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.

16.
 

Spike knew that what had happened That Night (and yes, it bloody well belonged in capitals) had done more than just damage what little fellowship there was between him and the Slayer. It had been all but obliterated.

They couldn't seem to look at one another without the memory of being bound so tightly that they'd been in each other's minds, hearts ... hell, Spike was damned sure he'd touched her soul. Something in him still stung whenever he remembered the way she'd glowed brighter than all the magic in town, like his own personal sun. More than that, she'd been so sodding good; not pure—there was little in this world that was pure, Spike knew—but down in her bones and blood, the Slayer was nothing but good. He felt fouler for having touched her.

It made his skin itch, only he wasn't sure if it was because she was the absolute antithesis of what he was, or if it was because he wanted desperately to touch her again. In the middle of the day, when he couldn't sleep, he stared at the sunshine fighting its way through the dusty basement windows and feared that it was the latter.

He wanted to touch her.

To kill her, he reassured himself. But Spike had always been a bad liar.

If he was struggling with his new reactions to her, the Slayer was drowning herself in denial. She rarely looked at him, and when she did it was with disgust. She barely even spoke to him. And she never, ever touched him.

A calendar had appeared on the refrigerator the next afternoon. The twenty-fourth of December was circled in red, and December first through the third had been crossed off. So she had a goal now, though Spike sincerely doubted whether the spell caster gave a rat's ass if the Slayer got a Christmas tree and presents. Still, she'd redoubled their efforts, hauling home twice as many books as before and speeding up their patrols. She no longer hesitated before breaking down doors, no longer quibbled over the morality of invading people's homes to look for clues.

But there were no clues to be found, and the books kept turning up nothing but false hopes.

As the days passed, she seemed to grow more and more frantic, hunting desperately for an answer that Spike figured was beyond their timetable. She didn't argue with him about watching Passions anymore either, but he noticed that she shoved more books in his lap the minute it was over. The Slayer had become a ticking time bomb and the more she rushed, the more inclined he was to sit back and watch her blow.

On December eighteenth, Spike pointed out that his blood supply was running low. She ignored him, but the next day, when he got up, there were precisely enough new bags in the fridge to see him through till Christmas.

Well, at least she wasn't going to let him starve.

***

Spike had found a new hobby, but it wasn't one that he would admit to enjoying. Slayer-watching used to be all about picking her apart, trying to find her weaknesses so that he could exploit them in a fight, or looking for ways to kill her. Back when he'd first rolled into town, he'd realized quickly that he didn't have the luxury of fighting her himself, though. Dru had needed a cure. Hence his having to resort to assassins and flunkies when he'd much rather have dealt with the Slayer problem personally.

Still, watching Buffy now, he wondered if he and Dru would have survived a fortnight in Sunnydale if the Slayer had pursued him with the same single-minded determination she was giving to this spell.

There were bruises beneath her eyes, and her whole body seemed poised and tight. She hadn't slept the night before, he suspected. She'd been in the same place when he'd come up from the basement as she'd been in when he'd gone down there the night before. She'd showered at some point and changed clothes, but when he'd poked his head into her room after his own shower, it hadn't smelled slept in recently— and that was purely a predatory thing, knowing what your enemy's bed smelt like after they'd had a lie-in.

A huge mug of coffee sat amongst her piles of books, and every hour or so she'd refill it. It didn't seem to be helping her reading comprehension, though; she kept blinking, scrubbing her eyes and then rereading the same page. Her head sometimes nodded, then jerked up again. Spike bet himself three cigarettes that she'd pass out before sundown.

He won his bet. Good thing he hadn't had to count on her staying awake for days on end.

She finally nodded off around four, and Spike briefly considered dropping a huge stack of books or turning the TV on full volume to wake her up. Still, it had been weeks since he'd had the chance to observe her for an extended period while she was unconscious. She'd lost weight, he noted; her sharp features had taken on a strained cast, even in sleep. Her lashes lay thick and heavy over her cheeks. Her tan was fading as well, though her skin still looked sun-kissed. His fingers itched to push into her thick, golden curls, and he salivated a little when she turned slightly in her sleep, exposing her throat to him.

It would be so easy to take her now, and god, how he wanted to. He was nearly sick with bloodlust.

