SPIKE:
Every day you wake up, it's the same bloody question that haunts you: is today the day I die?
        Fool For Love


    Buffy slept through sunset. She had been Spike’s pet for many days, being drained of blood regularly, and without a proper diet. She knew she was probably anaemic at this point. She didn’t have enough red blood cells to carry enough oxygen, so her body was conserving energy. Sleeping was the easiest way to do that.

    Spike seemed to be the only one home. He sat beside her on the bed the moment he saw her eyes were open. “Hey there, pet,” he said gently, and pressed a warm cup into her hands as she sat up. “Cuppa tea.”

    Buffy blinked down at it. As far as she knew, it was the first time Spike had turned on the stove, let alone thought much about what she should be eating or drinking. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

    Buffy shrugged. “Tired,” she said, sipping at the tea. She had to admit, it was excellent. Spike always could make a wicked cup of tea. She didn’t mention that she felt disgusting. Dried blood was caked along her skin in several places, the bites ached dully with the anaesthetic out of her system, and she had no idea what she looked like after yesterday.

    He didn’t seem to mind her appearance. His brow furrowed in sympathy, and he stroked her head like a child... or a dog. “I got some steak for you,” he said temptingly. “And milk. And eggs and bread and butter.” He tilted his head. “I really ought to be feeding you more, oughtn’t I.”

    Buffy shook her head. “I’m not starving.”

    “But I’ve been remiss. I’m a bad, selfish man,” he said. Buffy frowned at him. He’d sounded almost like himself as he said that, gentle, just little self-effacing. “I just went and got that stuff,” he said, indicating a pile of groceries on the counter. Buffy didn’t want to think who he’d killed to get it all. At least none of it had obvious blood stains. “Never really been a cook, though. Still, you just heat steak, right?”

    Buffy finished her tea and put the empty cup on the coffee table. “Okay, why are you suddenly being so nice to me?” she asked. “Is this the last supper? You killing me later?”

    “We already know I’m killing you later,” Spike said, without scorn or annoyance. “But not tonight.” He rolled over her and crept into bed beside her, pulling her close to him. He kissed her face gently, over and over, and hummed with contentment as he snuggled in against her.

    He seemed so much like the Spike Buffy knew that she was somewhat taken aback. “What’s with the lovey dovey?” she insisted.

    “I can’t pet my pet?” he asked, amused.

    “You’re scaring me.”

    Spike laughed. “Now I scare you.”

    “Now, I don’t know what’s going on,” Buffy said.

    “I’m in a good mood,” Spike said, kissing her cheek. He leaned back and gazed at her. “Thank you. For last night. I could tell it bothered you.”

    “Why do you care if it bothered me?”

    “Because of how you handled it,” Spike said. “If you’d done anything else, it would have been...” He chuckled. “You were right. You don’t need training. Not even with her.”

    Buffy wasn’t sure if she was pleased or not. She liked how he was acting toward her now. But she had no idea if it would last. “Dru does frighten me,” Buffy said honestly.

    “And I don’t?” Spike asked.

    Buffy sighed. “I’d rather die in your arms than hers.”

    “Death is death,” he said.

    “I’m...” Buffy decided to just bite the bullet. “I don’t love her,” she said. “I’d rather you feel I belong to you.”

    “You do,” Spike said, and he kissed her softly, holding her close. “You’re all mine. Just... thank you. For making her jealous.”

    “She’s jealous of me?” Buffy said, suddenly even more frightened of Dru.

    “No, of me,” Spike said. “She knows she’ll never lose me. But she saw us together last night, heard you with me. And you were sweet and soft and... She wanted you, and that made her want me. She hasn’t wanted me in... god, months.”

    “She’s invited you in.”

    “With her doll,” Spike said. “I’m allowed to touch them, not her. Not like I want to.” He shook his head. “It was just... today was very precious.” He touched Buffy’s hair. “Just like you.”

    Buffy didn’t know what to say. She was glad Spike felt happy around her, but if her duties were about to include offering blood and body to Drusilla as well as Spike, she wasn’t sure she could keep it up. “Why doesn’t she want you? Doesn’t she love you?”

    “‘Course she does,” Spike said, with only a touch of anger. “She’s punishing me. Or she has been. She doesn’t like it here.”

