Another thirty minutes goes by before Spike pulls off the highway and on to a frontage road. We pull up to one of the four pumps at a tiny gas station. He parks the car and twists the key out of the ignition, and even though my eyes are closed, the rustling of his leather duster lets me know he's turned to face me.

"Need anythin'?"

I turn my head to face him, blinking my eyes open, pretending to have been asleep.

"No. Thanks."

He nods and hops out of the car without another word, slamming the door behind him. I watch him swagger into the gas station, still shirtless, duster billowing around his legs. I can faintly hear him humming as he disappears inside.

He returns ten or so minutes later, diet soda in one hand and a package of some kind of sugary snack cakes in the other. He tosses them into my lap through the open window and moves to the gas pump.

"How'd you pay for the gas?" I ask, curiosity getting the better of me when he moves around to get back in the car.

"Pay?" He scoffs. "Pet, I haven't paid for anythin' in over a century."

I frown at him, stomach knotting, bringing the diet soda away from my lips.

He must see the look on my face because he quickly responds, "Relax, luv. Didn't off the checker."

My frown deepens, brow furrowed in confusion.

"Then how—" He cuts me off with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder.

I narrow my eyes and peer around him, looking into the wide windows of the gas station.

Sure enough, the fidgety little man standing behind the register is looking at Spike white faced and wide eyed, hand clasped to the bleeding wound on his neck, absolutely terrified.

But very much alive.

I turn back to Spike, gaping.

"What?"

"You drank from the cashier? Without killing him?"

"Catch and release." He says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

I'm still gaping. "You can feed without killing?"

"Course I can." He scoffs, as though it's obvious. "Not an animal. I do have some self-control, ya know."

I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

"Okay, well, not a lot of self-control, but I can feed without killing." He sniffs. "Just haven't had reason to before, is all."

"And you have reason to now?" I ask, disbelieving.

There's a poignant pause as he looks at me, one eyebrow raised, blue eyes gleaming in the fluorescent lights from the gas station windows.

After a minute, he sighs, rolling his eyes. "Let's call it self-preservation, yeah? 'M rather fond of my wind pipe." He inclines his head toward me, meaningfully motioning to where I'd dug my forearm into his throat. "Besides, can't have you fallin' apart at the seams every bloody time I eat someone."

I stare at him for a minute, letting this all sink in.

"You want to feed without killing."

He rolls his eyes. "I don't want to, but I can make it work. For now."

"Why?"

"Just sodding told you," he grits through clenched teeth, "can't have you a big blubberin' mess every time I have to feed. Bloody tiresome, that. Never stay on schedule then."

I lean back in my seat, eyeing him. "Thought we were already off 'schedule'?" I put the word in air quotes and tilt my head back the direction we came, indicating the fact that we're probably being pursued this very moment by more Wolfram and Hart recruits.

"Yeah, and I— that's exactly why— bloody well don't want to get more off than we are already, right? Got too much at stake here, with the Gem and all." He finishes in a rush, exhaling loudly. "Don't make a thing out of it."

I smile at him. A tiny, grateful quirk of my lips.

He's willing to go against his very nature. To make the rest of our time together easier.

On me.

Of course, he hasn't come right out and said it, so I could be wrong.

My smile falls.

And didn't he tell me not 24 hours ago that was something he wouldn't do?

I stare at him and think back to my thoughts before, at the diner, again wondering if this weird dissonant behavior is a thing with every vampire, or if Spike's just a special case.

I'm leaning more toward the latter.

He gives me a devilish smirk when he sees he's stunned me speechless.

"Cat got your tongue, pet?" He purrs, reaching out to me and catching my chin between his thumb and index finger.

On contact, unbidden, my eyes fall to his lips.

No. No, no, no.

"W-we should…keep moving." I say quickly, dragging my eyes away from his mouth. "Sunrise."

I make myself meet his gaze.

"Yeah."

But his eyes are on my lips, now.

He begins to lean forward, and warning bells sound in my head.

This is bad. A world of bad.

A giant, spinning, tilting-off-its-axis world of bad.

Making an effort not to murder people isn't romantic, I remind myself. It isn't sweet. It isn't a nice gesture.

It definitely isn't an excuse to kiss the vampire.

The dead, evil, beautiful vampi—.

No! Stop it. He uses that beautiful face to lure people.

To their deaths.

Sobered, I jerk back, pulling my head out of Spike's grip and smacking his hand away as though it were poisonous.

"What the hell are you doing?" I ask, hating that my voice sounds so breathy.

He blinks at me, raises a scarred eyebrow. "What's got your knickers twisted?"

I jab a finger at him. "You have absolutely zero effect on my knickers, pal."

Liar.

He raises both hands up, palms open in surrender, but his face is anything but innocent. "You've lost me, pet."

My God, he is infuriating.

"What is your deal?" I ask, my voice accusing.

"What's my deal?"

"Oh, come on! This whole…" I wave my hand in his direction, "good vamp, bad vamp routine. It's wiggy. And nobody's buying it!"

