FOOLS FOR LIFE:

CHAPTER 20: Homecoming

"You bastard! What have you done to her!?!" Xander bellowed as he advanced on Spike.

Tara got up and got in front of him. "Xander, no!"

"What do you mean, 'no'?? Don't you see...."

"Xander, stop!" Willow said in a commanding way as she stood up and moved in front of Spike.

"Willow, you can't be serious." Xander said, looking frantic.

"Xander, think for a moment!" Willow said as she turned to Spike briefly. "He brought her here."

Xander's body relaxed a bit. Tara's grip on his shoulders relaxed as well. "Yes," she said confirming Willow's words. "He brought her to us. Doesn't that tell you something?"

Spike sighed. He'd expected a welcome like this, especially from the boy. He'd hoped the lovebirds would be a little more observant as they usually are and fortunately, he was right. Of course he was far from being completely in the clear. It was obvious they had already connected Buffy's problem with him. And they weren't exactly wrong either.

Willow stood in front of him, looking at him with a little frown on her forehead. Then she looked at Buffy who hung in his arms completely limp. "Spike, she....she's not.." just as Willow was about to say 'dead' everyone noticed a rather unladylike snore coming from Buffy's mouth.

"Uh, I guess not." Willow answered her own unfinished question. Spike walked to the couch and gently put her down. Willow knelt down beside her to see if she was alright. And sure enough, irregular snores were very audible. And there was a smell that was even more obvious. Willow looked up to Spike with some surprise on her face.

Spike pulled an uneasy face and nodded softly as he spoke. "Uh, yeah...she's uh, kinda...drunk."

"She went out and got drunk?" Tara said.

"Well, uh.." Spike hesitated. This was not going to score him any brownie points with the Scoobie clan. "I, uh sorta helped with that."

"What??" Xander puffed.

Spike turned and growled: "Look, monkey boy! It was clear something was wrong with her, but as you lot may have noticed, she's not exactly in the know herself! She wouldn't listen to me, wouldn't come back here and could have gone and done who knows what!"

"Like what? Get drunk with a vampire??" Xander countered.

"It was either that or try and knock her out!" Spike snapped. Then added: "Which..may not have worked out, you know? She is the Slayer and all."

He looked at Willow. "It was the only thing I could think of..."

Willow nodded. "I understand." she said. "I uh, guess I sort of tried the same thing when I wanted to stop her from going out at all." She looked at Buffy, smelled the aura of booze around her and winced a little.

"Albeit on a...smaller scale."

Spike cleared his throat. "Yeah, well. She'll be okay."

At least he'd managed to get her here. Hadn't been easy though.

Buffy apparently now had both his and her own stubbornness. He'd tagged along with her, killing the odd vamp, searching for a way to lure her to the lover-wiccas. Nothing had worked. And she'd gotten more and more reckless. And showing no signs of going home. At this rate she'd have gone on all night. And eventually he would have had to hide from the morning sun, and then what? She might have gone home, but then again he couldn't risk that she wouldn't.

So he thought and searched his brain for a way, and then realized that they both were kind of sensitive to challenges. So in her current state, she should be twice as bad as usual. And since fighting wasn't useful, sex not an option to him(for once) he remembered something else. She couldn't hold her liquor!

She had tried before, when she was all bummed out and came to him for support. She'd tried the boozing. It had not been pretty. So with that in mind:

"Well now, you do know you kinda punch like a girl, Slayer." he'd said as she'd dusted a vamp. Which actually was true. Powerful punches. But girly.

"Say what?" she turned. "Really? Care to try a punch out, mate?"

"Just saying....you can take the Slayer out of the cheerleader squad but..."

"Oh now you're just begging for it." she'd said and advanced on him. "How're your parts feeling, by the way?" she added with a look that promised all kinds of naughty hurt.

"Now, don't change the subject, and don't get mad. Not a bad thing to say, I mean you ARE a girl aren't you?"

She looked at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Sensing he got her, he grinned. "Just look at how you drink. What was that sound again? *BLeeuouuuaagGGHH!!* or something?" And he made a decent imitation of her reaction to basically every swallow of hard liquor he'd seen her take.

"Still can drink YOU under the table, 'William'." she countered.