    “You can’t just find a better lair?”

    “She doesn’t like New York,” Spike said. “And it’s harder to find a better lair than you’d think. You need a hunting ground that doesn’t draw attention. Harder to find in upscale neighborhoods.” He shrugged. “Besides, I like CB’s.” He looked up at her slyly. “As you know.”

    “Why do you stay in New York, if it makes her so angry?”

    “I want the slayer,” Spike said, as Buffy had known he would. “It’s taken me better part of a century to find her. Every other time I’ve gotten close, she’s been killed by someone else before I got my chance. I’m not giving that up because Dru’s in a bad mood about it.”

    “I thought she wanted you to kill the slayer.”

    “She does. She wants me to come home hot with her blood, and maybe with her heart in my hand to gnaw on. She just thinks I should have done it months ago.”

    “And you can’t find her.”

    “I found her once,” Spike said, tensing his arm under Buffy. “Just before you showed up. We went a round. She nearly got me. She’s more inventive than the last slayer I fought, more clever. Dru thinks I should have gotten on with it long before now. She thinks if I just performed enough of a rampant slaughter, the slayer would have to come to me.”

    That thought hadn’t occurred to Buffy. Spike never had performed truly intense slaughters, heading down busy streets and breaking necks left and right. At least, not in Buffy’s experience he hadn’t. He’d never done it in Sunnydale, and apparently he hadn’t done it here. “Why don’t you?”

    “It’s inelegant,” Spike said, sounding annoyed. “It’s a game, not a war. I don’t kill for the fun of it.” He stopped. “Well, actually, yes I do,” he said. “Constantly. It’s a lark.” He laughed. “But reaping wheat isn’t fun, it’s a chore. Hunting is hunting, and that’s a lovely meal. Violence is an art form, it’s not just random killing. I like the fight. Butchering rabbits would just be work. And if I bring in the human police, they’ll just shoot up the neighborhood, and I’ll never get the slayer. There’s an art to all this.”

    Buffy looked down at him. “Since when?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I don’t know. You just always struck me as... more hands on. Impulsive.”

    Spike looked up at her. “Where do you think you know me from?”

    Buffy shook her head. “I just do.”

    “Well, maybe not,” he said. He fondled her fingertips. A thought seemed to strike Spike, and he looked up at her. “You’re not a reincarnation of someone from my past, are you?”

    Buffy shrugged. “If I was, who do you think I’d be?”

    He gazed at her, troubled. “I don’t know...” he said slowly. He seemed to fold into himself, considering.

    Buffy suddenly realized what his problem might be. “I’m not your–” she cut herself off abruptly from saying she wasn’t his mum. She wasn’t even sure he remembered his mother at this stage, beyond a vague knowledge of having had one. Whether he properly remembered the circumstances of her death or not, the thought would have been deeply disturbing for him. Particularly given his and Buffy’s current relationship. “Anyone,” she said instead. “I’m not anyone you’ve known. I swear.”

    He frowned, the troubled look still in his eyes.

    “What?”

    “Well, there’s no one I’ve ever known that I’d particularly like to meet again, and particularly not in that sweet body,” he said. “But it’s the only idea I’ve had that makes sense for what you are.” He sighed. “In answer, yeah. I can be impulsive. I wouldn’t have taken you on if I wasn’t, kitten. I follow my blood, ‘cause I like to see what happens. But the slayer is business. I think about her all the time. And I’m not gonna waste this opportunity by jumping in feet first.”

    “All the time?” Buffy asked.

    “For over a half a century,” Spike said. “Someone... someone once insinuated that the last slayer I killed was a fluke. That I’d just had a good day, and I couldn’t do it again. I intend to prove that statement wrong.” His voice was very hard as he said that. Buffy suspected that the person who had said that was Angel. Or Darla.

    “And Drusilla doesn’t respect that?”

    Spike shrugged. “To her, killing is all some kind of lovely dream. A dance, or a children’s party. She seeks out happiness and devours it. That’s why she came to us last night – you were happy. She likes happiness. She’s a charming creature.”

    “And her doll?” Buffy asked.

    Spike’s tone darkened, but he still held her tenderly. “He seems happy enough.”

