"Y'know, after a while all these crypts start to look the same," Tara decided as she and Willow hurried through the cemetery for an evening spent chez Spike.

"Usually he materialises with a swagger and some cocky statement before you have to start knocking on mausoleum doors," Willow added.

"Yeah, always with the cocky statement."

The two witches pondered this thought for a brief moment and then carried on walking.

"I don't know why he couldn't hang an empty blood bag from the foliage," Willow grumbled. "Should I do a homing spell?"

Tara pulled a face. "But then you'll be all tired and stuff. Can't you just ring him on his cell phone?"

"Sometimes I forget we're in the 21st century," Willow confessed, as she scrolled through her phone's address book until she found Spike's number listed under "Big Bad."

"Spike? We're lost. We're by the Shaw family crypt, the one with the aesthetically challenged gargoyles. Yeah. So we take a right by the unmarked, paupers' graves, then straight on, past the set of graves in that hokey new rust-coloured granite and you're first on the left? Got it!"

Spike was slouched nonchalantly against the door jamb of his crypt, smoking, as Willow and Tara finally appeared.

"Glindas!," he exclaimed, stubbing the cigarette out. "Just as well you're better on the old spell casting than you are at directions."

"Once you've seen one crypt, you've pretty much seen 'em all," Willow commented. "Don't see why you can't just get a small, one-bedroomed apartment in town."

Spike shrugged. "And pay for it how? Can't exactly see myself waiting tables at the local Piggly Wiggly."

"Well, no, that's a point," Willow said.

"Maybe you could do some freelance book-keeping," Tara suggested.

Willow and Spike just looked at her.

"So, we brought stuff," Tara suddenly remembered, holding out a bulging plastic bag.

Spike looked inside at the container of blood, the two bottles of vodka and a tub of Ben & Jerry's Cool Britannia.

"You two are so sodding adorable, then if I didn't have this buggering chip in my head, I'd eat you all up," he murmured. He stepped to one side and threw out an arm. "Come in ladies, mi crypt, es tu crypt."

Willow and Tara walked into the crypt and looked around. There were a couple of stone slabs, a beaten-up armchair, a television and a tiny fridge.

"It's er, nice," Tara said. "Minimalist."

"Sort of, um, Urban Outfitters meets early Gothic," Willow added.

Spike grimaced. "It's a dive, is what it is. But I used my fang discount to get some stuff from Bed, Bath And Beyond." He walked over to the corner and pulled out some bags. "Cushions and throws, so you don't well, get chafed in any uncomfortable places."

"That's so sweet," Tara said.

"Very thoughtful," Willow.

"You wanna go back to your place, don't you?" Spike asked.

"Oh yeah," they both said.

Spike didn't look too put out. "I'll get my coat. You put the central heating on before you left, didn't you?"

"And we could stop at the video place on the way back."

Spike pulled on his duster and then stopped. "You sure you're not up for a bit of hard fucking in a crypt? Be all dangerous and dark."

Tara looked pointedly at the dustballs that were gathering under Spike's armchair.

"Maybe I've hung round to many places where there are dead bodies but doing it in a cemetery doesn't really work for me," Willow tried to explain while shuffling towards the door.

"Well, can't blame a bloke for trying," Spike muttered, wrapping an arm round each of them and guiding them out into the graveyard.

"So we got Night Nurses' Dildo Gangbang, Pearl Necklace Harbour and The Fuck Club," Spike said, as he looked at the videos Willow and Tara had selected. "You sure you don't want to get a light-hearted romantic comedy for post-shagging?"

"Did you want to get something?" Tara asked mildly. "If you wanted to see a nice period film like The Age Of Innocence so you could re-live your un- undead days that..."

"Witch," growled Spike warningly.

"Yeah, The Remains Of The Day must be, like, your equivalent of The Breakfast Club," Willow teased.

Spike glared at them. "Sod off," he grumbled. "You got no respect for me. Have to do something about that."

Willow smirked. "I'm going to go and pay for these here films and then we should go back to our's and work on your trust issues."

"Yeah and you should be thinking of a safety word," Spike called after her. He turned to Tara.

"As for you," he purred. "You're a very bad little Wicca, aren't you?"

"I guess so," Tara agreed happily. "Can we hold hands?"

Spike stepped towards her so she was trapped against him and the 'ex-rental copies" sale bin. He swooped down and captured her mouth in a hard, passionate kiss.

"Open your mouth," he insisted. "Open your mouth and kiss me properly."

Tara complied and almost swooned as Spike's tongue swept into her mouth and his hands gripped tightly at her arms.

"Hey Deadboy Jr, your girlfriend know that you... ? Oh sweet Jesus, it's Tara!"

Spike and Tara stilled. Spike kept his back to Xander and tried to shield the shaking Tara from view.

"It's not Tara, it's just some co-ed I picked up at The Bronze," he improvised. "Now sod off."

"No, it's definitely Tara," said Anya, coming at them from the other side. "Why did you have Spike's tongue in your mouth? Are you having orgasms together?"

Xander grabbed hold of Spike's arms and pulled him away from Tara.

"OK, you and me outside, chip boy," he snarled. "No-one puts the moves on my best friend's girlfriend."

"Xander, honey, I think that Tara was letting him, there was ass cuppage going on, like I do when you kiss me and I just want to get straight to the sex," Anya explained. "Oh, but what about Willow..."

"Hi guys," said Willow. "So, um, here we all are in the video shop. Where we rent videos for Spike because he can't get a membership card on account of him being dead and all."

