Part II: Liquid Courage/Stupidity

The crowd at the bar had begun to filter out, the late hour finally catching up to its working class patrons. The room's insides still hummed with conversation, and everywhere you looked someone was knocking down a shot or draining the last of their beer; yet it was definitely emptier than it had been half an hour ago. Toronto was a thriving city, but even she had to sleep on occasion.

For Spike, this was the best time of the evening. When everyone who had been looking to get hammered or laid cleared out, with more of the former having achieved their goal than the latter, the real conversations could begin. Make no mistake: Spike loved going out, and he was no stranger to either being driven home or walking out of the bar with a woman under his arm. Tonight, though, he was content to sit back and relax with his some of his SRU teammates.

"All right, I'm out for the night," Jules said beside him, taking her coat off the back of her chair. "Lou, don't go too crazy with that gin and tonic."

Lou shot her a glare over the drink he'd been nursing for the better part of an hour. "Don't go too crazy with your drywall," he retorted cheekily, referring to one of Jules's more recent weekend warrior ventures—which often took precedence over her love life.

Jules rolled her eyes, then glanced over at the bar. "Tell Keira I said goodbye, all right?"

Spike and Lou promised that they would. "Assuming she's not too trashed from all the water she's been drinking, that is," Lou muttered when Jules walked away.

Spike couldn't help it: he smirked, his gaze wandering over towards where the newest member of Team One was asking the bartender for another water. She didn't get any strange looks from the man—he was too used to it at this point to raise an eyebrow—but the guy next to her certainly thought it was odd, and he used the excuse to lean over and start talking to her.

"How long do you want to bet it's going to take her to shake him off?" Lou asked, peering over in mild interest. "I'm guessing thirty seconds."

"Ten," Spike countered. As it turned out, he was right: in practically record time, Keira grabbed her water bottle and snaked out from the guy's arm. She began making her way back to the table, an annoyed expression on her face.

"Is she ever going to go home with a guy?" Lou wondered, taking another sip of his drink.

"Not in front of us, she isn't," Spike predicted. Keira was private to the point of it being a flaw; no one on the team knew much about her besides her name and the fact that she lived with her brother. Anything else—anything remotely personal—she refused to talk about. "Besides, she wasn't attracted to him."

"You don't think she plays for the other team, do you?"

No matter how reserved Keira was, though, there were some things she just couldn't hide. "Nah," Spike said. "At least, not that I can tell. But she likes blonds, and that guy had brown hair."

"And how the hell did you figure that one out?" Lou asked in disbelief.

"Because I'm observant, that's how," Spike said proudly. "Besides, it's really obvious once you've noticed it. Look, she's about to cross paths with one."

Sure enough, Keira's eyes flickered discreetly—yet appreciatively—over the blond grad student passing her on his way to the bar.

"Damn," Lou said, tipping his drink in Spike's direction. "You're good."

"So, what was wrong with the guy at the bar?" Spike questioned cheerfully when Keira rejoined them, water bottle in hand.

"Total asshole." Keira started gulping down her water as if it were a very alcoholic beverage. "Basically implied that he wanted to get me drunk and take me back to his place. What a fucking prick. I hate guys like that."

Spike and Lou's eyebrows shot up. Normally, Keira hovered quietly in the background; it was rare to hear such vitriol spewing from her mouth.

"Want me to go talk to him?" Spike asked, having a sinking feeling that Keira was more shaken than she was letting on. And, well, even though she could probably kick his ass six ways from Sunday, he didn't like seeing her upset and he had one of those urges to be all manly and protect her. His father had always told him, "You treat the women in your life like they're the best god damn things on this planet, because they are, and because they'll make your life miserable if you don't."

Keira, being Keira, immediately shook her head. "I've already said the magic words about being a cop."

"Does that actually work?" Lou wanted to know.

"Better than mace," Keira assured him.

Lou finished the last of his gin and tonic. "Well, that's it for me tonight," he announced, setting down the glass and yawning. "I'd better get home before I pass out. See you guys on Monday?"

"I should be heading out, too," Keira muttered after Lou left, in an awkward, I-don't-want-to-be-the-last-one-here sort of way.

"No, no, stick around for a bit," Spike pleaded, putting on his best puppy-dog face. "I just got started on this." He held up his Corona as evidence.

Keira hesitated for a second, then reluctantly lowered herself back into her chair. Spike beamed—partly because he'd gotten his way, and partly because it was the first time he could remember being alone with Keira. He wasn't used to teammates rebuffing his attempts at conversation, but he had consistently run up against a wall with Keira and he was determined to find a way around it. There had to be something she was willing to talk about, right?

