Rating: R
Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Distribution (are you nuts?): email ascian@tsoft.com
If anyone knows of somewhere other than ff.net that I can post
these, let me know.

Summary: Semi-series of post-ep musings, from Spike's POV.
During/after Potential

If you like it, let me know. If you don't, tell me why.
Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Demon

by ascian
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---
Potential
--

Unexpectedly, he finds that he enjoys playing the tutor. He's done it
before, but mostly for minions, which was all violence and swagger. This
is different.

He always used to love hearing himself talk, but now she
is the one doing the talking, and he provides the show to back it up. He
likes backing her up, likes the sense of purpose. Likes the wary respect
and genuine fear that flickers across the girls' faces when they look at
him.

It seems there is something of himself left, after all.

He stalks them for her, because she asks him to. It's a mockery of the
real hunt, heavy footfalls and clumsy lunges, but these girls are easy
prey. There are vague stirrings of real bloodlust when he pins them; he
is, after all, still a vampire. The effort required to suppress the
hunger is not great, but it feels almost like free will.

Plus, it's funny, watching them squirm.

Catching her eye, it's clear that she shares the joke.

As they walk together in the graveyard, a little apart from the gaggle
of girls they are supposed to be instructing, there is a sense of... not
contentment, exactly, but something like it. They're not talking, but the
silence is gentle, and she is very close. Close enough to brush against
his arm as she sidesteps something in the grass. He finds himself
remembering that they were comrades, before, and something like
friends.

It's easy to forget that last part, with everything that came after.

His mind strays. They were on the ground, before, he on his back and her
sitting on him, probing for injuries from the fall she'd had him take.
This is a pattern for them, and he is aware of the irony. He had also
been very, very aware of their positions, of her solid weight on his
hips, and her hand, cool against his tepid skin. Of the heat of her
groin against his, and the way that her hand had curled around his when
he pushed it away from his cracked ribs.

Her eyes drift across him now when she thinks he's not looking. In this
context, among strangers, they speak less and communicate more, and she
is willing to meet his eyes, which is also a new thing. She looks at him
differently now, and he doesn't know why. The defensiveness is gone, and
something else is there instead.

He knows he shouldn't be worrying about this any more. That whatever
once lay between them is irrevocably altered, that he is unlikely to be
invited back inside in this life. More than anything, he realizes what a
stupid dream it was in the first place, to believe that because she
chose to meet him on his own level, that it meant he had any claim to
her.

She is her own woman, he understands now. Despite the desperate need
with which she'd sought him out, again and again. Despite anything she
might have whispered in the dark.

Usually so sure-footed, graceful as a hunting cat, she stumbles into him
for the third time tonight.

As her shoulder touches his arm, a couple of forbidden thoughts crowd
through his mind. Darkness and sweat, soft cries and empty promises.

Some dreams are not meant to see the daylight, he tells himself, but it
doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.