him, raising a quizzical brow. “Been around long enough to know what sickness smells like.”

“No.” She admitted. “I’m trying some medication for now. If it doesn’t work then I will need something stronger and I will tell her. I know she’s grown up, but she’s still my baby. I don’t want her to have to deal with this.”

Summers women were so similar. When Buffy had changed, she hadn’t told her mother; she had waited until she couldn’t hide anymore. Spike stamped out his cigarette in the ashtray and saw Joyce shiver. “Why don’t you head inside? Buffy seems to have gotten a momentum going now.” She nodded and patted Spike on the shoulder.

“Come on,” she encouraged. He thought better of it for a moment, but if she wanted him to follow her, he couldn’t resist a lady’s request. Three sets of eyes watched him when he entered the house and placed the empty mug in the sink.

“While you’re here, Spike, why don’t you help Buffy fill in some of the details of that night.” For a Watcher, Spike found Giles to be quite clueless about Buffy’s body language. It was clear she didn’t want to linger on she subject of her death, yet the man kept prodding her.

For some people death is a blessing. It is an end to pain, suffering, loneliness, and responsibilities. Spike had embraced his; he liked William as far away as possible. Buffy, however, was somewhere in the middle. She had mentioned that she was ecstatic that she no longer had to feel guilty when she didn’t rush off to save every poor sap who got caught up with a demon. She also acknowledged that she was terrified that it would bite her on the ass when or if things ever went back to normal. She didn’t know if her conscience could handle it.

Spike held out his hand expectantly towards the man who sighed, handing over a couple of bills. He looked at Buffy and started, “Right then, she was in the midst of yet another of my attempts on her life…”

***

"You know, a little help wouldn't kill you!" Buffy yelled out to Spike who was currently sitting on top of a nearby gravestone.

"Now why would I want to do that?" Spike was more than content to watch his enemy fend off a group of fledglings. The buggers were a result of yet another plot to kill the slayer. This particular plot was planned by a dying teen by the name of Mercedes? No, Honda? Nope. Ford. Oh yes, the ailing Ford. What was it about this plan that was so bad? A dingy club full of willing vampire wannabes and, the cherry on top, the slayer. The only person that was actually supposed to be turned was Ford, but Spike's lackeys thought to create an army. All but Ford had risen last night and Drusilla had busied herself making her "children" feel at home. The over-abundance of newly turned vampires marching the hallways of his factory home had made Spike grouchy. What was an annoyed Master Vampire to do? Why, send them on a suicide mission, of course! He assured them that the young slayer couldn't possibly take on a handful of them at once, much less waves of them.

Buffy was currently working on the second wave out of three and in approximately three minutes the next round of lemmings would be slinking into the graveyard. Spike knew that she could take them, there was never a doubt about it. He also knew that a slayer's stamina wasn't infinite. Sure, she would be tired by the end, but she wouldn't be dead. No, Spike would never let a lowly fledgling take out what would be his third slain slayer. Three! The thought of yet another notch on his slayer belt sent a shiver up his spine. He could taste the heady slayer blood now. Spike was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't see her finish off the last of the wave and head straight for him. It wasn't until he got a fist to the nose that he was brought out of his tasty dreams. "Oi! Watch the nose!"

"What the hell, Spike? You want me dead? Do it yourself." She was standing over him now with a look that could kill... if it were a sharpened piece of wood, that is.

"Oh, please Slayer. Give the Big Bad some credit. They're not going to kill you, we both know it. Then again..." Spike broke off his sentence and rolled his eyes upwards looking towards the entrance to the cemetery. Buffy's eyes followed his lead and she was barely able to get her stake into position as a vampire came barreling toward her. The force of the tackle knocked her off balance and she fell onto Spike who was still lying beneath her.

"Why haven't you tried to kill me yet?" Buffy complained as she pointed her stake upwards to kill another vamp. Spike could tell she was running out of energy when she didn't immediately jump off his lap.

"When I kill you, I want it to be an event, Slayer. Something more memorable than my having to waste time killing off the newly risen. This here is just foreplay, pet." Her gaze shot down at him and her lip curled with distaste. "Not literally, of course." He added, matter-of-factly.

He had to admit that fighting Buffy was like foreplay. There wasn’t much that was better than a true fight with a formidable opponent such as her. She was feisty and what she lacked in formal training, she more than made up for with natural talent. He'd fought people with better training and more experience than she had, but she was the worthy adversary he had been waiting for. Spike's body reacted to the thought of his fights with Buffy. He truly could get off on their fighting.

