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DISCLAIMER: Joss is the Man! With the Copyright!


In the last chapter on WWHWH, Spike stole some moonweed from the Magic Box because he was still busted up from the beating Glory gave him and Princess Buffy was too lazy to run by his crypt and give him any blood. Then, Buffy went to Warren’s new lair and told him to make her a big, strong Spikebot, who didn’t talk too much. Spike may have messed up her plans. Jinx and Dank went looking for Spike at Willy’s, but I think they drank too many frozen yak urine cocktails, so they didn’t find him. Oh, and Spike found his favorite toy, the Buffybot, in the Magic Box basement, and charged her up.
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Chapter 2 – I’m Your Man


Buffy stood at the bottom of her front hall stairs, combing knots out of her bright blonde hair before twisting it into a single braid down her back. She wished she had x-ray eyes like Superman so she could see if her sister had actually rolled out of bed. “Dawn! Get up! You’re late for school. Again.” Buffy heard a faint growl from Dawn’s bedroom which she interpreted as a consciousness indicator and headed for the kitchen to scare up some breakfast.

The kitchen was a frightening place these days. Ever since Mom died, standards had taken a slide. Dirty dishes piled up in the sink, the refrigerator developed an echo and the garbage can, full two days ago, was a Leaning Tower Of Yuck. Buffy couldn’t make up her mind which project to tackle first, so she swung on the refrigerator door in the hopes that the Food Fairy stopped by the previous night with something tasty for breakfast. “Let me down again, the Bitch.”

The doorbell rang. Who could that be at this hour? Nobody she wanted to see. Buffy ignored the bell. It rang again.

As Buffy reached the front door, Dawn flew down the steps dressed in a pair of blue jeans so tight Buffy thought they must have their own aura.

“Just a minute, Dawn. Those blue jeans --”

“Oh yeah, you’re one to talk about wearing pants three sizes too small,” Dawn said. She grabbed her bag of books and jerked open the front door. “Don’t even act like you care what I do.”

A plump, middle-aged woman with puffy, brown hair stood on the doorstep with her finger poised over the doorbell button. “Summers’ residence? I’m Doris Kroger from Social Services. We have an appointment this morning.”

Dawn slid past Doris. “Got to run. Late for school.”

“Yes, you are,” Doris said. “Again. Ms. Summers, may I come in?”

Buffy demonstrated her bestest, phoniest smile. “Ms. Kroger, it’s so nice to meet you.” As she turned to lead Ms. Kroger into the living room, someone banged on the kitchen door. Buffy ran back into the kitchen. It was Spike. Wisps of smoke curled up from his blanket. She ran to the door and pulled it open. “Why are you here?” she hissed so the woman from Social Services couldn’t hear her.

“Let me in! I’m burning up!”

Buffy hesitated. She’d locked Spike out after the whole Chaining Up Incident and was not at all interested in letting him back in, no matter how brave and crazy he’d been over the whole Glory kidnapping and torturing thing. “What do you want?”

“First off, I want not to become a Duraflame Fireplace Log.” He flapped his blanket which erupted into tiny, blue flames. “Have a heart, Slayer. You don’t want to sweep me off your porch, do you?”

Letting Spike flame out on her back porch was probably not a very nice thing to do under the circumstances. She opened the door wide. “Come in, Spike,” she said. “This had so better be good.” She ran back to the living room where the Kroger woman was drawing her fingertip through the accumulated dust on the top of the television.

Spike tossed his black leather coat and his smoldering blanket over the sofa and slumped into a chair. The blanket gave off a nasty, burnt smell. He picked up the remote from the television and turned it on. Spike still sported two black eyes from his trouncing by Glory. His bruises, his busted up boots, his scruffy black clothes, his chipped black fingernail polish and the way he flopped his knees apart and slouched in the chair gave him a very disreputable appearance, in Buffy’s opinion, and not one designed to give the hovering Ms. Kroger any good ideas. Ms. Kroger wasn’t likely to appreciate the hotness that was Spike.

“Got any blood, Slayer? I ran out and the butcher’s not open for another two hours.”

Mrs. Kroger wrote something on her clipboard with her very sharp pencil. “I’d like to look around the house, if I may?”

“Oh, uh, it’s not a very good time. I was working late last night and didn’t have a chance to straighten up.”

Doris ignored Buffy and headed straight for the kitchen, which gave Buffy the important opportunity to rip Spike’s head off with her bare hands.

“Let’s hear it.”

