Betaed by: Goblin_Dae, Science, and Subtilior

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all recognizable characters, locations, and dialogue belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the various writers. This is written purely for fun.

14.

Spike knew it annoyed her when he watched TV instead of researching. Hell, that was mostly why he'd started doing it—then he'd gotten hooked. Say what you will about Americans and their lack of culture, at least they knew how to make soap operas bloody riveting. Today was promising to be good, too. Tabitha's house was unleashing unspeakable evil. Timmy was in the holiday spirit. That Charity chit was down in the basement with things that whispered at her ...

All in all, it was an hour in which he could forget his circumstances, namely: boring old books that he was becoming increasingly certain held nothing but a load of crap that wasn't going to help them, and his thrice-damned promise not to kill anything.

Despite needing to so badly his fangs itched.

One did not just give up a sodding century of bloodshed easily. Oh, sure, in the first few days he might have been properly worried about what would happen if he ate the townies. He still was. But there was at least one person in town he could kill, who just so happened to be the one person he wanted to kill, and unfortunately was the one person he shouldn't kill if he ever wanted to leave Sunnyhell again. It was like a massive conspiracy to see how long it took to drive him round the bend.

So, he watched Passions.

And fought back with every dirty, underhanded, immature trick in his extensive arsenal. The coffee mug thing had been sheer brilliance—

There was a ratcheting sound, and sunlight flooded the room.

"Bloody hell!" Spike tumbled backward, knocking over the chair to get away from the searing light.

"It's just so dark in here," Buffy said. "It's like a tomb."

He scrambled into the nearest shadow and watched with horror as she marched over to the next window and pulled back the curtains, then yanked open the blinds. And there went his nice shadow again. "What the hell are you doing?" He knew he looked ridiculous, crab-crawling into the nearest convenient bit of shade, but clearly she'd gone completely carrot-top.

"Oh," she said. "Just cleaning up." Her tone might sound airy, but he could hear the steel under it.

Spike scrambled to his feet in the relative safety of the foyer, squinting against the bright morning light that was filling the living room—and keeping him from his show.

"Come on, Slayer. I can't possibly research—"

She stood in the middle of the living room, her hands on her hips, her disheveled hair a golden halo in the sunlight. "Research?" she said, and suddenly Spike had an inkling of exactly how an angel might be terrible to behold—hand the bitch a flaming-sword and she'd send him straight to hell. "Don't pretend like you were planning to do anything other than sit in that stupid chair and watch that stupid show."

"It's only—"

"An hour, I know," she said, slowly stalking forward. "Just an hour. One measly hour of evil witches and talking dolls and stupid love triangles and really bad acting. One more hour in which I'm stuck with you."

"Slayer," he said, but she was still advancing, and there was dust in her eyes. His dust.

She threw open the front door.

Spike yelled again, feeling the light sizzle across his face and desperately backed into the dining room. This wasn't what he'd expected; he knew he was driving her nuts but he hadn't expected to actually, you know, drive her nuts. He barely had time to glance in horror between her and the bloody huge windows in the room before she was yanking open the curtains.

"What's the matter, Spike? I thought you might like a little fresh air."

"Are you completely daft, you stupid—"

She practically tore the curtains open on the next window and Spike found himself backed into the kitchen. On the upside, the kitchen didn't face east. That was the front of the house. On the downside—Buffy reached for a wooden spoon—lots of small wooden implements.

Bloody buggering fuck.

"Slayer ..." he said.

Only she'd clearly left reasonable several miles back. She yanked up the blinds over the sink. He flinched, though the light didn't enter deep enough into the room to do any damage. Still, there was enough indirect light in the room to make him nervous. He backed toward the safety of the basement and fumbled behind him for the doorknob.

"I hate you," she said, and advanced on him. "I hate you, and your nasty blood in my microwave, and your snarky commentary on everything, and your stupid TV show."

The doorknob twisted and he stumbled down the basement stairs backwards. Buffy followed, wooden spoon griped tight in her fist, looking more than a little like a deranged killer in some cheesy horror flick.

"I hate that you use my stuff, and that you're in my house, and that I have to put up with you every single day. I hate that I can't even get rid of you when I sleep, and by the way, my name is nowhere near as stupid as yours, Mr. The Bloody."

Spike blinked. That had come out of nowhere.

They'd reached the basement now, and Spike swore when his foot tangled in the towel that he'd tossed down earlier to add to the laundry.

"Would it kill you to clean up after yourself?" she asked, smirking.

"Yeah, sorry about that," he said, carefully. When her eyes flicked over the rest of the basement, Spike saw his chance.

