Chapter 5: Secret's Out

"WHAT?!!" Buffy repeated, gazing in shock at a very complacent Spike. "Y-you?! You hunt vampires . . . oh my God, it was you who dusted all the vamps and that one demon the other night!"

"Yeah." Spike puffed up his chest proudly, but frowned. "Wait a second . . . how'd you know 'bout that? And by the by, why don't we re-visit that whole question of 'what the bloody hell did you think you were doin' woman?' Taking on a big ugly by yourself like that?"

"I told you, that's my job! I'm the Slayer. Y'know, crazy chick who plays with lots of weapons and stakes? The actual vampire hunter in this town?"

Spike stared at her, stunned for a second before letting out a huge guffaw that took Buffy aback. "Oh go on!" he said through hearty chuckles.

"I'm serious! I'm the Vampire Slayer. The Chosen One. I fight the vampires and the forces of darkness, I don't have time for bored, testosterone-y, violence-obsessed teenage boys who spend their evenings trying to get killed attempting my job. Do you know how stupid you are?!"

Spike continued to shake his head in disbelief. "You've got to be kidding me. I can't believe . . . I mean, I heard about 'the Slayer' back in London, but I thought it was the imaginative creation of bloody feminist zealots and that sort."

Buffy sighed. "Well you're wrong. I'm the Slayer. I'm real. I'm no myth. And I have no tolerance for idiots like you who put themselves in situations where I have to duck in and play babysitter. So why don't you take your own advice and leave 'slaying to the professionals'?"

Spike snorted. "Oh please, I've prolly been dusting demons before you grew into those sweaters a' yours, pet."

Buffy glanced down at her tight blue sweater and hugged her arms around herself self-consciously. She glared back up at Spike. "I can't believe you. Do you realize what the hell you've gotten yourself into? Killing vampires for fun, like it's some sort of sick hobby?"

Spike chuckled. "Yeah, it is way better than video games that's for goddamn sure" he agreed. He smiled when he thought of the rush of battle, the adrenaline high he felt when he connected knuckles to skin, listening to the bone crunch under his force. The violence was addictive. As he surfaced from his reflections, he realized he was standing in front of a very disgusted, pissed-off looking Slayer. Clearing his throat briefly, he shrugged.

"I can't believe this," Buffy exclaimed, shaking her head. " I can't believe that my Watcher's---" She paused when she realized what she was saying. She wondered if it was right for her to admit to Giles' identity as her watcher. It would probably blow Spike's mind, to know that his own, seemingly un-cool father was actually well experienced with the very same activity that Spike relished in. She decided against it. "Wait. Does your father know about this? About you being a vampire hunter?"

Spike scoffed. "What you are daft, girl? A' course not. Ol' Man Rupes would blow his top if he heard what I was doing." He suddenly stiffened with fear. "You're not gonna sell me down the river, are you Blondie?"

Buffy thought a while, conflicted before shaking her head hesitantly. "I guess not. But I just don't understand how you could put yourself into such a stupid situation like this. You're just a regular Joe-Schmoe human. I'm the Slayer. I've got all these super-human, Slayer abilities and powers. Super-strength, quick reflexes, ultra-fast healing abilities---"

"God, a bloated head's all you got, Blondie. Way you talk, you'd think you were God's gift."

"I didn't say that. But I do know that I've got powers that you can't comprehend. You act like it's alright that you're doing this, playing the super-human renegade demon killer. But you have no idea what it's like. It's no game."

"You think I don't know that? I know what I'm dealing with, I've been doing it for a long time. Back in London, I was in a gang. A vampire hunting gang. Been in it since yea high. Saw my first vamp at the tender age a' nine. Since then, it's been a part a' my life. Sure the job can be fun, but it's got it's ugly sides too. Through the years, I've seen too many friends die, too many innocent people die. I may not have your Super woman kryptonic powers, but I can't help but do what I do. You think after seeing those bumpies take a chunk out of a human, you can just turn your back and sod it all?" He was staring at Buffy in earnest now, and for the second time this evening Buffy felt a strong pull from his eyes, gravitating her own towards them. They were a fiery blue, she hadn't really noticed before. Then, they sparked with an aggressiveness, a predatory perverseness. Now they were shining with honesty and for a fleeting second, Buffy conceded that Spike definitely had nice eyes. Shaking her head to break out of the stare she placed her hands on her hips.

