The Blood Is the Life
by Nan Dibble

Chapter 6: Delicate Negotiations and Tribute

Because Buffy had seen it before, she recognized it now. The moping (not brooding!), the withdrawal, the diminished energy and libido levels: how Spike handled grief. Or rather, didn’t handle it. Generally vampires weren’t vulnerable to loss or grief. Their self-sufficient natures protected them from any deep attachment taking hold. But in this, as in so much else, Spike was the exception. He didn’t come as a lone item: you had to get the set. From the first, it hadn’t been just Spike: it’d been Spike-and-Dru. Then Spike-and-Harmony. Then, with difficulty, Spike-and-Buffy. Plus Dawn. And after that, a whole liana-jungle of mostly unacknowledged connections had formed. Anya. Willow. Giles. The SITs--all twenty-eight of them. Michael.

No longer a tidy set: a collection.

Not particularly relationships he wanted: mostly they puzzled and annoyed him. They just happened to him. The soul had opened him up like the proverbial oyster and he couldn’t help but connect. He had no defenses against it. And he therefore had no defenses and no mechanism for dealing with pain when that was what rebounded through the open connection. The pain just happened too. So he shut down and hid.

Late Monday afternoon, finding Spike asleep, fully clothed and huddled up as tight as he could get (he normally was a starfish-style sprawler and slept naked) on what had been Kim’s bed at Casa Spike, Buffy got all melty and sad, looking at him. When she woke him, he never did come fully alert, not registering what she said, making disconnected replies when he said anything at all, and emphatically not wanting to be touched, flinching away or going still and rigid if she touched him anyway.

Buffy in turn had no mechanism for dealing with Spike when he’d gone unreachable in misery. Probably even worse at the touchy-feely aspects of things than he was. Since she didn’t know what to do, she made an uncomfortable smile and left him, and ended up consulting with Dawn on the front porch of Casa Summers.

“I’ve quit automatically categorizing vamps as animals,” Buffy explained, frowning, the two of them perched on the steps in the reddened light. “Some are, some aren’t. But when I was a kid, I saw this black-and-white mutt, mostly collie, lying at the side of the road. Hit by a car, I guess. It didn’t growl or snap or anything. Just looked at me, panting fast. I suppose it was in dreadful pain. But what struck me was that it didn’t understand. Didn’t know the why of the pain. Why it couldn’t do anything except lie there and pant. And….” She shrugged and spread her hands.

“Yeah. Not coping well,” Dawn agreed glumly.

“Not coping at all, as far as I can tell. I thought, if anything, I’d have to be hauling out the manacles to keep him from exploding at those two vamp nests. And it’s like…he’s not interested, he doesn’t care. And I know that’s not so. But….” Another helpless, puzzled shrug.

Eyes downcast, Dawn picked at her skirt--still in her school blouse-and-plaid--and commented, “It’s probably all ick to talk about, but, well, he hasn’t been feeding right for a long while now. Even before the SITs left. Pretty much from the closing of the Hellmouth, I think. Goes short or without as long as he possibly can, then a little. Never enough. Just as little as he can take and keep going. Sort of like when you hold your breath, you know? I don’ t know for sure: he’s gone all avoidy on me about it, tells me flat that it’s none of my business and he’s fine, yada yada. You know how he does.”

“Not really. I’ve left that end of things to him, figured after a hundred and twenty-some years, he knew how to take care of himself.” And, Buffy added inwardly, she’d figured it was better not to know.

“Only about seven months with the soul,” Dawn pointed out. “And I think that’s what it is: soul’s giving him hell about it. I was always afraid something like that would happen when I heard he’d gone all ensouled and everything…. Again with the ick, sorry, but we both know he feeds from you sometimes. And we have the same blood, the famous Summers blood….” Dawn tossed her head and grinned wincingly. “He’s had some of mine, but never direct, only in mugs and like that, and never outright asked me. Just something I did, something I do, when I think there’s need. Well, I’ve offered, and each time, he’s shut me up. It was like I’d offered to sleep with him, ‘scuse me, but it was, not that I ever did or anything. And not that I want to, or he wants to, or--”

“I get the idea,” Buffy assured her wildly blushing sister. An embarrassed, thoughtful pause. Then Buffy said, “I didn’t know you did that.”

Dawn hitched a shoulder. “No big. Not to me, anyway. But since that one time he snapped at me, he’s backed way off, even more than before. Pretty much figures beforehand what I’m gonna say and shuts me down cold, so I can’t even bring it up, can’t even ask. He’s not listening, you know?”

“Yeah. I do know how that goes. All Mr. Impervious, when he wants to be. But why, Dawn, when there’s the pig’s blood he could--”

“He hates that. He won’t touch it anymore.”

“Enough to starve himself?”

“Apparently. Looks like that, doesn’t it? He said he wouldn’t touch it, and now I expect he’s got his pride all in gear to stick to it.”

“Oh, the dreaded Spike pride. Then we’re all doomed…. I’ll have to think about this, Dawn. It looks as if he’s backed himself into a corner here and I don’t know what he’ll let me do to pry him out of it. I don’t even know what to try. Any ideas?”

“Well, when you’re…together, whatever, maybe you could….” Dawn suggested delicately.

