Marshmallow friend (4,?), by dutchbuffy2305

Pairing: Faith/Spike

Rating: R

Author's note: Sequel to His voice is like a Mars-bar

Author's website:

Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk

When Faith gets home, there is a perky little ladybug on wheels in their driveway. Its red paint gleams with exaggerated cheerfulness in the grey December air and only the black spots are missing. Faith goes in the house ass first, arms full of shopping, and when she turns around, a creature that looks like a pink marshmallow man after extensive liposuction pops its head out of the fridge. It has two of her beers in its dewlapped hand.

"Hi!" it says in a cheery tone. "You must be Faith!"

Faith attempts to slay him with her grocery bags, but as they are full of toilet paper and fat free snacks, this has very little effect.

"Oh! Hey!" the creature chuckles. "You seem really tense. I know we've never met before, but Spike and I go way back. Clem? Clement? Ring a bell?"

Faith hollers "Spike!", and the guilty party comes ambling out of the living room, exuding mellowness and beery breath.

"You two never met? Faith, this is Clem, Clem this is Faith."

"We got that far, honey bun," Faith says between clenched teeth. "But what is Clem?"

Spike shrugs. "A friend, and as it happens, a demon."

"So?"

"Well, I got out of Sunnydale in time, as you might have guessed because I'm here," Clem says chattily, "and then I finally made that grand tour I'd been promising myself, and looked up some relatives. And then I said to myself, let's visit my pal Spike. I found that sweet little witch, what's her name? Like Beech or Juniper or-"

"Willow," Faith supplies impatiently.

"Willow! That's it. Sweet girl. Except that one time, of course. Anyway, she knew your address, and hey presto, here I am!"

Spike walks up to Faith and puts his arm around her in that neck-crunching way guys think girls like. "Faith and I were just thinking we needed people to flesh out our team. Because a lonely slayer is a vulnerable Slayer, right?"

"Really? Another…I mean, you're a Slayer. How interesting." Clem takes a few steps backwards. "And what is your position on demons? Because Buffy and me, we had an understanding. I didn't bother her, she didn't bother me."

How the hell is this floppy-eared bumbling thing going to help a Slayer and a Vampire? But then Faith thinks of Xander, and what he did for the Scoobs. Maybe this Clem could get donuts and repair stuff. If he isn't, like, evil.

Spike reads her mind and says, "Clem here knows just about anybody in demon country, don't you Clem? And if not, you know their brothers or best friends! He could keep his ears to the ground and we'd be informed of everything that goes down."

Keep his ears to the ground and sweep up the dirt, more likely. Huh. Faith gets a heavy draggy feeling in her stomach. Demons and people are gonna come over and see her house. Sit on her couch. She looks at her living room, and for the first time sees that its cozy homey feel might be interpreted as fug-ugly and full of junk. Wow. They've never even vacuumed since they came here. The curtains are always closed and magazines and food wrappers give the drab room many uncoordinated touches of color. At night, when the candles are the only illumination, scattering little wavering pools of glowing orange, and she and Spike are smooching on the couch she doesn't notice that stuff so much but suddenly she sees it as Clem might. Candle-wax everywhere. The cleanest and brightest thing in the room are the shiny blue sex toys spilling out of a bag. The closed pizza box on the TV with a date and time from three weeks ago stamped on it is whiter than the walls. If B.'s Mom saw this room she wouldn't even go in.

Where have her prison dreams of a pretty, clean house gone? Okay, they didn't often go further than her getting off her bike, shaking her long shiny hair loose from her helmet and entering a vaguely sketched in white house, but gleaming wood and fresh flowers were definitely co-starring somewhere in there. All she has been thinking about these past months is Spike, sex with Spike and Slaying.

"Gosh!" Clem says, trying to sweep some magazines off the couch, and discovering take-out boxes underneath. "It does have that lived-in look, doesn't it? Not like your crypt at all, Spike, except the candles."

Oh. Faith-less Spike was neat. She'd always pictured his crypt looking like Buffy's basement, bare and dusty and smelling like the pipes had burst some time not too long ago.

Spike comes up to her and puts a cold hand on her back, rubbing it apologetically.

"I've been making a real mess of things," he tells Clem. "Gives me hell about my sloppy ways, Faith does."

Clem is a real gentleman and plays along. "You know what?" he says to Faith. "I'll teach this messy fellow of yours to clean up properly. We'll have a nice early spring cleaning, just in time for Christmas."

Shit. Christmas. Trees and singing and cooking turkey. The only bird Faith knows intimately is Cold Turkey. She wants to go back in time to take notes of the one Christmas meal she almost had with Buffy and Joyce. She should have paid attention to the food instead of griping about Buffy's absence and worrying about her present for Joyce.

Buffy could have done this, hell, she did it, playing house and taking care of her sister, she had friends and a real job. Spike and she have not made one friend so far, not even an acquaintance, in spite of searching the Cleveland bars thoroughly and repeatedly. And let's not mention her failure to keep a job for more than three hours.