But the truly sick thing was that he didn't want to kill her. Oh, he wanted to sink his fangs in and drink deep, but he wanted to taste her more. Bite her luscious lips, lick the warm place below her ear where her pulse pounded, unbutton her blouse just one more button so he could dip his nose into her cleavage and ...

Swearing, Spike stood and stretched.

It was a side effect of that bloody trance, he was sure. Oh, he'd thought about shagging her before, but only in an offhand he-was-male-she-was-female sort of way. There hadn't been this consuming curiosity to know what she tasted like after nearly a gallon of coffee, or how she'd moan if he ...

Spike glared down at the sleeping Slayer. He should snap her neck and be done with it. Only he couldn't. He needed her.

Sod this.

He stormed into the kitchen and went straight for his blood. He wasn't actually hungry, but the thought of downing a bag of the stuff kept him from wanting to vent his frustration in other, more destructive ways. Like pinning her to the couch and tearing out her throat. Or flipping her onto her stomach and driving himself into her from ...

"Bloody hell." He skipped the mug and stuck the bag in the microwave, then watched it spin, wishing he could be thralled. He needed to get out of his own bloody head.

Hell, he needed to get out of her house. Everywhere he turned he smelled her or saw her or some little reminder that this was her territory, not his, that he was an interloper and an unwelcome one at that. All he had to do was cock up just once and she'd stake him, and that was beginning to seem like an almost welcome relief to let him escape the torment of his thoughts.

He was a vampire. William the Bloody. The girl ought to be dead and sod the consequences.

Only she wasn't, and wouldn't be, and he'd promised, and she looked so fucking delectable in her sleep like this, with her pouty lower lip. Now that his tongue knew her taste; now that his hand knew the exact weight of one of her small, perfect, perky little tits; now that he had been so close to getting inside the heat of her body—it was so fucking hard not to lean down and take just a tiny—

He gagged as her fingers threatened to crush his windpipe. Not that he needed his windpipe. Except for talking. There was that.

"You want to explain exactly what it is you're doing?"

Buffy glared up at him, and he realized that he'd somehow gone from the kitchen back to the living room and he was leaning over her prone body. Fucking instincts. A busted trachea was precisely what he needed to make his night just bloody perfect.

He choked for a second, then gestured for her to let him go, since talking with compressed vocal cords and lack of air was a physical impossibility not even vampire metaphysics could overcome.

She loosened her grip enough that he could speak, but not quite enough to let him think she wouldn't pluck his Adam's apple out if he didn't answer in a way that involved sunshine and puppies.

"Sun's down," he said, seizing on the first thing that came to mind. Thankfully, he'd known when it had hit the horizon. "Was gonna wake you up for patrol."

"With your fangs?"

Oh. Bollocks. "Just made some dinner," he said. "Hungry. Was about to go and—"

"Save it," she said, and shoved him off her. He hit the coffee table and took out half its contents on his way to the floor. "I know what you were thinking, so don't bother."

She had no bloody clue what he was thinking. Hell, he had no bloody clue what he was thinking.

"Think what you like," he snarled, and picked himself up, then stormed out of the room. God he hated that bitch.

In the kitchen he tore into his slightly overcooked blood and downed it in several long pulls. It was too hot, and he felt it blister his tongue. He swore he still had Buffy taste in his mouth, even though he'd used half a bottle of mouthwash That Night after they'd gotten back. She'd used the other half. He'd found the empty bottle in the trash the next day.

She came into the kitchen a moment later, refilled her coffee mug, then glared at him over the rim. "I knew I couldn't trust you," she said.

"I didn't do anything," he said. "Was just waking you up."

"Uh huh. Right. And you went out and got a soul while I was sleeping."

"Bitch."

"Demon."

And that was really all there was to say about that.

***

Patrol moved quickly. They'd left when there was still a tinge of sunlight left on the horizon and the moon had yet to rise. This time they were covering the downtown area. Buffy had muttered something about Ethan and his costume shop, so Spike assumed they were still on the lookout for the missing mage. The Slayer moved with purpose, the heels of her sexy little boots pounding on the pavement. Spike sauntered after her, content to stay just a little behind for now.

Honestly, he was enjoying the view. Her tail was twitchy when she was brassed off, and tonight she'd worn a pair of leather pants that might as well have been painted on. So he watched her swish, and thought about killing her, and smoked, and waited for her to find whatever it was she thought she was looking for.

Except he found something first.