Buffy shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way. And when he’s like this, doesn’t work at all. I can barely get, or keep him, in snuggling distance, let alone…well, together. Avoidy. Like you said.”

“Buffy--” Dawn began, then stopped, mouth drawn tight, fingers clenching in her skirt.

“Present. What?”

“Kind of super ick for me, but I promised. Buffy, Mike tastes me. Drinks from me sometimes,” Dawn said, all in a burst. “I let him, and it’s soooo intense, and sometimes I don’t want him to stop but he always has, it’s not just a vamp thing--”

“It’s completely a vamp thing and you know it. And…yeah, intense. I guess. Why is the little talk about the birds and the bees never enough?” Buffy implored the skies. “Why does it always have to be high weirdness and talking to my sister about the sensation of vamp bites? Why couldn’t it just be plain old ordinary sex?”

Dawn giggled. “We could, like, talk about sex if you really want to--”

“Stick to vamp bites. Something we have in common. OK, I’ve got as far as Mike bites you sometimes and you both get off on it, more or less. So what’s the problem, exactly? If there’s a legal age of consent for vamp bites, I’ve never heard about it. Unregulated territory here.”

“Spike’s worried that sometime, Mike won’t stop. All ‘in the moment’ and all.” Dawn tossed her head and waggled her hands around randomly. “Not mean to, just get carried away. And then leave me to get carried away. Literally. Vamps aren’t exactly cut out for moderation. And not really big on the self-control. That’s what they’re made to do: bite; feed. All kind of hard-wired and primal and everything.”

“Yeah. A major biting thing. I’ve noticed.”

“Yeah. So anyway, Spike pretty much read me the riot act about it, and flashed out at Mike--”

Buffy’s eyes widened as illumination struck. “So that’s what that was about!”

“Pretty much, yeah. And he made me promise to tell you about it, thought you could take care of what little hide he hadn’t already ripped off me. So I have. And maybe one more thing I should tell you. There’s been times, a couple, when I had Mike feed from me on purpose. So he could turn around and have Spike feed from him. Spike has fewer scruples about vamps…and sometimes it’s been necessary and there was no other way. Like after Angel hurt him so bad…. That’s how come I got marked in the first place.” Dawn turned her left arm, displaying the white, defined semicircle of a deep vamp bite about midway on her forearm--like an upside down C with the punctuation of the longer incisors, fangs, at each end. “It wasn’t so plain, of course, to begin with,” Dawn added casually.

Buffy rubbed her eyes, feeling discouraged. Here her kid sis had been running around for several weeks with a vamp claiming mark, and the Chosen One, famous for being able to spot a vamp at fifty paces and stake it in under ten seconds, had never noticed. Maybe because it wasn’t in the expected place. Buffy rubbed her nose. “Confession of major Duh here. I’m sorry. I should have seen. It’s not as if I don’t know what one looks like.” As illustration, she rubbed the left side of her neck first, then slapped the right side: giving Spike’s mark precedence. “Bad Buffy.”

“No big. Really. Why I’m telling you…I did that, Mike and I did that, Sunday night. Last night. Then I sent him after Spike. Wherever he’d taken Kim. Yay, vamp long-distance smell-tracking capability. And of course Spike cussed him out, wouldn’t hear of it, yada yada. Except then he did. Was distracted enough, desperate enough, something, he just clamped down and fed to the point that Mike was lightheaded and shaky for awhile. Until the wonderful effects of Summers blood perked him up again, enough that he could get Spike home. So I figure Spike’s pretty far back into that corner, Buffy. To the point that he’s scared what could happen if he did come out, all vamped up and demon-driven.” Dawn tilted her head in a rather Spike-like manner, considering. “Nice phrase,” she decided. “Alliteration and everything.”

“Yeah. Like you said. Nice phrase, bad image.”

“Deduct two points for gross,” Dawn ruled. “The thing is, the famous little dab isn’t gonna do it here. We’re talking quarts, just to pull even. Make up the deficit.” She wrinkled her nose. “‘The famous little dab.’ Of what? Mom used to say that.”

“Obviously something olden-time: pre-us. I never knew either.”

“And how weird is it that the monks made me know something like that?”

“The current theory is that it was lawyers. Not monks.”

“Oh, sure, and that explains it all. You mean it: lawyers?” Dawn’s expression soured in distaste.

“Don’t blame me. I don’ t make it, I just report it. So: what do you want me to do about Mike?”

Dawn considered. “Just know about it, I guess. Or you could try to go all Mom about it, threaten to ground me if he darkeneth ye door, yada yada.”

“And we both know how well that goes. Actually, though, Mom liked Spike. A lot better than Angel, anyway. Hello pot, greet kettle. Well, consider me put on alert and ready to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming for any necessary bulletins and news alerts. And if you decide you want him dusted, that’s a well-known service I can also provide.”

Dawn gazed at her soberly. “Not funny, Buffy. And sort of on the NOT side of helping.”

“I know. Scratch that. Doesn’t mean I won’t, but not a current desirable option. Believe me: I understand…. Do you love him, Dawn?”

“I knew you were gonna say that!”

“Sorry to be so predictable. But it matters. Matters quite a lot, actually.” Buffy clasped Dawn’s hands and held them on her own knees.

