As she sped up the Pacific Coast Highway, the traffic light late at night, the radio murmuring pop music, he stirred, and yawned.


"Hungry."


"Cooler's in the back."


He reached around. In the rearview mirror, she saw the lid lift, a blood bag float out and then disappear from the frame. When she looked back at him, he'd vamped out, and was using his left fang to tear with a curious delicacy at the plastic.


"Do you feel better now?"


"Could sleep for days." Bewilderment in his tone. He sucked down half the blood in one chug, and sighed.


"Anything coming together for you?"


Another sigh.


"Look, I have to ask."


"That so?"


Now she sighed.


He took another swallow. "Not like I'd keep it from you, would I, if there was anything to tell?"


"I really hope not."


A silence. He finished the blood, tossed the empty into the back seat. "You know I appreciate what you're doin' for me, yeah? I'm all alone an' lost, an' here you are, dropping everything to look after me. Even though I think you don't much care for this Spike punter."


"You're welcome. And that isn't true."


"Nah. Don't humor me. I'm not a kid, I can suss out a few things here."


He was putting her in her place—;at her distance—;again. Not that she could blame him, after how she'd given him the hot-and-cold treatment. After all the questions he'd asked that she'd deflected. He was far from stupid, he could see there were long stories, big truths, she was keeping back.


"I like you," she said. "I really do. You ...you're very easy to be with."


"Me."


"You, who I'm talking to right now."


"Ah. An' who am I?" The remark was meant to be rhetorical, issued in a dreamy voice as he turned to look out the window, into the night. After a few moments, he said, "Don't want you to call me Spike anymore."


This startled her. She turned the radio off. "It's your name."


"It's what this vampire fellow styles himself. The ripper of throats. Don't want to be called like that."


"Spike is who you are. Even when you got your soul, you were still Spike."


He frowned. "Spike's not me. This me you say you like—;must be quite different, yeah? Spike doesn't fit. Name for some brute-ish animal, some bloody social deviant thug. Sure you don't know any other name for me? Spike was a man once upon a time."


His words struck her like bile splashing up into the back of her throat, foul thick and corrosive. Guilt and regret. A name. He wants a name, Buffy. Pick a name. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Moe, Larry, Curly. "It might ... it might be William." Might? Might? Shit, he'd remember this conversation later, when he was himself again, he'd match it up to the last time she'd said that name to him, when she was disposing of him, and he'd hate her. He'd hate her if he didn't hate her already. She had to force herself to ease up her grip on the steering wheel, and keep her eyes on the glowing yellow line. Breathe, breathe.


"William?" Little aura of surprise. "William. Will. That's not bad. Infinitely better than bloody Spike. From now on, call me Will."


She could've choked. "I'm used to calling you Spike."


"An' now you can get used to calling me Will."


"I'll forget."


"Try."


What was it in that one word that brought forth her tears? They spurted out, like iron filings drawn to a magnet.


Spike didn't move, but after a couple of beats, said quietly, "Pull over, girl."


Parked on the shoulder, heart hammering, she sprang out of the car. He left her alone for a few minutes, staying behind as she paced, the gravel crunching beneath her soles, struggling to get herself under control. She took out her phone. Someone, someone, she needed someone to take this off her hands. Who would come? Even Andrew, she believed at that moment, would be more help than hindrance.


A touch at her elbow made her spin around. "Don't have to tell me, what's got you so upset. But don't cry."


"I'm fine."


"Sure you are." His voice could be like this sometimes, so gentle. She remembered other times he'd spoken to her so soothingly, given her such generous permission to be herself in his presence and pay him no more mind than she would or could.


"I could drive for a bit."


"You don't have a license."


"Won't speed. Won't need one."


It was a relief, to relinquish control of at least this one thing, for a little while. She could tell it pleased him too, to slide into the driver's side, to command something for a change.


"W-W-Will."


She saw him smile. "Buffy Summers."


"Take the next exit, okay? I want to get some coffee."







The exit led to an isolated strip— a gas station with a convenience store, and across the way, a Subway, both lit up with remorseless fluorescents, the sight of which sparked more sad, anxious memories.


