Buffy took her club soda and left the bar to find a table while Spike collected the rest of his order.  Over in the corner, someone put a quarter in the ancient jukebox and it started wheezing out “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”  Story of my life, Buffy thought, watching Spike stroll back towards their table, balancing his beer, a plastic baggie of blood, a glass and a plate of nachos piled high with things which were mercifully unidentifiable beneath a thick layer of orange cheese-like substance. And who says supernatural agility is only good for slaying?

A Zagros demon left its booth and shuffled past him on its way to the bar, brushing belligerently close to his shoulder.  Spike twisted lithely to one side in time to avoid spilling his beer, and rounded upon the demon, his eyes flaring from blue to feral yellow.  Zagros and vampire growled at one another for a moment, and then, with a resentful glance over at Buffy, the Zagros lowered its dorsal crest and shuffled off.  Having the Slayer in the place did tend to put a bit of a damper on the hijinks.

Spike slid into the chair across from her and plunked his food down on the graffiti-scarred tabletop, obscuring 'Lanark the Gouger Loves Mindy, 1977'.  Buffy looked pointedly over at the Zagros’ demon’s table.   “If you think I'm going to save your bacon if you antagonize everyone here into beating you up in the alley, you've got another think coming."

He grinned, wholly unrepentant.  "If I antagonize everyone into beating me up in the alley, the last thing I want is your help.  Got a bloody reputation to maintain."  Suiting action to word, he ripped a corner off the plastic baggie of blood with his teeth, poured it into his glass, and gulped down a hefty swallow.  He crumpled up the baggie in the ashtray and sat back with a satisfied sigh.  Angel had never liked feeding in front of her, even when it was pig’s blood sipped from a coffee mug.  Spike would happily scarf down human blood to her face and make yummy noises.  There was a lesson in that.  I wish I knew what it was.

Spike shoved the nachos into the center of the table.  "Here you go.  Not as good as you get at the Bronze, but you get enough of that cheese stuff on it--"

Buffy poked at the gluey pile with a forefinger.  "Not hungry.”

His eyes did that softening thing again, real concern in the blue depths.  "Come on, love, you need to keep your strength up.  I eat more than you do, and I only do it for amusement."

God, did he have to do that, slip from snarky to sweet and back again in the space of two breaths?  It kept her off balance, and the last thing she needed was to be off balance around Spike.  Go with the snark.  The snark is your friend.  "It might help if you offered me something containing shreds of actual nutrition."  She poked the nachos again suspiciously.  "What goes into those things?"

"Excess poker chips, most like," Spike replied, callously stuffing a handful of chips, cheese and mystery meat into his mouth.  "Live dangerously."

Buffy glared across the table at him, trying to suppress a smile.  Her ire failed to make much impression; the vampire took another swallow of blood, followed by a swig of Guinness, and settled back in his chair with an expression of perfect content.  Well, of course.  Spike enjoyed hanging out in grungy bars, especially when he could run up an exorbitant tab and charge it to the Watcher's Council as a business expense.  This was probably his idea of heaven.  She picked up a chip and nibbled on it.  Not bad, for a hideous concoction of cholesterol-dripping goo.  “All right, I give in.  A plate of chips, a glass of seltzer, and thou, beside me bitching in Willy’s...”

He chuckled.  “And Willy’s is paradise enow.”

It took a second.

“You finished that,” Buffy said accusingly.

Spike’s angular face suffused with guilty alarm, as if she'd caught him out at something.  “You started it.”  After a moment he added cautiously, “Didn’t know you went in for that sort of thing.”

They regarded one another warily, a pair of fencers each expecting a jab in a vulnerable spot.  Buffy picked up another chip and ate it without thinking about what might be hiding under the cheese sauce.  “I just happened to remember it from the half of my intro poetry class I managed to get through last year.  It was very... seize the day.  Which used to be my motto, though now it's more like 'Seize the day very carefully since it's probably covered with sharp pointy things.'”