He bent and scooped up the towel, then flung it at her face with all the speed a century of undeath had given him. Startled, she dropped the spoon, and Spike kicked it out of her reach. It skidded over the cement to fetch up beneath a low workbench. Sputtering, she disentangled herself from the towel, then launched herself at him.

Only here they were finally on equal footing. They traded blows, Spike giving her as good as he got. He grinned, enjoying the fight. It was the first real action he'd had in weeks, and he was full of pent up energy.

Even though there was murder in her eyes, he could tell she needed this just as badly as he did. They were creatures of action, not scholars or sorcerers. He knew if solving this spell had been a matter of using fists and fangs, they'd have cracked it weeks ago. Since they hadn't, all their need for physical exertion had been bottled until the pressure was so much they'd needed this crack.

She got in a punch to his face that split his lip and nearly broke his nose. He managed to deflect her flurry of kicks, then got her once, hard, across her jaw before slamming an elbow into her stomach. Abruptly she cried out, doubling up.

That was odd, he thought. Still, no sense wasting the moment.

It took less than a few seconds for him to swipe her feet out from under her and pounce. He pinned her to the floor, using his hands to lock her wrists down. His feet tangled with hers as he leaned his entire body weight on top of her. She struggled beneath him, wiggling in a way that had him hard almost instantly.

He smelled blood. Slayer blood.

Instincts kicked in, and he felt his face bones shift, his fangs elongate. She was so warm beneath him, her whole body practically throbbing with her heartbeat. He leaned down and sniffed at her throat, he could almost taste the salt of her sweat and the coppery sweetness of her blood and the musky ...

Hold on.

Spike leaned back and stared down at her. She was crying. Her whole body shook with sobs.

And her blood smelled … wrong. Not off, exactly, but like ...

"Bloody hell," he muttered.

She just sobbed harder. So he slapped her.

Shocked, she turned her big, wet, green eyes up to meet his gaze. Deliberately he shook off his bumpies.

"Is that what this has been about?" he demanded.

Fuck. Her whole face just sort of crumpled up like a Muppet's when she cried. Spike tilted his head back and fought for patience. It wasn't like he had a lot of experience with this sort of thing.

"I'm gonna let you up," he told her. "And you're not gonna to hit me."

Her eyes turned squinty.

Right. They were gonna do this the hard way.

He let her up. She hit him. He punched her in the stomach again. She whimpered, her arms wrapping protectively around her lower abdomen. Spike didn't wait for another chance. He drove a shoulder into her gut, wrapped an arm around the back of her thighs, and hoisted the Slayer over his shoulder. Then he clamped both arms around her legs to keep her still.

Of course, she chose that moment to start hitting him in the kidneys. Good thing he didn't actually need his kidneys.

Spike marched up the basement stairs with the furiously squirming Slayer tossed over his shoulder like a side of meat. Angry meat.

Avoiding the dining room, he went through the door from the kitchen to the breezeway. The front door was still open, flooding the foyer with light. Spike gritted his teeth and walked through it; he felt his skin start to smoke as he turned to go up the stairs.

Buffy wriggled and fought, swearing at him. Spike slapped his hand over her ass, then slid his palm down to the top of one thigh. His fingertips barely brushed the molten hot place between her legs. She froze, just like he knew she would.

Then she struggled harder against his iron grip.

"If you don't knock it off, I'll drop you headfirst over the stair rail. See how well you recover from a broken back."

"... you worthless, disgusting, piece of—put me down!" she ordered.

"In a minute," he said. The scent was stronger now, only it wasn't the clean, delicious scent of fresh blood. No, this was dead blood, just a bit of it, and it was sickly sweet.

Angel would have had a hard-on. Hell, Angel probably would have tossed her down on the stairs, yanked off her trousers and had himself a little feast before jamming his knob in her bloody, twitchy, hot little cunt. It was the sort of thing Angel had liked to do back before the whole soul business. Tempting as the thought might be, however, Spike was more interested in keeping himself undusted.

He kicked the bathroom door wide open, strode over to the shower, turned it on, and cranked up the temperature. Then he deposited her on the countertop, holding her in place with his hands on her shoulders. Fury seemed to have given way to sullen bewilderment; she didn't fight his hold.

"Here's what's going to happen," he told her. "You're gonna take a long hot shower and clean yourself up cause the scent of your blood is making me hungry. Then you're gonna come downstairs, and we'll research. Sorry you've got your monthlies, but you can damn well take it out on the books instead of me."

He stepped out of the bathroom before she could argue, slamming the door behind him. "Bloody women," he muttered as he stomped down the stairs.

