Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of BtVS or AtS.

Rating: PG-13 for some language.

Pairing: Hints of B/S, C/A, C/C in this chapter.

Feedback: Yes, god yes, before I am forced to resort to strong-arm tactics and a billy club.

Author's Note: Wanted to let all you guys know (although I shamelessly plugged it in last chapter's AN as well, I have the tendency to nag) but I have started my sequel to "Fortunate Son" which you may or may not have read before. If not, you can still check out the sequel called "Summer Sanctuary" (with lots of B/S goodness for those that like that kind of thing, and face it, who doesn't??). Please do, it would make me ever so grateful. Thanks!

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Chapter 5: About a Girl

A moment ago, she had told him she loved him.

If he had been Galileo, unlocking the secrets to the universe or Michaelenglo, tormentedly carving his angel free from the stone in ecstasy, the magnitude of joy experienced would pale in comparison to what he was presently feeling. He was loved by the woman who was his savoir, his single drop of water in an endless sea of hot sand. It was too good to be true.

"Tell me again."

She smiled lightly, her hazel eyes flickering with subdued amusement. "I love you, Spike."

He tried to repress the conflicting feelings of incredulity and screaming joy, but the words came tumbling out of his mouth. "How much do you love me?"

She laughed. "What do you want me say?" She held her arms out wide like a child. "This much."

The oncoming grin was spreading on his face and he leaned over to tickle her. "Trollop." His hands were inching all over her belly and sides.

She squealed with laughter, only inciting him to tickle more. "Spike, s-stop!" she panted through giggles.

"You love me," was all he could reply with. "You love me." The words were rich and filling and he had to repeat them just to make sure they wouldn't evaporate away forever. "You love me."

Her body rumbled with delight, but his loving hands soon turned oppressive and smothering beyond control. Possessed, he repeated it again and she soon was squirming out of his grasp.

"Spike, stop . . ." she told him, more insistently this time.

"You love me."

"No, n-no . . . please . . . stop . . ."

"You love me."

"Spike, stop!" Her voice was rising in fear and finally culminated into a pleading shriek as they tumbled to the bathroom floor again. He was hard and snarling while she sobbed uncontrollably. She fought desperately against him as he groped her, trying to force himself into her heart. "STOP!" she screamed.

The look of shattered trust and terror on her face was like a stake to his chest. Horrified, he stared at her frail, small form, shivering on the tile. And then it was his turn to scream.

"NO!"

A coarse nudge and he was shaking, salvaged and saved. He gasped and gripped the sheets around him for testament. He wasn't in the hated bathroom. He was here, sleeping amongst his purple heliotropes. He hadn't hurt her. Mustn't ever hurt the girl.

Except he already had.

He looked up at his savoir who had roused him awake, breaking the spell. Fiery brown-grayish eyes met his gaze. It was the boy, Conner.

He glowered at Spike intensely. Still quivering, Spike scowled and affirmed brusquely with a shaky nod of the head, "Poof Jr."

Conner looked at him like he didn't understand and didn't respond. He threw a blood pack at him. "Buffy warmed it up for you."

Spike caught it before it went crashing into his chest. "Thanks." About to bear his fangs, he suddenly hesitated self-consciously. It was almost painful to do this in front of people and especially in front of him. So he paused and put the blood pack away. "I'll have a nip later."

He raised an eyebrow and waited for Conner to leave, but he stood there like a rock, staring at him intently. This kid just didn't get it. He didn't seem to comprehend the subtle nature of human interaction. He had an abnormal sense of oblivion to all things. He didn't care if he induced discomfort on nearly any person he encountered. He just muddled through a broody world of his own. Fed up, Spike finally pursed his lips and said gruffly, "Well . . . is there something you want?"

He continued to stare enigmatically, then finally spoke. "You dream," he stated, hard yet quiet.

Spike furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "What?"

"You dream. That doesn't make any sense."

He didn't know what to say to this mixture of a question and a statement. "I'm a walking paradox, boy. 'Sense' doesn't have much bearing on the likes of me."

He just talked on like he hadn't heard him. "You're a vampire. You're dead. You don't need to sleep. When you do sleep, you're . . . still technically dead. So why can you dream?"

Spike shrugged. "Just a perk of being of the living deceased." He sighed and lit a Marlboro. "If you can call it a perk."

"So you all can do it?"

"What?"

"Dream. You all dream."

"Well yeah. Never thought about it before. Can do all the normal functions you lot can, barring breathing and ogling ourselves in the glass."

Conner paused. It was obvious that he had never considered vampires relative to humans before and the realization startled him. "I don't know much about vampires," he admitted.

"That's evident. Didn't Da ever teach you the ways of unlife?"

He darkened and visibly drew within himself. "I said I don't know much. Never said I wanted to."

Spike sniffed lightly, adjusting in the sheets. "Right. So what's the Q and A for then?"

It seemed like it would take the might of gods to erase the scowl from Conner's face. "Nothing. I just think it's strange. You aren't humans. Yet you act like you are."

"Well we are hybrids of demons and humans, you know. Hurt like humans, fear like humans, love like humans----"

"No," he interrupted firmly with the voice of death. "You don't love like us. You don't know how."