“You know, Slayer …” Spike opened his mouth and launched into one of his long-winded explanations. “After the other night, when I took a severe beating from your number one nemesis of the moment, a bloke might get the notion --”

She so didn’t have time for a Spike Speech with the Social Services Dragon breathing fire down her neck. “Five words or less, Spike.”

Spike thought for a moment and held up his fingers and counted them off. “Came. To. See. You.” He flashed his thumb in a nasty manner. “Bitch.”

For a moment or two, Buffy felt bad about giving Spike a hard time. He was the only one these days who dropped by the house just to see her. The rest of her friends only showed up when there was a demon to kill or an apocalypse to avert. Buffy heard the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing in the kitchen. Crap! “Spike! What do you want?”

Spike flipped the channel on the television to a daytime soap opera. A blonde-haired woman clutched a blonde-haired man on the screen. “Heard you put in an order for a Spikebot. Thought you might prefer to spend some time with the real thing.”

Buffy fumed. How did he hear about the Spikebot already? God, he was nosy. She stepped between him and the television.

“I got a Spikebot because you are insufferable and annoying and you talk too much and, and … you have stupid hair. If you didn’t notice in between channel changes, that woman is here from Social Services to decide if I’m going to get to keep Dawn and you are so not helping.”

Spike stood up and tossed the remote on the sofa. “Want help? I’m your man.” He strode into the kitchen before Buffy could stop him.

“Wait, Spike!” Buffy ran after him. When she got to the kitchen, Doris was poking her head into the empty refrigerator and scratching notes on her clipboard with her pencil. Her pencil scraped on the paper and she wrote with tiny handwriting. Buffy never trusted people who wrote with tiny handwriting nobody could read without a microscope. Tiny handwriting was demonic. “It’s grocery shopping day?” Buffy said.

Doris did not look like she believed Buffy.

Spike snooped over Doris’s shoulder and read her writing. “That’s not right, Doris. Always plenty of food here. Bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, chips, Weetabix, toad-in-the-hole and whatnot. Buffy’s a good mum.”

Doris straightened up and stared into Spike’s sparkling blue eyes. “Do you live here? Are you Ms. Summers’ boyfriend?”

“Oh no, ma’am, I don’t live here. Buffy and I are waiting till we get married. Don’t want to spoil the wedding night.” He draped his arm over Buffy’s shoulder. He grinned, showing all his teeth, and letting his fangs slide out a fraction.

Buffy jaw muscles cramped from gritting her teeth and smiling at the same time. “William,” she said as sweetly as she could since she was in the throws of lockjaw, “Don’t you have that thing? You know, that thing you need to go and do? On the far side of the Planet that is Elsewhere?” She jabbed her elbow into Spike’s kidney while Doris scratched out more notes.

Spike leaned against the counter and tapped out a cigarette from its package. “It can wait.” He lit up and ignored the disgusted faces the two women made.

“Let’s sit down, shall we?” Doris said. She plopped herself down at the counter and used her clipboard to clear a space among the dirty dishes, greasy fast food wrappers and crumpled up paper napkins.

Buffy grabbed some dirty plates and rushed around cleaning off the counter. “There, all better. I mean -- There like it usually is, right after dinner, all neat and tidy.”

Spiked grabbed a couple of dirty plates and tossed them out the back door. They landed with a crash.

“Ms. Summers, I’ll get right to the point. Dawn is skipping school, showing up late and causing trouble when she does attend. There is no food in the refrigerator and you appear to be hanging around with …” Doris glanced at Spike, “questionable company. I’m giving you and your … fiancée … one week to straighten up. In the meantime, I will be contacting your father.”

“Good luck with that,” Buffy said. She’d been calling Hank for weeks with no response.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

“She said good luck with running down that bleeder,” Spike said. He flipped his cigarette butt into the sink where it spitted and smoked. “Tell you what. You find him and I’ll kick his ass.”

Doris rose up from her stool and tucked her clipboard in her briefcase. “One week, Ms. Summers. And, I suggest you move up your wedding date.” She left the house, her back held ramrod straight.

The minute the front door closed behind Doris, Buffy punched Spike in the nose.

“Hey! What was that for? I was helping.” He picked up a dish towel and wiped his bloody nose.

“Don’t. Help. Me.” Big ox didn’t even know what he’d done. She was going to have to make up a big lie next week about breaking up with Spike when she hadn’t even been his girlfriend in the first place. What did she have to do to get this pest out of her life?