“Yeah. And the thing is, I don’t know. It’s too strange…and intense…and confusing. He likes to just stand and smell me: how weird is that? I don’t know if he even thinks I’m pretty. Just kind of a Dawn-shaped scratch n’ sniff. He’s thirty-three, and he’s six. Before he was turned, he was a merc: used to kill people for money. Now he kills them for appetizer, dinner, and dessert. Sometimes. All uber strange. Nobody’s brought up the ‘L’ word yet. Kind of playing it a day at a time.”

“Sounds like a plan. Provided you have your taser.”

Dawn pulled a hand away to pat her pocket. “On my person at all times. Never leave home without it.”

“Good. Satisfactory.” Buffy had no qualms about Dawn’s being able to use it. Buffy had reason to know that under pressure, Dawn could be nearly as split-second, cold-blooded ruthless as any vamp.

“And…Spike?” Dawn asked.

“Under heavy consideration here. High alert. He can be such an utter…chowderhead!”

“Yeah,” said Dawn, and sighed, smiling, because it was another of Joyce’s words.

**********

Dawn sat thinking awhile after Buffy went inside, then went hunting for Spike. She already knew he was noplace in Casa Summers: that was the first thing she’d checked out when she got home from school. Not in the first likely place, the finished yuppie basement of Casa Spike. Roving through the ground-floor rooms, she found him almost immediately. In the bed Kim and Amanda and at least one other SIT had shared when bed space was at a premium. Kim’s alone, since Amanda moved home and the rest left.

That accounted for Buffy’s woeful expression, then: he really did look pretty pitiful.

Must be Kim’s scent was still on the pillow, the way he was hanging onto it. Dawn wondered what Kim had looked like in game face. Probably like one of the Oriental battle helmets at Mom’s gallery: all round-faced and fierce. Designed to scare the shit out of the enemy. Kim would have liked that. She’d been a fine fighter: never backed off.

Dawn pulled up a chair, very extremely quietly, to the side of the bed, sat down, and waited until her presence drew Spike up from someplace apparently very deep, because it took nearly five minutes.

When his eyes blinked open, she said, “Hey.”

He was another couple of minutes collecting himself, checking that he was presentable to teenaged girls, and roughing up his face with his hands to wipe the sleep away. “You in your Scout Finch phase?” he asked eventually, which was a pretty good line to come up with, out of sleep like that and everything. Definitely deserved extra points for that.

“I just felt like saying ‘hey.’ Shouldn’t over-analyze things like that.”

“Yeah. All right. Did you actually want something, or are you just being a pest?”

“Being a pest. Does Kim’s bed smell nice?”

His face froze.

“OK, sorry,” Dawn said softly, looking at her swinging feet. “What I meant was, does it help?”

“Rather not talk about it, Bit. ‘S complicated. Hard to keep all of it in mind.”

“There was a time,” Dawn said wistfully, “when I thought I could ask you anything.”

“Yeah.”

That bait hadn’t worked either. Maybe she should change the subject. “Is the locket still working?”

“Oh. Yeah. Guess so. Far as I can tell. No more dreams, since. But…do you think it was Lady Gates? This now, with Kim?”

Dawn bit her lip. That possibility hadn’t occurred to her. She found it rather alarming. “Can’t rule it out. A lot of coincidences and remarkable stupidity had to come together to make that happen. Not that people aren’t quite capable of being remarkably stupid on their own.”

“Could you find out?” Spike asked, very soberly, and Dawn looked at him very soberly in return.

“Is it worth my maybe being unmade?”

“No. Forget it, then.”

“If it is, I’ll do it. I’ll try,” Dawn insisted.

“No, just quit about it. No. Don’t do nothing like that, not even if I say. I don’t know the risks. Can’t figure out….” Spike left that hanging, which maybe was the problem, Dawn thought. Or at least an expression of it.

“You defaulted on your fight with Mike,” she commented.

“How-- Oh. Michael told you. Well, yeah. Who the hell cares.”

“You still mad at Mike? The last time that you almost killed him, when you made him submit, neither of you was mad. Vamp weirdness. I hate to think what might happen if you actually were mad when you were fighting.”

“Well. Only got to put him down, not dust him. Lad needs reminding, as long as he’s around you, he has to take me into account. I’ll hammer him to make sure he don’t forget. He’s gonna set it up again.” Spike didn’t appear to be looking forward to the prospect. Not scared. Just horribly tired.

“Why is it,” Dawn asked deliberately, “that you get to take me into account, and I’m not allowed to take you into account? Why can you worry about me, but if I worry about you, you go all freeze-face and dismissive?”

Spike looked more tired still. “Not up to you being provoking, Bit. You’re way too clever for me. Just a vamp here, not your debating club. You score yourself all the points you want.” He pushed off the bed and headed down the hall to the basement door.

Dawn didn’t recall his ever actually walking out on her before.

She wondered if she’d have to go to the extreme of hurting herself to make him attend. That had been her final resort when he’d had a wicked awful nightmare or just gone Looney Tunes in any of a variety of ways, that dreadful summer after Buffy’s second death with no hope or expectation then of any resurrection. She’d employed it whenever he was captured by the notion of greeting the morning, strolling out into the sun and then gone.

