full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Rewind. Shuffle. Replay. by cloud_forest
 
I, Robot... You, Jane
 
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Author's Notes:

Sorry for the relatively massive delay in updates. Real life has been kicking my butt lately, so they might not be as frequent as they have been...

Also, thank you for all of the love on the previous chapter(s). Now, I give you angst *ducks the throwing of rotten fruit*

There is a single line of dialogue from Season 4, Something Blue. Very insignificant, but... see previous chapters re: my wish for plagiarism to go die a horrible death. :)

Enjoy!
 


Dammit. Dammit.
 
Buffy had purposely avoided cutting through the cemeteries on her way to the Bronze tonight, with the hope that she wouldn’t have to make with the slayage at any point. She was wearing her new suede skirt, and kind as it was to the look of her calves, it wasn’t so conducive to hand-to-hand combat.
 
Probably should’ve sent out a memo to the vamp she’d just found mauling a woman.
 
“Hey! Fangface! Why don’t you try picking on someone your own size?”
 
Okay, so the words themselves weren’t all that quippy, but this guy was at least six-foot-five, and built like a linebacker. Points for irony, at least?
 
A little dazed as he surfaced from his bloodlust, he frowned at her. “Get lost.”
 
“Please help me! Call the police!” the older woman sobbed. Barely able to stand up, she was slumped over in the vampire’s arms, a jagged red stripe painted on her neck.
 
“Come on. Are you really gonna pass up a shot at this, for a belly full of that?” Buffy asked him, pointing first at herself and then to the woman.
 
He smirked. “Maybe I’ll have both.”
 
Tossing the old woman down, the demon lunged at her. With his arms outstretched like a gorilla, he left himself open for the uppercut she delivered to his jaw. Elbowing him in the gut, she then drove her heel down into one of his kneecaps. It was the highest point she could reach with the skirt she was wearing.
 
Sure, she’d be dusting him in a minute. Didn’t mean she wanted to give him a look at what she was wearing underneath it.
 
Sinking to one knee, the vampire howled in pain. Buffy looked around for a wooden implement of some sort, eyes settling on a shovel someone had left leaning against a tree in their front yard. Moving towards it, she felt her prey’s hand clamp around her upper arm. He spun her towards him, throwing a vicious backhand that sent her to the ground. Injured as he was, he still had enough mobility to pin her down. A triumphant grin spread between his cheeks as he hovered over her.
 
“You know, I could turn you if I wanted to. I bet you and I could-”
 
He was cut off when a pair of hands clapped down on his shoulders. Buffy frowned, thinking for a moment that it was the older woman. Then she saw the black nail polish.
 
“Fancy a bit of help?” Spike asked, leaning past the vampire to smile down at her.
 
Apparently sensing a fellow creature of the night, her attacker looked over his shoulder at him. “Yeah. But I get first crack at her.”
 
“Wasn’t talking to you, mate,” the bleached blonde muttered, fingers clenching around the fabric of his jacket and hurling him backwards.
 
A gust of cool air hurtled down on her as the two-hundred-and-some-odd pounds of walking-dead-guy were suddenly stripped away. Scrambling to her feet, she saw that Spike now had their opponent under control. Seemed to be enjoying his task of beating the un-living crap out of him.
 
Darting over to the shovel she’d spied a moment ago, she drove her palm into the shaft, snapping it in two. She then ran at the battling pair of vampires. Spike had just driven his fist into his opponent’s nose.
 
“Spike! Down!” she yelled.
 
Head snapping around, he caught sight of her, then bent over at the waist. Buffy rolled over him, her back against his. Landing on both feet, she sunk her makeshift stake into the vampire’s chest. A familiar feeling of relieved triumph washed over her as he dissolved a second later.
 
“That’s what you get for trying to ruin my night off.”
 
“Didn’t know you got those,” Spike commented behind her.
 
Turning around, she laughed. “Yeah, well… apparently neither does anyone else,” she muttered, indicating her stake and the vamp dust she was now brushing off her shoulders. She heaved a sigh, and only then remembered the woman she’d been attempting to help in the first place. “Hey…” Buffy looked around, finding no trace of her. “Did you see…”
 
“Middle-aged woman, running for her life?” he finished for her. “Yeah. She went that way.”
 
“Oh. Okay, well… you’re welcome!” she yelled out into the darkness.  
 
Straightening up, Spike stuffed his thumbs into the waistline of his jeans, cocking an eyebrow at her. “So um, when do I get my thanks?”
 
“Huh? Thanks? For what?”
 
“For rescuing you.”
 
Rescuing?” Buffy sputtered. “You… you didn’t rescue me. You… assisted me.”
 