"I don't understand. You've been hunting vampires since you were nine?" Buffy asked, an eyebrow arched high.

"A 'course not. I saw my first vampire when I was nine." His face darkened slightly. "Didn't start in the gang till I was 'bout thirteen."

Thirteen. Two years before Buffy herself had first been called. She had to admit that he must have had a lot experience. It was miracle itself that he was even alive after four years of fighting. She herself died after one year. And from the brief demonstration she had gotten tonight, he certainly was quite the well-trained fighter. "I guess you do have a lot of experience then," she voiced aloud.

Spike grinned. "Loads. See this scar here? Here, above my eyebrow. Got that trying to slice up a Kelgfar demon." His eyes misted over briefly as he recollected the memory. "Nasty big wanker, he was. I remember it was one of the first demons I had fought before and Munitz stupidly left me alone, a kid of thirteen for Chrissakes, to deal with it. He throws me a sword that's about four-fifths bigger than my body and too heavy for me to handle. I catch it, but it's lurches over and smacks me, blade side on me face. Munitz sees, laughing his bloody head off while I've got blood runnin' down my bloody face and I'm pissed right? So I wave the sword around in his direction and whaddaya know? The Kelgfar demon's comin' right at me, ready to do me in and I slice his head clean off without even noticing." He chuckled at the memory while Buffy watched him with a mixture of disgust and interest.

"Munitz?" She asked curiously, puzzled as to have stumbled into Spike's mid-narrative recollections.

"Huh?" Spike still was lost in a world of nostalgia. "Oh. Yeah. He was the gang leader. A right good bloke he was. Was in the band with me. Sorta taught me everything I needed to know about slaying, life, stuff in general. Guided me and that sort. Kinda my friggin' Yoda, you might say."

Like Giles, Buffy thought. "So what happened to him? Did he, well was he . . in battle . . ." She let the words linger with tact.

"Munitz? Oh no, the wanker's back in England with everyone else in the gang. And I'm stuck here cause my soddin' grandmum thought I was up to no good. I came home one night after blowing up a vampire nest in an old warehouse and immediately shipped got off here. Stupid bint, she is. Hope she gets bitten good by some nasty." His face darkened again as he lit up another cigarette.

Buffy could almost laugh at the familiarity of Spike's words. That was exactly the circumstances of her expulsion from Hemory and move to Sunnydale. With every word he spoke, Buffy found herself a little less belligerent against Spike and a little more understanding. After all, he certainly understood the whole slaying thing, so there was no need to introduce that there.

"But I guess it's not so bad here," Spike spoke up, drawing the cigarette from his mouth and releasing an easy puff of smoke. "Sunshine, nice climate, lots and lots of vampires to kill. I've never seen so many before in m'life. Not even in London. "

Buffy shifted uncomfortably. She never had really admitted to the strangeness of the Hellmouth to another person outside of the Scoobies before, but Spike seemed pretty experienced enough to understand it. "Well, yeah . . . about that . . . you see, Sunnydale is kind of a strange place. Not exactly Normaltown, USA."

Spike snorted. "You're telling me. First night here, I get attacked by some big-ass Hash'iak demon. You know how smelly those buggers are? Wasn't exactly expectin' a welcome party but still . . ."

"Sunnydale is . . . well it's a place of mystical convergence."

"What?" Spike's eyebrows rose at an alarming rate. "Come again?"

"Ever heard of the Hellmouth?"

Spike shrugged. "In storybooks and the like."

