It wasn't like how it had happened to him. She was nothing like him, never had been.


But he'd been waiting for this moment, knew it would come, though he'd expected it maybe a little sooner.


When it caught up to her, and the numbness broke, and the misery came up to drown her.


It was a sort of inside-out replay of a few months ago, wasn't it, when she'd been dragged back to life.


Transformed, against her will, into something she didn't want to be.


She perched, still emitting the occasional sob, on the edge of the bed, pale as death, staring. He'd wrapped a blanket around her, but that was all. The onslaught of grief and terror didn't make her confidential. She didn't speak at all, just cried for a very long time, shuddering, nearly voiceless. He sprawled in the chair near the door and let her get on with it.


Now she was still, he rose and got the last of the blood from the cooler. It was almost too thick to be any good; he'd have tossed it and gone for more, except for not wanting to leave her alone yet, or drag her out.


"Have a bit of this. You'll feel better."


"I thought it was gone."


"What?"


"All the—all the things that—" Her lip quivered. "Oh, I felt so free. I mean: weightless. I don't understand it."


"And suddenly you don't?"


She turned, and her eyes were wild. "I thought I'd really escaped this time. I thought that maybe I'd really gotten away with it. I really didn't care. I was light."


"What are you saying, love?"


He offered the blood; she shifted away, hid her face.


"You tellin' me you're still Buffy. That's it, isn't it?"


"You should leave me, Spike. You really really should."


"Why? Never have yet, have I?"







She slept then, for the first time staying down for hours, motionless. He kept awake, slumped in his chair, watching over her. What she meant, when she told him to go, was that she still didn't love him, and never expected to.


Of course, he knew that. He wished it mattered, but it never would.







He must've dozed, because he awoke to her invading his lap, tugging on his flies.


"Stop that." He shoved her away, so she tumbled backwards onto her tailbone, and came up frowning. He stood up, stepped around her.


"C'mon, you're not turning me down."


"You're right on schedule, Slayer."


"I'm right on— Oh."


"Yeah. Not playin' this tragedy second time. Because then it's—"


"Farce," she supplied.


"Got it in one."







They didn't drive that night. Without discussion, he knew that neither of them could stomach the idea of being together in the car for any length of time. Both too bloody hinky. She shut herself in the bathroom for hours. He heard her splashing in the tub, and muttering to herself. When night fell they walked towards the waterfront.


"Give me a cigarette, Spike."


"You're gonna smoke now?"


"Why shouldn't I?"


"If you go through my whole supply and then pout when I steal more, because stealin's so very wrong."


"You think I still care about stuff like shoplifting?"


"Don't you?"


"No."


"Snaffle your own, then."


"Okay, I will. You think I don't know how to shoplift? I used to be a champ. I never paid for one single lipstick."


He started to answer, but she was already gone.


He postponed following. It was a relief, being on his own for a few moments. He wandered into a cantina whose door opened a few feet off, exuding music and enticing odors of beer and bodies. Got stuck into a cerveza, and then spirited into a flirting conversation with one of the local lovelies, who laughed at his Spanish and twinkled at him until she actually coaxed him onto the dancefloor. Ten minutes elapsed before he remembered with a start that he wasn't supposed to going solo.


Still, he didn't want to chase after her. Hadn't they already proved that he wasn't going to shadow her every moment—that he couldn't, anyhow?


And he was still sore about that stunt she'd tried earlier. Like she thought he'd forgotten how she'd sworn off him, put him off like a filthy habit.


Not that he hadn't half suspected it would happen, but he'd dared to hope she'd be a bit better than that, even now.


He adored her, but he always knew the girl was far from perfect. No matter what she used to like to pretend.


Whereas the girl right in front of him, whom he didn't know or care about one bit, was about as perfect as any girl could be, and why not stick around and improve their acquaintance?


He did, for another hour. At which point they were out back in a dark corner of the deserted beer-garden, and he had her wriggling like a belly-dancer, both hands up her dress, her heavy breathing making a counterpoint to the music. Backing her up to perch on the edge of a table, Spike dropped to a crouch, crawling up her skirt to taste her.


She wanted him to, there was no doubt about that. She made little chirping noises like a pretty bird as he nuzzled her thigh, her legs flexing open.


At least until she shrieked and went leap frog on his head, her skirt snagging for one dark moment on his nose before it tore and she ran, screaming all the way.


He looked up into Buffy's blazing eyes.


Her fang array was huge in her little face, distending her lips.


It looked painful.


And yet there was something beautiful about it too, which he felt in his body, an urge that he refused with force, springing up to grab her by the shoulders.


"The fuck—? What are you doin'!"


"Me? You!"


There was no time for this—outraged men were pouring out into the beer garden. He tugged her towards the wall, scrambling up the cement blocks, straining for the top. Buffy grunted—she'd caught herself on the broken glass that edged it, but there was no helping that, they were both over and flying down the alley. She was still faster than him; he ended up the follower, pursuing her as she streaked ahead, through the town and out past it down a road with no lights.


When they finally stopped, they were all alone with the stars. Buffy's eyes still flashed, her new face in the waning moon glow alight with fury as she wheeled on him.


He was ready for her blow. Knew it would be coming. Gave it back to her double. She'd beat him down, there was no question of that, given time, but he'd get his licks in hard and early. Wouldn't spare her.


He meant to enjoy this, until she knocked him down and out.


But it wasn't the kind of Buffy fight he was used to.


Buffy never used to scream at him while she cleaned his clock. Not like she was now, calling him a prick and a fucker and a shit. He'd never heard words like that from her, not even when they were screwing.


She never used to snarl either while she punched him in the face, never rained down on him in staggering rage.


And never before did she just drop him in the middle of a beat-down to crawl into the underbrush and retch.