“Always liked old Omar myself.”  Honestly, Spike sounded as if he were confessing to a sordid addiction.  He looked round to make sure no one else was within listening distance.  “Which edition did they give you?  Fourth?”

“Editions?  Um...”

He sat forward, gesturing with his beer bottle as he warmed to the subject.  “Yeh, the Rubaiyat was like ‘Leaves of Grass’, Fitzgerald revised the whole thing top to toe three or four times, so it was really a work in progress as long as the bloke was alive--” At her astonished expression he cut himself off, clearly embarrassed despite his inability to blush, raking his fingers through his hair nervously.  “Anyway, there’s a bloody sight more than a few verses.  Don’t need to bore you with the details.”

“No!  I mean, not bored.  I didn’t know there was more.  There were just a few verses in the textbook and we hadn’t gotten to that chapter by the time I had to drop out of college.”  As he didn’t seem too inclined to snicker at the idea of her struggling through a poetry class, she added a little wistfully, “I wish I could have read more of it.”

“There are such things as libraries, Slayer,” Spike rejoined with his customary sarcasm, “And I’ve heard they’ll let just anyone in here in the colonies.  But...” He ducked his head and muttered, “gotacopyyoucouldborrowifyouwant.”

Buffy blinked a few times, realized she wasn’t saying anything, and managed, “Sure.  I’d like--” I’m sitting in Willy’s and talking about poetry with Spike. There is something deeply weird with this picture.  “--that.  Do you ice skate?”

Spike looked askance at the change of subject, but went with it.  “Not since I was twelve.  I fell through the ice and caught pneumonia. Nearly died--worse, got stuck in bed the whole of Christmas holidays and half-way into next term.  My mum had a fit.  Put me off skating.  Why?”

This time it was her turn to grin at him.  “Just wanted to make sure I hadn’t fallen into a parallel universe where we had things in common.  Ten more minutes and that's it," she said firmly.  She reached for another nacho and discovered to her surprise that there were only a few broken bits left.  “Then we get back to hunting for Willy’s mystery guy.  Maybe the other bartender knows him.”

Spike gazed speculatively over at the bar.  “Could chat her up a bit.  I think she likes me.”

“Yeah, I can feel the love from here.  I've got to hit the bathroom.  Just try to keep the Big Bad posing down to a minimum, huh?"

Spike laughed.  "Posing?  Who's posing?"
 

         Tanner sat at the end of the bar and nursed the beer that an hour of genteel panhandling (“I just need to use the phone, my car’s...”) had bought him.  There was a dollar and some change lying on the bar two seats down, but he didn’t make a move towards it.  He prided himself on not being a thief.  Except, of course, for necessary things.

The bartender’s soul had tasted of old clothes and the mouse-nibblings of fear.  The astringent flavor lingered in the back of his throat.  Not the good stuff.  Wouldn’t have lasted him a day even if he’d taken it all.  Tanner was selective, when he could afford to be.  Had to be, with the others depending on him.  He’d taken only what he needed from the bar owner for tonight.  The bar owner--he’d heard someone call him Willy--bustled by, swiping a glass with a dirty rag, his close-set beady eyes passing over Tanner without a flicker of recognition.  He was relieved to see the thin, nervy man had come back--he’d intended to shove him back inside the bar once he’d taken what was necessary, but Willy’d taken fright and run away.

“He will not know you,” the guy with no eyes proclaimed.  The guy with no eyes was not much on merely saying things.

“I know.  I’ve done this before.”  Tanner shifted restlessly on his seat.  Even without magic involved he knew how to escape notice.  He had one of those faces, a little lined, a little tired, a lot ordinary.  Combine that with the shapeless off-the-rack jacket and slacks and defeated slouch and he could have been any of a thousand men in a hundred bars.
 The eyeless man, on the other hand, was just plain invisible, which was a little more bothersome with Willy’s stolen rationality holding his thoughts together.  Fortunately there was nothing unusual about someone sitting in a bar and mumbling to himself.  Tanner sipped his drink and stared at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar.  There was grey in his hair.  When had he gotten that old?  This was the reason he put off hunting sometimes--it was more comfortable when you couldn’t remember how much you’d lost.