It wasn’t that bad yet, she judged, and the sun was down now. Night was normally a good time for him. Fewest restraints and restrictions. Her best strategy was to keep self-damage in reserve and stay with the provoking awhile longer.

She trailed along to the basement stairs and ventured down three steps.

His voice came from below, from the bed end: “Bit, you keep this up, gonna be hard to stay friends.”

“I’ll survive,” Dawn replied coolly, and sat on the step, chin resting in palm. “The problem, it seems to me, is the soul. Any way to get rid of it?”

Pulling on a fresh T-shirt, Spike came slowly to the foot of the stairs and stared up at her. “Goddam, Bit. You take the bleeding cake.”

“Thanks. But seriously. Is there? You were fine, before.”

“I wasn’t. I--” He started wandering away.

“Don’t forget, I was there.”

His voice came back, “Not for all of it, you weren’t. Not…. Bloody hell, Bit, can’t you just let me be?”

“Nope. That’s not in the contract. And here you thought it’d take sixty years for us to get sick of each other.” Dawn had a sudden thought. “If you don’t agree to come back to Casa Summers now and play nice, I’m taking off the locket. Count of ten. One. Two. Three.”

He came back into view, and he had his locket out, hand clasped around the chain. He said, “Four,” looking straight at her.

“She’ll probably fry me, cutting her off like that. Five.”

“Really? Six.”

“No, haven’t a clue. Seven.”

“Back off, Bit. I mean it. Eight.”

“Nine. I don’t back off.”

He let his hand drop. “All right. You win.” Then he leveled a finger at her. “If I do someone a mischief, it’s on your head.”

“I’ve had worse on my head. Come on.”

Slowly climbing the stairs, he grabbed her hand, pulled her up, and pushed her before him with a hand on the small of her back. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a wretched bully?”

“Often,” responded Dawn serenely, and squeezed his hand. She awarded herself high marks.

**********

Slowly meandering across the two back yards, Spike thought that it was like being stoned or mildly concussed. He was there, right enough, but everything else had only two distances--much too close and confusingly distant. They alternated those positions about every minute and a half. Except Bit, steadily alongside. Annoying as hell but absolutely there and wouldn’t let you forget it for a minute.

Maybe what he needed was a drink. That could serve as a reason why everything was off. Make sense then.

Wheeling about, he turned back to Casa Spike, expecting every second that Bit was gonna blow up at him, but she just kept watching him and following along. Never could predict the child or much figure what went on in her head.

In the kitchen he pulled the bottle of fairly good bourbon off the top shelf of a cabinet. Only half left. Well, it’d do. Uncapping it, he put some down, then leaned against the humming refrigerator with his eyes shut, waiting for the liquor to settle and grant at least an illusion of warmth. Generally he didn’t much notice temperature, and Dawn had no sweater or anything, so it was probably a normal night. But he felt cold. Deep at the core.

Kim, she’d been so cold, holding her for so long. But not really, that was foolishness. No colder than he was, than the crypt was or that sodding ugly little alcove….

He’d hoped, when she rose, there would be something capable of being talked to. Something still in her that could listen and connect. For a second or two, at the first, he thought he’d touched it. But no: just another ravenous fledge. He’d been disappointed like that before….

Not working. He applied more alcohol.

He asked, “How’s Rona?”

“Staying over with ‘Manda for a few days,” Dawn responded. “Trying to get it all sorted.”

“That Kennedy?”

“You should watch that, Spike. Anybody you don’t like, they get to be a ‘that.’ It’s a dead giveaway.”

“I lose obviousness points. What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her all weekend. Maybe she’s gone.”

“Maybe…. And Buffy. Has she decided?”

“Decided what?”

“How she’s gonna live, gonna be now.”

“Is she planning something different?” Dawn sounded surprised and slightly alarmed.

“Might. She could now. Just wondered, is all.”

“You have the count,” Dawn said.

“Count.”

“The ten. If we’re not gonna have locket showdown, I think you’d better move.”

“Oh. Yeah. All right.” He rubbed at his eyes and blinked until they focused better, then pushed away from the refrigerator.

Some better, he decided, crossing the lawn again. The lunge-retreat of everything seemed to have eased into a vague middle distance. He didn’t have to notice. But he could. That big beat-up Dodge van, bad shade of maroon, that would be that Oz. Wolfboy. And another strange car at the curb, beige characterless Euro-heap, maybe a Volvo, that would be the Watcher. Rental place must have been all out of crappy red Mustangs. No sign of Harris’ truck, though. That was a mercy.

Near the sidewalk, reaching the brighter patch the street light cast, he looked back and was seeing a score or so of girls, all the young faces nervous and hopeful, and he heard his own voice saying, You’re mine. I’ll keep you from death. Just as if he could do what he promised them. Kim, run to me, child. Fast as you can.

The next thing he knew he was laying on his side in the grass pulled up all tight and breathing in great gulps as if he needed it and none of it made sense. Dawn was practically kneeling on top of him, hands patting and grabbing at him, saying words he couldn’t make out, only her shrill voice. He reached and checked that the locket was still there and it was, so all right, this was just him some way.

As he sat up, Bit curled around until her weight was across his legs and her arms around him at the shoulders, head tucked hard against his chest. The smell of spilled liquor told him he’d dropped the bottle. Damn. Getting control of the breathing, quieting it down, he patted vaguely at Bit’s back. “’M fine. Just came over strange there a second. Don’t you be scared. ‘M fine.”