"Not storybooks. Here. We live on it." Buffy nodded in response to Spike's wide eyes. "Sunnydale is located over the Hellmouth, the center of demonic activity in this side of the hemisphere. Lot's of big uglies and baddies are attracted to it and they tend to make a nasty habit of causing havoc here. So it's not really surprising that we have one of the highest fatality rates for a small town in the country."

Spike shook his head, now rumpled with blond spiky curls and sighed amusedly. "Well this has been quite a night. Found out my dad's shagging some bint, some scrawny littl' girl's the much famed Slayer and that I've just relocated to the friggin' Hades of Southern California."

Buffy frowned at the prospect of being titled a 'scrawny little girl'. "Well we deal with it just fine. I guess you'll have to too."

"Oh I don't mind about the Hellmouth bit. Kinda quirky, but at least it'll provide a morbid sense of entertainment. But I really must say, you? As the Slayer? Shocker of my life." He snorted and stepped back to give a slow, languorous glance down her body, squinting hard as if there was some essence of her that was incomprehensible. "I mean, really. Look at you. A prissy little prat who looks more concerned with Saks than stakes. And you get to be the one with all the super-human powers?"

Buffy glared him. The honeymoon was fleeting it seemed. He apparently returned to berating her small size and girlishness and she returned to hating him. "Look, I don't really care what you think about the whole Slayer thing," she said sharply. "Just remember that no one can know about this. No one. My identity as the Slayer as well as Sunnydale being the Hellmouth is conversationally off-limits, get it? This is a whole Clark Kent operation here."

"You don't have to tell me twice. Where I come from, us vampire hunters keep our habits on the lowdown anyway."

"Fine," Buffy agreed. "You don't tell anyone about me being the Slayer, I won't tell anyone about you being a vampire hunter. Deal?" She offered an outstretched hand. Spike hesitated and finally broke into a slow smirk before shaking it firmly, looking deep into her eyes with a half-serious, half-chiding expression. He continued shaking her hand and smirking at her playfully before she snapped her hand out of his uncomfortably long grasp. "Deal," he echoed.

"He's what??!!"

"A vampire hunter," said Buffy grimly, prompting expressions of shock and confusion from every one seated at the lunch table except Oz, who as usual, reclined back in his chair with an air of aloofness.

"Spike? Giles' Spike? Annoying Spike? Mr. Billowing Coat of Re-hashed-Post-Punk-Aspirations Spike?"

Willow poked a sputtering Xander and returned her attentions to Buffy. "That's so weird. Giles' own son is a vampire hunter just like him. I guess it runs in the family. I can't believe they both don't know about each other."

"Well how long are we going to have to keep them in the dark about each other," Xander whined. "Because it's gonna be like some bad episode of Days of Our Lives where everyone knows what's going on, but they're too caught up in their own web of lies to admit to each other that Lindsay's baby is actually Brett's, not his half-brother, Jordan's. And then it will all end badly with Lindsay faking her own miscarriage before Jordan finds the switched paternity test . . ." Xander broke off from his tangent to view raised eyebrows and questioning faces. ". . . Not that I'm an avid viewer of the show or anything," he rebounded quickly.

"Xander does bring up a good, if not convoluted point," Willow agreed. "How long are they supposed to go on not even knowing about each other? They are father and son."

Buffy shrugged. "Well judging from last night's circus, it doesn't look like they'll ever sit down and have a heart-to-heart chat about it." Suddenly, Spike entered the cafeteria with his usual flash-and-crash entrance as he rudely knocked into people.

"Hey!" Football player Larry yelled as his lunch tray, piled high, fell to the ground as a result of Spike's careless saunter by him. Falling to the ground to pick up the remnants of his lunch, he glared at Spike's retreating figure. "Hey!" he repeated again, much more menacingly. Spike stopped, turned around and walked up to Larry, his eyes burning down at his hunched figure intimidatingly. Slowly, Larry rose to full height, towering over Spike as he cracked his knuckles.