"Spike told me once—" She was getting it already, referring to Spike as some absent third person! Even if she still couldn't quite bring herself to address him as Will. "—that some demons like to stand under fluorescent lights because it makes them twitch. Me, I hate them." She almost added, Spike thought I was a kind of demon, and that I wouldn't admit it out of perversity. Because if I did it would mean I wasn't really that different from him, deep down. But no, she wasn't going to get into that. How her thoughts betrayed her!


As if he sensed that she regretted the topic, he said only, "Want your coffee from the shit sandwich shop or the Stop 'n' Rob?"


"Uh—Stop 'n' Rob, please. We should top up the gas tank too."


Twenty minutes later, when she pulled out from the convenience store lot, doing eighty up the freeway on-ramp, listening out for the sound of sirens she dreaded hearing, Buffy had forgotten this little exchange, his ironic coinage. She'd walked in, was getting her drink while Spike did the fill-up, and was as startled as the lone clerk when the mulletted guy coming out of the men's room pulled a gun. He herded her behind the counter with the cashier, and there was nothing her slayer powers gave her that could disarm him.


Spike came barreling through the entrance in full game-face, getting the guy to spin around, to point the gun at him. Earning himself three bullets to the chest as he ran at the mullet, tackling him to the floor. Together they'd disarmed and bound him—Spike administering a punch or two "for holding a gun on my girl, you tosser!"—then fled before the clerk could calm down enough to really think about what he'd seen: the fangs, the man who'd taken three point-blank gunshots without even slowing down, much less bleeding out.


He was bleeding plenty now, all over the back seat of her rental car. "Christ, this burns. Got bruises on my bruises already, an' now there's holes in my bruises."


"I don't think we should stop yet. Drink some more blood."


"Whatever I pour in'll just pour out again, I'm a feckin' sieve," he grumbled, but she heard him fumbling with the cooler.


"You saved my life back there. Thank you."


"You'd have been all right."


"I'm not Supergirl. If I get shot, I die. It happened like that, once before. I would've died on the operating table, except my friend, a witch, got the bullet out with magic."


"Yeah? You must've been bloody scared just now, poor pet."


His sudden touch on her shoulder startled her. She flinched.


"Ssssh. Slow down."


She eased up a bit on the gas. His hand stayed put, cupping the curve of her neck into her shoulder. Steadying her. "That feels good," she whispered.


"We'll make it. You're doin' fine."


They arrived just before dawn. Buffy punched the security code into the keypad with shaky fingers, waited for the gates to open, and drove the last mile up through the private woods, to where the house nestled amidst trees on an abutment high over the ocean. Inside, jelly-kneed, thirsty and faint, she went around pulling the drapes on all the windows.


When she came back to Spike, he was in the kitchen, taking off the blood-sodden shreads of his teeshirt. Sight of the ragged red holes in his chest drew a moan from her.


The bullets had gone clean through, the exit wounds on his back just as gory. She offered a rueful smile. "I can tell you your shirt is a total loss, hope it wasn't your favorite one."


"Think I've another couple just like it."


She dug out the first-aid kit—there was always plenty of bandages and salves in a slayer house. "I'll fix you up."


"S'nothin'," he insisted. "Leave it."


"No." Buffy dabbed at the wounds with a warm wet washcloth, feeling sorry when he gasped and winced.


She made him lift his arms so she could wrap him round with gauze. He stood patiently for her ministrations, and when she'd snipped the end and taped it down, he caught and drew her close.


"Dunno what I would've done if you'd been hurt. Or killed."


Her throat had gone thick and dry; she couldn't speak. She couldn't not thread her arms around his waist. "Little girl, little girl, you're all a-tremble. You're exhausted." He tucked her head in beneath his chin, rocking her just slightly, a lulling motion that drew the last of the tension out of her as if by some charm.


"Stop 'n' Rob. Guess they call 'em that for a reason," she babbled. She wanted to just close her eyes and stay held like this forever, with her cheek nestled in the cool smooth curve of his neck.


"All a-tremble, poor pet," he repeated, steering her backwards, prodding and leading her numb stumbling body, out of the kitchen, up some stairs, into a large airy room. Half-stupid, half-asleep, she let him undress her and put her to bed. Was it her dream, or did he hover for a moment over her, as he pulled the sheet up? She held her arms out, coaxing, and when he dropped into them, she cozied at once into that same good place, against the column of his neck, and was out.