As he worked getting to his feet there was an awkwardness, a dullness in the right side of his back that puzzled him. And also, under the spilled bourbon smell, a sharp edge of bloodsmell, not Dawn’s.

She was tugging at him, impatient, so he came along even though he wanted to look back again to see if the phantom children were still there. Didn’t want to leave them if they were. He’d promised. But Bit insisted, so he wandered up the walk and then up the stairs, leaning on the left-hand pillar and that was strange, he surely hadn’t downed enough to be so fumble-footed.

Inside the door Dawn finally released him to lean against the wall, coming over a bit strange again, and Bit yelling, “Buffy! Spike’s been shot!”

**********

They’d been in the middle of dinner when Dawn’s screech brought Buffy dashing into the hall to find Dawn hopping in anxiety and Spike starting to spill bonelessly down the wall, leaving a blood-smear behind on the wallpaper. Wounds of all sorts, Buffy knew how to handle. She grabbed Spike and eased him down, then grabbed some towels out of the closet under the stairs, laid them out, and shifted him onto them.

The small entry wound on his back was plain: a patch of blood about the size of her hand just south of his right shoulderblade. No exit wound. So the bullet was still inside. Yanking up the shirt confirmed what she’d thought: the wound was already smooth, healed.

“Will, can you get it out?”

“Think so. Yes.” When Buffy looked around, Willow was staring into the air with unfocused eyes. “Gonna hurt, though.”

Spike was already trying to get up, protesting at such a fuss being made over nothing. Buffy firmly pushed him down again.

“This rug doesn’t need any more blood on it. Stay put at least until Willow can--”

“Ow!”

The slug pushed back through the entry point and hung in the air: a little warped splash of metal. Willow bent and scooped it up.

“Small caliber,” commented Oz, behind her. “Twenty-two. Maybe for squirrel hunting.”

“Not magicked that I can tell,” Willow reported, handing the bullet off to Oz. She knelt down next to Spike: sitting up steadily enough while Buffy wiped off the blood with a wet dishtowel Dawn had brought. Willow said to him, “You know what I told you about your aura? How it’d gone all wide and strange, bright?”

“Bleeding hell,” Spike was grumbling, his back twitching under Buffy’s hands. The reopened wound had stopped bleeding and was already closing. Barely the diameter of a pencil. No need for even a Band-Aid. “That’s nothing respectable. Like somebody was to come after me with a fucking push-pin.”

“Spike. Your aura.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“It’s not, anymore. I can barely see it at all, and what I can make out is black.”

“So I’m dead, am I? Well, no news there.”

“I think it means you’re running on fumes,” Willow said firmly. “Normally a little pinprick like this, you’d barely notice. But you have no reserves. Healing takes extra, and extra is what you don’t have. You drop below minimum, the engine won’t turn over. Or something.”

Spike didn’t seem interested, trying to pull the T-shirt off over his head and swearing when the obvious stiffness of his right arm and side impeded that. Buffy helped ease it off and took it before he could drop it on the rug. She deposited it on the towel, then took the fresh one Dawn had collected from upstairs, from his colorful collection of black, black, and black. Buffy didn’t like Willow’s report about his aura, mainly because it sounded ominous and was waaay out of her field of expertise.

She was just helping him get the fresh shirt on when he quit swearing, went still, and keeled over--very much like an engine stalling.

“Ran out of adrenaline,” Willow guessed. “Or it could be shock. Vampires can get shock, right?”

Giles came in then, and Xander behind him, carrying a large styrofoam chest. Hallelujah, Buffy thought. Xander asked, “Buff, where do you want this?” as Giles demanded, “What on earth has been happening?”

“Front room,” said Buffy, pointing, “and sniper, apparently.”

“Good lord.”

“Not much firepower,” Oz commented, displaying the deformed bullet. “Twenty-two.”

“But why?” Giles asked.

Bent to deposit the cooler on the front room floor, Xander called, “Hey, do you think it’s possible he might have pissed somebody off?”

Spike had come to again, this time as lethargic and vague as Buffy had found him earlier. Oz went and shut the door: a belated prudence. Buffy hadn’t done it because she was used to thinking of Casa Summers as thoroughly protected. Yeah: against Bringers, uninvited vamps and other wildlife, a wide range of spells, and door-to-door salesmen. Not snipers with low-powered rifles.

Buffy directed, “Everybody, finish your supper before it gets cold. Colder. Dawn?”

“But I haven’t even started mine,” Dawn whined, but came and helped lift and steer Spike into the front room and install him in the big corner chair.

Once he was down, he seemed to steady. As Dawn scampered off to rescue her supper before everything was gone, Buffy knelt down by his knees and said lightly, “Hey.”

“Now you’re doin’ it!” Spike accused.

“I wasn’t aware that ‘hey’ was actionable.”

“You’re both daft. The pair of you.” Spike looked at her: frowning; concerned. “Bugger did more damage, scaring Bit and interrupting your meal, than he did to me. Fucking twenty-two. ‘M just…not all caught up to myself, is all. Nothing to fret yourself about.” Wincing slightly, he leaned forward to stroke her cheek.