"What is it?" Keira asked, a note of suspicion in her voice.

Spike realized that he'd been staring at her. "Nothing," he said quickly, lifting the Corona to his mouth to hide the faintest beginnings of a blush on his cheeks. "I was just thinking," he continued after he'd swallowed, trying to regain his footing, "that I don't really know you that well, and you've been on the team for five months."

Keira shrugged, already looking uncomfortable. "There's not much to know," she replied.

"Bullshit," Spike scoffed. "You're a weirdly interesting person."

She narrowed her green eyes. "How much have you had to drink?"

"A little," Spike admitted. He probably wouldn't have said that if he had been on his first beer. "But mostly I'm just in a good mood."

Like the rest of the team, Keira had figured out a long time ago that there was no stopping Michelangelo Scarlatti when he was in a good mood, and that the only course of action was to hunker down and wait it out. She sighed, asking, "What do you want to know about me?"

Spike didn't make the mistake of thinking he had won a victory, because he'd seen other teammates get this far and then start asking all the wrong questions. "I guess that depends on what you want me to know about you. Maybe we should establish some ground rules."

"Some what?" Keira looked as if she wasn't sure whether or not to laugh.

Spike shrugged, trying to hide the fact that he was growing more intrigued by the second. "Well, I never know what subjects to avoid with you. I've mostly figured out that you don't want to talk about where you grew up, but I'm pretty sure there's more. And I want to have stuff to talk to you about."

"You're insane, you know that," Keira muttered, though he noticed that she was relaxing a little.

"So I've heard," Spike answered with a grin. "So, come on, what's off-limits for you?"

"You're not serious."

"One hundred percent serious."

"You're serious?"

"Mmhm."

She eyed him curiously, not knowing what to make of his proposition. "What are you getting out of this?"

"Hopefully a friend." A really attractive friend, he added to himself, watching as she twisted her dark hair around her fingers.

Keira seemed to be considering his offer. Eventually, she leaned back in her chair. "What's off-limits for me?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah. Whatever you don't want me asking you about, name it," Spike told her.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath and looking away for a moment. "Uh… My entire childhood."

"Shit."

She continued as if he hadn't interrupted. "College."

"So, uh… Basically the first twenty-two years of your life?"

"Twenty-three," Keira corrected him, without missing a beat. "I took a year off."

Spike was tempted to ask why, but that would have been breaking the rules. "All right, I can work with that," he decided. "What's your favorite color?"

"My favorite color?"

"I've gotta start somewhere, right?"

"You're actually insane," Keira muttered, shaking her head.

"So, come on, tell me. Favorite color."

"Um… I guess red?" she ventured.

"Favorite movie?"

"Wait a second," Keira immediately objected. "If I have to answer all of these questions, the least you can do is answer them, too."

"Okay, fine," Spike agreed, amused by her reaction. "Green. Favorite movie?"

"Dirty Dancing."

Spike grimaced. "Cheesy eighties dance movie? No, thank you."

"And let me guess, you're into dick flicks."

"What flicks?"

"Dick flicks," Keira repeated, smirking at him. "You know, a testosterone overdose. Bunch of manly men running around and blowing shit up. Maybe one female character in the entire thing, existing solely for the purpose of eye candy. No plot necessary."

"Well, when you put it that way…" Maybe he needed to stop giving chick flicks so much crap. "Okay, The Fast and the Furious is kind of one of my favorite movies. And I kind of hate myself for it."

"I'll give you a pass on that one," she decided, her eyes sparkling. "I have a soft spot for Paul Walker."

"The cute blond guy, of course." Spike made a show of scoffing. Inwardly, though, he was crowing because he knew he'd been right about the blond thing.

Keira snorted. "Please, like you weren't drooling over Jordana Brewster."

"I'm going to, uh, pull an American and plead the sixth."

"I'm pretty sure it's the fifth."

"I hate those fucking amendments."

Over the next two hours, Spike discovered that Keira was actually a pretty damn good conversationalist. Once she figured out that Spike was sincere about wanting to find another way to get to know her, she opened up almost shockingly fast—until he realized that he, and everyone else on the team, had been completely wrong about her. She wasn't the cold, aloof person they'd assumed her to be; she was warm, funny, and kind of insanely hot. (Yeah, so, maybe he shouldn't have ordered that last Corona.) As it turned out, all she'd needed was for someone to respect her boundaries… of which there were, admittedly, many.

Somehow, they started talking about relationships. "I haven't been able to make one last for three years," Spike said. "This job… and living in my parents' basement…" He loved both of those things, but sometimes they really got in the way of his game.

"I haven't even gone on a second date in three years," Keira replied. "I seem to be really good at picking up assholes."

