Spike thought he was hallucinating at first.
 
But no, there really was a demon creeping out of Lolly’s room. Spike could smell it. It was well over six feet tall, muscular, with a half-foot-long, prehensile nose above its mouth. It was also covered in shaggy, baby-blue fur. Which was useful, ‘cause it sure wasn’t wearing any clothes.
 
“What the bleedin’ fuck?” Spike breathed.
 
“Hey, how’d you get an invite?” the demon asked. His voice was remarkably high-pitched, given his size.
 
Spike just gaped. “How’d you get in?” Lolly lived on the seventeenth floor, and this did not look like a demon that could fly.
 
“Why haven’t you eaten everyone?” the demon asked, very confused.
 
Spike opened and closed his mouth a few times, before saying, “There’s a Slayer!”
 
“Really?” The demon was now looking decidedly nervous.
 
“Really.”
 
The demon grinned. There were some pretty impressive teeth under all that nose and fur. “Guess she’ll be going after you first, then.”
 
Spike opened his mouth to speak, but just then Buffy’s door opened and she peeked out. Her hair was sleep-tousled and Spike could see her nipples pressing through her so-nearly-see-through shirt. For a second, he forgot completely that there was anyone in the world but them.
 
“You have got to be kidding me,” Buffy grumbled. Spike-in-nothing-but-jeans plus giant blue thing were so not what she wanted to be dealing with right now. Xander’s supposed to be the demon-magnet! Not me!
 
“S-Slayer?” the demon stammered.
 
Buffy grimaced. “That’s the rumour.”
 
The demon stretched out its nose towards her. “You smell … depressed.”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks.”
 
It blinked its eyes a few times. “Don’t s’pose you’d like to go back to sleep, would you? Bet your dreams’d be delicious.”
 
“You’re a misery-eater?” Spike hissed. “But they’re a myth!”
 
The demon shrugged. “Uh, not so much? And we prefer the term nightmare-eater.”
 
Buffy sighed. “Could we just skip to the ass-kickage? I really don’t want my family-tastic Thanksgiving to happen on no sleep.” She started awkwardly manoeuvring out the door on her crutches.
 
The nightmare-eater looked at her sceptically. “No offence, babe, but I’m not exactly quaking in my boots here.”
 
Spike snorted, then leaned back against the wall to watch the fireworks. He hoped she broke his nose.
 
“You’re not wearing boots,” Buffy growled, dropping a crutch and using the other to pivot her good foot into a roundhouse kick at its head. It sort of worked – the demon went down – but Buffy hadn’t thought through the landing part so much. Like at all.
 
Broken ankle now in agonising pain from her fall, Buffy seriously considered the merits of spontaneous combustion. Could I fall on my ass any more today? Thank God I am no longer wearing a skirt.
 
Spike started towards her, but her death-glare stopped him from closing the last few feet of distance.
 
The demon sat up slightly dizzily. “You pack quite a punch for someone so tiny.”
 
Buffy’s attention snapped back. Am I losing it? That should’ve knocked it out cold….
 
Spike grabbed up one of her fallen crutches, broke it over his knee and stabbed the demon through the heart with the splintery end.
 
“Ow!” he yelled. “Why’d you have to go and do that?”
 
Spike looked over at Buffy. “Didn’t dust.” He sounded slightly panicky.
 
“Gee, thanks, Captain Obvious!” Buffy sneered. “Hadn’t noticed, myself.” She very carefully got herself into a sitting position against the wall. “And now I’m supposed to get around how exactly?”
 
Spike shrugged. “Could carry you.” He leered at her.
 
Buffy rolled her eyes.
 
The demon pulled the makeshift stake out of his heart. The hole closed up immediately. There wasn’t even any blood. “I’m just not that sort of demon,” he said sadly.
 
Buffy couldn’t help giggling. “So, what, you want me to buy you dinner before I kill you? Flowers, maybe?”
 
He sighed. Then he grinned back. “What can I say? I’m a lover not a fighter.” His teeth had to be two inches long, easy. “Name’s Digbert.”
 
“Did your parents hate you?” Buffy asked, heavy with the concern.
 
“What’s wrong with Digbert?” He sounded wounded.
 
“What isn’t?” Spike scoffed.
 
“Look, the lady who lives in this apartment is pretty depressed – especially around the holidays. It’s good eating.”
 
“You’re eating my aunt?”
 
“Her misery!”
 
Spike sniggered.
 
“Nightmares! Eating her nightmares, I mean!”
 
Buffy was wondering how on earth Dawn and Lolly were sleeping through all this.
 
Digbert looked over at Spike quizzically. “Shame vampires don’t dream, really. You’re pretty depressed, too, aren’t you?”
 
Spike stiffened. “I am not depressed! And of course vampires dream! You’ll be tellin’ me I don’t breathe next.”
 