Clem sails on, his ears ready to catch a good stiff breeze. "You know what? I could cook a really spiffy Christmas dinner for you guys. Just like old times."

"You ate dinner?" Faith looks at Spike.

"We ate together," Spike says and elaborates, "we ate our own personal food at the same time, watching a nice movie or something. We didn't share our food. "

Faith tries to picture this, coupla demonic guys on a couch, TV, blood,  beer. She fails.

"Remember," Clem says dreamily, "That one time that we couldn't hear Jimmy Stewart because of the screaming of Spike's victim?" He bends over and picks up a crackling empty snack bag. "Mm, Cheetos. Got any left?"

*

"Hey, Slayer," Willy says politely.

"Hey, Willy."

Willy goes on silently with rubbing something goopy and yellow into the bar-top. It smells of her Grandma's house on Thursdays. The wood doesn't gleam as nicely as her Gram's chairs did, though. The rest of Stinky Ned's is changing as well. The windows, that Faith never even noticed were there, are open to the freezing air, the chairs are stacked to the table and something misshapen and undersized is on it scabby green knees scrubbing the floor. The demons are taking over Stinky Ned's, just like they did at her house. What is it with demons and hygiene? She's scraped off candle-wax off carpets until she couldn't take it anymore and took off on the bike. She's never been a Mall kind of girl, so this is where she's ended up. Spike and Clem are still vacuuming, dusting, throwing out thrash and doing laundry and so on. It's unnatural and she resents being made to feel it was her responsibility. Male chauvinist pigs. Not as if Spike ever picked up his holey black socks of the floor before.

They discovered Faith has twelve pairs of black pants. Clem is arguing that instead of buying more black leather she should buy better quality of food. Has Clem been a Home Room teacher in a former life? Sheesh.

Willy shoves a beer towards her, still not speaking. Faith leans her chin in her hand, vaguely enjoying watching Willy work. He goes on methodically waxing the bar top, and then as calmly and precisely folds the cloth, screws on the top of the tin of wax, washes his hands. He turns and puts in a CD in the player, and then starts cleaning a stack of beer glasses that don't look dirty to Faith. The music is oddly syrupy, melancholy and dark, making Faith think of men in pencil moustaches with out-thrust pelvises driving high heeled women backwards over the dance floor.

"How did you get in the demon catering business, Willy?" she asks idly, as a second beer appears just when she wants it.

Willy throws her an unreadable look from those little brown eyes. "Took over from my Dad," he says, still cleaning glasses.

He doesn't elaborate. What does she have to do to get the man to talk? "And how did your Dad get started in demon bars?"

Willy shows his teeth politely but doesn't look her in the eye. "He got laid off from his job as a foreman on a demon farm. He used the severance money to buy the bar in Sunnydale. "

Faith licks the foam of her upper lip thoughtfully. Demon farms? Everything she's every heard about demons from her watchers suggests that demons are the scum of the earth, reaping and not sowing.

"Severance money? Pretty good employers, sounds like."

"Uh-huh," Willy nods.

"So, what did they grow?" Faith continues, elbows on the bar, stretching her neck to keep Willy in sight, who's sort of stroking a yellow cloth over the row of bottles at the other end.

"Demon food," Willy says cryptically.

A third beer comes up. Faith toasts Willy with it and decides regretfully that she really should get back to the boys in aprons at home. She tosses back the brew and realizes that even the beer has gotten better. Demon beer?

*

Clem is in the kitchen when Faith gets home. Dinner stress steams from the pans on the stove; pans they apparently possess. Clem's ears are bright red and stand off his head like warning flags while he furiously stirs something brown and nice smelling. Faith slips past him to the living room.

It is now dust and trash free, and Clem and Spike have uprooted a baby fir tree from the local forest and planted it a corner, where it stands with hunched shoulders against the ceiling. The painful lack of taste and color in the decor is all the more obvious for it. It smells of cold outside air and a scent that is like air freshener, only nicer. Spike stands surveying the room with a frown. He pulls at his lips.

"It needs something more, love," he declares seriously. "More color and holiday spirit."

If his bright eyes are any indication, he's already imbibed a lot of holiday spirit. He suddenly disappears into the kitchen and returns with the trash bag. Under Faith's disbelieving eyes all the shiny crinkly wrappers they've so painstakingly picked up are fished out and stuck on the branches of the silent dark green tree. Well. If you look through your lashes, and imagine candle light, the effect might  not be bad.  There certainly would be a Christmas ornaments' store open somewhere, but Faith knows that just buying things would never enter Spike's mind on its own. Finally he's satisfied with the overall effect. He picks up an old envelope, draws a crude fanged face on it and sticks it on top of the tree.

"Not bad, Spike, but why the drawing?"

He looks at her challengingly. "It's tradition, innit, to have an angel on top of the tree?"

TBC