The blond man from the pool house was sitting at one of the tables across the room with a young woman, small and pretty if rather too thin.  If he wanted to he could watch her in the mirror, talking animatedly to empty air.  Right.  Vampire.  If he wanted to see the man too he’d have to turn around and watch them directly.  Since everyone else in the bar was doing the same thing it probably wouldn’t hurt.  The woman looked familiar.  A memory of her swinging a hammer almost as big as she was flashed across his mind’s eye.  She was someone important... the Slayer. Yeah.  She’d been there too, when the walls of the worlds had dissolved.  Now the two of them sat here, talking, laughing, as absorbed in one another as any couple he’d ever seen at the Bronze.  Normal.  Well, except for him being a vampire and her being able to swing magic hammers like they weighed nothing.  Mostly normal.  If he’d had the energy to spare he could have hated them for that.

“So what is it exactly you want me to do?”  Tanner asked.  “I was never much of a wizard, even before...”
 The eyeless man was silent for a moment  “The Slayer has... encountered us before.  She will be wary of our usual methods.  You must prepare our way in her heart and in the hearts of her friends.”

“And how do I do that?”

“You have a skill,” the eyeless man whispered.  “Use it.  Observe them.  All evil is born of fear.  Find their fears, find the one whose fears rule them.  Find her fear.  We will do the rest.”

“I do this, and you restore the others?”

“They will all be made whole.  I swear upon the Seal of Akhun.”

“And none of us will owe you anything further?”

The eyeless man’s lips sketched a sere, horrible smile on his parchment face.  The was a note of pity, or perhaps amusement, in his voice when he spoke again.  “You own nothing else worth our taking.  Your souls are as your lives: dry leaves upon the wind.  You made no difference to the balance when you were alive.  You will make no difference to the balance when you are dead.”

“You are lying,” Tanner said, setting his glass down. “I’m insane, not stupid.  Remember that.”  The eyeless man was right about one thing--the balance had been out of whack ever since last May, stresses building up like pressure along an earthquake fault.  When you’d lived on a Hellmouth for most of your life you got good at noticing the signs.  Which way it was out of balance... well, that was more difficult to say.  “I’ll do what you ask because it may help the others, and I see no other way of doing that.  I won’t be surprised if we all end up dead, or worse.  But you know what?”  He stared at the wrinkled, empty sockets, each sewn shut with a double X of coarse twine.  “That might be an improvement.”
 

Buffy sidled down the cramped, ill-lit hallway to the bathrooms.  “Sorry,” she said to the man who brushed past her on his way out, then “Hey!  Watch the hair!”  Her good mood dissipated.  They were wasting their time here; for all she knew, that hair-stroking perv had just been their target.

Things with far too many legs scuttled out of the way when the lights flipped on.  Buffy surveyed the tiny room with distaste; she was fairly certain that some of the things on the floor were developing their own ecologies.  She stared at the toilet for several minutes before deciding that she could wait for something a little less Third World.  She bent over the sink and turned on the cold water tap, letting it flow for awhile to get the rust stains out.  Once the water was running reasonably clear, she splashed a little on her face.

Her own reflection stared back at her from the grimy mirror over the sink.  Big haunted hazel eyes, a waifishly thin face framed in long hair slowly reverting to its natural brown--she hadn't bothered to lighten it since her... return.  Mouth a little too wide, nose with that funny bump to it that never seemed to bother anyone else but which drove her to distraction.  Reassuring.  Reflections meant Not-Vampire Buffy.  Something that had been a real fear at one point--it hadn't been much, but she had tasted vampire blood that once.  But she hadn't risen in the night, hadn't clawed her way with desperate strength through a layer of hardwood and six feet of earth, hadn't come back from the dead.  Not in the few nights after her death.