"Oh he's in for in now," voiced Xander eagerly as the lunch table watched the drama unfold. "Neanderthal Larry will pound Spike into a peroxided pulp and all will be right with the world."

But Spike did not appear to be backing down. He remained standing upright, eyes squinted, head cocked to the side. He bit his lip and sneered dangerously at Larry, bringing his hand slowly to the pocket of his duster. The whole cafeteria paused and watched, straining their eyes to see what it was Spike was reaching for. But Larry had seen it, and that was enough. Eyes widening, he cleared his throat and gazed at Spike apologetically. "Umm, sorry man. I, uh, s-shoulda looked where I was going." With that, he practically ran from the cafeteria in haste.

The occupants of the cafeteria were all silent for a moment before resuming their usual clatter. They paused a while and regarded the new exchange student with mixed feelings of fear, respect and distrust. The jocks mumbled, the punks nodded appreciatively, the Cordettes sighed dreamily and the nerds cowered as they found that there was just another person in school to potentially whale on them. Even Buffy was impressed. As much as she disliked Spike, she knew how much of a jerk Larry could be. For Spike to stand up against him was pretty admirable. Spike slumped and smirked, lazily sauntering to their table and flopping himself into a chair.

Willow looked to him with awe. "Wow Spike, that was amazing! You stood up to Jerky Larry without even batting an eye!"

Spike shrugged. "Oh, that wasn't much," he said, trying to vaguely disguise his pride.

"Nu-uh!" Willow continued. "That was totally cool! What did you show him to scare him off?"

Smiling, Spike withdrew a small silver knife from his coat pocket. The rest of the table stared in shock. "What?" he said off their looks. "It's just a bleedin' letter opener I nicked from the library. What's the big deal?"

"This is a public school, not Armory-R-Us," Buffy pointed out. "You could get kicked out for just carrying one of those things."

"Oh like Ms. Sunnydale over here is so virtuous. Like you don't have exclusive experience with weapons like say . . . a stake would you?" He clamped a hand over his mouth in mock shock. "Oh dear, did I say stake? I m-meant steaks, you know with A-1 sauce and that sort . . ."

Buffy was not amused. "You can cut the obscenely bad puns, Spike," she sighed. "Everyone here knows I'm the Slayer." Spike's eyes widened as he surveyed all the nodding heads.

"And we know that you're the big bad Slayer wannabe," Xander added.

Spike looked to Buffy with disbelief. "You told!" he yelled.

"Well I had to! They're my best friends! They know all about my . . . Slayer-y things!"

"Yeah!" Xander sat upright proudly. "We're her Scooby gang!"

Spike snorted. "Sounds right manly, Harris. Lemme guess. You're Velma."

Xander ground his teeth. "Listen Spike, don't get too excited. Just because we all know doesn't mean you can go tellin' everybody about it."

"Yes, because it would cause a sensational rumor at this school to hear about your lot's sorry misadventures in following around Blondie like a bunch of drips." Spike's eyes narrowed into mocking slits as he smirked at Xander.

"Enough!" Ever-the-peacemaker Willow separated the two's bickering exasperatedly. "We all know that we know who knows now." She grinned impishly at her own words. "Hehe that's funny." Spike cleared his throat and Willow returned to seriousness. "Doesn't this just show how much we all have in common? I mean now that we know about you Spike, it's guaranteed that we'll end up working together a lot."

"HUH?!" Buffy and Xander cried in dismay.

"Well it makes sense. We're the Scoobs, we fight the forces of darkness . . . well okay, Buffy fights the forces of darkness. But guess who else does? Spike. Besides Buffy, he probably understands slaying more than all of us ever will."

"The girl's right y'know," Spike agreed.

"Excuse me, but I'm thoroughly offended," Xander sulked. "I've done more than my part in defeating the nasties. Think of all the vamps I've dusted."

"What vamps? You dusted that one vampire after Buffy had pummeled him for 10 minutes and he was too exhausted to fight back," Willow pointed out.