    “But keeping him makes you unhappy.”

    Spike took a slow breath. “I’m not her prey, am I,” Spike said. “It’s just the way she is. She’s hard right now. She’ll be soft another day. It’s one of the things I love about her. She never stops surprising me.”

    “She doesn’t... seem to look at you.”

    He shrugged. “She can’t always see me. She’s always in two or three worlds, Drusilla. The present, the future, and what ever reality I can’t find.”

    Buffy looked at him. “She keeps hurting you.”

    “We’re vampires, sweet. We like to hurt.”

    “To hurt, or be hurt?”

    He shrugged. “Both.” He scratched his nails down her arm, leaving red marks, and pulling some of the scabs off her bites. Buffy hissed. He smiled at the droplets of blood and kissed them off, killing the fresh pain.

    “I’m not really strong enough to hurt you,” Buffy said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

    Spike looked up at her, his eyes soft, with an amused expression. “That was probably the sweetest thing a human being has ever said to me.”

    “I know,” Buffy whispered. She bent down and kissed him. He was quickly charged with it, and grabbed her close, kissing her back with violence.

    After a bit he pulled away. “How do you do that to me?”

    “I wish I knew what I was doing,” Buffy said.

    Spike looked at her and shook his head. “I think you’re lying. I think you do know.”

    She wasn’t. If she knew how she did what she did, she’d be doing it harder, and faster, and getting the hell back home. “You’re good at reading lies, Spike. You tell me.”

    Spike blinked up at her. “I think,” he said after a moment, “that I need to feed you.”
 

***

    She wasn’t really a pet, Spike thought. That was what was off with the whole thing. She wasn’t, in fact, taking on the role she said she was. No, not a pet. She didn’t act like one, or think like one. There was no real submission. There was no fear. No loathing. She didn’t seem entirely thrilled, either, as the sadistic ones who wanted to be turned were. She didn’t make any sense.

    Spike watched her as she laughed at his failed attempt at making steak, and took the sauce pan from him. It was the only pot in the apartment apart from the tea kettle. “You need to turn the stove down just a bit,” she said. “Do any of the windows open? The smoke will clear soon.” Spike slid open one of the windows, and the smoke sailed out through the grating. “You’ve never had to cook in your life, have you.”

    “I make tea,” Spike said. “Forgive me, pet. Never had to cook as a human.”

    “How did you feed your other pets?”

    “Pizza,” Spike said. “You seemed a bit put off by the concept.” She looked at him as if he’d just given her a gift. That heartfelt grin of relief on her face made him want to laugh with pleasure. She didn’t quite dare to ask if he had killed anyone for the groceries. He hadn’t, actually. Well, unless she counted the cash he’d taken from some of the boys’ victims the night before, but that couldn’t possibly count, could it. “Is it too burned?”

    “It’s a little blackened. I could still eat it, but.... Here, we’ll give it to Dru’s doll,” she said with a bit of a laugh, and she set it on a plate.

    She really wasn’t scared of him. At all. She didn’t have the cowed and tormented terror he was used to from his pets, even the ones who used to claim that they too were “willing.” She didn’t get off on the idea of the murders, either. That was the other kind of pet, usually the kind he handed off to Dru to play with. This Sarah girl... she was a little manipulative, and she could fight – she’d actually landed some serious blows on him, the other night – but she wasn’t looking for someone to hurt.

    “Put it in the dog dish,” Spike said. “I don’t trust him with ceramics. They can cut things.”

    “Good point,” she said, and she started up the second steak. “You know he’s... really creepy.”

    “To be fair, the dolls get a little worse after Dru starts playing with them. She’s good at making people... well. Not very human anymore.” It was something he adored about Dru, actually. Her many, many skills.

    “Where does she find these guys?”

    “Same way she found me,” Spike said. “And anyone else she wants to find. Closes her eyes until the right idea comes to her. She goes looking for someone her brand of torture can make happy.”

    “Yet she can’t find the slayer?”

    Spike shrugged. “She says slayers are often dark to her,” he said. “Some kind of protection, probably to do with their calling. Everything about the slayer is kind of... blurred.”

    She looked considerably relieved at that statement. And Spike kicked himself. What was he doing spilling Drusilla’s secrets to this highly suspect pet? He couldn’t seem to help himself.