No, it had taken a few months.

Willow meant well.  Willow always means well.

She couldn’t remember what it had been like to be dead.  All she remembered was the moment just before, when for the first time in years she’d been completely at peace.  All of them had meant well, Willow and Spike and Dawn in trying to bring her back, Giles and Tara and Xander in trying to prevent it.  They’d all been doing what they thought was right... mostly, anyway.  The whys of it didn’t matter now anyway.  She was alive again, and had to... live with it.  So she got up dutifully each morning and went through the motions, trying to be grateful.  Every now and then, just for a minute or two, the world would click into focus around her and she’d be alive, not just existing.  The wonder of those moments was enough to keep her going, hoping for the next one, fearing it wouldn’t come.

I used to feel like that all the time.

Tonight had been good.  Strange, but enjoyable.  That summed up a lot of her interaction with Spike lately.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like  hanging with the others, but it could be a strain.  They desperately wanted her to be all right, and she felt guilty when she couldn’t be.  Spike didn’t expect her to be all right.  It was very relaxing.

There were a couple of demons of indeterminate species lounging outside the end of the hallway as she left the bathroom, and Buffy slowed as she approached them, composing herself.  She could see Spike over at the bar again, buttering up the bartender and ordering what looked like several bottles of whiskey before his free drink ticket ran out.  OK, that was wrong.  Bad Spike, no biscuit.  She couldn’t get too upset about it; after the way the Council’d jerked them all around, paying for Spike’s liquor was the least they could do.  The vampire gave the Bracken woman behind the bar a rakish grin, and Buffy had to admit that a little part of her thought that having brash, cocky Spike back at least part time was...fun.

The Bracken nodded in response to whatever Spike had said, bent over and rummaged around below the level of the bar, and came up a moment later with several small plastic baggies filled with red fluid.  Spike collected his booty, alcoholic and otherwise, and sauntered back to their table to stow it away in various pockets in his duster.

Fun? the responsible world-saving part of her mind piped up. Excuse me, but when did Spike stockpiling human blood become ‘fun’?

The blood Willy served to his undead clientele was kosher; she’d checked into that long ago--obtained from human patrons who donated in exchange for liquor, or 'liberated' from the hospital.  No one had died for it.  But still... Buffy examined her own reactions of the evening uneasily.  She knew Spike still preferred human blood to pig when he could get it; he made no secret of the fact.  But... shouldn’t she be more wiggy over it?  Drinking human blood was wrong, and... and vampire-y, no matter how he got it... wasn’t it?  He’d told her this very night that he still had trouble fighting his basic urge towards the bad.  Was she just making it more difficult for him to stay on the straight and narrow in the long run by tolerating these minor slips?  And how minor a slip was this, anyway?  Was the fact that Spike was the only person she felt really comfortable with these days making her cut him slack she shouldn’t be cutting?

"...putting on airs," one of the demons at the end of the hall said as she approached.  It was tall and thin and bile-colored.  "Thinks because he's here with the Slayer no one's gonna lay a hand on his traitorous ass?  I say we get Durgo and the boys from the clan and have a little talk with him later.  He’s obviously forgotten the last one."

The other one, short, scaly and possessed of at least one more arm than it really needed, chuckled nastily.  "You know Spike.  He never struts higher but when some bitch has him on a short leash," Short-n'-Scaly said.  Its voice was deep and gravelly, like a laryngitic bullfrog.  "And you can't get much bitchier than the Slayer."

"Oh, really?"  Buffy said brightly.  "You must move in really limited circles."
 

         Spike slouched comfortably down in his chair, sipping his beer and keeping an unobtrusive eye on the rest of the patrons.  So far he was having a ripping night.  He’d gotten in a good fight with a couple of kills right off, he’d given that git Willy a proper scare, he’d gotten Buffy to smile a couple of times, he’d just taken care of half his shopping for the month on the Council’s shilling, and he’d made the astonishing discovery that the Slayer had not only read one of his favorite poems, but had liked it.  And hadn’t immediately skewered him for his admission that he’d liked it.