***

It seemed to Spike that it took her forever to finish her shower and another century on top of that to venture downstairs. He was waiting in the foyer for her, and he gauged her mood from the expression on her face. Embarrassment seemed to be reigning at the moment, but there was still some irritation, and she winced when she took each step.

He held out a bottle of pain relievers and a glass of water. Her eyes flicked to the offerings, then to the living room.

"You closed the blinds," she said.

"Bloody brilliant you are."

She glowered at him. He didn't bother to try to hide the seared skin on his face, hands, arms and chest. It wasn't too bad; he could move quickly when the occasion warranted, after all.

"We have work to do, and I'm not much help when I'm a big pile of dust." He held out the pills and the water again. She frowned.

"What's this?"

"Unlife insurance." He raised an eyebrow at her. After a minute she took the pill bottle, inspected the label, then the pills inside—likely to be sure he hadn't switched them for something more sinister, which he hadn't, though the thought had occurred—then downed two of them and chased them with the water.

"I'm not thanking you," she said, her eyes narrow. "You're a real jerk."

"And you're a bitch, even when you're not on the rag. Don't we make a right pair?" He eyed her warily. "You gonna open all the drapes again?"

"No," she said, then sighed. Spike watched her wrap one arm around her abdomen, then drop it. She looked miserable, and Spike was male enough that the entire process baffled and vaguely horrified him. His Victorian upbringing had ignored the finer intricacies of women's plumbing as if it only existed for the purpose of popping out sprogs. Which, technically ... She winced again. Spike felt an odd twinge of sympathy. He had plenty of experience with sick women—this illness was just a bit more mundane than he was used to.

"Is there ..." He shuffled his feet slightly. "Is there something I can do?"

She glanced at him, her big eyes startled. Then they got all squinty again. He hated that look. "I mean," he said through gritted teeth. "Aside from dusting myself, breaking the soddin' spell miraculously, or buggering the hell off ... Is there, I dunno, somethin' that'll make you more comfortable—and, fuck, I cannot believe I just asked that."

"Me neither," she said. Then she looked speculative. "Do we have any chocolate?"

***

Spike watched the Slayer surreptitiously over his copy of A Treatise On Modern Witchcraft and the Problem of Contiguous Time. She was curled into her little pillow nest, wrapped in blankets ("Spike, could you get me the blankets out of the hall closet?"), with a heating pad against her lower back ("Spike, plug this in over there ...") and a big bag of Halloween chocolates that she'd unearthed from somewhere. She wasn't wearing any makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a simple queue at the nape of her neck. Her gray sweatpants were rolled up to midcalf and paired with an over-sized t-shirt that had been washed so many times that it looked as soft as skin. It clung in all kinds of interesting places, and he found his gaze dipping to those spots whenever she shifted.

His eyes were starting to ache a little from all the bobbling going on.

Every so often Buffy would wince or give out a little pain-filled moan. She'd done something to stop up her leaky bits so that he no longer could smell blood on her, but the hormones racing through her body made her scent a bit different than usual. He was tempted several times to vamp out, just to see whether he could sense other changes in her. His senses were sharper when he was fangy; he'd probably be able to hear the things going on inside her that were making her wince. Of course, she'd likely stake him with her pencil if he did, so instead he just watched.

And did his best to hide the cockstand he'd inexplicably acquired during his long perusal.

Disgusted with himself, Spike tried to read some more. She wasn't even his type—okay, so she was female, which was pretty much his type, but he generally liked his women tall and dark and mysterious. Not compact and muscular and bottle-blonde. Besides that, she was bloody disgusting at the moment: scrubbed clean of her usual cosmetics, dressed in men's clothes, probably next to naked underneath ... Not to mention all that weird human female stuff going on.

Oh, who the fuck was he kidding? She was bloody delicious like this. Vulnerable, sexy, and best of all, dripping like a coffee pot. She'd probably be repulsed by that thought, but hey, he was a vampire. Blood was sort of his thing. It made everything better.

"What are you staring at?" she asked, and he realized that he was watching her perky little tits dance under her top again.

Impulse said, tell her and shock her. Self preservation, however, won out with an eloquent, "Nothin'."

"You were not staring at nothing," she said. "You were staring at me. Why?"

Was wondering how much weight you were gonna pack on scarfing chocolates. I was wondering what color your nips are when they're all pointy like that. I was wondering if you'd let me lay between your thighs for the next three days and feast like a—

"You've got a bit of chocolate ..." He gestured vaguely at her face, which was utterly devoid of chocolate of any sort. She swiped at her lips. "There, you got it."

"Thanks—" Her eyes met his, then widened with horror.