Or sit there afterwards and bawl like a little child whose mamma was struck down.


Stupid to think she'd cried herself out earlier. Nothing was ever that simple.


He went to her, laid a hand on her shoulder.


"What?" She shook him off.


"Am I to have nothin' at all then, 'neath your dispensation?"


"What?" Entirely different tone now.


He knelt beside her. "Not allowed to have my end off once in a while? Don't call that quite fair."


"I don't know what you're talking about."


"Yes you do."


A pause. "Yes I do." She snuffled. "I offered—"


"Yeah, well, don't want that anymore, do I? Your offers."


"But I was trying—" She swallowed, choked, stopped. "Okay, I didn't like seeing you with that girl."


"So you should've walked away."


"I ... I brought you some cigarettes. I wanted to give them to you."


"So where are they?"


"I ... I lost them." She looked up. Still in game-face, a mess of wrinklies distended by the rictus of her misery. The yellow eyes puffy and half-shut.


"This isn't about me fucking that girl."


Her head shook, yes, no, refutation, agreement. Body tensed with resistance. "This is ... it's too much."


"Yeah, can be." He tugged her up. "Come away from here, Slayer."


He drew her off, downwind of the place where she'd thrown up a sticky bolus of clotted blood, and lifted his nose to the fresher air. "This way." He broke into a trot, pulling her along after.


"Where?" She still breathed in sobs, but she kept up. They entered a meadow, wide and grassy and looking, in the starlight, like it went on forever to meet up with the distant mountains, purple and dark. Spike sucked in the air—it was cooler here than in the town, and smelled—he thought of the word innocent. Okay, it smelled innocent.


He drew Buffy around to the left, coaxing her to move faster. "There," he breathed. "Use your nose. Got it?"


"What?" She was impatient, still angry and embarrassed now too. But he could feel her get it the next moment, picking up the scent he'd fixed on before. She glanced around at him. "Can we? I mean—"


"Run him down, yeah. Go on."


Buffy hesitated, then broke. It was a few moments before they saw him—a huge ochre stallion, all on his own in the night-cloaked meadow. He'd trampled his way out of his enclosure, that was what made the cuts on his chest, the blood dried now but enough for Spike to scent him all that way away. Buffy gasped at the sight, and gasped again when the horse, catching wind of them, arched his neck, began first to dance and then to gallop.


"Oh God—" Buffy gave him one incredulous look.


Spike nodded. "Go."


It was beautiful to watch her. Like two mythical creatures, enacting some primordial ritual of pursuit. Pretending at first like there was any possibility the outcome could be in doubt. The stallion running, then doubling on her—knowing his size, his power to overrun and crush. She moved like wind, bending the grass in her path, faster than the animal could track, and between one blink and the next, she had hold of the mane, the stallion rising up on his hind legs, kicking out even as she scrambled up to claim his back. She was so small on him, her hair flying, and Spike knew from experience how it was to be ridden by her, those hard thighs gripping and rippling.


She did ride for a little while, hands sunk tight in the mane, her head down low over the tensed neck, as the horse spun and shook, wanting rid of her.


That gave him time to catch up, to be near enough to see the glance she gave him out of her orange eyes, meeting his, before she swung low and forward, clinging with one leg to the animal's spine, and seized on its silky throat where the flesh was thin.


The released blood scented the air. Spike took grateful snuffs, and began to grin. The horse shuddered and bucked, spinning and whinneying wild objections. But she was stronger, and by time Spike sidled close enough to reach out and grab at the mane itself, the great beast had slowed to a tight bewildered sway as she fed on him.


He was subdued already, there was almost no need to seize his head, to look into his big panicked eyes. But Spike did, because it was a pleasure, stroking and gentling the long soft nose, cooing into the wide nostrils, listening to Buffy's ravenous gorging gulps, before he darted in himself to bite into the soft smooth place just beneath the jaw.


The wind picked up and washed through his hair as he fed, stirring the hem of his leather, carrying the meaty grassy coppery smells up to his nose like offerings. The immense horse was a fountain, limitless, delicious.


After a while Buffy made a small sound, like a sated child, full of sugar. She stayed where she was, sprawled companionably on the broad back, her cheek, smooth again, cradled against the bunched shoulder, her little hand caressing the foamy flank where a little while ago it had commanded.


Spike let his fangs go, wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. When he met her eyes now, she smiled. She seemed half asleep, and all happy.


"He followed me home. Can I keep him, Daddy?"


"Liked that, did you?"


Her eyes brightened, like two fireflies in the gloaming. "He's so warm and comfy." She touched her lips. "Alive."


"Yeah. That's the thing."


"It's what we want." She sounded dazzled. The 'we' fell on his ear like a seductive lie. "Why did you keep this from me so long?"


"Didn't think of it, that's all." He had to move to keep abreast of the dazed horse, a gentle two step. He liked this, standing so close to the big radiant beast, its heat more cheering than any fire, fingers threaded in its mane, seeing her relaxed at last, talking to her this way, which was new and uncertain but good in a way he couldn't resist. It was good that he'd found something that really pleased her.


"I'd like to just stay out here forever. Wouldn't that be nice?"


She knew as well as he that the morning was coming. After another minute, in which she pressed her lips again to the horse's flank, this time for a long National Velvet sort of kiss, she slid off. As soon as she was down, the horse pricked up its head, neighed, and moved decisively away, breaking into a half-speed gallop.


Buffy watched him go. "We tuckered him out."


"He's down a few pints, but he'll be all right."


"I feel better."


"An' me."


She smiled again, and he was able to pretend that this smile was for him, and not just for her own satisfaction. An apology would've gone down well too, but he knew better than to get his hopes up.


Saying sorry to the likes of him was never the Buffy way.