Chapter 4
 
“Oy! I don’t need a bleedin’ sitter!”
 
Buffy’s protest was just as loud as Spike’s. “Giles! I really need to get home! And what about my shift at the store? I need the money…” She glanced meaningfully at Spike. There was no way she was going to let him in on that particular aspect of her life. It would be giving him far too much power over her. “You know why!”
 
“Be that as it may, Buffy, I really must insist. Don’t worry about the money; I’ll pay you for a regular shift. You’ll have to ring your mother before she needs to leave for the gallery and make alternative arrangements for...” He broke off at Buffy’s frantic warning glare. “Uh… Perhaps Tara or Willow could…?”
 
Buffy heaved a resigned sigh. “Okay. I guess…” She headed for the phone while Giles started gathering all their notes together.
 
“You may sleep on the couch, Spike. If Buffy tells me you have been the perfect house-guest, I might pick up some blood from the butcher’s for you. I assume that pig blood will be acceptable?”
 
“As it happens, I prefer cow, watcher. And make sure it’s fresh!”
 
Giles snorted. “You’ll get what I bring, and be suitably thankful.”
 
Buffy hung up after giving her mother an appropriately abridged version of the night’s events. She had explained that a possibility had arisen that a way might soon be found to restore her Swiss cheese memory. She had, however, managed to avoid mentioning Spike by name, or the fact that the individual assisting them was in fact a vampire. She may just have allowed her mom to gather the impression that the ‘out of town visitor’ was one of Giles’ friends from England.
 
“So… full Scooby meeting at my house tonight then?” She suggested to Giles’ back as he prepared the two of them scrambled eggs and toast and a pot of tea. “Willow and Tara may be able to help with the spell stuff.” She glanced over her shoulder to where Spike was lolling on the couch, idly flicking from channel to channel on the TV. “Although I dunno how I’m gonna explain the presence of the bleached menace here.”
 
“I generally find that the truth serves best,” Giles said with a smile, handing her a heaped plate. “It avoids the necessity for potentially upsetting revelations later on.”
 
“Dunno why you feel the need to explain anything,” Spike contributed. “You’re the slayer. That means you’re the boss. All you gotta do is tell them what’s what. If they don’t like it... sod ’em. You can do without them.”
 
“But they’re my friends,” Buffy began. “It’s important for me to make them understand…”
 
“Why? Can’t say I’ve had much experience of having friends, but I was under the impression that good friends were supposed to stand by you without question through thick and thin and the occasional vampire ally?”
 
Giles chuckled and nearly choked on mouthful of toast. He sipped from his cup of tea to clear his throat. “He has a point, Buffy. They supported you all through…”
 
“Yeah… I know,” Buffy sighed, absently pushing her largely uneaten egg around her plate. She was still hungry, but just couldn’t face eating it. “Well, except for the without question part. I clearly remember there being a great many questions.”
 
“Which with any luck, you should soon be in a position to answer to your own satisfaction, if not theirs.” Giles cleared away the plates and on his way to the kitchen, added, “Now I must just take a quick shower and be off to the shop. I trust you’ll escort Spike to your house after sunset, Buffy? I’ll look out the disinvitation spell and use it here this evening, then I’ll have it ready to use at your house after the meeting.”
 
“M’kay…”
 
~*~*~*~
 
Giles juggled with the package of butcher’s blood, the bag of Doublemeat take-out for Buffy and an armful of books in an attempt to get his key into the lock of his front door. He had become concerned when Buffy had failed to answer the telephone, so he had decided to pop home during his lunch break. Now that his knock at the door had gone unheeded, he was beginning to panic.
 
He swore when his keys slipped through his fingers to fall to the ground. Why on earth had he insisted that she should lock the door after him? He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself, muttered, “More haste, less speed, Giles old man,” settled his load more comfortably, retrieved the keys and finally managed to open the door.
 
He didn’t know what he’d expected to find. The bruised and broken body of his slayer and/or a pile of dust had featured highly in his imaginings. He had tried to prepare himself for demolished furniture and a lot of spilt blood.
 
What he was not prepared for was the tranquil domestic scene that met his eyes.
 
The television was playing quietly in the corner, heedless of the fact that its audience had lost interest in its programming.
 
His slayer and the vampire were lying spooned together on the couch, Buffy’s back to Spike’s front. Buffy’s head was pillowed on Spike’s arm and Spike’s face was buried in Buffy’s hair. Spike’s free arm was draped over Buffy’s waist, holding her close. Her hand lay over his upon her stomach, their fingers intertwined.
 
“Buffy?” he asked in quiet bemusement, dropping his forgotten encumbrances onto the table.
 
There came no response.
 
With an anxious gasp, Giles dashed forward and gently brushed Buffy’s hair away from her neck to press trembling fingers against her pulse point. “Oh, thank the Lord,” he murmured in relief when Buffy’s warmth and vitality were proved beyond doubt.
 
Ruthlessly pushing aside his impression that the sleeping pair looked very cosy together, he placed his hand on Buffy’s shoulder and gave her a little shake. “Buffy?”
 
He stepped back expectantly when Buffy stirred, but instead of becoming instantly alert as he’d hoped, she merely wrinkled her nose, smacked her lips and snuggled further into Spike’s embrace, moving so that the clasped hands were cradled between her breasts. “Five more minutes, honey…” she mumbled sleepily.
 
Giles forced down the sudden urge to giggle hysterically and watching Spike warily for any sign of wakefulness, shook Buffy’s shoulder more firmly. “Buffy!”
 
