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Love Sanctioned by slaymesoftly
 
Two
 
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Chapter Two

Spike spent his first weeks in Los Angeles figuring out where he wanted to spend his time. Eventually, after tiring of sleeping in his car in underground garages, he found a small but nicely furnished basement apartment on the edge of a demon community. He made it known that he was available for the occasional body-guarding or property retrieval job and between that and the reduced rent he paid in return for keeping the building quiet and vampire-free, he was able to keep himself, as well as have a little left over for cigarettes and booze.

As he prepared to go out on a new job, he gazed around his small apartment, admiring the furnishings and the Play Station that had come with it. He smiled in sad satisfaction as he compared the comfortable apartment with the stone walls and missing roof of the old mansion in which he’d spent his time with Buffy. Somehow, the apartment managed to suffer by comparison.

(Might as well make it a nice place; probably going to be spendin’ most of my time here feeling sorry for myself.)

He’d almost turned around and gone back to Sunnydale when he found the rolled up sheets in the back seat of the old car. Only the rising sun and the difficulty he knew they would both have saying good-bye again kept him from turning around immediately. Weeks later, he was glad he hadn’t done it. Sleeping with his face buried in the sheets that smelled of Buffy and of their love-making turned out to be his favorite activity as he slowly worked his way back into LA’s demon community.

(I”m sorry, love. I know you wanted them, but they’re all I’ve got of you for a good long while. Don’t want to give them up. I’ll find a way to make it up to you somehow.)

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He was chasing a suspected magical book thief through downtown when he ran past a large, modern building with a familiar name. ( Wolfram and Hart. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, that’s where Peaches kept his –sod that – MY money. Had somebody there kept it “invested” for him.) He continued down the street until he had run down his night’s quarry and removed the stolen book from the man’s suddenly weak arms. A sniff and a listen and he realized that the terrified thief was fully human, if a bit magically enhanced. Spike gave his latest assignment a wolfish grin and allowed his face to shift.

“Guess I won’t be going hungry tonight, will I, mate?” he asked conversationally as he pulled the frightened man closer. His intended victim shut his eyes and squeaked, “If you don’t kill me, I’ll give you something valuable.”

“Already got something valuable, you git. Somethin’ that belongs to somebody who isn’t you, if I remember correctly.”

“No, no,” the man said hastily, flinching away from the fangs only centimeters from his throat. “Something that is mine. That only I can give away. You can’t take it. I’ll give it to you if you just don’t kill me.”

“I’m hungry,” Spike growled, hoping he sounded less whiny than he felt. In spite of his efforts to seek out true evil-doers for his meals, he was finding it harder and harder to justify killing the always male victims he found and he was leaving more and more of them alive when he finished. The voice in his head that acted as his newly-awakened conscience - and that sounded suspiciously like Buffy - was happy but his belly was not; and it was becoming harder and harder to fight the urge to drain his victims.

“What is it?” he mumbled, his fangs grazing the man’s throat and sending very satisfying shudders through the would-be mage’s body.

“It’s a crystal. You just look into it and picture your life’s desire and it will happen. Not right away,” he added quickly, lest he be accused of lying. “But it will happen.”

Images of big green eyes and pouting pink lips immediately filled Spike’s head, as did the feel of silky skin and womanly curves hiding muscles that rivaled his own. Feeling like a fool, he snarled his assent.

“All right. I’ll leave you alive. But I’m going to drink from you. Spent too much time chasing you all over town to go out hunting for somebody else.”

The relieved man nodded vigorously. “Of course. Of course. Take what you need. Just don’t kill me. It will be worth your while, I promise.”

“Where is it then?”

The man fumbled inside his jacket, unwilling to point out to the impatient vampire that being held by the shoulders was interfering with his ability to reach the crystal. With a triumphant sigh, he finally pulled an ordinary looking pink crystal from his jacket and held it up.

“Put it in the pocket of my duster.”

As soon as the man had complied, Spike sank his teeth into the artery pulsing in front of him, taking deep draughts of the man’s blood until he felt his victim weakening. Reluctantly, Spike removed his teeth, being sure to lick the wound closed before he propped the man up against a nearby door.

“You alright, mate?” Spike cursed himself for asking the poncy sounding question.

(A deal’s a deal, innit? Just making sure I’m holding up my end is all.)

The would-be thief nodded his head wearily and took out a cell phone. He hit a button and murmured a quiet, “I need you to pick me up,” into it, glancing at the nearby street sign and giving an address before hanging up.

“So, someone’s coming to get you then?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine. You can go. Just be careful when you use the crystal. Don’t waste it on something trivial. Be sure it really is your heart’s desire, before you activate it.”

“What do I do?” Spike asked, his tone making it obvious he thought he was just humoring his victim.

“Just look into it and think about what you want most in the world.”

“And then what?”

“And then nothing, probably. I can’t tell you when it will happen – that you get your heart’s desire – just that you will. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“You’re a thief,” Spike snorted. “Why should I trust you?”