The look of disgust and the red tint of embarrassment on her cheeks let him know that she had felt his reaction and Spike let out a laugh. "What? It's natural isn't it?"

"You're such a- Ow! Holy mother of-!" The slayer let out a hiss as an arrow pierced through her right shoulder from behind. The arrow was currently lodged inside of her as she spun around to see her attacker. There was a single demon, who looked almost slimy, standing by a mausoleum with a crossbow.

"Let me guess, one of yours?" She grumped at Spike and gave him a good hard stomp to the gut as she swayed on her two feet.

"Not mine. If it were, I guarantee you they would have completely missed." Spike's minions were not known for their smarts or their talents, unless that talent was failing... miserably. The one thing they did have was determination and, more often than not, that trait sent them to an early grave, again.

Buffy took off running after the demon and Spike followed after her, breathing in the intoxicating smell of her blood as it dripped out of her wound.

Buffy was not feeling well. She never expected that getting shot with anything would feel pleasant, but she was scared because after the initial pain of it slicing through her skin, she didn't feel it at all. There may not have been any pain but every other aspect of her was going wonky. Her blood felt like ice running through her veins and she was starting to feel light headed.

Very quickly, she began to mentally kick herself for insisting on patrolling alone tonight. Giles had come along last night to lend a hand because he had thought that all of the turned teenagers from the club would rise. When none of them ever showed, they feared that Spike and his crew had taken all of them back to their hide-out to keep them safe. Buffy had known that that wasn't true for Ford. They had watched as his family buried him and she had stood guard at his grave ever since. Tonight was the last possible night that Ford could rise. If he didn't then something had gone wrong. They rationalized that the supernatural healing would take extra time due to the tumor in his brain, but nobody rose from the grave as a vampire past five days.

Buffy had felt that she needed to do this alone. She knew that she had to slay him if he rose, that wasn't an issue. However, just turning an old friend to dust didn't sit well with her. She felt that it might be easier to do alone, without someone watching over her shoulder. When Ford did finally rise, Buffy had imagined that it would be more eventful. She felt that it should have been more meaningful, but it wasn't. There was no banter, she couldn't think of anything to say. Her jaw had tightened and she had plunged the stake into his heart before he could say a word. She was not ready for this.

They were all right; it wasn't something she could do alone. The moment she had seen him, the young girl in her had closed her eyes tight and had wished that somebody was there to lie to her and tell her that everything gets easier. Even Angel had volunteered to come along, but when she had nixed that idea, he had found business that he had to do out of town. He had mentioned something about tracking down a demon that could be coming after her. Buffy suspected that it had already found her.

She became winded after following the demon down the block. Her fingers, toes, and lips were now cold to the touch and everything kept spinning long after she stopped moving. Spike wasn't far behind her and she tried to gather the energy to make a run for Giles' place. Many nights, she lay awake buzzing with energy that was just screaming to be let out, and now that she needed it, there was none to be found. With her hands on her knees she tried to catch her breath.

"Come on, Slayer. Don't make this that easy on me."

She raised heavy-lidded eyes to the blonde vampire and tried to come back with a witty remark but all that came out was a whimper.

"What? Really? Goldilocks has gone and run all out of porridge?" A smirk took over his face and he grabbed her by the hair and jerked her to a standing position. He looked her in the eyes then took a second to regard the arrowhead that was impossibly close to his own skin. Buffy couldn’t help but watch as he slid his free hand into the sleeve of his duster then reached up and snapped off the tip that was protruding through the front of her shoulder. If she could have kept any air in her lungs, she was sure that a scream would have pierced the quiet that surrounded them.

Spike's blue eyes closed as he inhaled deeply. He was sniffing her! Buffy's mind raced with the thought of all of the vile things he could do to her and she couldn't lift a finger to stop it. Rape, kill, torture. These were all things he boasted about whenever they crossed paths; wouldn't he take more pride in doing them to a slayer? Is this how she would be remembered? As an anecdote to the next slayer he killed?

Buffy knew she was dying, it was just a matter of how. Was it going to be at the hand of her nemesis or some lucky demon that got in one good shot? She waited for her life to flash before her eyes, but it never came. She didn't have any thoughts of what could have been with Angel or the good times she would miss out on with Willow and Xander. None of this came to her and she wasn't sure if she was angry or relieved. Should she be mad that she didn't get to reflect on her past? She was the freaking slayer! Wasn't that enough to be deserving of a montage of her life? Apparently not. All she had was the sound of a frustrated sigh from Spike and the look of bloodlust in his eyes as he openly ogled the expanse of her neck that he held open to his view.