Bet she’d like Robert Service.  And Kipling.  And--bloody hell, rein yourself in, William!  She took half of one poetry class and said she liked one poem in it.  Don’t be more of an over-eager ponce than you can help .

“...get Spike when they leave...”

Spike set his Guinness down and unslouched himself.  His vampiric hearing was perfectly capable of picking up a whispered conversation on the opposite end of a large and moderately noisy room.  Like anyone else, he didn’t listen to most of what he heard--heartbeats and mice crawling behind the walls and boring bar conversations--but there were a few sounds  to which he was always attentive: certain dangerous tones of voice, for example, or his own name... He concentrated on picking out that voice from the desultory chatter and the music of the jukebox.   There.  The two demons over by the hall leading to the restrooms.

An anticipatory shiver ran through him, lifting the hairs on the backs of his arms.  If they decided to try him alone, he could probably take both of them, or at least make it a difficult enough fight that they’d think twice about pressing it to its conclusion.  If they went and got all the friends they were talking about, though... that could turn nasty.  He had no expectation that Buffy’d back him up; she’d said as much, and she’d never gotten involved in his ongoing feud with the rest of Sunnydale’s demons before.  Spike looked around the bar thoughtfully.  Besides the two by the bathroom hall and the Zagros demon, there were two vampires playing darts over in one corner and a scattering of humans and vampires on barstools and at various tables.  No more than a dozen people all told; it was a slow night.

He had no qualms about turning tail and running from unfavorable odds when it was only his own hide on the line, but he hadn’t been lying when he’d told Buffy he had a reputation to maintain.  Sheer fighting prowess wasn’t what kept the demon population of Sunnydale from ganging up and crushing him like a bug--he was good, but not that good.  There were plenty of creatures in the demon world stronger and faster than a vampire only halfway through his second century.  What kept him in one piece was the general belief that if you went up against William the Bloody, you had a good chance of dying, and William the Bloody didn’t give a damn if he died in the process of killing you.  That made enough of his potential opponents think twice about taking him on to ensure his continued sojourn in the land of the unliving.

He had the option of trying to leave, with or without Buffy, before Muff and Jeff over there decided to go collect their mates, but it would make a more lasting impression on the populace if he carried the fight to them before they could carry it to him.  They couldn’t very well go collect their mates with broken kneecaps, could they?

One of the other sounds he always paid attention to interrupted his deliberations.  Buffy’s voice.  She’d come out of the hall and was frowning up at the taller of the two demons, who was making the obligatory threatening remarks.  He had no worries of her being in real danger--if he could take those pillocks, she could wipe the floor with them--but she sounded angry, and it made a perfect excuse for him to stroll over and give them a piece of what for.  Besides, buggered if he’d let her have all the fun.  Spike tossed back the last of his blood, licked his lips and got up, drifting across the barroom floor as silently as smoke.  With luck, he was going to get his skirmish after all.

Both demons were fully occupied with Buffy, and didn’t notice him stalking up behind them.  The short one was making nervous motions of attempted escape; the taller one looked disgusted at its companion's sudden reversal of attitude.  "This isn't your ground, Slayer," it rasped out.  "It would behoove you to exercise caution."

Buffy planted one fist on her hip, looking incredulous.  "Or what, you'll practice your Word-A-Day on me?  If so I suggest you get a new calendar, cause ‘behoove’?  Not scary."  Her eyes met Spike’s for an instant.  "I'm only saying this once.  Remember it.  Spike’s working with me these days, and the only one allowed to lay hands on his traitorous ass is me."