He wasn't sure what it was that first alerted him. Maybe it was the slightly sub-audible whimper, or the subtle (but oh-so-delicious) sound of bones cracking. Maybe it was the scent, shifting between human and animal and female in heat so quickly he wasn't certain which was what. All he knew was that his feet stopped dead just outside of the Bronze, with its closed doors and dark neon signs. His head swiveled toward the building with the certainty of a hundred-plus years of predatory instinct.

And of course the bint kept tromping on, oblivious.

"Hold up, Slayer," Spike called, pitching his voice low enough for her ears but not loud enough to be heard inside the building. Buffy came to a halt several feet away and turned to him with a frustrated glare. He touched a finger to his lips, then gestured at the building.

"There's something in there," he said quietly. "Something moving around."

That perked her up. She approached silently, scanned the building, then gestured down one of the alleys. "There's a door in back, we can sneak in that way."

He slanted her a glance. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

Their gazes met, and he saw just when she twigged to the memory. Of course he bloody well knew where the back door was.

They slid around the building like ghosts, all of Spike's senses pricked to try to figure out what was happening inside. Every so often he would get another whiff of the shifting scent. He thought it smelled familiar, but he couldn't be certain. There were too many other scents in the way.

There was a van parked in back, a driver asleep at the wheel. It was loaded with musical equipment, but Spike couldn't tell if they'd been loading or unloading when the spell kicked in. Shy had been painted on the side of the van doors. The big metal door at the Bronze's loading dock was open; most of a drum set and several large speakers were stacked inside.

The sounds were coming from down a hallway, behind the stage.

He gestured, and the Slayer fell in beside him, a stake in her hand. He wasn't sure if it was for whatever nasty they were about to find, or if it was for him if she thought he was messing with her. In her current mood it could have been either.

Another whimper led them to a curtained-off doorway. Spike paused just outside and shifted into game face. He sniffed: female, animal, pheromones strong enough to give him a cockstand—provided he hadn't already had one from watching the Slayer's tail. He didn't hear anything moving though, and the breathing coming from the room was still that of creatures sound asleep. He pushed aside the curtain.

"Oh, crap," Buffy whispered. She needn't have bothered. They were all fast asleep, caught in the spell like everyone else. Including the werewolf that was still going through her transformation right in the middle of the room. Spike frowned.

"What's taking her so long?" he asked. "I thought they changed when the moon rose."

"They do," Buffy said. "I-I don't know."

He looked at her, sharply. "One of your little friends is a wolf, isn't he? The one that took my ring to Angel. Knew this smelled familiar."

"Oz didn't mention running into you," Buffy said. "Then again, Oz rarely mentions anything."

Spike snorted in disgust. "He tell you what your wanker of an ex did with my ring?"

"It wasn't your ring, Spike," she said, her eyes still fixed on the mangled form of the woman in mid-transformation. "And no, he didn't."

"I found it, makes it mine," he said with a sniff. "Not that it matters now that Angel smashed it to smithereens. Bloody priceless relic and he—"

"Shut up, Spike." Buffy knelt beside the werewolf. "This is wrong," she said. "It's taking her too long to change. Why?"

"How long's it usually take?"

"Not this long. Couple of minutes, tops."

"You know her?" he asked. She shook her head.

"No. If she's with the band—"

They both looked around at the guys draped over the furniture, half-drunk beers still sitting beside them. There was a flyer on one of the makeup mirrors. Spike recognized it. He ripped it off and looked at it closer.

"Think this is her," he said, pointing at the picture of the sultry blonde girl on the flyer. "Gotta say, I prefer my women without a full body beard."

"Ew," Buffy said. "Do you think ... Will she wake up, when the transformation's complete?"

Spike glanced at the room, and at the woman's clothes. "Doubt it," he said. "Look, this isn't the first time she's changed since the spell was cast. There was a full moon couple of nights after I woke you, I think. See here? Her clothes are already shredded."

He picked up the remnants of what had once been a nice pair of lady's Doc Marten boots. It looked like they'd had a bad date with a weed whacker, but the girl's toes were still mostly human.

"Okay, so, the spell doesn't wake her ... but it doesn't stop her from transforming," Buffy said. "It just slows it down. Everyone in here is still intact, and you'd think she'd have gone after them first if she'd woken up before."

