A/N: Thanks to DoS for betaing, and to all who have reviewed :D Oh, and the song that Spike is singing is a quote from Slipnot.



Buffy was in a rush, trying to clean up the bathroom before her mom got home. Bent over the tub, scrubbing its sides, she heard the heavy clomping of boots entering the bathroom behind her.

“There you are. Been lookin’ for you.”

She stood up at the sound of his voice, and Spike appeared before her, only standing in the tub, rather than behind her, where the sound of his voice had come from.

“Give us a hug, then,” he whispered, and she found herself taking off her shirt.

“Topless hugs are more fun,” she explained, pulling his T-shirt apart right down the middle, exposing the smooth, pale skin of his chest before leaping upon him, wrapping her legs around his torso, her arms wound tightly around his neck. She could feel his huge erection beneath her, and gasped when she realized that there was nothing separating their interlocking parts, and that he was deep inside of her. It felt as he was everywhere at once, all around her, consuming her.

She groaned low in her throat, dropping her dampened brow on his leather-clad shoulder, and shuddered as her orgasm came instantly at the contact. It felt as if she couldn’t breathe, but she was not afraid. A wonderful sense of calm coursed over her at the same time.

“Bloody hell, ‘s Joyce,” Spike muttered, looking out of the square window that now existed in the once solid ceramic tiles of the shower wall. Buffy looked up, realizing what he had just said, and sure enough, her mother was standing below on the street, wearing a long, flowing red dress with black trim. Her hand was held up to her face, shielding her eyes from the setting sun as she attempted to look up toward the window, and Buffy hoped to God that she hadn’t seen them in their very-much-compromising position.

Spike put her down before dashing out of the bathroom in search of her mother. Buffy searched for her pants, wanting to hurry downstairs before her mother could suspect anything.

Wearing a pair of wrinkled pants that she had found on the bathroom floor, she finally made it out to the street, and saw a little boy with blond, curly hair and deep blue eyes full of tears. He appeared to be wearing Spike’s clothes, only they fit his little-boy-sized body perfectly. She guessed that he was maybe about nine or ten.

“I cleaned the tub,” she hurriedly explained to her mom, who wasn’t really paying that much attention to her.

Joyce’s eyes were focused on the little boy standing before her.

“The bad man wants to hurt me,” he whimpered to her mom, rubbing at his eyes. Her mother looked sympathetic, but remained silent, wanting the little boy to continue. “I’m just a poor boy—I need no sympathy. I’ll kill him before he touches me again.” The last sentence was not spoken in the little boy’s voice—but in Spike’s.

Buffy frowned with concern, realizing that it was in fact Spike, hiding behind the façade of an innocent little boy.

“But you can’t. Your chip…”

“What, this?” the little boy asked, still in Spike’s voice, holding his hand out to her. There was a tiny microchip in his small palm, and he sneered at her as it burst into sky blue flames. “Thunderbolt and lightning,” he laughed as it crumbled to dust. “Didn’t think I’d be caged forever, did you?” he asked rhetorically, shifting into game face.

Buffy was taken aback as she saw the little boy’s face shift into that of a vampire—and in the sunlight, no less. Her mother stood there impassively as the vampire boy lunged for her daughter, grabbing her wrist and biting into it.

Buffy hissed in pain out of reflex, but it didn’t hurt.

Not at all.

“Spare him, Sweetie—he’s just a poor boy,” her mother pleaded with her.

When she didn’t move or cry out, he released her, and all at once he was full grown Spike again, not in game face.

Holding a guitar.

He began strumming it softly, looking down at his hands as he plucked its strings.

“I never wanted anybody more than I wanted you. The only thing I ever really loved was hurting you. Don’t go, I never wanted anybody more, than I wanted you. The only thing I ever really loved was hate…” His voice trailed off, and he suddenly appeared to be very confused. He looked up at her then, as if searching for something in her expression.

“Buff—”

Slamming into the floor from rolling off of the couch jarred Buffy out of her strange dream. Putting her hand to her head, she sat up slowly, wondering if it had been a slayer dream, or a wacky, crazy dream induced by the effects of alcohol on her own subconscious.

She really couldn’t tell.

With everything that had been going on in the past twenty four hours, it was truly hard to say. But there was one thing she did know for sure.

Spike was no longer in the safety of Giles’ apartment.

“Damn it, Spike,” she muttered, getting up and heading to the door. He was out there somewhere, alone. She just hoped he didn’t run into any trouble before she could get to him.