He frowned at that. "No second dates at all?" he asked, trying not to wonder if she'd had sex with any of the first dates. Jesus Christ, how drunk am I right now?

"None," Keira confirmed. Her next words were quieter, almost subdued. "Most guys don't see me as someone they actually want to be in a relationship with, you know? I'm basically just—" She cut herself off. "Well, whatever," she said, taking a long drink of water as if she could hide behind the bottle. "What's gone wrong with your relationships?"

Spike didn't take the bait. "That's bullshit," he told her.

"What?" she asked, blinking.

"Them. Not wanting to date you." He needed some beer to wash that one down. "It's bullshit." You're gorgeous, for starters, he was tempted to say, but he wasn't nearly drunk enough.

As much as Keira tried to hide it, he could tell that she was flattered. She got the slightest blush on her cheeks, and damn if it didn't make him feel good. "Thanks," she muttered, embarrassed.

"Relationships are tough, though," he said, trying to cheer both of their single asses up. "Especially with this job. We go overtime at least three days a week, and we're still on call on the weekends and holidays. My last girlfriend dumped me because she got sick of never seeing me. Said it was like we weren't even in a relationship anymore." He had liked her, too. At the end of the day, though, she'd been right: he just wasn't in a position to commit to anything serious.

"That sucks. I'm sorry," Keira said, looking like she'd tried but hadn't been able to come up with a more comforting response. "Relationships aren't really worth it, anyway."

He glanced at her in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"They take too much time and effort," Keira complained. "And then they want to know all about you." ("Heaven forbid," Spike remarked.) "Like, honestly, at this point I just want a guy I can call up at whatever ungodly hour I get off shift, and who's not going to want to meet my family or any of that shit."

"So… friends with benefits?" he hedged, and for a fleeting moment—nope, he wasn't even going to consider it.

"Exactly." Her eyes narrowed, and he had the terrifying suspicion that she'd guessed where his mind had gone; but nothing was amiss in her tone as she elaborated, "No hassle, no drama, just someone who's not an asshole and is up for having sex at completely random hours of the night."

Part of him still couldn't believe he was having this conversation with Keira, but another part of him was seriously considering her viewpoint. "That actually… sounds pretty good," he admitted. Then, because she was looking at him like that again, he hastily (and truthfully) added, "For now, I mean. Not something I'd want in the long run."

"Yeah? What's the long run, then?"

She was eying him curiously, like she was expecting him to let her in on a secret, and he found himself stumbling over his words as he replied, "Um, well, you know—family, kids, the usual. Italian, so—I mean, I'm Italian, so, yeah. You?"

Even partially buzzed, and more than a little flustered by the recent turn in their conversation, Spike knew he'd run up against another invisible boundary. Keira's flinch was almost imperceptible, but something in her eyes had closed off again. There was a harsh clunk as she set her drink down. "Don't think that's in the cards for me," she said, not to him but to the water bottle. "It's getting late. I should go."

Her abruptness caught him off guard, and when she stood he instinctively followed—only to bang his shins against the table and lose his balance, falling right back into his seat.

Keira paused at that, giving him a quick, thorough examination. "Yeah, you're not driving home," she concluded. "Where do you live? Woodbridge, right?"

This was a spectacularly bad idea, in more ways than one. "Nah, I'll be good to go in another hour," he said, ignoring the fact that coming home so late would wreak havoc on his sleep schedule. "You go ahead."

Keira rolled her eyes. "Except that'll make you a zombie tomorrow, so no, you're coming with me."

"Bossy, are we?" he muttered, trying to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with accepting a ride home from a friend. It didn't matter that he'd been battling an attraction to said friend all evening, right?

Damn right it doesn't matter, he thought. She's way out of your league. Apart from her terrible social skills and general refusal to volunteer any information about her private life—which, he reminded himself, was no longer necessarily the case—Keira was pretty much the definition of every girl he'd never had a chance with.

Oh, and there was kind of that whole coworkers thing.

"Just get up," Keira replied, unmoved by his grumbling. "We can carpool tomorrow so you can get your car before work."

"That's too far out of your way," Spike protested. He'd been about to give in and stand up, but now he sat right back down again. "Seriously, I'll be fine."

She didn't budge. "Then get Lou to drive you in the morning. Now come on, or I'll drag you."

The thought of Keira attempting to haul him through a bar, when she couldn't have weighed anything more than a hundred and twenty pounds, would have been hilarious if he hadn't known she could absolutely make good on her threat. When he stood up, it was pure self-preservation. "All right, fine. Let's go."