This time the tactic was more effective.
 
Buffy opened her eyes and blinked. She glanced down curiously to find herself holding somebody else’s hand close to her chest and lifted it away from her body to get a better look at it. At the sight of the chipped black nail polish adorning the elegant, long-fingered masculine hand, her eyes widened comically. Then with a manoeuvre that would be impossible for anyone other than a slayer, or possibly an Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast, she spun and flipped and was instantly standing on the far side of the room.
 
“This isn’t what it looks like!” she cried pleadingly, frantically finger-combing her dishevelled hair and smoothing down her clothes.
 
“Really?” Giles tried to keep a straight face as he teased his slayer. “So you weren’t both exhausted after a long night of research and dozed off all snuggled up in front of the television?”
 
“No! That is, yes! Only without the snuggling part. I so didn’t snuggle.” Buffy examined her hand, apparently to check that it was still intact, then looked across to where Spike had stirred at the disturbance. He wrapped his newly empty arm around the cushion she’d been lying on, pulled it to his face, nuzzled into it and with a sigh, subsided back into deep sleep. She pouted and crinkled up her nose, looking up at Giles through her eyelashes. “There was snuggling?”
 
“I must honestly say you looked very easy together. Very relaxed.”
 
“I didn’t have the dream about searching for something in the fog… first time since… like… forever,” Buffy mused.
 
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
 
“I guess.” She went on to whisper in incredulous disbelief, “He insisted we watched that stupid show, Passions! My mother watches Passions!” She turned to regard Spike thoughtfully. “He’s not exactly what you’d call your average vampire, is he?”
 
Giles took his spectacles off for a polish and impulsively resolved to be open-minded. This one vampire was single-handedly challenging every Council tenet regarding vampires that he had always accepted as unassailable fact, and he found it intriguing, if somewhat unsettling.
 
“I’m beginning to recognise that, Buffy. The thought that he is willing to continue to go against his natural inclination to kill and feed, even when he can’t remember why he originally made that decision, is remarkable. And look, he’s assured enough to sleep in the presence of his most fearsome enemy,” Giles gestured at Buffy, “and what’s more, despite having the perfect opportunity, he made no move to take advantage of the situation to drain you in your sleep.”
 
“So what do you think? I know I said I believed him about the truce, but should we really trust him?”
 
“Well, Buffy…” Giles tapped the arm of his spectacles against his teeth and then put them back on, nodding decisively. “I think that going by his behaviour in the past few hours, he has earned the benefit of the doubt until and unless he proves otherwise. At least until our memories are fully restored. Then we’ll have to reconsider.”
 
“Fair enough.” Buffy sniffed the air and gestured hopefully towards the packages Giles had abandoned upon his arrival. “Do I smell fries?”
 
~*~*~*~*~
 
Spike rolled his eyes and made a frustrated noise. “Is that rule twelve or rule thirteen, slayer? You’ve started repeating yourself, so I’ve lost count.”
 
Buffy stopped in her tracks and turned to face Spike, who was trailing a couple of paces behind her. She prodded him in the chest with one strong forefinger. Hard. “This is not a joke! It’s going to be hard enough getting them to accept that you’re trying to help and resist the urge to stake you, without you behaving like a pig and getting their backs up!”
 
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Spike started counting off points on his fingers as they resumed the walk to Revello Drive, side by side. “No eating the slayerettes; no eating your mum or your little sis; no rising to the provocative comments made by somebody called Xander—and what sort of poncy name is that for an all-American lad, I ask you? No using obscure British swear words in front of your mum or little sis; we don’t want to let on right off that I’m a vamp, so no going into game face and being menacing; no making obscene sexual innuendos in front of your mum or little sis…” He broke off and looked across at her, grinning teasingly. “Not sure you needed the ‘obscene’ there, slayer. If a sexual innuendo is done right, it can’t help but be obscene. And I do them right.”
 
Buffy threw her hands up in desperation. “See, that’s what I mean! You have a definite tendency towards pigginess! Try to practice the manners your mother taught you—assuming you can remember that far back in the mists of time. Look… my mother had brain surgery a few weeks ago and I need for her not to get upset. At. All. Okay? Just… try to be considerate?”
 
Spike pouted and hunched his shoulders. “Seems I’m banned from doing or saying anything that could be remotely fun!”
 
Buffy heaved a resigned sigh. “Okay then, how about… if you behave yourself, you get to come with me on patrol later and help me kill things? That should allow you to let off steam and get rid of all those pent up frustrations and irritations.”
 
“Sounds like the voice of experience there, slayer,” Spike chuckled. “Accumulate a lot of pent up frustration and irritation to take out on some poor demon, do you?”
 
Buffy glanced up at him in surprise and tried not to grin back at him. “No! Well… sometimes…”
 
Spike nodded knowingly. “Okay then, slayer. I’ll try to play nice. I should warn you though, I’m not exactly renowned for my patience and if they try me too far… I am evil, don’t forget.”
 
“I know. Just try, okay?” Buffy gestured towards the brightly lit house ahead and the cars parked at the kerb. “Here we are. We’re later than I meant to be, thanks to your insistence upon taking a detour. Looks as if everyone’s already here.”
 
“Well, the watcher said he wanted all the stuff Lanaro gave me about the spells he’d tried. Figured the sooner the better…”
 
“I know. It’s all good.” Buffy paused on the front porch to number 1630 and took a deep breath, looking up at him apprehensively. “Ready?”