Trouble meaning Riley, of course.

~~~~~

Spike had to wonder if he had been asking for this. Going out alone, still chipped and therefore unable to defend himself from the only monster that was any real danger to him was bloody stupid, after all. But of course, there was no time to dwell on such trivial matters now.

No, now was the time to focus on running like hell.

His body tensed, his knees slightly bent as he prepared for his mad dash; but before he had the chance to move a yard, a bolt of electricity hit the base of his skull, sending him crashing to his knees, his body shaking in involuntary spasms as his hands shook out in front of him. A choked scream completed his moment of pain, as he collapsed face forward on the ground. As the pain began to subside, he was viciously shocked again in roughly the same spot. It felt as if his brain was on fire.

“You thought I was going to let you get away with it, Spike? You thought I was just going to let you walk away?!” Riley kicked him in the ribs so hard that the wounded vampire was flipped forcefully onto his back by the blow.

“You’re going to pay, you son of a bitch.” The molten lava of anger and hatred burst forth from within Spike, making him no longer care about the firing of his chip he would surely receive from striking out at the wanker. Vamping out, he thrust his foot out at Riley, catching the soldier directly in his privates with the thick, hard sole of his combat boot. It was only after his bull’s eye hit that he braced himself for the pain.

Except, there wasn’t any. only a slight tingle in the back of his noggin...

Well, isn’t this just… neat.

Getting to his feet, as Riley remained on the ground, moaning in pain, Spike kicked him in the face experimentally, knocking his rapist onto his back from the blow. There was another tingle, but less noticeable than the last time.

Spike grinned around his fangs.

“No, you’re gonna pay, you limp bastard. Thanks to your wankerish tactics of attempting to fry my brain with your little taser, my chip seems to be out of commission— for the most part. This is gonna be—Aagh!” Spike yelled in pain as Riley stabbed him in his jean-clad thigh with what must have been an eight inch blade, burying it to the hilt in the vampire’s flesh.

Spike’s leg buckled slightly, and he stumbled backward, grasping the handle of the knife with both hands, trying to pull it free from his tense muscles. It hurt like a bitch, but the pain was nothing he couldn’t handle. Unfortunately, he couldn’t pull it out fast enough, and Riley took advantage of his distraction, tackling him to the ground with a grunt, consequently lodging the knife further into Spike’s thigh once again, but this time at an awkward angle. He reached into another pocket of his cargo pants, and held something else out in front of Spike’s face.

It was a can of pepper spray.

Spike screamed in pain as the pepper spray burned his corneas, dilating his blood vessels, and tainting the ocean blue of his irises and the whites of his pupils with red.

During Spike’s distraction, Riley grabbed his wrists and held them together, binding them with a plastic clamp and pulling it tightly so that it dug painfully into his skin.

“See, Spike? I always come prepared,” Riley panted out, his eyes traveling slowly over Spike’s incapacitated form with undisguised lustful anticipation.

“You aren’t gonna get away with this,” Spike gritted out the words, fighting back a wave of panic at the helpless condition that he was finding himself in once again, regardless of the chip’s failure.

Before Riley could retort, a yell of fury interrupted him, followed by a blur of blonde as Riley was tackled off Spike and slammed into the ground by the young woman. Riley’s eyes widened when he realized that it was no woman at all.

It was a vampire.

Harmony? Spike thought, twisting his head to confirm with his eyes what his keen nose already smelled.

Riley smiled at her.

“Glad you could come. You can be the first part of the lesson— my demonstration to Spike of just exactly what I’m gonna do to him.” His cold eyes looked her appreciatively up and down as he shrugged, “More or less.”

Eyes narrowed with hatred, Harmony shut him up by punching him in the jaw, the powerful blow whipping his head to the side.

“Wrong, bitch, cause I am so gonna be the one teaching you a lesson.”

Riley grunted as he used his upper arm strength to the max, hurling her up and over his head and onto her back. She quickly twisted once she had landed on her back, pulling herself up onto her knees, grasping Riley’s wrists and twisting them into an X in the process. Riley never got the chance to react, for as soon as she had him properly pinned, shifting into her game face, a tall, brown-haired, male vampire leapt upon him, smiling gleefully as Harmony bit into his neck.

“Harm?”

Harmony’s head shot up, and she smiled fondly at her blondie bear, who was now standing, hands bound in front of him, staring bleary-eyed at the scene unfolding before him.

“Yes, Spikey. It’s me. I came home earlier and you weren’t there, and I smelled…” Harmony faltered, swallowing as she looked away. “Him. I just couldn’t let him get away with it, could I?” she asked as Chris trailed his hands slowly up and down Riley’s torso, enjoying the smell of his fear in the air.

Spike tilted his head, staring more at Harmony than at the other two. She was starting to look a bit worried— as if perhaps she had done the wrong thing. Spike looked down at Riley, who was panting heavily, attempting to wriggle from beneath the vampire, who had his hips and thighs locked in a vice grip between his powerful legs, rocking against his pelvis with his own as he hummed in pleasure. Two thin trails of blood dribbled from the twin puncture marks in his neck. Harmony had been extra careful not to rip his throat.

After all, he had to be alive and alert for all of the fun.

It didn’t look at all comfortable for the captive soldier.

Wouldn’t be fair to worry her unnecessarily, would it?

Spike smirked at her devilishly, swaggering up to her. He held his bound wrists out to her, and Harmony temporarily used her knees to pin Riley’s wrists down, so that she could pull apart the plastic clamp that bound Spike. She smiled at him as the thin plastic fell broken to the ground, ineffectual. With a hard tug, Spike yanked the knife out of his thigh with a grunt, then held it before him, admiring the length of the blade. He looked back down at Harmony and smiled.

“Of course not, pet. But let’s not have your friend enjoy all the fun, yea?”

~~~~~

Buffy was rushing through Sunnydale, checking one place after another in a desperate attempt to find the traumatized, vulnerable vampire. She had been to the Bronze, the Magic Box, the corner store…and she couldn’t find Spike anywhere. She figured that the one place he wouldn’t be was at his crypt, considering that was the place where it had happened.

Buffy shook her head, feeling sickened by the unbidden images attempting to force their way into her mind’s eye.

Force. Definitely a bad choice of words there…

She sighed, focusing on her…dream. The brief, hot, Spike-sex—definitely no prophesy in that. Then there was her mother, and Spike as a young boy, so she assumed that was still the wacky subconscious coming into play.

But the chip…

His chip bursting into flames, Spike biting her— definitely some extreme warning bells going off there.

But he said he’d never hurt me. Buffy’s brow crinkled as she remembered another line from her dream.

I’ll kill him before he touches me again…

An all-consuming fear gripped her, and she knew she had to find Spike before something awful happened.

She just wasn’t sure what that something was.