This is my first story from the Buffyverse. It's been a very long time since I've written anything, so your feedback is greatly appreciated (feel free to nitpick). I'll have much more to upload... tonight, as soon as I get the formatting right.

Disclaimer (Is this mandatory? Everyone does it. Oh well!) I own nothing from the Buffyverse. It all belongs to that super awesome writer guy, Joss Whedon.

Since this is an entirely Spuffy focused fic, I'm sure you guys won't mind that I've omitted Angel's little fall (rise?) to Earth in season 3 for the sake of story flow. For some crazy reason, Buffy always preferred him to Spike when he was around. D: Silly slayer. Pretty much everything else has been kept as it was in the series... With the huge addition of Spike.

Alrighty, have at it!

Chapter 1: Welcome Back

"Competition is a beautiful thing, makes us strive, makes us accomplish, occasionally makes us kill." The bloke who'd organized this game must have thought he'd been the one to give the Saint Crispen's Day speech, the way he carried on.

"First target is Buffy, the second is Faith, a little more elusive. They will both be together and ready for the killing-" Spike stopped listening at that point. Two slayers in one go? Play your cards right and it could be one hell of a good day. Spike wasn't the type to play anyone's whipping boy, but he also couldn't pass up a golden opportunity. The vampire was halfway back from Brazil, and well on his way to tearing the girl who'd destroyed his happy unlife to messes, when this Trick person had contacted him with an interesting and undeniably attractive proposition. Needless to say, Trick was very interested in recruiting the slayer of slayers for the first ever slaying of slayers competition, even after Spike had refused to pay his sodding entry fee. This fellow had devised a plan to get a whole team of hunters together, all people that wanted the slayer's head on a spit.

Looking around, Spike realized that the contest might end up getting very ugly... for the contestants, not the slayer. These grand hunters included a couple of Germans with computers, some redneck vampires? A bounty hunter and some nasty yellow thing with knives in his arms... Didn't he know that the slayer only played with the good-looking ones? This motley crew had no idea what they were up against. They could have the other slayer... if they managed, but Spike would be damned if they laid a hand on his girl. Buffy was his.

"Welcome to SlayerFest 98."

Spike sat with his feet propped up on the dashboard of his Desoto, nursing a bottle of Teacher's bourbon and waiting patiently for the slayer to make her appearance. Safely parked under a tree, he watched the young and tasty students go about their business, flirting, laughing, soaking up the sun. He idly thought of himself when he was a schoolboy, Eton and Sunnydale High School had nothing in common though of course, he'd received a much higher education at Eton. There was no way any of those California brats were half as literate they should have been. Everyone in the sodding state conversed in a near incomprehensible slur of valley-talk, slang, and grammatically butchered English.

The slayer's old nemesis grinned when he saw his target enter the courtyard and come into his field of view, he grabbed his binoculars to check it out. She was wearing pink... and ruffles, he scoffed at that. A girl so ferocious, with such a penchant for violence shouldn't wear such innocent and ridiculous things, she was a walking bloody contradiction, she'd be more suited to wearing entrails. When the slayer was costuming as a normal-girl, she reminded him of the Victorian girls he grew up with- fragile, nubile, very easy on the eyes, and absolutely snobbish. Women, they were all bloody teases, you couldn't satisfy them! Oh sure you could try, but they'd just end up leaving you for some slimy disgusting chaos demon. He took another angry swig from the bottle and refocused his attention on the slayer. It's not as if he actually needed to stake Buffy out for the killing, but she was fun to watch, always kept him guessing. Something strange boiled up inside him as he watched the scene fold out before him. Buffy had just found some barely post-pubescent boy and she seemed to be pretty sweet on him. Spike perked up his ears, ready for a good show.

"I think we should break up," the boy admitted.

"You do? I mean... Where was I?" She looked and sounded genuinely confused. It figured that the slayer would be much too caught up in herself as usual to notice anyone around her, the girl was a menace to mankind.