Buffy turned to him, shocked. “But—”
 
“Ever try to talk without breathin’?” Spike snapped.
 
“Ever tried not talking?”
 
“Would you two quit it? I feed off desperation and depression, not anger and lust!”
 
Buffy’s face did its best impression of a fire engine. Again.
 
“Look, clearly this place is a, um, a no-go area for demons. I can take a hint,” Digbert said. He looked over at Buffy. “Even if you are kinda pathetic right now – no offence.”
 
Buffy waved her hand dejectedly.
 
“I can see how you would really frighten a guy when you’re up to full strength.”
 
Spike was suddenly reminded of Clem.
 
Buffy banged her head against the wall. First sex in a public bathroom and now demon pity. She could not possibly get any lower.
 
Digbert lumbered to his feet. “I’ll, uh, I’ll just be going now.”
 
Spike looked back and forth between Buffy and Digbert. “You want me to kill him?”
 
Buffy snorted. “You think you can? You did such a stellar job with my crutch before.”
 
“Maybe metal’d do the trick? Got a knife.”
 
Buffy blushed again, even redder.
 
“I don’t want to know, do I?” Digbert said.
 
They both glared at him.
 
He started backing slowly towards the front door, hands held out in an appeasing fashion.
 
“And don’t come back!” Spike yelled, once the door had shut behind him.
 
Buffy slapped his shin – right on a bruise, too. “You’ll wake up Dawn and Lolly, you moron!” she hissed.
 
He stepped closer to her, looking down. “I think they would’ve already if they were goin’ to.”
 
Buffy sighed. Her shoulder was almost leaning against his leg now, and one of his naked feet was crossed over the other, just in front of her knee. Despite herself, one finger escaped from her clenched fist to glide along length of his arch. She felt him shiver under her.
 
She was surprised by the soft smoothness of his skin. Didn’t vampires get callouses? Feeling almost outside of her own body, she watched her stupid, treacherous fingers creep up to close around his ankle.
 
After so much humiliation today, what's a little bit more?
 
She leaned into him a little, stretching her neck so she could see his face while her cheek rubbed against the roughness of the outside seam of his jeans.
 
He stared into her eyes. She wanted to see his pupils blow and his mouth grow soft and awed. Instead, every muscle was stretched tight, clenched. He looked almost like he was in pain.
 
Can’t have that.
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 
 
 
Spike’s fingers were convulsing mindlessly in her hair while his hips jerked arrhythmically against the wall and his mouth stretched impossibly wide, lips trembling, throat arched long and lean.
 
She’d used his belt loops to pull herself up, kneeling, while humiliation burned a hole between her thighs. All Buffy had wanted was for him to lose control. Like her. He’d tried twice to pull her up, to make them equal, before she’d wrapped her lips around his cock and he’d stopped having any kind of opinion on the matter. Or on anything else.
 
It occurred to Buffy that this shut Spike up even more reliably than biting his tongue.
 
Now her knees were red and angry from where they’d been burned by the rug and her ankle was throbbing from her fall and too much blood. But when she looked up at him, she could no longer see the blue in his eyes and his panting gasps were turning to needy whimpers.
 
Satisfied, she closed her eyes and pressed her nose further into his coarse thatch of hair, feeling every ripple and clench of his stomach muscles against her forehead and the soft slap of his balls against her chin. His jeans were too tight to move past his upper thighs on their own, so she had to keep untangling his buttons from her neckline until finally, irritably, she jerked it all down to hobble his knees.
 
She was truly drowning in him now, struggling more and more for each breath the deeper she took him in. There was a surprising power in the degradation of choosing to suck instead of breathe. And the constant threat of Dawn or Lolly coming out into the hallway and catching them added a frisson of shame and self-loathing that trumped even the dirtiness of the gas station – at least there they had been assured privacy.
 
Definitely came back wrong.
 
Buffy’s vision started sprouting white spots from lack of oxygen about the time he started shuddering, legs twitching in a series of fine tremors while his toes dug into the carpet like they were after buried treasure. But just as she’d decided it was time to pull back or pass out, his too-large hands enveloped her head and he thrust himself deeper than she’d thought physically possible and stayed there. Every single muscle in his body was taut and straining and she couldn’t even taste what she could feel pouring down the back of her throat.
 
Panicking, she wrenched her head from his hands, spitting and spluttering as she jerked herself away. She collapsed to the side, alternately coughing and heaving great gulps of air, while Spike slid limp and boneless down the wall.
 
“Don’t you dare speak,” she gasped, her swollen throat making her voice sound raspy and foreign.
 
He reached out to her, but she slapped him away.
 
When he made to drag her back into her bedroom a few minutes later, she’d regained the ability to breathe but was too winded and tired to put up a fight.
 
He never did find out if the bed was as comfy as it looked.