He smirks, tilting his head. "Wiggy, is it?"

"Yes!" I shout, frustrated. "You bite me, and then you bring me orange juice." I tick each point off on my fingers. "You tell me that I'm food, and then refuse to drink from me when I ask you to. You say you're evil and that you're a killer, and then you go off and don't kill people. You keep insisting that you don't care, but then you-" I flail my arms about wildly, "do things. Like talk to me, and answer my questions, a-and kiss me, and…" I fade out, voice getting quiet and losing ire as I meet his eyes, "…look at me like that."

"Look at you like what, luv?" He asks, voice suddenly silken and soft.

The expression on his face is thoughtful, lips forming a pout, head still tilted just slightly. Everything about him seems softer in this moment. His cheekbones less angular, platinum hair dried in tousled curls instead of slicked back.

But it's his eyes.

Searing and searching and so, so blue. Overwhelming in their intensity, like they can read every thought that's going through my head. Like they see me more intimately than I can even imagine.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, what am I seeing when I look into Spike's?

I answer him without thinking.

"Like William."

He leans back away from me, blinking rapidly. Something hard passes over his face, and the moment is gone.

Before I know what's happened, the outright mocking leer returns, curling his lips. "Wasn't goin' to kiss you if that's what's got you all in a tizzy."

Oh.

"Shyeah," I scoff, laughing awkwardly, "I know that."

My face is burning.

"Just had something right…" He trails off, flicking his thumb in one rough, quick motion over the bottom of my chin. He pulls his hand back and shrugs. "'S gone now."

Oh, the nerve.

'Just had something', my ass.

I swear my face is on fire.

I cross my arms, trying for indignant. "So you meant it? No more killy-biting?"

He shrugs. "For now."

I think about this for a second and decide it's better than nothing.

It's already more than I ever expected.

"We really should go." I say, sighing, turning back to face away from him. "Unless you wanna be southern fried vamp."

I hear him chuckle and put the key in the ignition. "Can make it as far as Denver tonight."

"I've always wanted to see the Rocky Mountains." I muse, breaking into the package of puffy white snack cakes as Spike pulls back onto the highway.

He laughs. "Won't see much of 'em, luv. It'll be dark."

"I've always wanted to not see the Rocky Mountains." I amend snarkily, taking a bite, promptly gagging. "Spike, I can't eat these, they're pure sugar."

I toss the opened cake package onto the center console.

"Eat 'em anyway." He glances at me, eyes me up and down. "You're too skinny."

I am? "I am not!"

He scoffs. "Bollocks. Sodding skin 'n bone, you are."

I look down my body at the flat stomach, slim hips, thin thighs.

I know I'm skinny, I always have been, but I'm not too skinny.

I tell Spike this, but find myself picking the package back up and finishing the cakes anyway.

"There you are."

It's Spike, dressed in his trademark all black, only a little more retro— lighter jeans, t-shirt covered in artfully arranged safety pins, covered by the leather duster. His hair is different, still peroxide blonde, but longer, a messy array of bleached spikes all over his head.

"Been lookin' everywhere for you."

We're standing face to face in a dark alleyway, the pavement glistening and damp. I can hear sirens whirring somewhere in the background.

"Oh, yeah?" I look at him. Shrug. "Guess you found me."

He takes a predatory step toward me, hands clasped behind his back, eyes smoldering.

"Looks that way."

I sigh, folding my arms over my chest. "Look, I really don't have time for this."

Spike leers nastily. "Don't worry." He runs the tip of his tongue along his upper lip. "This won't take long."

He shifts into vamp face and lunges for my throat.

"Buffy!"

My eyes fly open and Spike's leaning over me, hands on my shoulders, a bewildered expression on his face.

I blink at him. "Spike?"

I glance away from his face and look around. We're no longer driving, but inside another motel room. The lamp on the nightstand is on, casting an orange glow over both of us. I'm on top of the bedspread on another lumpy mattress, sweat drenched pillow beneath my head.

It was just a dream.

"You started shoutin'." He says, letting go of my shoulders and stepping away. "Bloody distracting. Bad dream?"

I frown, remembering, suddenly unsure. Is that really all it was?

"Um," I put the back of one hand on the side of my forehead. It's drenched in sweat. "Yeah. I guess so."

He nods but doesn't ask me anything else. He goes back to the ratty arm chair he must have been sitting in. There's a plastic cup half full with an amber colored liquid sitting on the TV stand beside it, the smell of cigarette smoke strong in the little room.

"What time is it?" I ask, looking down at my crumpled t-shirt and jeans. "And why didn't you wake me up to change?"

"You were knackered." He explains simply, wedging a fresh cigarette between his teeth and lighting it. "And a quarter past 3:00."

Judging by the light streaming in from beneath the drawn curtains, he doesn't mean 3:00 in the morning.

I sit up a little, rubbing the crick in my neck.

"You let me sleep for almost 12 hours?" I ask, surprised and irrationally irritated.

He just shrugs. "Tried to wake you when we got here, but you were good and dead to the world."

I look around the room again. "And where is here, exactly?"