"Don't mention it," he said, feeling more than a little horrified himself. "Ever. To Anyone." Fuck. If this ever got out in the local demon community, he might as well stake himself. Making nice with the Slayer? He ought to be decorating the room with her entrails not ... whatever the fuck he was doing.

They sat in silence for a while longer, Buffy reading while Spike pretended to. His brain kept sucking him back into a cycle of blood and sex and violence, until he was hungry, hard, and bored as hell with the dry text in front of him. Finally he put it down. "You want to patrol?"

Buffy looked up at him. Her face was pale. "Uh, it's not quite sunset and ... not really." She winced again, barely a flinch of her eyes but it was there.

"Hurts?" he asked, feeling uncomfortable and sort of helpless. Not that he wanted to help her or anything, and not like there was anything he could actually do even if he did. Which he didn't. Not at all. Not in a hundred, thousand years.

"Legs are kinda sore," she admitted.

"Something I can get you?" he asked. Fucking mouth, always ran off before his brain and better judgment could catch it and beat it to a pulp.

"No," she said. He resisted the impulse to scrub his hand over his face with relief.

She tilted her head back against the couch and closed her eyes.

Bloody hell, he thought, and stared at the long column of her throat that she'd unthinkingly bared to him. Mustn't vamp, she'll stake me.

He got up and headed for the kitchen. Blood. He'd heat up some blood, take it down to the basement, and have a good long wank. Or maybe several short ones. That's what he'd do.

"You're going to the kitchen? Would you bring me back some hot chocolate? There's those little mix packets in the pantry."

He froze, halfway to freedom. Fuck. How did women manage to sound both bossy and plaintive at the same time? "Yeah," he heard himself answer. "Sure. I can do that."

In the kitchen he found the packets just where she said they'd be. He read the instructions on the back, then realized that all the mugs were in the dishwasher. He was halfway through emptying the thing and putting the dishes away when he froze, a mug in his hand.

What the hell was he doing? He was William the goddamn Bloody, for chrissakes. He was not the Slayer's butler, not her caretaker, not her sodding houseboy. They weren't friends. He hated the bitch. So what the hell was he doing emptying her fucking dishwasher and preparing to make her a mug of cocoa? His hand tightened so hard on the mug that it cracked.

"Spike?" Her voice floated out of the living room, suspicious and wary. "What are you doing?"

"Making you hot chocolate, you bloody wench," he growled back. She was quiet for a full thirty seconds.

"Can you put in two packets so it's extra chocolatey?" she asked.

Spike swore, first in English, then in German for good measure. "Yeah," he said, and tossed the pieces of mug into the rubbish bin.

The problem, he decided as he popped a mug full of hot water into the microwave, was that he was such a bloody pushover when it came to sick women. After all, he'd spent the better part of almost a hundred and fifty years (if you counted time spent amongst the living, which he sometimes did) taking care of sick women. First his mum—and there was a topic best left dead and buried—then Dru. Not that Dru had always been sick, exactly. But she'd always needed a caretaker of sorts. Then after Prague, she'd just been so weak ...

For a moment, Spike missed her so much it physically ached. He wasn't used to this, still. Dru had been such a part of his life for so long that less than a year apart hadn't taught him yet not to reach for her automatically, not to perk up in the middle of the day if he imagined she'd whimpered somewhere near.

Clearly, it also hadn't cured him of his nursemaid tendencies. He'd merely transferred them onto the nearest sickly female—no matter that that female happened to be his bloody arch-nemesis.

On the other hand—a hormonal Slayer with violent mood swings was irrational and dangerous. Playing nice with her right now would keep him alive. Well, as alive as he could get, at any rate. Which was the only reason why he was adding two packets of chocolate to the mug of hot water, and swearing when the cup overflowed a little on the counter.

He did his best to glare and look absolutely ungracious when he handed it over to her, but, of course, she ignored him right until he was about to sit down. Then she perked up. Her eyes were doing that big, vulnerable, please-help-me thing again and Spike braced himself for what was about to come out of her mouth.

"Do you ... since I'm not feeling patrol-y tonight, uh … would you put in a movie for me? The tapes are in the cabinet over there."

Spike gritted his teeth. Of course she didn't ask if he minded watching a movie. Or even if he wanted to watch it with her, which he didn't—though it might be a nice change of pace. There wasn't even a "please" in there. And what happened to 'an hour with you watching Passions is an hour wasted'?

He wandered over to the cabinet indicated and opened it up. "What'd you have in mind?" he asked. Huh. The Slayer had a decent collection of martial arts flicks. This might not be so bad after all.

"I want to watch The Breakfast Club."

Oh. Bloody. Hell.