"I would have," Spike said, without thinking. When she glared at him, he shrugged. "Well, I would have. Though maybe not the way she would."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

He sniffed, then leered. "Bitch is in heat."

"You are such a pig."

"She is, Slayer. If you had my nose, you'd smell it yourself. She's ready to breed, and she'd be looking for a male to mount her."

"And again I say, ew." Buffy scrunched her nose up adorably. Spike caught himself. No, not adorably. Annoyingly. That's what it was. Bloody annoying. And rabbity. So there.

"It's biology, Slayer. Look it up."

"Oz couldn't have turned her," she said, apparently ignoring him. He hated it when she did that. She shouldn't ignore him. He was still the only real danger in the room. Instead she had a thoughtful look on her face. "We keep him locked up during full moons."

"Nice friend you are ..."

"He asks us to."

"Kinky."

"Shut up, Spike." Buffy examined the human males in the room. "I wonder why she didn't turn her band?"

"Pack might draw attention," Spike said. "Or she's still new."

"Maybe," Buffy said. Then she frowned. "So ... if she was looking for someone to breed with when in werewolf form, it's kinda unlikely Mr. Right Now would be human, huh?"

Spike looked at the slowly shifting female on the floor. "She'd want another werewolf," he said. "Know a few demons that don't mind fur, but they wouldn't be able to breed with her. Like calls to like."

"But the only other werewolf in town is Oz, and he's got a girlfriend," Buffy said, drawing Spike's gaze again. She was nibbling on her lower lip. He'd be willing to help her with that, if she wanted.

He caught himself, then snorted. "Not when the moon's full, he doesn't. He might be human most of the time, Slayer. But when he's like this he's as demon as I am. More, even. Girlfriend? Bugger that. He's just an animal. He'd get one whiff of this one, and you'd be dealing with a litter no one would want to adopt. Ever."

"Oz isn't—"

"A demon?" Spike asked, quirking an eyebrow in her direction. "Why, cause he's got a soul?" He advanced on her slowly, barely aware of his own movements. He was feeling a little dizzy, and she smelled so ... damn ... good. He wanted to nuzzle her neck, figure out where that scent that was just Buffy was coming from. "Trust me, Slayer. When he's wolfed out, his soul is somewhere else entirely. All he cares about is that gnawin' empty pit of a stomach of his, and where he can stick his—"

She punched him, hard. Which cleared his head a little, so he probably ought to thank her.

Instead he snarled. "What the hell was that for?"

"Being stalky," she said. Then she paused and studied him intently for a minute. "Are you hungry?"

"Ravenous." He was, actually. Not to mention horny as hell. He shook his head to clear it. "Bloody pheromones in here are messing with me. Mind if I wait in the hall?"

"We're leaving," she said.

"What about she-wolf?"

Buffy glanced down at the girl who was sleeping through her slow morph. A bone splintered and began to reshape. Spike winced. Probably better for her that she was asleep after all. "We'll ... come back in a little bit. I want to check something ... and make sure you've fed."

Spike shrugged. Sounded like a decent plan to him. Provided he could slip off somewhere for a few minutes and take care of his other little problem Except there was nothing little about it, thank you.

***

They stopped back at the house, and Spike downed two more bags of blood while the Slayer watched to be sure he'd fed. She tried to press a third on him, but he told her too much made him feel bloated. Apparently the threat of vampire vomit was enough to dissuade her from force-feeding him more. Maybe he'd scared her more, earlier, than he'd thought.

It should have pleased him to know he'd finally unsettled her.

Instead it left him feeling out of sorts.

The 'other thing' she'd wanted to check turned out to, once more, be all the way across town. They slipped into the dorm building and up to a room that smelled familiar as hell. Buffy broke the lock. To Spike's surprise, however, when he went to lean against the invisible barrier to the room, there was none. He stumbled across the threshold, then righted himself with a grin.

"Huh," he said. "What do you know? A room I can enter. No humans in residence." He tipped an imaginary hat to the sleeping werewolf, who was still going through his painful transformation process.

Buffy looked around wildly as if she could figure out how to put the barrier back up by herself. "Get out."

"Nah, don't think I will," Spike said, then the kid's vinyl collection caught his attention. "Bloody hell, is that a Lurkers album? This one has taste, Slayer. Try not to let him get killed." He flicked through the stack of LPs with a connoisseur's eye.

"You shouldn't be in here," she said.

