It was like floating. Buffy stretched her arms above her head and sighed with pleasure, stupid with bliss. Spike’s hands skated up from her abdomen, noting the delicate ridges of her ribs before sliding over her breasts and squeezing. His clever, narrow fingers closed over her already taut nipples, pinching until they was almost painful.

“Yes—yes—” moaned Buffy, sinking down on him with a dreamy slowness. She looked down at his lean face, his inky lashes smudgy against his cheeks as he savored the sensation. Then he opened his eyes and his gaze met hers, intense and devouring, and suddenly she was back in Sunnydale High, facing him across a hallway without fear as he discarded the staff he held to fight her barehanded. Then in the quad at Sunnydale U, sunlight glinting off his hair, eyes licking at her as intensely as they fought, they thought, to the death. And she won.

Yet those thing couldn’t have happened. She wasn’t good enough to fight a vampire as powerful as Spike was before he was chipped, not without Jonathan’s help.

But they weren’t hallucinations, and they weren’t dreams. They were memories. She’d stood in that Sunnydale High hallway without Jonathan to help her. She’d fought Spike a few months before in the sunlight. They were impossible, but they’d happened. “Wrong…it’s wrong,” she muttered.

“No shit, Slayer, we’re supposed to be killing each other,” gritted Spike, grasping her hips and beginning to thrust more urgently. He began to pant, and she knew he was close. His forehead was getting just a little bumpy.

She stopped moving and put a hand on his chest to get his attention. “It’s important—”

“Christ, don’t stop!”

She lifted off him a little, determined to get his attention. “I saw—”

“I don’t care what you saw, you little cocktease,” he growled, flipping her over and pinning her hands beside her head as he finished, dragging her with him relentlessly. She opened her mouth to tell him but he jammed his mouth over hers and pushed his tongue inside, releasing one of her hands to grab her jaw and slant it so he could have better access. She tried to bite his tongue but he just moaned in pleasure, shoving his hands under her knees and pushing them up to provide a lovely new angle. A few moments later she clenched around him and he followed immediately, pulling his mouth from her to shout his approval.

“Now you want to tell me what the hell that was about?” Spike groused, flopping beside her.

“It was Jonathan.”

Spike paused in the middle of lighting up a cigarette. “You were thinking about Jonathan?” he clarified, his voice deadly.

“He’s not right.”

“Something not right with Jonathan,” he repeated slowly. “Adam said the same thing.”

Buffy raised her eyebrows. “What, you and Adam are buddies?”

“Hardly—I’m using him to get my chip out.” He laughed. “Just like I’m using you to fuck my brains out.”

Anger flashed through her, and she slapped his chest hard enough to leave a bruise. Of course, that just made him laugh harder.

“It was a few months ago—when—” she broke off abruptly. It was around when Faith had gotten out of the coma and tried to take over her life, again. But Faith had failed and taken off, and Jonathan hadn’t had much to do with the whole thing. But it was around that time—something strange had happened—she could feel it niggling at her—

“The demon!”

“What demon?”

“The one Jonathan wouldn’t kill.”

“What, there’s a big bad out there the golden boy didn’t off? Be still my heart.”

“It was dangerous—it attacked Tara, and some other girl. There was a strange symbol on its forehead, and Jonathan said it indicated the demon provided balance to the world, and that the world would spin out of control without it. So he’d keep it neutralized, and the world would continue like it was supposed to.”

“A demon that provides balance to the world…” Spike raised an eyebrow. “And you fell for it? And I thought Harmony was thick.”

She felt her cheeks heating up. It did sound painfully stupid. “It sounds different when he says it,” she mumbled.

For a moment Spike’s eyes took on a faraway look. “He is a magnificent figure of a man,” he murmured, barely audible.

“What?”

He shook out of it and rolled his eyes. “Had you going, didn’t I?” he covered. “So how’d he neutralize it?”

“He had a cage constructed in the caves by the beach—he had Willow and Tara enchant the bars so the demon couldn’t get out. He has people stationed there to guard it, in case something happens.”