Her expression dared him to make anything of it, but Spike was too pleased and stunned at the unexpected backup to come up with anything beyond "Awfully flattering, Slayer."  Both demons jerked round to face him as if pulled by one string.  “Show’s that way, boys,” he said with as straight a face as he could manage.
 Buffy shot the demons a disdainful look and tossed her hair over her shoulder.  “Show’s over. Come on, Spike.  We’ve got places to go.”

She brushed past him and headed for the door.  He watched her retreating back (and other more interesting parts) for a second, then shrugged.  “Sorry, boys,” he said with a smirk at the taller demon.  “Can’t oblige you tonight, I’ve got a little strutting to take care of.”

He caught up with Buffy as she passed their table, grabbed his duster off the back of his chair, and fell in step beside her.  The Zagros demon he’d faced off with earlier looked up with a startled grunt, then rose and shuffled towards the door ahead of them.  “They’re signaling to the Zagros demon,” he said conversationally.  “Probably going to jump me once we get outside.  If you’re not inclined to participate while they beat me up in the alley, mind the motorbike for us, will you?  I don’t want it scratched.”

Buffy gave him a distracted “Mmmf” of acknowledgment.  Something was obviously biting her arse--she was still frowning, lower lip pushed out in that delightfully edible-looking pout...  She took a deep breath and looked up at him with those big eyes, the irises gone grey with thought.  “Spike...”

“Yeh, love?”

“Go put the blood back.  We’re not paying for your nummy people snacks.”

That had not been on the list of things he’d expected to hear.  Spike suppressed a growl of exasperation.  “I think not, pet.  Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to get hold of the good stuff these days?  The Council can afford it.  Think of it as keeping me on retainer.”

She came to a full stop, folded her arms, and locked eyes with him--the serious, I’ve-been-thinking-hard-about-this look.  Damn.  “Look, Spike, I know there are certain things you can’t help about the whole being a vampire biz.  I don’t expect you to take up sunbathing any time soon.  But this isn’t one of them.  You do fine on pig’s blood.”

The prim, all for your own good tone made his hackles rise, but his unerring sense of what would brass Buffy off the most prevented him from exploding.  Keep it all calm and logical.  He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and faced her down.  “Fine?  Yeh, and you do fine without chocolate, but I don’t see you giving it up.”

Her frown deepened and he could see her counting to ten.  She started for the door again.  “It’s not the same thing, Spike!  Chocolate’s not sentient!”

“Neither are most of the people who donate blood to Willy’s.”  He took a quick half-step ahead and grabbed the door for her.  “How exactly is it not the same thing if I legally purchase a freely offered commodity?  Illuminate me, Slayer!  You against free enterprise?  Bloody un-American of you.”

Buffy stopped dead in the doorway, blocking his exit, her face set in the expression of mulish determination which always boded ill for whatever was opposing her.  “We’re not out of here till you take it back.”

To hell with calm and logical.  Go for the throat.  That was what vampires did, and he was still a sodding vampire, despite Buffy’s apparent conviction that he was a Pekingese.  Well, and why shouldn’t she be convinced when he’d done nothing since her return but trot after her with his tongue hanging out, hoping for a pat on the head?  “I suppose we’ll be spending the night, then.  Why the sudden attack of squeamishness, Slayer?  Getting along a little too well with the monster for comfort, are we?”  He draped himself lazily against the doorframe, close enough to feel her body heat, and favored her with his nastiest smirk.  Her grey-green eyes widened and her mouth made that little wounded twitch--bullseye.  Not his imagination, then, that electricity in the air.  He should have stopped there, but his demon temper couldn’t resist a further dig.  “Is the problem that you’re bothered by my choice of liquid refreshment, or that you’re not bothered?”

The mulish look blossomed into pure Buffy-fury, her face shining with that glorious inner light that made him want to grab her and ravish her right then and there, even as he battled an equally strong desire to shake her till her teeth rattled.  When she spoke her voice was low and intense. “By the fact that you don’t give a damn where your liquid refreshment comes from, Spike.  I’ve seen some of the people Willy taps, remember?  Run-down winos the blood bank wouldn’t touch.  They’re dying by degrees, but a vampire’s killing them all the same.”