“Right. Cause you’re doing such a good job here, Slayer. I’ll get my coat and we can go over to the Thank Heaven and pinch some groceries. Can we drive your mum’s car? My Desoto’s out of gas.”

Only Spike would steal groceries from his own cousin. “We are not pinching any groceries from Wedgy. And, you can leave. I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Fine, I’ll go by myself. No complaining if I don’t bring back what you like. How about a kiss for your fiancée before I go?”

“What! I’m not kissing you! Get out!”

Spike snagged her arm and pinned her against the counter. “You kissed me the other day.” He tugged on her hair braid to align her mouth with his.

“Plainly, I made a Kissing Mistake. Anyway, that was a Thank You For Getting Your Ass Kicked Kiss, not an Anything More Kiss. Let go.” She trembled at the way his bright blue eyes stared into her own and seemed to pierce her heart.

“If it wasn’t anything more, then giving me a real kiss shouldn’t bother you.” Spike lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her hard before she could question the very questionable logic of that statement.

Buffy’s heart sped up and her palms sweated. She kissed Spike back. When he slid his hand onto her butt, her frontal lobe function reactivated and she pushed him away.

He snarked a smile, grabbed his coat and blanket and flashed out the front door with the keys to Joyce’s Suburban in his hand.

Buffy’s hand shook as she dialed Willow’s dorm room. “Will? Get over here and bring your box of goodies.”



Buffybot blinked her eyes and looked around the basement of the Magic Box. “I’m awake. I wonder what happened to me.” Her post battery charge programming sequence initiated and she stretched her arms and jumped up and down and threw a couple of punches to test her reflexes.

She checked her programming – no instructions from Spike. That was disappointing because Buffybot liked to keep busy. She didn’t like to stand around doing nothing when she could be helping or having sex with Spike. “I should make a To Do List! Then, I will have something to do.” She learned all about making To Do Lists while watching Oprah at Spike’s crypt. She searched her programming for activities she’d done in the past, before she blanked out and found herself in this skanky basement.

Acquire Blood For Spike.
Kill Evil On As Needed Basis.
Locate Spike.
Protect Spike.
Have Sex With Spike.
Change Clothes Into Something Hot.
Clean Up Spike’s Crypt.

She loaded the items into her To Do List Matrix and climbed up the stairs. It was early morning and the shop was empty, except for Anya who was counting money.

Anya …
dates Xander
likes money
ex-demon
likes sex even though she dates Xander

“Anya! How is your sex life?”

Anya looked glum. “The pits. Xander conked out right after we went home last night. He didn’t even want to play Naughty Nurse. Naughty Nurse is his favorite.”

Buffybot searched her Make Spike Happy files. Naughty … Naughty … No Naughty Nurse. “What’s Naughty Nurse?”

Anya placed the money back in the cash register in neat stacks. “The woman puts on a skimpy white nurse’s outfit and a white cap and the man takes his clothes off, then the nurse gets a bar of soap and a rubber glove …”

“Is this anything like Prissy Governess?”

“Yes! Yes, it is. Just a different outfit and a rubber glove.”

“I like outfits.”

“Me, too,” Anya said. “Who’s your partner for Naughty Nurse?”

“Spike. He enjoys Prissy Governess, so I think he will like Naughty Nurse.”

Anya peered at Buffybot for a moment, shook her head and picked up her feather duster and fluffed a speck of dust off Frimwerst, an ancient Laplandish fertility god with a very large, erect red penis. “I would have thought Spike preferred the Virgin Cheerleader and the Hollywood Producer. Hunh. You never really know a person until you’ve f –”

“I must go,” Buffybot said. “I have many items on my To Do List. I must Kill Evil on an as Needed Basis. I fight with weapons. Do you have weapons?”

Anya checked under the counter. “Here’s your patrol bag. You left it here last night.”

Buffybot picked up the pink leather patrol bag and set off for Sunnydale Memorial Hospital to Acquire Blood For Spike.



After Willow finished locking Spike out of Buffy’s house again, the two girls headed for the Magic Box.

“Hi Buffy, back so soon?” Anya said.

“Was there a time floop and nobody told me?” Buffy said. She hadn’t been at the shop since last night, she was quite certain about that. Kissing Spike this morning confused her, but it hadn’t confused her that much.

Anya shrugged and went back to checking the store inventory.

Giles was waiting on a customer. He dropped a squirming mummy’s hand into a brown paper bag for a woman customer and folded over the top and stapled it several times to secure the hand. The hand scrabbled against the bag.