“I trusted you.”

“Well, that’s…that was the right thing to do. I’m a vampire; not a liar.” The indignation in Spike’s voice would have been humorous if they had not been discussing his having made a meal from the man in front of him.

“Neither am I,” the magician said, allowing his head to fall back against the door against which he rested.

When it appeared that the conversation was over, Spike made sure he had both book and crystal and then walked back to where he’d left his car, already mentally spending the five hundred dollars he was being paid to retrieve the stolen book. As he passed Wolfram and Hart for the second time, it occurred to him that with his entire vampiric family dust, he was the surviving heir to whatever money was left in the accounts Angelus had set up so many years ago. Vowing to follow up the following night and try to locate the right person, he whistled cheerfully as he strode through the night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following evening found Spike still in a reasonably good mood as he returned the book and pocketed his reward money. As he was stuffing the bills in the inside pocket of his duster, his hand brushed against the crystal there and he took it out, looking at the suddenly intent witch who had sent him after her book.

“You have any idea what this is?” he asked, tossing it carelessly from hand to hand.

“It looks like an ordinary wishing crystal,” she replied with feigned disinterest, waiting for him to stop tossing it so that she could look at it carefully. “Yes,” she added when she’d looked it over carefully, “that’s what it is. Nothing special, but I could buy it from you, if you’d like.” She glanced up at him, her eyes sharp with avarice, and he smiled as he took it out of her reluctant hand.

“Wishing crystal, eh? No, thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll keep it. I’ve taken a fancy to it.”

He turned to go, almost laughing at the obvious disappointment on the witch’s face.

“Well, if you get tired of it…” She made a last attempt, stopping quickly when he flashed his fangs at her. She gave him a weak smile and waved good-bye, retreating behind the counter for safety. “Just…just be careful what you wish for, then,” she suggested. “Be very sure it’s what you want…”

“Yeah, already heard that, but thanks anyway.” He was out the door in a rustle of leather, the crystal safely tucked into an inside pocket as he made his way to his next destination.

Two hours at Wolfram and Hart, during which he had to give a sample of his blood to prove who he was, and he was the sole possessor of the small fortune that Angelus had accumulated through his two centuries of unlife and to which he had added all William’s net worth when Dru made the young man a part of their family. Spike also made arrangements for a special purchase. A flash of fang was all it took to convince the fawning human lawyer that he was perfectly serious about his purchase and with what he wanted done to it.

He returned to his apartment, setting the crystal carefully beside the bed as he stripped and slid between the sheets that still, to his sensitive nose, smelled of Buffy. He took the crystal down from the nightstand and set it in front of his face as he leaned on one elbow, picturing Buffy’s smiling eyes and warm lips in front of him. Feeling somewhat silly, he then imagined himself with her, trying to picture them together, her mother, her watcher and her two disapproving friends watching as they pledged their love to each other in front of the witnesses.

When, after several minutes of staring into the crystal, the only thing that had happened was that his eyes began to hurt, he gave up and, with a growl, shoved the pretty rock off the bed onto the floor.

“I don’t know what the bloody hell I was thinkin’…” he muttered to himself as he closed his eyes against the faint light beginning to show around the edges of the heavy drapes covering his one window. “Like wishin’ I could be in Buffy’s life is gonna make it happen…”


He was sound asleep when the piece of quartz on his floor began to glow softly and he was completely oblivious to its steady luminescence throughout the day. By evening, when he awoke, his previous good mood gone in the wake of his disappointment, it was just a pretty rock again. A pretty rock that he stepped on when he got out of bed, causing him to curse at it for the useless piece of gravel that it was.

He dressed and went out into the night, planning to use his new-found riches to drown his disappointment and allow him to fall into peaceful oblivion at the end of the evening. He diligently prowled his neighborhood first, putting a stake through the chest of a vampire that wanted to argue with him about its right to eat the man in the corner grocery store, and sending three others running off to the less well-protected streets of other parts of the city. He acknowledged the grocer’s grateful wave with a nod and crooked his finger at him as though shooting a gun, reminding him to keep his water pistol filled with holy water handy at night.

As had become his habit, he haunted the seedier parts of the city until he came upon a would-be rapist that he held up with one hand while he sent the intended victim on her way. The man’s struggling turned to panicky thrashing as Spike turned back to him, his demon to the fore. Ignoring the man’s pleas for his life and promises of a complete change of life-style, Spike sank his teeth into the less-than-clean throat in front of him and drank enough to get himself through the next twenty-four hours. He then dropped the man’s semi-conscious body to the ground and without a backward look, strode out of the alley and down the street.

He finished the evening at a new bar he had discovered. A demon bar, but one in which humans were safe also, as the owner had a protective spell on the place to prevent violence. He settled into a small booth and asked the smiling waitress to bring him a glass and bottle of Jack Daniels which he then used to drink himself into a state in which he could temporarily forget that he was living by himself in Los Angeles, and that Buffy was living her life back in Sunnydale.




 
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