49

They sat there for several minutes, gazing into each other's eyes, saying nothing. But it was not an uncomfortable silence, the awkward feeling that the silence must be filled wasn't there.

Spike finally, perhaps inevitably, interrupted the stillness. "So, any ideas on just how we're going to handle this, luv? I still can't believe how little you're willing to settle for. I can't touch you, kiss you, or make love to you."

"I'm not settling for a little," Rose replied. "I have your love, and sometimes, it seems so big that I'm lost in it."

Spike laughed, still a little sadly. "Well, I know it can't be my body or my money, 'cause I've got neither one." He paused briefly and quirked a grin at her. "Must be a little lacking in the brain department too, starting something like this that I can't finish."

"You never once asked me what was in those books I keep bringing home." Where the hell did that come from? Was the discussion getting too uncomfortable for her? Before he could ask, Rose went on. "Didn't you ever wonder? Even just a little bit?"

"Can't say as I did, pet." Now that she had brought up the subject, though, his thoughts ran riot as to what it could be. "I give up."

"A little research for my own purposes," Rose murmured, with a sly little half-smile. Then the smile went away. "I haven't had any luck with it yet, though. Some of those spells just might have worked if it weren't for the influence of that stupid amulet."

Then, at last, Spike understood. "That's what you've been doing this whole time?" he asked incredulously. "Every night?"

"And during my lunch breaks, and whenever I have a spare moment," she answered. "Not that I've had too many spare moments at work. The more I get done the more Wesley piles on my desk. But if there's a way to restore your physical body, Spike, I'm going to find it, if I have to read every single word in every piece of information stored in Wolfram and Hart's vaults."

"You're going to all that trouble for me?" Spike didn't really believe at this point in time that she'd find anything, but the fact that she had put so much time into it, and still was at it, touched him.

"No," she surprised him by saying. "I'm doing it for me. Because it will make me happy to see you able to really be a man, to be treated as a man. To get some small, but much deserved compensation for what you've done."

"You don't make any distinction between a vamp and a man, do you, pet?" Spike quizzed. "There's quite a bit of difference, I can tell you."

"Not for you and Angel," Rose pointed out. "And the research that I have managed all suggests that if a restoration is possible, that it will be as a vampire, true. There are a couple I had to rule out. They would have worked, but you would have lost your soul again. I didn't think you'd want that, and certainly no one else would. But if I can work something out, you would be what you were before, a vampire with a soul."

"And what are you, precious girl?" he asked softly. "An angel sent straight from heaven? No, that can't be it, I can't imagine an angel having anything to do with the likes of me. But the better I get to know you, the more certain I am that you're at least a little something more than human."

"Where did you get a notion like that?" she queried. She wanted to know where she had gone wrong. "I didn't think I'd stand out at a place like Wolfram and Hart. Just your average employee."

"No," Spike disagreed. "Not even average for Wolfram and Hart, which wouldn't know average if it bit them and drained them dry. But I'll swear, luv, that you are simply too good to be real."

"The more I work at Wolfram and Hart the more I find what a slippery concept 'real' is," Rose remarked. "You may not be here physically, but I think you're more real than half the people in that place who are just going through the motions of life without actually living."

"We never did make a decision about what we're going to do about us," he reminded her. "If either of us had any sense, we'd just stop seeing each other, suffer a little heartache now, and save having a lot of it later on." He grinned suddenly. "I'm pretty sure that I don't have any sense, not where you're concerned, pet."

"I'm glad to hear that," she replied with a smile that would have made him feel warm all over, if he had had an all over to feel. "Because I don't have any sense either. I think we ought to just go on as we are and see what The Powers hand us."

Spike made a rude noise. "The bloody Powers That Be. Sometimes I wouldn't half like to give them a piece of my mind."

"You don't seem to think too highly of them," Rose observed. "I know you've received a bad bargain at their hands, but they do have an awful lot to oversee. And maybe, just maybe, they might reconsider their decision."

"That lot?" Spike hooted. "Doubt that they'd give me a second thought. Probably make a decision and bam! that's it, engraved in stone. What makes you think The high and mighty Powers would give a damn about me?"

"Why shouldn't they?" Rose felt a pang of guilt that he had been treated so unfairly that he thought so badly of them. She resolved that one way or another, before she had to go back, she'd tell him. Tell him everything. Even at the risk of him despising her. If his love turned to hate, at least that would make the parting easier for one of them. "You did something absolutely amazing. You willingly sacrificed yourself for the greater good. Don't you think that could make an impression? Even on The Powers That Be?"

"You're an optimist, pet," Spike remarked wistfully. "I wish I could agree with you, but evidence to date suggests that you're dead wrong."

"'Evidence to date' implies that all the evidence isn't in yet," she responded. "Maybe they're still weighing that evidence."

"You'd stand up to The Powers themselves for me, wouldn't you?" he asked in awe. "Bloody amazing woman."

&&&&&&&

Rose and Spike spent most of the weekend together, mostly just sitting and talking. Sometimes about themselves, but increasingly about other things, books, music, ideas. Spike hadn't talked to anyone like this since before Dru had turned him, and he found that he actually enjoyed himself. Time flew by until Monday morning arrived and Rose had to report to work.

He rode the car with her to the law firm and walked inside with her.

"You're sure, luv?" he asked, just standing and looking into her eyes.