DONT FRET, Buffy thought, remembering the capital letters drawn in blood on the dusty sarcophagus lid. You had to watch him every minute or he’d be off doing something insanely dangerous. Or insanely kind: like exempting everybody but himself from having to witness the ghastly spectacle of Kim rising…and then his mercifully staking her.

Buffy hadn’t asked. She didn’t need to. Some things, she just knew.

“Today, I realized something. And I think it’s something you should be told. That first night, Friday, at your crypt. All the time we were there, trying to figure out what had happened. Here I find you with a body, young girl, throat torn out. Obvious vamp kill. And it never once entered my mind that it might be you. Not for a second. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, you never for a second thought I might. And taking our history into account, I think that’s really something.” She gazed at him, loving him very much. Like an ache in her middle.

He turned his eyes away, likely thinking of a dozen dismissive or derisive things to say. Not saying any of them. Meeting her eyes again, he responded simply, “Yeah. Guess it is.”

She got up, hands braced on the chair arms, and leaned into him. They had a long, satisfactory kiss. He even tangled fingers into her hair and held her there. Not so much moping now. Whatever its intent, the sniper incident seemed to have cracked the shell of his mourning.

Straightening finally, Buffy said, “Gonna collect the troops now, reconvene here for coffee in a few minutes. You want some?”

“Ta, pet.” As she was leaving, he said, “Never mind me. I’ll just sit here in the dark.”

She slapped the wall light switch in passing. Definitely recovering.

**********

When the Scoobies started wandering in, some with plates of supper they were still finishing, Spike knew something was up by the way they either looked at him too hard or avoided looking at him at all. Either way, something was up.

After folding tables were broken out and Buffy deposited a mug of black coffee on the weapons chest and took a seat there herself, Giles stood up with hands in his pockets, confronting Spike’s suspicious gaze with a mild but resolute expression. “Spike, to give this the short shrift it deserves, you’ve been overruled. Regardless of your whims and your stubbornness.”

The Watcher picked off the top of the styrofoam chest. It was stacked nearly full of bagged blood.

Now everybody was looking at him. Expectantly. Some hopefully. Some bracing for explosion. And he couldn’t dredge up the energy for indignation. He just wanted to be someplace else. So he pushed out of the chair and walked out. Got himself down to the basement, back to the washtubs. He turned on the cold water and ducked his head under. A little stiff, bending, but that was fading. Nothing wrong with him a little rest wouldn’t fix. Fucking twenty-two. Pea-shooter.

He opened the dryer in the middle part of the room, knowing he’d always find a towel or two there: left behind for an extra cycle, when everything else was dry, and then forgotten. Toweling his face and then his hair, he leaned on the dryer, waiting, wondering who the delegate would be.

Feet on the stairs: three steps, then settling there.

“Bit, just go on.”

“Spike, we’ve done this. It’s old.”

“They may not see, but you should. It’s not a thing I can do. It’s a collar.”

“Maybe not.” She came the rest of the way down, all long legs and grace, and stood by him, facing him soberly, a sweet, pensive expression on her face. Tall enough now to look at him pretty much level, eye to eye.

“Listen,” she said. “Don’t think of it as a bribe or a collar. They can’t make it be that, even if they wanted to. Because you can walk away anytime. They’re committed; you’re not. You haven’t promised anything. And they’re not asking you to. You’re just being super-suspicious, super-stubborn, because you need it so bad. And so you figure there must be something wrong with it and you shouldn’t let yourself have it. Do you know what benenoia is?” When Spike only waited, she explained, “It’s the uncomfortable suspicion that people are banding together to do you good. Seldom fatal.” She made a quirky little smile. “You’re allowed good things sometimes. Really! Don’t think of it as a bribe, Spike: think of it as tribute.”

He barked a syllable of a laugh. Then the idea caught his attention and he had to consider it. Master vamps accepted tribute. It was their due. Expected. Even required. Very often in the form of blood: on the hoof, not in bags, but the container didn’t signify.

He’d accepted the SITs bargain because it was fair. Marked or not, they’d been under his protection and willing to provide him with blood in return. All fair, nothing to object to there.

And the Scoobies. Well, he protected them too. Had for a long time--years--without so much as a single thank-you nor bare recognition of his help. Of course, for years before that, he’d tried his best to kill and demoralize them, but that was before and didn’t count. They’d tried nearly as hard to off him, so that all should balance out. They were an extension of Buffy--her friends. Family, as good as. Not his, by any chalk, but surely hers. And for her sake, he protected them.

He could get his mind around that: tribute was fitting. Nothing shameful in it at all.

Watching him think it out, Bit was grinning and trying not to. She knew.

“Bit, you tell them what you said. Tribute is acceptable. But if Harris or anybody has some smart-mouth thing to say about it, I don’t want to hear because things might get unpleasant. Then fetch the box down here. Damned if I’m gonna have them all watching me. None of their damn business what I take or don’t.”

“Got it,” said Dawn briskly, and raced off up the stairs.

It was Buffy who brought the styrofoam chest, tucked under one arm. In her other hand she carried a full pitcher whose rich scent made his eyes heat and change, and a mug dangling by its handle from her little finger.

Placing pitcher and mug on top of the dryer, then setting the chest down, Buffy remarked, “I didn’t think you’d mind me. But if you want…?”