"Not just that one! There was also that one time in the back alley of the Bronze when Buffy was cornered by that vamp, all meek and helpless and wearing quite the revealing black jumpsuit and I arrived just in time to save the day, all manliness and macho-like, much to the gratitude of Buf---" Xander paused a beat, searching mentally. "Wait. That just may have been one of my many adolescent daydreams, lemme just think . . ."

"Great." Spike looked disdainfully from Xander to Buffy. "So you let the whelp join into your crime-solving capers just cause he's having puppy love wet dreams about you? That seems gracious." Buffy grabbed her plastic butter knife from her lunch tray and attempted to impale him on it before Willow stopped her. Spike just sat back in his chair and laughed heartily.

"Well I think we do just fine," Buffy continued sharply as she glared at Spike. "Who says we need to have Spike as another . . . Scooby? I'm the Slayer and this is my gig and my gig alone."

"Hey!" yelled Spike, offended. "I'm no Scooby wanker!"

"I prefer the term 'Slayerette' myself," Oz advised sagely. "A little more effeminate, granted, but overall, much more relevant to the circumstances."

"We do not need Spike," Buffy persisted.

"Who says I want to be needed by you all anyway?!"

"Buffy, think reasonably. You can't all save the world by yourself. You tried and guess what? You died. I mean, we do all we can, but sometimes we're not enough. So doesn't it help to have just one more person on your side? Especially someone who can come close to actually fighting vampires besides you?" Willow looked her friend who grudgingly nodded.

"She's right," Buffy mumbled. She turned to Spike and narrowed her eyes. "But let it be known how much I violently dislike you."

"Fabulous," Spike responded indifferently, sitting back in his chair lazily. "So what's this mean? I suppose we're all partners then?"

Willow nodded. "Yup. We officially recognize you as an honorary Scooby."

"It's as I always hoped!" Spike crooned in an exaggerated falsetto.

"You know what we should do? Have a celebration. Like a . . . an initiation party or something!" Willow beamed excitedly. "Oh, I know! T-the Bronze! You haven't seen it yet right? We should go tonight . . . ALL of us! You know, officially introduce you to the typical Scooby haunts. You kinda already been to the other one last night . . . the graveyard that is." She suddenly frowned. "That sounds a lot more morbid out loud."

"I don't think Spike wants to do that . . ." Buffy protested.

"Course I do, why wouldn't I?" chirped Spike brightly, smirking. He obviously rejoiced at the prospect of ruining a good of evening of hers'.

She pursed her lips. "Oh really. I thought you had 'better things to do with your time than hang with a little git like me'."

Spike shrugged. "Yeah. That was before I found out that you did those 'things' too." He chuckled and absently played with the silver letter opener, recklessly twirling about his slender fingers. "Come on Slayer, it'll be fun. We can swap on-the-job stories and techniques."

"And I suppose the next thing, we'll be toasting marsh mellows by the campfire and harmonizing 'We Are the World' to an acoustic guitar," Buffy scowled. "And don't call me that!"

"Oh come on, Buffy let him come. You want to see the Bronze, don't you Spike?"

Spike continued to twirl the knife in the air, this time dangerously close to Xander, who visibly cowered. "Don't care either way," he sighed. "Nothin' else to see in this two bit town."

"Then it's settled!" Willow could be practically radioactive with perkiness, an attribute that Buffy was not too fond of at the moment. "We'll all meet up at the Bronze around . . . 7-ish?" She squealed with excitement. "Oh this is fun, it's like an office party . . . and, and it's like we're people of different cultures together . . . y'know . . . British . . . American . . . um . . . werewolf . . ."

"Werewolf?!" Spike grabbed the spinning knife in surprise, much to the relief of Xander.

"Yeah . . . that would be me." Oz raised an affirming hand. Spike gazed at him with amazement for awhile before lapsing into acceptance.

"Huh."

"This will be fun." Willow was shaking her head furiously.

"Yeah . . . real fun," Buffy grumbled, sinking into her chair miserably