She led him to her car in the parking lot, held the passenger door open for him, and told him not to look in the back. Spike, of course, promptly did, and his eyes widened at the sight: heaps of clothes in every conceivable corner, a car seat that was overflowing with Power Ranger toys in her nephew's absence, and more CDs than he could count.

"Why do you have so many Madonna albums?" he asked suspiciously.

Keira gave him what he could only describe as an expertly-executed side-eye. "Because Madonna is my lifespiration," she said, and Spike was still trying to figure out what that meant when she turned on the car and "Vogue" came blasting out of the speakers.

It would have been very easy for Spike to tell everyone on the team about Keira's terrible taste in music, or for that matter anything she'd revealed to him that night; God knew most of them could use something to talk to her about. But for some reason, he never said a word about that night in the bar, and he found himself lying when Lou asked if he'd stayed long with Keira.

Of course, that didn't mean he went back to treating her like a stranger. In front of the others, he never alluded to having more than a professional acquaintance with her (although he redoubled his efforts to include her in the general conversation, ignoring each and every warning look she gave him)—but whenever they were alone, he found a way to tease her about her Madonna obsession or inquire about her brother and nephew. She seemed receptive to his cautious advances; she never told him off, at any rate, and he could tell she appreciated his avoidance of her "off-limits" topics.

(Once, and only once, he made the mistake of asking her if she ever got the chance to see her folks at home. If the fact that she very pointedly ignored the question wasn't enough, she spent the rest of the shift making sure their paths never crossed. Lesson: learned.)

It was always two steps forward, one step back with Keira; yet gradually he eased past her outer defenses, until he thought he could reasonably be counted on to make her smile at least once a day. She, too, seemed to want to keep their friendship discreet, so she rarely sought him out at work—but one night she texted him complaining about "the absolute dipshits" on her commute home, and after that, well, Spike may have started sneaking a few texts to her during the day.

Mindful of his instincts, though, which were warning him about the covert side of their relationship, Spike was careful not to cross any lines. For the most part, this wasn't too difficult: he kept their conversations strictly friendly (and their texting sessions emoticon-free), and Keira was content to follow his lead. They never revisited their discussion about friends with benefits, and more importantly they never spoke about that moment when Spike's guard had slipped. As time passed, Spike convinced himself that Keira had either forgotten it or simply hadn't noticed in the first place.

Of course, with Keira, there was no such thing as a guarantee.

"So," she said one night, when they were back at the bar (again) and the only ones left (again—and Spike couldn't help but notice that this had been happening rather frequently lately), "we should probably talk about that time you almost asked me to be your fuck buddy."

Spike actually spit out his drink, which wasn't his proudest moment. "You just went right into that, wow," he spluttered as he cleaned himself up, realizing too late that he hadn't denied anything.

"Well, I could have beat around the bush a bit"—a small grin tugged at her lips—"but that's not really my style. So let's talk."

"I wasn't—I didn't—" was Spike's feeble, last-ditch attempt at salvaging some sort of professionalism from the situation.

"I can always tell when a guy wants to fuck me," Keira replied, and he could have sworn her lips were taunting him as they curled over fuck and released. "You're never as good at hiding it as you think you are." Just as Spike was starting to worry that she was actually pissed at him, her leg nudged his under the table, a tactile reassurance that he was in the clear. "Anyway, you obviously wanted to make the offer, and I would have taken you up on it. So."

It shouldn't have been possible for Keira to shock him more than she already had, but he almost asked her to repeat herself because he couldn't quite process what he was hearing. "Um… you what?" was the best he could manage.

"Well, if you think about it, it makes sense," Keira replied, as if they were discussing carpooling or coordinating coffee runs. "Our schedules are both shitty, which is why actual relationships don't work, but they're both shitty at the same times."

"Because we're coworkers," Spike pointed out. "And there's the priority of life—"

"But as long as it's just sex, how is that any different from us hanging out off-duty?" Keira asked, raising her eyebrows. "Personally, I'd be more concerned about you breaking the priority of life code for Lou."

"Not funny," he muttered, only partially joking. He hoped he would never have to be put to that particular test, because he didn't know what he'd do if Lou were in danger.

Keira shrugged. "But true. Look, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not in love with you and I'm pretty sure you're not in love with me. So as long as we keep things professional on the job, we shouldn't have any problems. We're just two coworkers who happen to find each other attractive enough to have sex with. Big deal."

"But you like blonds," he said, stupidly.

She smiled at that—a low, mischievous smile that went straight to his groin. "And I like you."

He examined her for a moment, still half-expecting there to be a catch. "You're serious about this," he finally realized.

Keira didn't even blink as she replied, "Completely serious."

Which meant there was only one logical question left to ask: "When do you want to start?"