Pressure Points









"Did you kill him?" Dawn asked, her eyes wet and her voice furious.

"No," Spike said as he took his jacket off and sat at the kitchen table. "Pressure points."

Dawn raised an eyebrow. "What?"

Spike smirked and then pressed his fingers on her neck.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, OW!" she said as she staggered into the chair across from him.

"I barely took two pints out of him. He thought he was singin' his swan song, though. Rather funny, actually. Is Buffy at the hospital with him?"

"Yes. You fed off of him?"

Spike didn't say anything for a second.

"You fed off of him?!?"

"Dawn…"

"Tell me you didn't."

"Why are you so hysterical about this?"

"He's probably infected!" she screamed. "Did you swallow his blood?!?" She stood up out of her seat.

Spike looked at her with disbelief. She was actually concerned for his safety. He always knew the Bit had a soft spot for him but he never figured it was anything that resembled actual caring. He smiled that devilish smile of his. "No, luv. I'm a spitter."

A look of huge relief suddenly washed over her face. She ran and threw her arms around him, resting her face on his shoulder. He hesitated for a moment, obviously a little thrown by such an open show of affection, then relented and hugged her back. "I am not going to lose you too," she said more as a threat than anything else. "I refuse."

Spike laughed slightly. This kid was really something else. "Don't worry."



















Riley came to and found himself in a hospital bed. This alarmed him and he shot up so fast he felt dizzy. He looked at his arm, which was covered with track marks. Buffy had told the doctors on the scene it was a dog bite and the eyewitnesses were too stunned to argue. That required a good deal of shots. He groaned and lowered himself back down on the pillow as the events of the previous evening came flooding back to him. He felt as if he had just remembered hooking up with his best friend's sister at a party, or something equally humiliating. "You all right?" he heard a familiar voice.

"Buffy," he said softly. "You…you came," he said, sounding more confused than touched.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. "Of course I came."

"Well after that night with Dawn and Spike…"

Buffy shook her head. "That night has the distinction of being one of the most screwed up experiences of my life. Talking about my life, that's quite an honor. But I'm still pissed at you."

"Pissed at me?" Riley pretended to sound insulted but was really slightly panicked. Did she know what he almost did? Did that little punk ass tell her? "Your buddy Spike nearly killed me," he said as a defensive measure.

"My buddy Spike was mostly fucking with your head. He's a real pro at it."

Riley raised an eyebrow. What was she talking about? "So I suppose these two puncture wounds in my neck are a mirage?"

"Spike only took about a pint and a half from you. You didn't even need a transfusion. Would have been plenty ironic, if you did though, wouldn't it?"

Riley closed his eyes and leaned back in his pillow. Terrific. Spike had managed to make an ass out of him yet again. "Buffy, I don't understand you," he said softly, his eyes still closed. "You've always fought the Initiative tooth and nail from the get go. Why? We're on your side. I…I'm on your side. I always have been."

Buffy sighed and leaned her own head against the wall. "I know you are, Riley. I just wish you had seen what I saw tonight. Then maybe you'd understand."

Riley suddenly sat up, panicked again. "What did you see?"

"I saw consequences."

Riley grunted, but was relieved. He didn't know what that meant but it probably wasn't that. Jesus. Keeping embarrasing secrets is exhausting. "What is that supposed to mean? Are you some sort of vampire activist now?"

Buffy narrowed his eyes at him and he immediatley looked down. That wasn't the brightest thing to say. "I don't want to kill anything," she said in a low voice. "My job was to save lives and to do that, I often had to destroy. But it's not the same as you."

"How? How is it different?"

"I don't kill to validate myself," Buffy shot back. Riley fell silent. "When I kill I do it to stop the immediate threat. I don't put V-chips in their heads just to see what they would do. I don't try to create evil armies of the night out of their spare parts. I don't keep them in cages and poke and prod until they're reduced to whimpering rejects. I have more respect for them than that."

Riley made some sort of irratated growling sound. "Respect? For Christ's sake. They kill people."

"I look into their faces each and every night and dare them to take my life. One mistake and any one of them could have ended me. You grow to respect that. If you're smart anyway."

Riley stared at her with a dazed expression. It was obvious he wasn't even remotely on the same page. She wondered if he ever could be. He might be able to eventually accept her position, but never understand it. She figured that was what caused vampires to seek her out. They lived by similar codes, though she never truly admitted it.

"Listen," she said, exasperated. "I'm not asking you to understand. I'm just asking you to get the hell out of this thing. You're Riley fucking Finn. You don't need to meet quotas and objectives and…and…just wipe shit out to feel like you're worth something. And certainly not to impress me. I liked you when I thought you were just a TA with a taste for cheese," Buffy huffed and brushed her hair out of her face. She sat there, waiting for some sort of reaction. A "Hey, you're right, Buffy" or a "Fuck off, Buffy, I hate you." Something. But he just stared at her with this perplexed expression as if she had just spoken to him in Chinese. She knew she might as well have, and that was the problem all along. "You know," she grumbled and Riley winced, cursing himself for not speaking up earlier. "I spent a good chunk of my life beating myself up cause I thought I drove you away. That *I* was too hard. I even thought at one point that I was incapable of love entirely. Now I'm sitting here, how many years later, and I realize…it's you. You shut me out. You run and hide in your quotas and objectives whenever you felt threatened or confused or scared. I wasn't threatened by anything. It was you, Riley. The whole god damned time."

Riley closed his eyes and leaned back down on his pillow. It did hurt him to hear these things, but he knew he needed to. He had heard the same words in his own head for so long, but they were so much easier to ignore then. "I'm sorry you feel that way," he said, and he really didn't know why. He knew some reaction was expected of him but didn't want to admit she was right just yet.

Buffy rubbed her forehead. This conversation was making her head hurt. "You're better than this," she said as she patted his leg affectionatley and left the room.

Riley stared after her for awhile, and the placed his hand gingerly on the gauze taped to his neck.

"Now we know," he said out loud.