Spike paid no attention. Ignored the mug, too. Seized and lifted the pitcher, gone to full game face because his demon had barged through and wanted it so bad. Not warm, but not halfway to killed by the microwave, either: Buffy’d had the sense to leave it as it was. Strong. Rich. Fragrant. Only a small step from the source. None of the pleasures of the kill, of feeding at another’s expense, raw direct exchange of life for death; but he didn’t need that and the soul would have rebelled and ruined it all anyway.

This was fine. And good. And not nearly enough.

He finished the pitcher and Buffy helped refill it.

Finally, after two more pitchers, it was enough. He gazed regretfully at the bagged units left in the chest.

“There’ll be more in the morning,” Buffy said. “This was kind of the emergency expedited version. Giles filed the papers this morning. Later, there will be invoices. Accounting. The usual mess of bureaucratic paperwork, all in perfect order, none of which you’ll have to touch. That was the third thing I did, after I got home: called Xander to ferry Giles around in minimum time. Giles showed his authorization, scribbled up a purchase order, and basically wiped out a blood bank. Tribute is taken care of. Just one less thing to worry about.”

She leaned toward him. He immediately turned away and went to the concrete tub to wash his mouth with tapwater. However good blood tasted to him, it’d been made abundantly clear to him it was pretty nauseating to humans. Their loss. But he’d never present himself to Buffy tasting like something repulsive.

She’d followed him and was combing fingers through his drying hair, probably making it all stand up and look stupid. Felt really fine, though. He kept still and let her.

“I like it better not all flat and stiff and gelled up,” she remarked absently.

“Yeah: like it looking like a bleeding poodle.”

“I guess…. So, you gonna be all right with this?”

“Poodle hair?”

She smacked his head. Always with the hands, his girl. Wonderful, warm little hands….

Against her mouth, he said, “Come back to my place. Nobody to hear. Much better bed.”

“But Oz,” she replied indistinctly. “He’s been waiting to-- Mmmm. But we were gonna discuss--”

He grabbed her wrist and began towing her. Not at all in the mood for discussion.

At the head of the stairs, where an instant’s uncertainty about who should go first turned them against and into one another for more heated groping, Buffy protested, “But…they’re all there. They’ll all see!”

Breaking from her, Spike resourcefully hauled her to the kitchen door and out. There was another protracted question of precedence at the gap in the hedge, but no more protests.

**********

“So,” Spike said, the following morning, “what d’you want with me, then?”

The shaded side porch of Casa Spike was Spike’s usual morning place. Spike was semi-perched on the wooden porch rail, and Oz, rumpled and friendly, occupied a folding chair borrowed, months back, from Casa Summers.

“Need a vampire for a job,” said Oz, as Spike lit a fresh cigarette from the coal of the old one. “I was told you’d help.”

“Who exactly told you that?” Spike responded, all amiable. He suspected if he felt any better, he’d catch fire, because all that energy had to go somewhere. He turned, enjoying the play of sunlight on the grass, the hedges, and the trees, projecting the shadow of the neighboring house’s utterly useless California chimney as though it were the gnomon of a sun dial. He knew, pretty much to the minute, how long this porch would be safe.

“Well, you know,” said Oz uncomfortably.

“No, I don’t know,” (Spike employed full elocution and politely swallowed dogboy) “so why don’t you spit it out and tell me?”

“They don’t like being talked about. You know, right?” Oz persisted, puzzled but still hopeful there would be a meeting of minds or secret handshakes or something in the near future.

“Oh, you mean the moderately famous Powers That Be,” Spike said, as if he’d just caught on, enjoying Oz’s plain discomfort.

“You’ve had dealings. You should know better.”

“Right,” Spike responded in the flattest, least-impressed tone he could manage. “So this Power, or these Powers, that you get all itchy-looking when I mention, conveyed to you,” (point with cigarette) “that I was available for assignment.”

“Something like that.” Boy was all shut up now: wary, displeasured. Spike had hurt his furry feelings. Pity.

“And you come when they whistle, do you?” Spike decided to try genial. Gave Dogboy the pleasant smirk of the thoroughly shagged-out and self-satisfied alpha male.

Oz shot him a look. Definitely getting hostile here. Oz stood, all five-feet-maybe-six of him, went down the stairs, and tramped off without another word.

Studying the cigarette-end, Spike wondered who the delegate would be this time.

He’d decided he liked tribute. Very much.

He didn’t have to wait very long, about half an hour, before the delegate arrived: Willow. Spike made a disgusted face because he owed Willow a few and if he was extremely rude to her, she quite likely could make him regret it.

“Now, that’s not fair,” he complained as Willow took the chair where Oz had been. “Dogboy’s brought in the big guns.”

Willow gave him a bit of a wry grin. She pretty much knew his number: knew he stole cookies at every opportunity. Couldn’t put much past her. “It seems Oz was given the false impression that you were no longer a thorough bastard. I’ve put him straight about that. Sure, you can refuse. But don’t refuse just to prove you can. That’s petty.”

“I can do petty. Doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Did you even give him a chance to explain what it is?”

“Don’t care what it is. Not my concern.”

“Feed you and you get ugly, don’t you.”