“What could happen if the bars have a protection spell?”

Buffy thought a moment. “The spell was so it couldn’t get out. I don’t think it prevents anyone from getting in. I mean, why would anyone want to?”

“Why would anyone?” Spike mumbled, not really caring.

“So are you going to help me?”

“If there are people guarding it, I’m not sure how much help I can be with this chip in my head,” he said silkily.

She ground her teeth. There had to be a better way.

****

There was no better way.

Luckily, Buffy knew just the person to remove Spike’s chip. After all, she'd seen him around the Initiative often enough.

“I can’t help you,” said the doctor for the fourth time, looking terrified, casting a desperate look towards the safety of his front door, just a few feet away.

“You know who sent us here?” demanded Spike. “Jonathan.”

The doctor’s jaw dropped, and Spike shot a glare at Buffy, his gaze insistent. Buffy hesitated a moment before swallowing her discomfort. “I’d never ask for something like this if it wasn’t because of Jonathan,” she assured him. Which wasn’t a lie.

“Why didn’t you say so?” exclaimed the doctor. “We’ll need something some tool for the surgery—do either of you have a box cutter?”

“Box cutter?” repeated Spike with alarm, touching his head protectively.

“I can’t believe Jonathan knows who I am! Did he ask for me by name? Did he say anything about me?”

“What do you think you’re going to need a box cutter for?” Spike asked suspiciously.

“Oh, anything sharp will do, really,” the doctor shrugged.

“What?” Spike yelped in dismay.

Buffy eyed him nervously. “Shouldn’t we go to the hospital?”

“Yeah! Yeah, that.”

“But Jonathan’s waiting,” protested the doctor. “Besides, Hostile 17’s a vampire—he’s not going to die from a little discomfort.”

“I think Jonathan wants my brain relatively undamaged,” Spike snapped. “Keep that in mind when you’re rummaging around in there.”

The doctor looked at Buffy and she nodded. He looked dejected. “Fine. We’ll take my car.” He turned towards the car, but stopped suddenly. “Just one thing.”

Buffy and Spike eyed each other nervously. “What?” she said asked.

“What was he wearing?”

***

It wasn’t hard to kill the demon, not with the both of them. Once the spell that Jonathan had cast over them had fallen, she knew she could have killed it on her own, with no help from Spike. He didn’t need to be de-chipped. He shouldn’t have been de-chipped.

It was just the miserable cherry on top of the crap sundae that was waking up to a world in which Jonathan wasn’t a superhero. And a magnificent athlete. And the greatest chess player who ever lived. She’d been so stupid, so foolish, that she’d unchipped one of the most dangerous vampires who’d ever lived.

And they were lovers.

“Buffy.” She jumped and Spike touched her back softly, soothingly. His voice was a whisper in her ear. She glanced up and realized that they were in his cemetery. She’d wandered aimlessly after the spell was lifted, him tagging along silently, and for some reason she’d come here. “You holding up okay?”

Buffy shrugged. What was there to say when the world as you know it has totally changed, because of you? It had been the right thing to do, but that wasn’t a comfort. And the things she’d done...

Spike's voice, softer than usual, intruded into her thoughts. “I know you, Slayer. I know you better than you do yourself. I know you wouldn’t feel right about shagging me now that I’ve got my mojo back.”

She was a little stunned by his perceptiveness, but he continued before she could answer.

“So I’ll make it easy for you, Slayer. I can kill now. And if you don’t want me to, you’d better keep on with the hot and cold running sex. Because I’ll be a very bored vampire otherwise—who knows what kind of mischief I might get into.”

She gasped and swung to face him and he backed off, holding up his hands with a laugh. “I’ll give you three days, Slayer. Three days I’ll stay in my crypt all nice and tame. And if you don’t come by then—well, I’ll have myself a time. You want me to stay in the yard, fine, but I have to have some incentive, don’t I? Think about it, sweetheart. You can tell yourself you’re coming back because of the threat, but we both know better. Don’t we?”