"If you're hanging around all the time I'll be so distracted that I won't get any work done," Rose pointed out, looking back. The two of them stood there just gazing at each other for long moments, making obvious to anyone how they felt. "If I don't get any work done," she finally managed to finish, "then I'll probably get fired, and I won't have access to all those reference materials. So you're going to have to find a way to amuse yourself till I get off work."

"Off you get then, pet," Spike said reluctantly. "The sooner you get going, the sooner you'll be done. And I'll be counting the seconds."

Rose finally forced herself to move on to her office, and Spike stood and watched her walk away, just taking in the sight of how graceful she was, and the way she wiggled her..,

"What in the hell was that all about?" His reverie was broken by a ticked off Harmony.

"Hello, Harm," Spike said cautiously. What in hell was she on about? They hadn't been an item for quite some time.

Harmony glared at him, hands on hips. "You've been giving me the cold shoulder ever since you popped in out of thin air, then you stand there making goo-goo eyes at that." She waved her hand in the general direction that Rose had gone.

Spike started slouching along, hoping that Harm would get the hint and shove off. No such luck.

"Well?" she insisted, following along. "What's the matter, Blondie Bear? Lost your tongue along with everything else?"

"You and me ain't been together for a while now, Harm," Spike pointed out a little less than politely. "So, not meaning to be rude or anything, but what the hell business is it of yours?"

Harmony pouted. "You're making a laughingstock of me, that's what. It's bad enough that people know that we.., dated. But then they had to find out that you dumped me for the Slayer, and then you go chasing after.., her." Harmony couldn't even bring herself to say Rose's name.

"No one's laughing at you, Harmony," he said evenly. The more he saw of Harm these days, the more he wondered just what he'd ever seen in her.

"You.., you..," Harmony groped around for the right word, and as she generally did, got the wrong one. "Unsubstantiated creep." She stormed off, still obviously in a snit.

"Some things never change," Spike observed to himself. He disappeared before he had to talk to anyone else that he really didn't want to talk to.

&&&&&&&

"Good morning, Rose." Wesley greeted her as she walked into her office. Then, he did a double take at her new hairstyle. "What happened to your hair?" he blurted out. "Is this more of Spike's influence?"

"Actually, it was due to the Amalyar demon's influence," she remarked ruefully. "Do you remember seeing anything that said that its blood is acidic?"

"You got demon's blood on you?" Wesley sat down heavily, in her chair. "How did you manage that?"

"It's a long story," Rose warned. "But at least you shouldn't be hearing about anymore deaths because of the Amalyar. If I recall, they're very solitary."

"You know," Wesley remarked. "An encounter with a demon could be interpreted as being work related. At least here, it is. So why don't you just tell me all about it."

"If this is supposed to be an official report," she remarked, "then shouldn't I just be writing it down?"

"Maybe later," he replied. "Right now, I want you to tell me all about it, and I'm not leaving your office until you do. So I'd suggest that you start talking, Rose."

"My boss the slave-driver," she pretended to grumble. "Well, we were walking on the beach, and I saw the demon hiding behind a rock..,"

Wesley sat there through the entire narrative trying to keep his jaw from hitting the floor.

&&&&&&&

Spike popped in to Angel's office. No sign of the poncey bugger. Must be nice to be the big boss, he reflected, set your own hours, do pretty much as you damn well please. He thought about sitting in Angel's chair, that generally was enough to set off a case of the grumpies, then changed his mind and sat dead in the middle of the desk. He'd barely gotten settled in place when the object of his irritation came out of the office's loo, and since he didn't need it for what most people needed it for, Spike guessed that he must have been adding another layer of hair gel on.

"Where have you been?" Angel asked, ignoring the fact that Spike was sitting on his desk, and thereby ruining his fun.

"Where do you think?" Spike smirked at him. "We decided to carry on as is for the time being, thought you'd like to know."

"Sure, it's all I thought about all weekend," Angel said sarcastically. He flung himself down in his chair. "When it all blows up, don't say that I didn't warn you."

"Be at the top of my list," Spike said insincerely. "Say, do you remember all those reference books she was lugging home?"

"Could you give me some warning before you change the subject," Angel groused. "Yes, I remember. What of it?"

"She's been looking for a way to make me like I was before I went up in flames," Spike said, with more than a touch of pride. "Since the very beginning, she's been at it. Credit that, huh?"

Angel looked thoughtful. So Rose was trying to come up with a back-up plan, was she? "That's very nice, Spike. Now would you get your ass off my desk? I've got a ton of paperwork to do." He looked at the stack of papers that Spike had, quite deliberately, he was sure, disarranged. "As usual."

"The price of power," Spike quipped, choosing to go through the desk rather than back over it. "Tell me you ain't lapping it up, paperwork an' all."

"What's the use?" Angel shot back. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Wouldn't want to ruin my record." Spike smirked at him one more time for good measure and disappeared again. He was thinking he ought to see if he could do the vanishing act slowly, a bit at a time. Wouldn't the pouf's face be a sight if he faded out to nothing but a smile, like the Cheshire Cat?

&&&&&&&

Rose nearly levitated out of her seat when her phone rang. She wondered if she would ever get used to the confounded instrument. "Hello, research department, Rose speaking." At least she didn't have to think of anything, just recite a pre-set speech. "What? Oh, yes sir, right away. As soon as I can tell Wesley where I'll be."