    He felt unleashed.

    That morning, with the pet’s deep, deep brown eyes gazing up at him, and Drusilla’s quiet acceptance, and the two of them contentedly curled up in the same bed with him.... He’d melted more than a little. He’d been trying to get through to Drusilla for so long, and it was so... hurtful. Dru knew it was, and that was why she pulled away like that. Spike felt useless without a lover to pour himself into. She knew he’d never leave, and she used that against him. She did everything she could to hurt and abuse him, for the same reason she gouged the eyes out of her dolls and tore open her blood dolls. She enjoyed taking happiness, and her goal was either to devour or destroy it.

    When she got like this, she was taking Spike’s happiness, and his joy in his love for her, and eating it alive. It was only when it was gone, bruised and battered beyond all recognition, that she’d bring it back to life. Just as she had brought him to life, the first time she’d killed him.

    This pet was cutting though all of that. She was bringing his joy back, and that drew Drusilla back to him. He couldn’t begin to express his gratitude for that.

    He’d been fighting her. He’d been suspicious and mistrustful. He’d been testing her and setting mind games and trying to trip her up. The decision to stop all of that and just accept this gift he’d been given made him feel as if someone had just opened the door to a cage.

    His mind had begun to race. What could he do for her? Well, feed her, for one. He’d been terrible about that. He left Dru’s blood dolls half starved on purpose, hoping they’d die quickly. She deserved food more than once a day. Lots of it. Good stuff, too. He’d stood in the grocery store feeling completely helpless, trying like hell to remember what he’d eaten as a man, and drew a complete blank. Instead, he focused on TV shows, and got stuff that echoed those.

    He’d come back laden with her groceries, actually singing. He had something for her! Something she needed. He wanted her fed. He wanted her happy. He wanted to see her smiling and laughing, and curl up beside her, and pick her up and kiss her, and chain her up, and hold her down, and lick her, and bite her, and tear her pieces. He came up behind her as she stood at the stove, and had no fear that she was about to pick up the hot sauce pan and smash him in the face with it. Last night, he’d have been sure that was going to be her next move. Tonight... why fret if it was?

    He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her throat. “Stop that,” she said, sounding teasing. “I don’t want blood on my steak.”

    He kissed her again. “I’m not biting you...” he kissed down to her shoulder, “yet.”

    “Then you’d really better stop,” she said, still with a smile in her voice. “Or you’ll make me burn this one.”

    She enjoyed his touch. It made him hum with desire. He was hard pressed not to turn her around and set her on the stove to have his way with her. No. Burning her wouldn’t be fun for long. “Wouldn’t want to spoil your meal,” he breathed in her ear. She shivered.

    Spike poured himself a cup of tea and held it while she cooked. She sat down to her steak dinner and then looked a little lost, as there was no silverware. “I... could get a knife out of the weapons chest,” he said slowly.

    The pet looked up, caught his suspicion, and shook her head. “Nah, I’m good.” She picked the steak up and gnawed on it like a neanderthal.

    She hadn’t just begged for something sharp. When she might have cut him with it, and gotten her blood. Granted, she wouldn’t have lived long enough to do anything with it, but he was the only one who could have been sure of that.

    “You eat like a little beast,” Spike said with a smile.

    “Not most of the time,” she said. “You want some?”

    “I don’t eat cattle.”

    “Why not? It’s good.”

    “I have something sweeter in mind,” he said darkly.

    “You’re silly,” she said. “You shouldn’t look down on a good rare steak.” She tore a bite off her steak and came up to him with a piece clenched in her teeth. She kissed him, and the bloody meat slid into his mouth. “Just bite down hard,” she whispered to him.

    He did. It was pretty much instinctual, he wanted to bite her so badly suddenly. She was right. The barely seared meat tasted bland compared to human flesh, but it felt good in his teeth, and as she straddled him he could gnaw on it as hard as he wanted without tearing her pretty pink throat out...

    He swallowed the steak down and cocked his head at her. “I should get more of that,” he mused.

    “Yes,” she said. “I think you should. And while you’re at it, may I recommend onions, spicy chicken wings, and wheetabix.”