"Really now..."

So that had been easy. They'd gone to Willie's and even though he had worried if her changes were also physical and she suddenly could hold her booze, he was bound to see it through. It was either that or hit her over the head with a tombstone.

Fortunately, she'd been as 'blueeagh'-y as before and it hadn't taken long before she passed out. Was around the second bottle they shared when she'd gotten up, with a giggle, to go sit in his lap but instead had wound up falling over it, face forward.

'Ah well, a position she's been in before' he'd thought with a grin.

'And one I've been in, the other way around.' he added to that thought with something like embarrassed nostalgia. 'And a bit more often.' He cleared his throat and hoped there weren't any mind-reading demons around. He quickly lifted her up and left before word got out the Slayer was unconscious in a demon bar. Next stop, Scoobie central.

He was shaken out of his thoughts by Xander who was starting up again. However, Tara stopped him. She gave him a little push in the opposite direction of Spike. "Come on now this is not helping her." she said softly. Both Spike and Xander glared at each other, then both let it go and turned away.

Spike knelt down with Willow who was still sitting with Buffy. Willow looked at him and said. "Spike, what happened? What caused her to, 'be' this way? I mean, we have most of it figured out, but.."

Spike sighed. "Great, you can fill me in then."

Willow frowned. "I'm serious, Spike. You have to admit, it doesn't look exactly good on you when we have a closer look at Buffy's little problem. Unless you know any other cocky, swaggering, chain-smoking Brits who go around calling people 'pet' and 'luv' and say 'soddin' and 'bleedin' every other word and who just HAPPEN to have both a thing for Buffy and contact with Vengeance Demons?"

Spike was a bit flustered at that. They had worked things out alright. He'd kind of hoped they would be able to magic her back to normal without anyone finding out too much about the cause. But then he had known it was a long shot. The lovebirds were clever, and they probably needed to know that stuff to get the job done. Magic rules and all that. He just didn't really care to see Buffy's reaction to it all when she got better. IF she got better.

He scratched himself behind his head. "I-I...don't really know. That's the truth. Buffy'd come to me and said some...nasty bits the other night. Well, just a little nastier than usual. And I got....well, I had a few drinks after that. Halfrek..I remember she was there, Clem said she was...I don't know, we talked but I was kind of... out of it, really."

Anya shook her head. "Hallie, Hallie....you really should know better than that."

Spike looked at her, not getting it. Anya continued shaking her head and rolling her eyes. "I mean, honestly, she lectures ME on being out of the loop? Only beginners make this kind of mistake. We do call it 'The Drunkard's Wish' for a reason!"

"Hey!" Spike said.

"Even riskier than that girl who tried the guy who talked in his sleep?" Tara wondered.

"Oh yes!" Anya said. "Please, boozehounds are way more erratic and unpredictable."

"Hey!!" Spike said again.

"You're liable to become cursed yourself! It's just the stupidest thing. We also call it 'Lushful Thinking'."

"HEY!" Spike said yet again. "I remember you not minding the booze that much the other night yourself, luv."

Anya cleared her throat and adjusted her hair. "Yes, well...but I didn't do any spells, did I?. We just had impulsive sex on the table." She looked him up and down for a second with a small smile. "Which was basically risk-free and far more gratifying."

"Yes," Xander cut in. "And I could just hear about that all night long. Could we get back to the current crisis? We have Buffy here now. Maybe we should work on finding Halfrek."

"Xander's right." Tara agreed.

"And if *that's* not a sign of impending Armageddon....", Anya muttered. Spike almost snickered, but Tara's look as she folded her arms made him contain it.

"He's right." she continued. "But first let's help Buffy. I'll go put on some coffee. Why don't you give me a hand, Spike?"

"Huh?" Spike said. Then he saw the look in Tara's eye and followed her to the kitchen.

Once there he had to ask though: "What's this about, luv? You worried me and the nerd are going to go at it?"

"That," she admitted, "and...ahem, that." She gave a little sideway nod towards the lower half of Spike's body. He looked down and remembered.

"Oh...that." he looked up at her again, kind of uncertain.

"Yeah, well...there's a perfectly good explanation for that..."

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TBC!

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