He rolled his eyes.  “Oh, very poetic.  I’m responsible for the welfare of every sot in town now, is it?  Next you’ll be on the second-hand smoke.  How often do you put in time down at the soup kitchen, Slayer?”

“That has nothing to do with this!”

He pushed himself off the doorframe and they stood toe to toe, glaring at one another.  He was breathing just as hard as she was and the air was heavy with the scent of anger and arousal.  “Doesn’t it, then?   Tell you what, Slayer, you want to take these back--” He patted the blood bags in the pocket of his coat.  “--you come get them.”

Her lip quivered for a second.  “Damn you, Spike, you can’t fight me!”

She was poetry when she moved, when she danced, when she fought: free verse, a complex visual meter of deadly lines and curves.  He would have given much (but not anything--no, he knew now that there were things even more important than the touch of her hand) to be able to dance with her again, in any sense of the word.  He took a step closer, voice dropping to a low, sensual growl.  “Who said anything about fighting?”

“We did,” said a far less pleasant growl from outside.  The anemic glow of the lone parking lot light shone down on the Zagros demon, who was flanked by Short-n-Scaly, Tall-n-Thin, and several more hulking indistinct shapes further back.  They must have gone out the back way and circled round the building.  The Zagros demon slapped a length of lead pipe against one horny palm.

Spike welcomed the painful-pleasurable stretch of bone and muscle as his demonic visage emerged.  Yeah, he wanted blood tonight, and not in plastic baggies, either.  Buffy’s eyes narrowed and the corners of her usually generous mouth went tight as she turned to face them, an equally ominous sign for anyone who knew her.  “Do you mind?  This is a private conversation.”

“We don’t have any quarrel with you, Slayer,” Tall-n-Thin rasped.  “You’re free to leave.”

Buffy sighed.  “I really hate it when I take the trouble to make elaborate threats and people just don’t listen.   I work hard on those, you know.”

Spike glanced down at her and ran his tongue over his fangs.  He carefully removed his duster and laid it down on the sidewalk, not about to take the chance of breaking two bottles of Jack Daniels in a free-for-all.  “Just this once what say we skip the witty banter and go straight to the killing things part?”

Buffy’s shoulders tensed and she rocked lithely on the balls of her feet, ready to pounce.  “Good idea,” she breathed.  “Very good idea.”
 

An hour later the bike came to a halt in the driveway and the engine rumbled to a halt.  For a few seconds the two of them sat there, motionless, and then Buffy pulled away, wincing a little as she got off.  Her right leg was still sore; she knew she was lucky it wasn’t broken.  She pulled off the powder-blue helmet and handed it to Spike, who took it without comment and hung it on its hook.  He was moving pretty cautiously too; she hoped that the ribs were only cracked.  Maybe, just maybe, taking on seven-to-two odds when unarmed had been a little bit foolhardy.  At least they’d finally maneuvered the fight close enough to get Spike’s axe off the motorcycle.

Yeah, but you should see the other guys.

She reached out and brushed a thumb lightly across the raw scrape above his right eye.  It had mostly stopped bleeding; lack of circulation had its advantages.  “You gonna be OK?”

“Always am.  You?”

“Nothing a hot bath and ten hours sleep won’t fix.”  She searched his face.  His eyes smouldered with bloodlust and tenderness, anger and love and longing--how could such a cold shade of blue burn so?  “We’re not finished with this, you know.”

There was more than one meaning to that.  Spike shrugged.  “I know.  So... same time tomorrow?”

She nodded.  “I’m still mad at you.”

He just looked at her.  Reached up and removed her hand from his forehead, holding it in his own.  In one swift stroke, dipped his head and licked his own blood from her thumb.

And looked up, and smiled.  “Mutual.”

Part 2

Part 4