    “Now you’re pushing it,” Spike said. “Anything else you want on your menu?”

    “It’s not for me, it’s for you,” she said. She kissed him again. If he’d had a heartbeat, it would have been racing. His blood burned.

    “I have much better things to eat,” he said when she finished with him.

    “Yes,” she said. “I know. But a little variety never hurt.”

    “I get variety,” Spike said. “I like the punk rockers. They’re spicy. Kids are tender, but they don’t have enough hormone kick for me. Had one of the college girls last night. They all have this dorm-food undercurrent which...”

    The pet got off his lap and went back to her plate. Nope. She was not at all impressed. Or afraid. If anything she seemed disgusted. “What did you think I ate?” he asked.

    She looked up at him, and her eyes were cold. “I don’t know why you do that to yourself,” she said.

    He frowned.

    “You know I don’t like it. You know I’ll stop whatever sweet thing I’m doing to you. Then your only choices are to either force me, or do without. Does it make you feel all manly, or something?”

    He looked away. He didn’t know why he’d done it. It had just seemed the thing to do. It was perfectly normal. That was how he got variety. But... he supposed that wasn’t normal for her. What was normal for her? How did she live, day to day, in that breakable little body? How did she stand so strong and so brave in the face of a brutal killer, starting shouting matches no less? He could snap her neck with a twist of one hand. He could tear her head off with a single pull. He could crack her spine over his knee and tear her apart without straining a muscle. As charming as each of these images was, the image of her bending over her plate, filling herself with food he had provided for her... he liked that innocent image, too.

    God, what was she doing to him?

    Spike stood up and carried the dog dish into Dru’s room. Her doll was chained in his kennel, and Spike threw the dish onto the floor for him. For a long moment he regarded the creature. That looked right. Clearly afraid of him, kind of fanatical, with a cold deadness of acceptance to his situation.

    “Where is she?”

    “Hunting,” Spike said.

    “She’ll be back soon?”

    Jonesing for a bite already, he was. And Dru’d only been gone about three hours. Blood junkies all tasted thin and watery.

    The pet was starting to taste that way, but she’d been clear when he’d first bitten her. This guy, he fit the pattern. He smelled right. But Sarah....

    Spike went back to find she’d finished her meal. She’d gone to the bathroom, and was taking a shower. She hadn’t asked permission. God help him, he found her self-determination charming.

    Spike sat on the couch and turned on the telly, and a little while later she came back out. She got herself a big glass of milk and came to join him. She’d clearly forgiven him for bringing up the murders, because she sat alongside him, and let him put his arm around her. God, she was warm. And sweet. And strange. And he wanted her.

    She set the cold milk on the floor as he turned to her and kissed her. And then pressed her down into the sofa and kissed her some more. And then more. And more. Oh, bloody hell. She knew how to kiss him. The right mix of passion and sweetness, just a hint of teeth, and even though he had to keep letting her pull away now and again to take in a breath – oh, bugger. It made it even sweeter, that taste of her living breath, the tease of her leaving him, and coming back...

    The sit-com on the telly changed, and he realized he’d been kissing her for nearly half an hour. Just the taste of her kisses were electric. He hadn’t even wanted her blood....

    He pulled away and looked down at her. Her eyes were shadowed with desire. “Hallo, little bit,” he whispered to her.

    “Hey there.”

    He loved that smile on her kiss-swollen lips. And the way her hands were hot around his back, and the warmth of her beneath him. He’d taken her completely that morning. It had been wonderful, the look on her face, the feel in her body, the pure ecstasy he had clearly bestowed. He’d had complete and utter power over her, in absolute perfect joy....  And then Dru had come and stolen it.

    Now, that was a weird thought. Dru couldn’t steal anything from him. Everything he ever had, everything he ever was was Drusilla’s, she owned him entire...

    He sat up and pulled the pet with him. “Here,” he said, pulling the milk up from the floor. “We have to feed you up. Keep your blood up for me.”

    The milk had gone room temperature, but Sarah didn’t seem to mind. “Thanks.” She sipped and snuggled in under his arm again. “You know that’s not really how it works,” she added.

    Spike drew in a breath. He’d never had a pet last more than two weeks... Don’t think about it. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He kissed the top of her head, and settled back to watch the telly.