Spike studied him carefully. Peaches must have done a number on his kid. He would have expected any regular kid to harbor an unknowledgeable discrimination against vampires, but the son of a vampire?

Unable to control himself, Spike shook his head. "Man, your pops must have been a real tool towards you."

Surprised, Conner's eyes widened as he grew more sullen. Looking down at the floor and lost behind a scraggly head of hair, he snarled, "Who asked you?"

"No one, really. Just making an observation. And it wouldn't surprise me, neither. Peaches has been quite tool-like for awhile."

Curious, the boy looked up. "Peaches?"

"Angel. Your Daddy Dearest."

"You . . . you don't like him?"

Spike chuckled at the understatement. "Let's just say I'm not his biggest fan."

"Why?"

He lay back onto the sofa and sighed. "I could give you a ten-page list if you'd like, but I don't think it'd be helpful. You obviously don't have the chummiest father-son relationship, wouldn't like to be staked by the Poofter for exacerbating it."

"There's nothing you could say that would make it any worse."

Spike furrowed his brows. He normally never pried into anyone's business, but the curiosity was killing him. "What did Angel do to you, exactly? Why do you detest him so much? I mean, I know why I hate them, but what about you?"

The bitterness in Conner's expression deepened. He appeared to be thinking very hard before he finally said, "Because . . . he's a vampire."

Spike snorted. "So you carry this much hostility about any random bumpy you stake?"

"I didn't say that . . ."

"You hate me 'cause I'm a vampire?"

Conner stared at him in confusion. "I . . . don't know you."

"Right, well. So how can you hate Angel for the same reason? I mean---"

"He killed my father," he suddenly cut in with razor-edged sharpness.

Spike's eyebrows raised hastily. "Your 'father'? Well color me a shade of confused. I thought-----"

"Angel might be my father, but he's not my real father."

Spike eyed him suspiciously. "Are you sure you weren't raised in a trailer park or somethin'?"

"After I was born, a vampire hunter named Holtz saved me from Angel----"

"Saved?"

He ignored him. "He saved me and took me to another dimension called Quartoth. He raised me there. He took care of me. We were a family."

"Let me guess. This vampire hunter had a deep-seated aversion towards your father."

"He killed his son, Stephen."

Shocked, Spike sat up quickly. "Angel? He killed someone with his soul? That's-----" He quickly faded off into silence when he remembered that he certainly wasn't the souled vampire model of discretion. He burned with guilt inside.

"No. He killed him many years ago. When he was still Angelus."

"Oh. Well . . . I don't get it. That was a hundred years ago. How could this Holtz be alive to track him down?"

"Time travelling. It's this whole big thing."

He nodded. "Usually is. So wait. Holtz still held him responsible for the actions Angel committed without a soul?"

Conner looked him steadily with his eyebrows knitted. "It's called justice."

"Funny, you said justice, but it came out sounding so much like vengeance."

"He killed Stephan!"

Spike sighed. "He's done a lot worse. Hell, I've . . ." Pause again. He couldn't bring himself to say it. So instead he just said, "But killing your father. Now that's something to gripe about."

Conner shrunk slightly. "Well . . . he didn't really kill Holtz. He probably would have though."

Spike gave him a look. "You're quickly loosing steam here, Conner. Now I sympathize with you completely if you hated Peaches for no damn good reason, but you're telling me there are reasons. Now what are they?"

He shifted awhile, but finally uttered it: "Cordelia."

"Cheerleader?"

He stared at Spike, confused. "Cordelia Chase," he clarified.

"Yeah I know the broad. High-mantainence chick if I remember. What did she do to you?"

"She's the reason I left." His eyes told the story and Spike, astounded, whistled.

"No. You a-and . . . no."

"He saw us together. He made me leave. He wanted her to himself." His voice was filled with venom and spite.

"Let me get this straight. So Dad caught you playing footsy with teacher and what? Just told you to get gone? And so you left? You don't seem like a kid who'd take that kind of authority well."

"Well she wanted me to leave too." He said the words and they hung heavy in the air.

"Oh." Spike didn't know what to say to that. "Well . . ."

"I think that's why I really hate him," Conner suddenly said, as if in revelation. "I hate him because . . . she chose him. She chose him over me."

Spike bit back an empathetic sneer. "Yeah. I can understand that."

"I would do anything for her. Anything she'd want. But all she wanted was . . . him."

"It's like it doesn't matter what you do, he'll always be the bloody tape you'll be measured by," Spike sighed, lost in his own thoughts.

"Yeah. And then he sent me away. They all made me feel like . . . like I was a freak. Like I didn't belong there. Like I belonged nowhere. Like I didn't deserve a home."

He had to stop empathizing with this kid. He kept doing that, he'd be just as surly. But it was hard not to. "Well you left of your own accord. You left because she told you to. So why don't you hate her?"

He whipped his head up at Spike. His expression was one of innocence and devotion. "Because . . . I don't think I ever could. No matter how much she hurt me. I . . . just couldn't."

Spike took a long drag off his fag and sank back onto his back, contemplatively staring at the ceiling. "Yeah," he murmured with a tone of regret. "Yeah, I couldn't either."

TBC……………………