He scoffed. “That what you call it then? Me pulling him off of you, getting him all ready for the staking.”
 
“Well, yeah. Me Slayer, you vampire. Like you said, you got him ready, I did the staking. Ergo, you assisted me.”
 
“You do realize that’s a load of bollocks, don’t you?”
 
“If ‘bollocks’ is yet another of your wacky fun phrases that means ‘incredible trueness’, then yeah. I do realize that,” she fired back, arms crossed as she grinned at him.
 
For a second, it looked as though steam was going to start leaking out of his ears. Instead, the tension within him was released with a long breath, as he dropped his head and shook it. He looked back up at her, blue eyes shimmering. “I’ve missed you, love,” he said, voice suddenly dripping with sincerity.
 
A warm shudder ran through her at that. This was the first time she’d seen him since their encounter at the Bronze a couple of nights ago. “I’ve missed you too,” she admitted before she could tell herself not to.
 
Probably a good thing, because she was already busy telling herself not to move into his arms. Not to kiss him. Not to get lost in his gaze. Not to sink any further into the feelings she had for him.
 
 “You um… headed to the Bronze?” he asked, sounding shy, although he took a step forward to close the distance between them.
 
“Yeah.”
 
“You look nice,” he commented after letting his gaze fall down her form and then crawl back up.
 
“Thanks.” She was sure she was blushing. With anyone else, she’d be happy for the darkness, and its ability to conceal the crimson blooming on her cheeks. Being a vampire though, Spike could probably see the outline of every capillary as it opened up beneath her skin.
 
“You meeting someone there?”
 
“Uh, yeah.” At the somewhat stormy look he gave her for those words, she quickly corrected herself. “I mean no.” That didn’t seem to help, because now he thought she was lying to him. “I mean… I’m meeting Willow and Xander.”
 
Buffy thought for a second about teasing him for his obvious jealousy, but decided against it. Despite the fact that their conversation had suddenly stalled, it hadn’t entered the realm of ‘awkward’ yet, and she didn’t want to be the one to steer it in that direction. Plus, she couldn’t exactly blame him for being jealous. It had been less than a week since they’d kissed in her bedroom, and even though she’d shut down any chance of their having a relationship, she definitely still had feelings for him.
 
Big, scary, consuming feelings that she didn’t really want to consider right now.
 
“Can I walk you there?”
 
Her heart clenched.
 
No. She should say no. This was a bad, bad idea.
 
“Yeah. Sure. I’d like that.”
 
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
 
“Buffy’s here!” Willow announced, perking up in her seat.
 
Xander clapped his hands. “All right, let the fun begin.”
 
She shot her best friend a wounded look at that. Realizing his mistake, he attempted to backpedal.
 
“I mean… ‘cause Buffy’s here now. So we’re all together. So we can start having fun without feeling guilty that we’re leaving her out of it. I wasn’t saying that- whoa, hey! What’s the Bleach Job doing here?”
 
It took her a second to catch up with his sudden detour. The look on Xander’s face helped her understand what he might be referring to. Glancing back over to where she’d seen Buffy, Willow noticed Spike standing beside her.
 
“She didn’t invite him, did she?”
 
“I don’t think so,” Willow said with a frown. She was sure that was something Buffy would’ve mentioned to her. “Maybe they met up on the way here.”
 
“Well he can’t stay!”
 
At this point, the redhead was only halfway tuned in to her companion’s rant. Instead, she was busy watching the two blondes by the door. Buffy looked down to where their hands were clasped, and from the way she gently jerked away, it appeared she hadn’t realized they were connected in the first place.
 
They exchanged a few words, before Buffy pointed her thumb in their direction. Spike nodded, grinned, and said what must’ve amounted to ‘good-bye’.
 
Before they parted though, he reached out and captured her hand again. Buffy stopped and looked at him. He said something else, and then leaned in to brush his lips against her temple.
 
“What the heck was that?” Xander broke through Willow’s focused observation. “I thought they were all with the not having of a relationship.”
 
“They’re not.”
 
“Then what’s with the-”
 
“Xander, just don’t, okay?
 
“But-”
 
Willow turned to him. “Xander, I get it,” she said with authority, though she tried to look sympathetic at the same time. She knew this whole situation kinda sucked for him. “You’re not a card-carrying member of the Spike Fan Club. Don’t say anything about it when Buffy comes over though, okay?” she glanced back over to see Spike melting through the doorway. “I’m thinking she’s gonna need us to cheer her up a bit.”
 
“What? Why?’
 
Disappointed, but not surprised by her best friend’s lack of insight, Willow offered him the only explanation he would understand. “Just… because.”
 