“All a matter of perspective, pet. Some people think I look quite nice. All poodled up, an’ all.” He pushed a hand through his hair, that he figured was still all curly, going every which way and probably looking ridiculous. Today, he didn’t care. Today was for impenetrable smug. He didn’t get days like this very often. He intended to enjoy this one for everything it was worth.

Willow thumped hands on her trousered knees. “All right, let’s ditch the attitude and just talk straight: one killer to another.”

That made him pay attention. “Got you on numbers, Red.”

“Got you on style. You want to turn this into a pissing contest, I can piss you right out in the cheery sunlight.”

“And live with it afterwards?”

“Well, no: you got me there. And let’s not mention the fight to the death, afterward, with Buffy. Take that as a given.”

Spike opened another chair and sat down facing her. “You get round one on points. No contest. But I think you know something of the issue here. No collar. No leash. Not gonna do that.”

“Agreed. You may be battling the biggest windmill ever seen, but you’re entitled. I grant you that. I’ll even help you. But you used to make this big deal of what you were for: getting between whoever and death. What are you for now, Spike?”

Spike looked at her for what seemed to him quite a long while. “Non serviam,” he said finally.

“Got that. Really. And yet, your Hellish Majesty, it doesn’t seem to bother you a whit to second Buffy.”

“True.” Spike took his time lighting a fresh cigarette. “I trust Buffy. No, that’s not entirely right either. She can do with me whatever she likes. Even throw me away. No complaint here. Not because I trust her, although I mostly do. Because she’s the Slayer. An’ the best fighter I’ve ever seen or expect to see. And, well.”

“And you love her so much you get a little crazy with it sometimes. I know about that,” said Willow, a little wistfully.

“I know you do. Not to interrupt, but what’s happened with our Kennedy?”

“Subtle segue there, Spike. You’re not nearly the air-head that you look.” Willow’s quick-humored face turned somber. “She’s gonna try to wait me out. Taking a place of her own, here in town. Gonna sign up for classes. Likely some I’m in. Camp on my doorstep and make an embarrassing spectacle of us both. Kid doesn’t know how to let go gracefully. Now she’s hissing and spitting at Oz, and poor guy, he doesn’t know what to make of it. I’ve known worse break-ups,” said Willow distantly, “but this one will do. Very non-fun. She may actually succeed in chasing me out of Sunnydale. Even the First couldn’t do that….”

“Not evil. Only young.”

“I worry: more and more, things Principal Snyder said are making sense to me…. Back to topic here. What do you figure to do with the rest of your unlife, or at least the chunk immediately ahead?”

“Dunno. Been waiting for the Slayer to call the mark, and then I could figure. But she’s not done that yet.”

“A-huh. OK. I can see that. First shoe hasn’t dropped.” She bent her head and raised her eyes, as though looking at him hard over imaginary glasses. “She being secretive, or you being shy?” She added a patently fake cough before the word “shy,” as punctuation.

“Not shy. Just don’t want to joggle her elbow. Haven’t been many times she’s been free to choose. Don’t want to spoil that for her.”

“And the Powers. You setting up against them, or what?”

“Non serviam. I’m not their servant. Slayer’s one thing, but I’m not putting up with this ‘champion’ crap for a second. It’s no honor to be used. The pay’s real bad and the reward uncertain, to say the least. The reward is you live through the one thing so they get to use you again. Got nothing in particular against the Powers. As pointless as hating Zeus or Hera, which they much resemble. Nothing special about the Powers, except that they got it: power. That doesn’t make me inclined to trust ‘em and certainly doesn’t incline me to want to go blind wherever they point me. Whether…whether Buffy came or not.”

“Kinda thought that might be one of the sticking points. Yeah. You’re getting pushed toward an independent destiny and you’re digging in your heels as hard as you can. I can see that,” Willow allowed. “Buffy know about this?” Another sharp over-the-no-glasses glance.

“Dunno. We’ve not talked of it. An’ you keep shut too, Red. This is her choice. When I know it, I’ll make mine. And nobody else gonna do it for me. Not the Powers. Not Oz. And not you.”

“Fair enough. I respect that. Leave it at this, then. You owe me a few favors, right?”

“That I do.”

“Then hear Oz out. Find out what this business of his is about, and no, I haven’t asked him. I just know Oz. It means going someplace--that much, I’ve gathered. He didn’t realize you and Buffy were joined at the hip. Till now, anyway….” Willow made a reflective and rather pointed smile. It faded and she gazed at him soberly again. “But have you thought Buffy might do better, making her choice, without you moping around the place, right in her face, all the time? Maybe you’d both be better for a break. But whether or not, consider whatever Oz says on its merits. The Powers steered him your way for help. That doesn’t mean the thing’s not worth doing. You listen and then you make the call. If you do that, we’re square.”

“You are definitely not square, Red. Not in any way, shape…or form.”

“I go for the quiet ones, Spike. You’re not my type at all. Significant absence of meek.”

“Well, happens I’m pretty taken, so it’s probably just as well. Tell Oz, real nice, to come back.” Spike glanced at the sky, the tighter angle of sun. “Have to adjourn to the conversation pit. Downstairs. But tell him I’ve had my fun for the day. I’ll behave.”

“Spike, everyone behaves: the question is well or badly.”

Spike made a grand gesture. “Always let the lady have the last word.”