Spike was hunting around, looking for a turntable. "You ever listen to Slaughter and the Dogs, Slayer?"

"You ever listen to Dust in the Wind, Spike?"

"Kansas? Bunch of nancy—Ah, there you are!" He shifted aside a bag of laundry that stank of eau-de-teenwolf and found the turntable, then busied himself sorting through the stacks of vinyl. He found the one he wanted and slipped it from its cover with reverence, gently laying it in place. A flick of the power switch, set the needle just so ... Spike closed his eyes to savor the static hiss you only heard when listening to times long past.

The angry screech of guitars and bass filled the air, accompanied by the violent beat of the drums. Voices Spike had once heard live chanted: "Shadow! Shadow! Shadow! Shadow! My heart's in the shadows! My heart's in the shadows!" If he closed his eyes he was right back in Manchester, in a tiny little club full of juicy human bodies slamming against each other to a beat that reverberated in his dead chest.

A beat that died the next moment with a pathetic kind of warble.

He opened his eyes to see the Slayer holding the end of the disconnected power cord. He glared. "Do you mind? I was havin' a moment."

"Your moment was giving me a migraine," she said. She shoved him out of the way and reached for the needle. Spike smacked her hand away, then gently removed the needle and slid the record back in its sleeve with care. He sneered at her.

"Spoil all my fun."

"Comes with the job title. Protect the world from demons and vampires with bad taste in music," she said.

"You're insulting your wolf-friend, too, you know."

She rolled her eyes and strolled back over to the bed. He replaced the LP, then joined her. Spike tilted his head to the side and watched the boy's ribcage realign in slow motion. "Looks painful."

"I wish there was something I could do."

"Be glad he's unconscious?" Really, what was the point of worrying about the boy's pain when he wasn't even aware of it.

"Why do you think it's taking so long?" She made a face.

Spike thought about it. "Are we bein' logical now? All right … everyone in town is asleep, yeah? But they're not starving to death or pissin' themselves or gettin' bed sores or any of the stuff you'd normally worry about with someone in a coma. Bugs are asleep. Food doesn't rot. Blood doesn't go bad. Corpses don't decompose—" He frowned. "Plants aren't growin', either."

"Yes, they are," Buffy said. "I noticed the other day that the grass was a little taller. Not much, but ..."

"Do wounds heal?" Spike asked.

"Yeah," she said. "In the hospital, there were injured people, but they're healing. What does that mean, exactly?"

"Means the spell not only put everyone to sleep, it slowed down most biological processes," he explained.

"Huh?" Ah, there was the vapid cheerleader again. "You know a word like biological?"

"Stuff it, Slayer. Look, I'm not a bloody scientist. Best I can suss out is that the spell didn't stop time, otherwise you and me wouldn't be able to do much. But it slowed down most biological processes," he enunciated the words extra, just to piss her off, "so they sleep but they can't die from starvation. So the whole town doesn't rot round their ears."

"But you and me?" she asked.

"We're awake," Spike said. "We're outside that part of the spell."

"Okay, but, if it slows down biological stuff, then why would they shift at all?" Buffy gestured at the wolfboy.

"Because that's not all biological, is it? It's magic. Metaphysics. Same with me shifting faces; it's got nothin' to do with the natural order of things. But since it mucks with their biology, the spell is slowing the whole process down."

For a moment they both watched the boy writhe on the bed, his body contorting in sleep to conform to his new shape, the bones of his face rearranging. It was gruesome and fascinating. Spike had watched Angelus pull a man apart once, piece by piece. It was something like that, only slightly less gory. He shuddered, remembering the way Angel had hooked his fingers under the screaming man's upper jaw and then ripped off most of his face. Some memories really stuck with you.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Buffy said.

"I sincerely doubt it," Spike said. Then he took in the worried expression on her face. "What?"

"It's just, whoever cast this—they thought it through, didn't they? And ... and it's powerful. Really powerful. Maybe too powerful." She looked, for the first time, overwhelmed.

Spike laughed. "Since when has that ever stopped you?" he asked. Startled, her gaze flew to his. He grinned. "What, you thought I woke you up to fix this because of your sunny personality and sparkling intellect?"

"I thought it was because I was the only one you could wake up."

"That, too," Spike said, unashamed of honesty. "But the truth is, Slayer, you have an annoying habit of winning. And this once—just this once—it's gonna work in my favor."