Buffy shuddered. She hated those damn hands. “What are those things for, Will?”

“You don’t want to know,” Willow said. She faded up the stairs to check out the books Giles didn’t want her to read.

“Be sure to keep the hand in a cool place until you’re ready to use it,” Giles said to the woman. “And, do come again.”

Buffy flopped down in a chair. She wished Giles would quit fussing with the cash register. He could be an old maid in britches sometimes, fidgeting around and shuffling papers and hovering over the customers until Buffy wanted to shriek. He was at his worst in the Old Maid Britches Department when he wanted to avoid saying something unpleasant. “Slayer reporting for duty. Make it quick, the DoubleMeat awaits.”

This was a small lie on Buffy’s part. She was off work today and tomorrow, but didn’t want to explain to Giles and the others that, in spite of a deep seated feeling she should avoid Spike early and often, she planned to spend her morning pounding her fist into Spike’s nose for telling that Doris woman they were getting married.

Giles sat down at the table and fiddled with a stack of books. “I’m glad you’re here, Buffy. There’s something I wish to discuss with you.”

“What’d I do now?” Giles made a funny face, one of those I’m About To Give You Some Very Bad News and I Hope You’ll Take This Like an Adult Faces. Buffy had no intention of making his evil announcement, whatever it was, any easier.

“Er, nothing. Nothing I care to know about, I’m sure. I wanted to speak to you about my plans for the future.”

Buffy blinked. Plans? How could Giles have plans that didn’t involve her, his very own chosen Slayer? He was stuck in this vampire slaying thing just as much as she was. “You’re going to help me fight Glory, right?”

“Yes, yes, of course. After that. It’s past time for me to return to England. I don’t feel you need me. You’re quite capable of acting on your own as the Slayer, and Willow and the others can assist you with research.”

His words pierced Buffy’s heart like a crossbow bolt. For all her aggravation at his fussy ways, she counted on Giles and cared about him. Once again, a man in her life was dumping her. She jumped out of her chair and pushed a big stack of books onto the floor with a bang. “You drag me into this whole Slayer deal and abandon me. You’re just like the rest.”

“Not at all. I’m merely going --.”

“Good thing I have a vampire with a chip in his head to back me up, isn’t it? Since I can’t count on my Watcher.” Buffy ran out of the shop and slammed the door behind her.



When Spike commandeered the keys to the Summers’ SUV, he forgot the windows weren’t painted black, and he was forced to abandon the car a block away from Revello Drive and jump into the sewers. After a short walk, he emerged from the manhole outside the Thank Heaven Convenience Food Mart operated by Wedgy Chalk, a regurgitating frovolax demon, who happened to be the younger brother of George Chalk, a regurgitating frovolax demon in Iowa, who was married to Spike’s cousin, Sophronia.

Wedgy was a small, aqua blue (except during molting season) demon with rubbery skin and suckers on the ends of his finger tips. He favored tan leisure suits, white leather shoes, matching white belt and a red afro-style toupee to cover his bald head. Today, he wore a peach-colored ascot with his leisure suit.

Buuwookkhhh. Wedgy belched. “Spike! What is up with my Cuz? I have gotting in some Robertson’s Thick Cut if you are being interested.” He produced a jar of Spike’s favorite marmalade from under the counter.

Spike headed for the crisps aisle, which for mysterious reasons he couldn’t fathom, Americans insisted on calling chips. “Shopping for the Slayer and her kid sis today.” He grabbed a three-pound bag of Cheetos, some Hostess snoballs dyed a radioactive shade of blue and a half dozen packages of Little Dubby Snack Cakes. In the frozen foods aisle, he picked out five frozen pepperoni pizzas, some blueberry waffles and other treats. After a quick dash through the candy aisle for cherry blowpops, chocolate kisses and Kitty Kat bars, he threw the entire mess on the front counter and pulled out his wallet.

“You do not have to be paying for the food of the Slayer. I am owing her Big Time after she chased away those bloodsuckers who were playing the dominos in front of the store and scaring off my customers. No offense, Cuz.”

“Take the money, Wedgy. Slayer wouldn’t want you giving away the store. If you see her, don’t let on I paid for anything. Tell her I snaffled all of it.”

Wedgy added up the purchases and packed them up. “I am talking to Sophronia the other day. She wants to know when you and Buffy will be sending out invitations --” Buuwookkhhh. Glurp.

Spike banged the front door shut behind him before Wedgy could finish his sentence.