Author's Note: The other day I was walking along with my roommate and good friend Elise, and I jokingly said I would write a Spike/Buffy fanfiction for her, and then somehow that became an actual plan. I have not watched any of "Angel," and I have not read/watched any of the eighth season of BtVS, so let's just pretend that none of that ever happened, shall we?

So yes. This is for Elise, who is of the opinion that even vampires deserve a Happily Ever After.

It had been agreed upon by both the involved parties that there would be absolutely no wooden furniture in their home. When this was first decided, Spike could not have thought of any situation that would have him revisiting and reconsidering this move. This, however, was before Spike saw the chrome monstrosity that was currently dominating their sitting room. After all, wouldn't being accidentally staked by a wooden coffee table be preferable to having anything to do with this affront to design?

Probably, yes.

"Buffy," he called, "I'm not so sure about this."

"About what?" she responded from the basement, where she was inflicting a world of pain on an innocent punching bag. "Can it hold on a minute? I'm almost-" slam, whack, thump "-finished down here."

"Yeah, take your time. I'm just going to go drink the blood of whatever innocent sold this to us."

She was still out of breath when she joined Spike in the sitting room. "Oh, no."

"See what I mean?"

"We bought this?"

"To be fair to us, love, it looked a lot better in the store."

"Still. Ew. I guess I should keep my day job, huh? Well. Night job."

Avoiding wooden furniture had never been terribly inconvenient for them. There was a lot of attractive metal furniture out there, and if need be it was always possible to find faux-wood finishes. And sure, neither of them were interior designers, but they had always done pretty well when buying items for their home. Until now.

"It's bloody awful," Spike said. He was almost in awe of their lack of taste and foresight. Almost. "Tell you what. You stick to the punning, I stick to playing poker with my mates, we get rid of this monstrosity, and then we deny ever letting it into our place."

"Deal. I'll call the store." Buffy headed to the kitchen, where she found the furniture vendor in the phone book and dialed their number. "Hello? Hi, yes, this is Buffy Summers calling about the table I had delivered today? Yes, I can hold."

Back in the sitting room Spike lay down on the couch and flipped the TV on. He had been watching his favourite soap opera, but what with the arrival of the table he had missed the ending. Instead, he found himself watching a film adaptation of "Twilight," a book that had supposedly been written about vampires.

Shuddering, he went to switch the channel just as Buffy walked back in. "Why the disgust?" she asked. "Did Marguerite go through with the wedding?"

"Passions ended before I started watched again. I guess we'll have to wait until next week to see if she married him. No, it was that "Twilight" film again. Terrible."

"Well, the vampires in it aren't too accurate, that's for sure."

"They sparkle! What kind of self-respecting creature of the night sparkles? I'm much happier bursting into flame in the sun, thank you."

Buffy pouted. "But if you didn't burst into flame we could go on a picnic!"

"We could go for a picnic at any time, love. Just because they daytime has a monopoly on picnickers doesn't mean it has to be that way. We could go for a picnic tonight, if we wanted to."

"Do you want to?"

"Of course not! You're talking to a physical manifestation of evil, here. I can't be seen going on picnics."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "You have a soul. You aren't exactly a standard 'Big Bad.'"

"Oi! No need to be rude. I could be plenty evil if I wanted to. I just don't feel like it. I have other things to do. I've got to organize the basement first." He sniffed in displeasure, and Buffy snickered in response.

"You said you'd do that two years ago, by the way."

"I've been busy."

"Sure you have. Anyway, I talked to the store manager and picked a new table out of their catalogue. They're going to drop by tomorrow with the new table and pick this one up."

"Hey! Just because I don't tell you all about the evil I get up to when you aren't around doesn't mean it doesn't happen." In all honesty, it didn't happen. Spike spent most of his time reading and trying to improve his poetry skills. It wasn't going terribly well.

"Could you make sure you're around tomorrow to let the deliverymen in?

"And what time should I be here to let the delivery men in?"

"They said anywhere between four and six. Thanks, sweetie!"

"I'm not sweet," he called after her as she all but flounced out of the room. "I'm very evil."

Spike slammed the door shut after the deliverymen left the next day, seething. How dare she? He growled in such a way that might have been menacing had anything been nearby to hear it, however he had no such luck. It was damn difficult to be terrifying, being that he had a soul, had given up killing things, and was involved with the slayer. Keeping up appearances was more a chore than it had ever been, and when people weren't around to her his menacing growls they were growls wasted.

A short while later, an exhausted Buffy walked through the door, her sister Dawn and friend Willow in tow.

"Slayer," Spike growled, stalking toward her. "And Dawn!" His countenance suddenly became much brighter. "How're you, kid? It's been ages, it has."

"Hey, Spike," Dawn said, smiling. "How're you?"

"I'm doing pretty well. Having a spot of bother with a table, but it'll be sorted. How're you, Willow?"