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
 
 “A robot.”
 
“Uh-huh.”
 
“A demon robot.”
 
“Still correct.”
 
Spike continued to stare at her, no doubt waiting for the moment where Buffy got to the punch line or remembered that she had actually been on a psychoactive drug at the time, but instead all he got from her was a helpless shrug. “All right. I need you to explain it to me one more time, but go slowly, and use very, very tiny little words.”
 
“Oh, trust me. That’s my default setting. Big words, small words, words that aren’t even actual words… no matter how I explain it, it doesn’t get any less wigsome.”
 
He shook his head. “And you say Thelma’s the one got mixed up in…” he wiggled his fingers in the air. “…all this?”
 
“Yup.”
 
“Christ. And here, out of the three of you, I picked her for being the smartest one.”
 
“Hey!”
 
He cocked an eyebrow at her protest, and she deflated, crossing her arms over her chest.
 
“Well, okay… fair enough. But still. Hey.”
 
Spike smiled at her, his expression just a little too affectionate considering their status as not-and-never-will-be involved. She decided not to call him on it thought. “Don’t worry, love. I ever need advice on tactical strategies, or an opinion on what kind of mace I should use to take out a Graestock demon, you’ll be the first number I dial.”
 
“Gee. Thanks.” Her voice was so soaked with sarcasm, it was surprising that the words hadn’t landed on the ground between them with a wet squelch.
 
“So,” he prompted after serving her an obligatory smirk, pushing off from the tree he’d been leaning against and pacing slowly back and forth in front of the picnic table she was seated on. “Tell me, Slayer. Hypothetically speaking, had this Malcom fellow turned out to be an actual fellow, and the redhead asked you to go on a double date… anyone you might’ve wanted to take along? Anyone… new, I mean.”
 
Buffy gaped at him. “Spike. Did you seriously just ask me that question?”
 
“What?” he asked, as if he was actually confused by her tone.
 
“Wow,” she said with a shake of her head. “You really do like to just walk up and punch subtlety right in the face, don’tcha?”
 
“Well, yeah. Why bother being subtle when you can just say what you actually mean?”
 
Infuriated as she was, Buffy decided that this was a good conversation for them to be having. It’d be a lot easier to forget about the fact that she wanted to pretty much leap into his arms right now if she reminded herself how annoying he was with his blunt questions and his logic and sense-making and how even though it was a gross, disgusting habit, he somehow managed to make smoking look pretty damn sexy and…
 
Okay. Getting off the Bad Thought train.
 
“Look, Spike… this whole bumping into each other thing isn’t gonna get any less awkward if you don’t stop asking me every time if I’ve got a new guy on my radar.”
 
Did he really think she’d be able to date someone so soon after…?
 
“Yeah well, we both know that it hasn’t exactly been blind luck that we keep ‘bumping into each other’.” The smirk on his face said that he knew she’d been purposely focusing her patrols on the few areas where she’d encountered him during her first couple of weeks in Sunnydale. The cemetery where she’d told him about Amy, the alleyway where they’d first met, the spot where they’d been attacked by the Three… and the vicinity of a bar that she’d come to understand had an alarming tendency for demon fights to break out outside of it. Willy’s Place, or something…
 
What exactly did he mean by that, though? Did it actually bother him that they’d still been seeing each other over the last two weeks? Okay, yeah, maybe it wasn’t the healthiest thing for her to have been doing… purposely hanging around the places she knew she was most likely to find him, but… she couldn’t help it. She still wanted to at least see him, to at least be able to hear his voice and paddle through that gaze of his and just experience him, no matter what sort of limitations might have to be put on their interactions.
 
But… maybe he didn’t feel the same way. Maybe he’d decided that if he couldn’t be with her, then he didn’t even want to be around her. Maybe he’d decided that all they had between them was a physical attraction strengthened by the thrill of fighting against the spawn of Sunnydale’s Hellmouth.
 
Maybe, now that he’d had some time to think about it, he’d realized that she just wasn’t worth his time… and he was relieved to have figured it out before they’d actually committed to anything, and now she was just… buzzing around him like a fly around a juicy steak.
 
“I’m… sorry,” she said with a frown, fighting to keep a lid on the tears that were suddenly leaning against their ducts. “I didn’t think you’d mind… but, I’ll… I’ll go away. And just be… away.”
 
“Slayer…”
 
Having already opened a good fifteen yards between them, she spun around to face him again, holding up her hands. “It’s fine, I get it,” she assured him, deciding not to read too much into the tumultuous expression he wore. Instead she smiled, hoping that the levee on her tears would hold for just a few more seconds. “Take care of yourself, Spike.”


 

 
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