Disclaimer: Damn, but I wish that I'd had this fabulous idea before that Joss Whedon fellow, but as it happens I didn't so sadly I cannot claim ownership.

Author's note 1: This is very much an AU fic - no vampires, no slayers. They're all just normal people. This is my first effort at total AU fic so if it's bad please don't flame it, I'd have to crawl into a corner and hide for at least a month. As always comments, compliments and criticism are welcomed.

Author's note 2: Yeah, I know. I'm meant to be busy writing my other fic 'The slayer, the sleuths and the scoobies.' Well, I got distracted. This idea has been in my little head all week taking up valuable space and every time I tried to do a new chapter for my other story I kept coming back to this one, so I decided to just write it and hopefully get it out of my mind - I haven't abandoned my other fic I promise.

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Buffy moaned and shoved her head under the pillow, hoping to shut out the ringing of her alarm clock, she stuck out an arm and thumped wildly in the right region but the annoying ringing didn't stop. Then she realized it was still a bit dark and the ringing was coming, not from her now much abused alarm clock but her doorbell.

She shoved her mussed blonde hair out of her eyes and squinted at the digital display, it read 5:26am. She dragged herself across the bed and reached for her robe planning a slow and painful death for whoever had the nerve to ring her bell like this at such a disgusting hour. She rolled out of bed and shoved her feet into bunny slippers before stomping out of her bedroom into the hall, cursing as she tripped over the torturously high sandals she had kicked off there the night before after her date with Riley.

She glued her eye to the peephole and then frowned as she saw Spike outside. She swung the door open, "Okay buster, you'd better have a damn good reason for. Spike?" She took in his pinkish eyes and slightly blotchy face, "Aw honey, are you okay?"

Spike shuffled into the apartment looking very unlike his usual cocky swaggering self. "She's left me," he gulped out, "Left me for that bloody ponce Wesley, can you believe."

Buffy took his hand, pulled him through to her lounge and installed him on the sofa. Leaving him there she bustled away without a word to the kitchen where she hastily hauled chocolate brownie ice cream from her freezer and peanut butter cup cakes from her refrigerator. She started coffee perking and rushed back to Spike; he hadn't moved. Next she rushed to her bedroom and grabbed the duvet she had until so recently been snoozing under, when she had them both tucked up on the sofa with armfuls of comforting junk food she broached the tricky subject.

"So, why did Cordelia leave you for Wesley?"

Spike just bawled round his fourth cupcake.

Buffy sighed and dug deep into the ice cream; it was going to be a very long morning.

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Spike had finally calmed down once he'd eaten every scrap of her junk food and had copiously dribbled the contents of his nose and tear ducts onto her neck and shoulder. Now he was actually starting to make sense.

"So you had no clue?" Buffy questioned gently, "Just, poof! Bye Spike I'm running off with Wes, who incidentally has more money than you do."

Spike smiled faintly, "Something like that."

Buffy simmered, she'd mistakenly thought Cordelia genuinely cared for her friend, she had been wrong. Now Cordelia would feel her wrath!

"What you plotting pet?" queried Spike with a hint of the old mischief beginning to gleam in his baby blues.

"Well my initial plan was for Willow, Anya and myself to trail Cordelia whenever she goes shopping and deliberately buy the same outfits to wear at the same time as her, hell, I might even bring in a few extra buddies."

"You'd still have your work cut out." Chuckled Spike amused by the notion of his fastidious, fashion conscious ex meeting other women wearing the same outfit wherever she went.

"But you're right of course, far too much effort, far too expensive and far too obvious. We need something much subtler that will irritate her just as much, but we might still throw in a fashion clash for good measure."

Spike smiled a little, "Do tell."

"Well what drove Cordy nuts? Besides fashion clashes and Xander that is."

Spike looked blank.

Buffy rolled her eyes, "Think about it Spike, what were almost all your arguments with Cordelia about? She plain hated you being anywhere near another attractive woman, she was so jealous she'd all but turn green."

"So?"

"So, we make her jealous. If she sees you apparently blissfully happy with another woman so soon after her leaving you, when you should be busy nursing a broken heart, it'll really bug her. Nobody likes to think they're so forgettable that their former lover is already happy with someone else." Buffy cringed slightly but Spike didn't seem to have heard that last somewhat insensitive sentence.

"It'd have to be you then," he said consideringly, "Cor always was worried that one day I'd turn round and tell her I was leaving her for you."

Buffy's jaw dropped, "Whaa?"

"Yeah I know, dumb huh? You and me like that, weird or what? I mean, I can see that you're pretty and I love you and all, but it's just not like that."

Buffy nodded in agreement, "It is always a bit hard for people to understand that a guy and girl really can be just good friends, Riley has a problem with it too."

"Oh God," Spike groaned, "he's not peacefully slumbering in your bed waiting for you to go back to him once your demented friend is done snivelling is he? Oh yeuch, he's not is he?!"

"What, may I ask is wrong with Riley?" Buffy grinned.

"It's not the fish boy I'm bothered by but the bodily fluids that might be on the duvet I currently have tucked up to my chin!"

"Ewww, Spike!" scolded Buffy wrinkling her nose in mock-disgust, secretly glad he was back on his usual rude form again.

"Still maidenly and modest eh?" he chuckled delightedly, "Dimpled knees still firmly gummed together?"

"Spike!" Buffy snatched up a handy cushion and whumped him on the head with it.

He let her batter him for a minute before capturing the cushion in a determined grip, "Will you do it Buffy?"

"Pretend to be your new bit of stuff?"

Spike wriggled his eyebrows and pouted his bottom lip, "Please."

Buffy sighed dramatically without any real regret, "Oh dear, I guess that means I have to bid my love from Iowa a fond farewell."

"You stuffed it up again didn't you?!" howled Spike gleefully.

"I don't know what you mean." Retorted Buffy with dignity.

"You were unsuccessful last night at dumping the greasy little fishy back into the scummy pond he flopped out of!"

Buffy giggled, "Well Spikie baby," she purred mock seductively, "I guess being your latest lurrvve toy will just have to be my excuse for dumping poor boring Riley!"

"I knew it!" crowed Spike triumphantly, "I so knew you were bored with the loser! All the rest of them were getting excited thinking maybe Buffy had finally met someone who wouldn't turn her off and bore her witless within three dates, but no. Another one bites the bloody dust." He paused, "Are you ever going to find a guy Buffy?"

Buffy glared at her friend, "Hey, I'm about to do you a big favour so don't knock my extreme lack of love life when you don't have one of your own right now." Spike looked hurt and Buffy clapped a hand over her mouth, stricken by her unthinking bitchiness.

"I'm sorry." They said together.

Spike recovered quicker, "Now, to plans."