"Some shit hole on the sodding Kansas border."

My heart sinks.

"I missed the mountains?"

Spike laughs, taking a deep drag off the cigarette and exhaling. "Yeah, all those exciting black blobs way off in the distance. Tragedy, that."

I sit up in bed, pushing my hips backwards to lean my shoulders against the wooden veneer headboard.

"Might've been my last chance to see them." I say quietly, giving voice to a thought I've had about a million times since that first horrible night in the back of Spike's car. Even though I'm pretty sure at this point that it won't be Spike won't be doing the killing, it doesn't mean I have a lot of confidence that I'll escape this whole thing alive.

Has it really only been three nights since we sat across from each other in that restaurant? Only two nights since he showed me what he really is? Only hours since we were attacked?

Since the kiss?

On one hand it seems like no time at all.

On the other, a lifetime should have passed for how much older I feel.

"Don't do that." Spike says, pulling the cigarette out and staring at it.

I blink, realizing I'd zoned out. "Don't do what?"

"The pessimistic bit. It's bollocks." He looks up at me and leans back in the chair, cigarette held loosely between his index and middle finger. "Already told you. If the boys at Wolfram and Hart wanted you dead, that's what the bounty'd be for. It isn't. Whatever it is they want you for, you're worth more alive than dead."

I fold my hands and place them in my lap.

"Yeah, maybe. At first."

"Bollocks." He says firmly, bringing the cigarette back to his lips. "So you gonna tell me what this dream was about, then?"

I look down at my hands. "Why do you care?"

But the predictable "I don't" response I'm expecting doesn't come.

"Interrupted my 'me time', you did. Had to put out my cigarette to wake you up, wasted the whole bloody thing."

"What a shame." I snap sarcastically, looking up.

"Plus, 'm bored." Spike smirks at me, folds his arms up behind his head and leans back, wagging his eyebrows suggestively. "Entertain me."

"Entertain yourself." I fix him with a sickly sweet smile.

He does that tongue curling thing. "Naughty girl."

"You wish."

"I do indeed."

"God, you're such a—"

"Pig?"

"Yes!"

"Am not," he counters, grinning around the cigarette. "I'm charmingly rakish."

"What does gardening have to do with anything?"

"Not a blessed thing." He laughs at me, taking one last drag off his cigarette before stubbing it out on the TV stand and picking up his drink. He lifts it toward me. "Fancy another round, pet?"

I shudder. "A world of no."

"What, no more questions?"

I start to pick absently at a loose thread on the bedspread. "You wouldn't answer them, anyway."

"I dunno, luv. Feelin' awfully chatty just now."

"Because you're bored."

"Maybe." He considers me with a head tilt. "Maybe I have some questions of my own."

"Alright." I say, fixing him with a hard look. "What did Wolfram and Hart say to you about me?"

He sighs impatiently. "Already told you, I don't know what they want."

"No," I draw the word out, then sound the rest out slowly, "what did they say about me. About who I-…who Elizabeth Manners was?"

He gets a funny look on his face before abruptly grabbing his cup and downing the liquid inside.

"See?" I ask, gesturing to the empty cup. "Not a good game if it's one sid-"

"They told me who your mum was."

I stare at him, blinking slowly. "My mom?"

He stands up and crosses to the nightstand beside me, where the half empty whiskey bottle sits. He pours himself another round and downs it, immediately pours another.

"Said that's how I'd know how to find you. Recognize you when I found you, rather."

I sit there looking at him, letting his words sink in. Is he actually going to tell me something?

"Y-you…you knew my mom?"

He doesn't look at me. Grits his teeth, clenches and unclenches his jaw, the muscles in his neck twitching.

"Didn'tknow her. Met her. Once or twice."

I pull my legs up to my chest, wrap my arms around them, letting the implications of that sink in.

"So…my mom knew about vampires?"

Spike lets out a high pitched, maniacal giggle. "You could say that."

He abandons his cup in favor of drinking straight from the bottle.

"What do you mean, 'you could say that'?" I repeat snippily, tired of the crypto boy routine.

He rolls his eyes. "Bloody hell. Yes, she knew about vampires."

I'd already guessed as much from our conversation the night Spike bit me, but having it laid out so plainly is both unsettling and a relief.

I press on, encouraged by his response.

"When did you meet her?"

This is the third question in a row I've asked about my mom, but I figure since Spike's the one who brought her up, our little "I'll answer one question" rule is sort of out the window.

He thinks about it for a bit before answering.

"Awhile back, in the 80s or round abouts. In New York."

I do the math.

"I was already born when you met her, then."

He takes an extra-long pull from the whiskey bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Yeah."

"Did she work for Wolfram and Hart?"

"Not even close, pet." He laughs again, reaching into his pocket for another cigarette. "Your mum was a slayer."

And there it is. No preamble, no dramatic pause, no soul-searching eyes. He just lays it out there, plain as you please. One simple statement. Like it isn't a huge deal. Like it isn't the biggest news I've probably ever gotten.

Like it doesn't change everything.

"What?"