"Yeah," Spike agreed, shrugging Xander's hand off his arm and grabbing the bag from Willow. "Forced the girls to rent me some bad, nasty porn 'cause I'm a bad, nasty vampire."

"Let me look in there," hissed Xander, grabbing the bag. "Night Nurses euwwww, Pearl...The Fuck...... euwwww, euwwww and once again, euwwww! And Yentl?"

"So I like a bit of Barbra with my porn, not a crime, mate," Spike said defensively but Xander was gazing at Willow with a look of horror on his face.

"Yentl is like your favourite film, ever Will!", he spluttered. "And the Tara/Spike kissing. What's going on?"

"Nothing is going on," Willow insisted. "Hello, does the word "lesbian" mean anything to you people?"

"But Tara and Spike! And again I have to mention the kissing with his tongue forcefully thrusting in her mouth!" Xander spluttered.

Anya nudged him. "Over-sharing, honey."

Spike looked pointedly at the witches. They were the ones with the dark mojo at their disposal. Couldn't they just do some memory lapse spell to stop Chubs opening and shutting his mouth like a mentally challenged goldfish? But Willow was flapping her hands behind Xander's back and mouthing something at him. Spike frowned.

"It was a bell?" he said in a questioning voice.

"A spell," Willow hissed.

"A spell," echoed Tara. "To, um, m,m,make me irresistible to vampires?"

"Why would you do a spell like that?" Anya wanted to know. "Are you a fang groupie? I met one of them once. It was quite funny really she wanted vengeance on this master vampire who wouldn't turn her and so I..."

Xander turned to the love of his life. "An, not now. Y'know I love to hear stories from the days when you exacted gruesome revenge on all my kind but now is not the time. So, yeah, why the hell would anyone want to make out with Chips Ahoy here!"

"Hey watch it," Spike snarled. "Rather be chipped than an ex-demon whipped tosser."

"With your words you're really wounding me," taunted Xander, trying and failing miserably to come back with a witty riposte. "So the spell?"

"Er, vampire bait!", announced Willow triumphantly.

"Yeah!," smirked Spike, catching on. "Glinda 2 here is giving off this smell of blood and virgin's sweat and I couldn't help myself. Had to dive right in. And very nice it was too!" Tara beamed.

"And if he'd been a 'grrrrr' vampire, Buffy could've staked him while he was kissing Tara," Willow finished.

Xander thought about it for a moment and was just on the verge of mentioning the ass cuppage when Anya grabbed his hand.

"Xander seeing Spike and Tara kissing has made me want to have many orgasms with you," she said simply. "Let's go to the park and have sex spiced with the slight danger that someone might see us."

Spike leered at Xander. "Off you go Chubs, it's rude to keep a lady waiting."

Xander weighed up the odds. He could stay and taunt Spike about being fang impaired or he could have sex. There was no contest really.

"Wills, love you to death but you might wanna rethink the vampire bait thing," he managed to get out as Anya pulled him out of the door.

"That was close," Tara remarked as the door closed behind Xander and Anya.

"We should think of a cover story," Spike suggested as they walked towards Marchmont Street. "So the other Scoobies don't get all suspicious and end up driving the business end of a stake through my heart. Something that doesn't involve lame excuses about spells."

"Well I didn't hear you coming up with anything," Willow snapped.

"Yeah, well thanks to you demon girl will probably tell everyone that I like Barbra Streisand," Spike grumbled. "If I was de-chipped, I wouldn't even waste time ripping her throat out."

"So cover story?", prompted Tara, trying to avert one of Willow's garbled soliloquies about how under-rated Babs was and how I Never Promised You A Rose Garden was actually a metaphor for the feminist struggle against a patriarchal power base.

"A cover story sort of suggests that this is a regular thing," Willow said in a tiny voice as the three of them entered their apartment building. "A thing that is not just a thing to make Buffy jealous or pass the time while someone's bloodlust has become less bloody and more lusty."

"I don't love you," Spike said gruffly. "Not that you aren't appealing. I mean, you've got the girl-loving wicca stuff going on and any small crumbs you wanna throw the way of the Big Bad then it'd be rude to throw them right back. Not sure what the deal is with me and The Slayer either. But this thing between us it's real. It's not going away, is it?"

"And you say I babble," Willow muttered, as she unlocked the door.

Spike took off his coat and hung it on the hat stand before going into the kitchen to put his blood in the microwave.

"I don't say you babble, Glinda 1," he corrected. "I say you've got verbal bloody diarrhoea."

"Anyway historically vampires and witches have always had a bond," Tara pointed out, as she got Spike's Kiss The Librarian (that they'd "liberated" from Giles' kitchen) mug out of the cupboard. "For magick rituals."

"And fucking," Spike added indignantly. "It's the stuff of legends. Would be bad manners not to carry on the tradition."

He tipped a splash of vodka into his blood and handed the bottle back to Tara who poured out measures for her and Willow.

"So what are we drinking to?" Willow asked.

"The vampire/witch bond?"

"Shagging?"

"Both. Here's to the vampire/witch bond and the shagging that goes with it," Willow said, clinking her glass first with Tara and then with Spike.

"So shall we strengthen the bond right now?" Spike drawled, arching an eyebrow and nudging Tara with his hip. "I'm thinking a little porn, a little grope here and there, maybe a few new positions that you could never, ever tell your lesbian mates about?"

"OK," agreed Tara.

"Sounds cool," added Willow.

"Right then," Spike said. "I'll go get the restraints. Are they still in the third drawer down?"

And the three of them lived happily ever after. Or at least for the next fortnight, but that's a whole other story.