Spike could smell death pouring out of the slayer and he was at a loss. His third slayer, his trophy, was wasting away right in front of his eyes and he actually felt a tinge of sympathy. She was a fighter, and a damn good one at that. She was supposed to put up a fight before he relished in the taste of her blood. Instead, here he was holding her up as she let out her last breath, with one hand tangled in her hair to keep her head to the side as he decided whether he should bite her or not. If he had been the one to fight her into exhaustion, he would have sunk his fangs into her creamy neck. Sure, Spike was irrational but he was not stupid. There was no way that a simple arrow could have killed her like this. When it occurred to him that the arrow was poisoned he broke it off and cast it aside.

Wasn't this a treat? A dead slayer in his arms, ready for the bite. It should have been a treat, but it was laced with something bad. There wasn't a chance that Spike was going to take a bite of this forbidden fruit without making sure that whatever toxin that was now in her blood wasn't going to affect him. Mind made up, he ran two fingers over her face to close her eyelids, slung the petite, dead fighter over his shoulder and made his way home.

***

“So, she was truly dead?” Giles asked.

“Yes, Watcher. Truly dead, no pulse or anything of the sort.” Spike was leaning against the counter watching Buffy. Her eyes were focused on Giles, shooting daggers at him. Buffy could feel her demon getting angry and she was grinding her teeth together trying to keep the change at bay. Faith brought her hand up to rest on the table, giving her an open view of the stake.

“And the time between her death and when she rose, it was relatively short?”

Relatively short? Buffy wanted to scream. There were nearly two hours of her life and her unlife combined where she had ceased to exist. There had been nothing after death until she had woken up to a fledgling getting ready to snack on her throat.

Spike must have sensed her power rolling off of her in waves because he groaned.

“You know, Rupert, nothing about her as a vampire is normal so it isn’t surprising that it didn’t take as long. I think we’re done for tonight. Since you seem to be so fascinated, I’ll tell you all about her time being dead another night; for a price, of course.”

Buffy was grateful that Spike was calling it quits. She still had a hard time knowing when she was overreacting. Her demon often reared its ugly head over small comments that at one time she would have just shrugged off. Now those comments gave her the urge to tear out a person’s throat if they so much as coughed in her direction or ate a bite of her Special K cereal.

Giles began clearing the table of the papers, books and his recorder. Joyce assured Faith that she could go on upstairs and get some rest, that Buffy would be fine. Faith shot a look at Giles and he nodded his head in agreement. Buffy felt a twinge of envy seep into her. It had been months since she had been able to walk up those stairs and crawl into her own bed. She tried to make things work while living here, but her mother’s cries at night and sleeping down the hall from a Slayer that could waltz in and plunge a stake into her heart just wasn’t natural.

While Buffy managed to spend a good chunk of her time with her mother, she was sharing Angel’s old apartment with Spike. She called him her ‘Vampire Watcher’; Spike said it was called a ‘Sire’. Buffy insisted that she did not have those particular kind of Daddy issues. It would make some of the things they did very wrong.

Spike thanked her mother for the hot chocolate and held the back door open for Buffy. She followed close behind him as he hopped the fence into the neighbor’s yard.

“What are you doing?” Buffy laughed as he stomped through the garden of orange flowers.

“Doing your mum a favor.” Buffy smiled at Spike being sweet in his own kind of way and joined him in obliterating the offensive plants. When a growl came from across the yard she looked over and growled back. The dog was deathly quiet and satisfaction bubbled through her. Her satisfaction was short-lived as she was swept up over Spike’s shoulder and she knew that she was in for a whole different kind of satisfaction.

“You know what happens when you let your demon out.” Spike’s voice was lower and Buffy felt excited.

Satisfaction, indeed.

A/N: Okay, most people understood when I posted this elsewhere, a couple did not. When Buffy yells out to Spike saying "A little help wouldn't kill you" she didn't actually think he would help, nor did she expect him to. Kind of like when someone makes a mess but is too lazy to clean it up, or in Spike's case, is just having fun watching you do all the work. If it really irks people, I'll take the darn line out. I threw it in there as a bit of sarcasm... in my opinion the one line doesn't really affect the story.