"I'm fine," the redheaded computer wiz whispered, her hand covering the microphone on her cell, before returning to the person on the other end of her very important phone call.

"I take it Red's still writing code for that startup up in San Francisco, then?" Spike asked.

Dawn nodded. "She's really busy. Willow and I ran into Buffy when she was leaving work! We can't stay long, but I figured we should say hi."

Buffy hung Dawn's coat and turned to Spike, crossing her arms. "So why did you sound on the brink of murder when I got home? And what's wrong with the table?"

Spike grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the sitting room, where a gorgeous table stood.

"Nice table," Dawn commented. "It looks perfect in here."

"Yeah," Spike said tersely. "It's a nice, oak table that looks perfect in here. Looks like someone got tired of me and has decided to order a loaded gun for the sitting room."

"What? No, I definitely asked for a faux-wood finish, not the real deal," Buffy said. "The store messed it up, not me. Besides, it looks pretty stable. I doubt it would a very convenient murder weapon."

"Oh, great table," Willow said, walking into the room and then throwing herself down onto the couch. "It really pulls the room together, you know?"

Buffy looked baffled. "No, I don't. How does a table pull a room together?"

"Well, you know, it grounds it." Willow searched the three, uncomprehending faces before her for a spark of understanding. "Ties it all into one, smoothly-flowing space?"

Spike raised his hands in defeat. "You've lost me."

"They're design terms," Willow said. "I've been watching a lot of interior design shows lately." Willow didn't catch the look of dry disbelief Spike was throwing her way.

"Anyway," Buffy said, turning toward the kitchen, "I'll call the store again. Maybe they'll let us trade it once more."

Ten minutes later, Buffy returned, defeated. "Apparently the table doesn't exist in anything but real wood," she explained. "He misheard me the first time I asked for faux-wood."

"Well, you can just exchange it," Dawn suggested. "Right?"

"I tried, but no dice. I already exchanged it once, and apparently that's the most they'll do unless the table is broken upon delivery. And we can't really spare the money to buy another."

The four of them stared at the table, deep in contemplation, for approximately fifteen minutes before Willow stood and broke the silence. "I could try to use magic to change it from wood to something else," she suggested.

"No, I can't ask you to do that," Buffy said.

"Wait, why not?" Spike demanded. "One simple spell won't get her all evil again like she was when you were in university. And if we don't do something, that table will kill me!"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "The table won't kill you, Spike. Besides, we used to have wooden furniture at Mom's, and you were fine there."

"There's a difference," the nearly two hundred year old vampire said, sniffing delicately. "A man shouldn't feel threatened in his own home."

Much to Spike's displeasure, this sparked loud laughter from the three women in lieu of the sympathy he had hoped for.

"I'm not kidding!" he sputtered. The laughing grew in volume, until Spike had no choice to but to crack a smile. Stupid Scoobies, he thought. Making life all rainbows and kittens all the time.

Quite a while later, after Dawn and Willow had been seen to the door, Spike sighed and sat down on the couch. "I suppose this is what I get for deciding to live in a house instead of a crypt. Now, with a crypt, there's no danger. Everything's made of stone. Not a splinter to be had."

Buffy laughed, curling up against his side. "Much less girlfriend-friendly, though," she said.

"Much," he agreed. "So, what's the plan for this table?"

"I don't really know what we can do. I mean, it does seem pretty solid. Could you live with it?"

"Well, I could, yes. With the kind of demon action this house sees, though, I give it four weeks until that thing is just a pile of sticks."

"Scary, life-threatening sticks," she teased, softly. He shuddered, barely, but she hugged him just a bit tighter anyway. "Tell you what," she said, adjusting her head on his shoulder. "I'll have Xander cut it down into stakes. Then it will be out of the way, but the wood won't be wasted. I can put it toward slaying."

"But that leaves us without a table," Spike reminded her. "And if we don't have a table, what will we have left to tie the room together?"

Buffy laughed. "Are you suggesting we keep the scary table?"

"Possibly. As long as you're willing to take it on when it decides it's Stake the Spike time."

"Of course." Buffy's voice was solemn. "After all, I can't risk an angry vampire in my own home. Keeping my fanged tenants happy is very important to me."

"Oh, really?" His became teasingly predatory. "How important would you say it is that you keep me happy?"

Giggling, Buffy shoved his shoulder. "Down, boy. I still haven't had dinner. We can work on the happy later."

Buffy climbed off the couch and headed toward the kitchen, with Spike following closely behind. He knew as well as she did that happiness wasn't a problem for them.

Spike slipped his arms around Buffy and leaned his chin on her shoulder. Smiling, she tapped his arm lightly with a spatula. "How do you expect me to get this blood heated to a decent temperature for you if you keep distracting me like this?"

"Oh, so you find me distracting, do you?"

No, happiness wasn't a problem at all.