"It's just... Buffy, before we were going out, you seemed so full of life, like a force of nature. Now you just seem distracted all the time."

"I'm getting better," Buffy begged without much heart, "Honest. From here on out you are going to see a drastic distraction reduction..." Awkward silence. "Drastic distraction reduction? Try saying that ten times fast?" She finished lamely.

"I'm really really sorry." The boy looked at Buffy pityingly and left her to stand there at a complete loss. Mangy git! Sure the slayer could be a stuck-up tight-ass with no sense of fun, but she was a right catch and a half!

Where in the bloody hell was this sense of sympathy coming from? Oh right, because he was in the same sodding rowboat because of this super slayer bitch. Dru had been saying ever since they left Sunny D that he was covered in the slayer. The real love of his life was incomprehensibly angry with him because he apparently wasn't able to let Buffy go. Unable to let her go? They weren't even in the same hemisphere! He took him and Dru far away, all the way to Brazil, and she still continued all her moaning and groaning nonsense about how he tasted like ashes and saying that there was no hope for him. So although he hated the slayer for ruining his sodding life, he felt a little bad for her. They were both victims of loneliness and heartbreak.

"We few, we happy few," Spike muttered and lit the cigarette dangling from his lips.

Buffy evaluated the sight before her, measuring up her opponents to form a plan of attack. Did they seriously think could beat her? They had no idea who they were messing with. Oh no, the slayer was on vacation. These girls had unleashed Buffy, the Prom Queen within. A campaign was like a war, it was won or lost in the trenches. She thoughtfully jotted down bad skin under Michelle's weaknesses column, and then preceded to check her own pores in a compact mirror. Oh yeah, Buffy smirked, she had this in the bag.

Her friends may not have been willing to help her in the battle against Cordelia, but as the slayer, loneliness was in her blood. She'd use all the good and the bad to her advantage. Yes. She even had an idea for Buffy Summers campaign posters: simple, shy, deep. Boys liked that, right?

Now shopping for the perfect dress? That might pose a problem.

Spike chuckled as he watched the slayer play domestic the next day at school. She was skipping about in her perfect little spring dress with her bouncy, shampoo commercial hair. She looked good enough to eat. His stomach growled. The girl was a bloody fang-tease, among other things.

As if to add insult to injury, the girl was passing out absolutely massive cupcakes and clearly pretending she'd baked them herself.

"It's not going to work slayer! Everybody knows you're a bloody bitch," he growled and rummaged through his things to find some freshly bottled blood. Definitely wasn't anything compared to what Buffy would taste like, he was sure of that, but her classmates certainly weren't the worst he'd ever had.

Spike lost himself in a daydream. What it would be to drain the slayer dry on her homecoming night. She'd be all wrapped up like a pretty little present, just for him... Looking the best she'd ever looked, hair sleek and shiny, neck and shoulders bare and tan, beckoning him, and she had those those glossy lips. In his fantasy she was delicious, spicy.

Since the first time Spike and the slayer had met, she'd gone through a great number of changes, the big character-altering ones, not the least of which included dying. At that point in her young life, the slayer was still trying to be someone else, she was still in denial of her calling. Just as she matured physically, mentally, grew sharper, harder, the look in her eyes changed too. She used to be frightened like a little lamb, she was powerful, but unaware of her own strength... she was uncontrolled. Now when Spike looked at her, he could see that she was all grown up.

The slayer now had the look of someone that had seen a lot of death in their life, but somehow she still held inside her the tenderness and strength of the caring and protective friend she'd always been. Her friends still trampled all over her and piggybacked off her glory, her apocalypse averted was their apocalypse, and he could see it starting to weigh on her. Buffy was becoming a creature of the night, just like him.

Please review if you have the time... Which you probably do if you're reading fanfiction. Oh yes! It's go time, Spuffy fans!