(3/7)
They walked the dark streets in silence, Spike sneaking occasional glances at Buffy, trying to make her blonde California looks fit with the Old World surroundings. Ever since Andrew had told him that she was here, Spike had tried over and over to picture Buffy in Rome. Imagination always failed him. He knew the city well: ancient, haunted, appetizing and carnivorous at once. And far too thick with posers for his taste, both in the human and sub- terrestrial crowds. He hadn't been able to visualizee Buffy in one of those pulsing overcrowded clubs, packed tight with naively biteable Americans and willing Eurotrash victims.
If he concentrated, he could almost put her in motion scattering bread before pigeons in the Forum, loafing in a café or riding past Trevi Fountain on one of those dippy motor scooters. Daylight or twilight images, ones he couldn't have seen himself. As schoolboy William, he had read "Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage" (by then, shamefully out of fashion)behind his tutor's back, and like every mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know wannabe, had nourished youthful dreams of cutting a decadent Byronic swathe through the continent. But the state of the family finances after his father's death had turned even the obligatory pre-University continental tour into an unpardonable extravagance. His mother had assured him that they would scrape the money together, but William had been the one to insist on responsibility, and with one thing and another he had never made it to Italy while there was breath in his body.
Oh, bloody hell. Where was this ridiculous mental whine coming from? He could spend an eternity in the Eternal City, and he doubted if he would get to like it anymore. And he had seen Rome by day often enough, over the years. In the pictures. Not that Drusilla had ever understood his fascination with flickering images. She liked a good night at the movies as much as the next vamp -- darkness, confined space, no one outside listening for the screams. But she never cared much about what was on the screen, which was much less interesting, he supposed, than the spectral images floating around in her brain, pretty much all the time. But Spike didn't have the vision thing, and he liked the occasional glimpse of the world under the sun. Besides, he figured that once a bloke had fed and shagged, he needed something to pass the time.
Of course, he'd gone cold turkey off of cinema raids back in 1980, after he and Dru had almost gotten burned to death in Sydney. There was an angry mob outside, and he'd gotten a bit caught up in the end of The Empire Strikes Back -- not normally his sort of thing, to be sure, but, "That walking garbage can thing is his father? Makes no bleeding sense!" To which Dru had replied with a withering glare, "If you send your goslings down the path of pins and needles, they will come home to nest in your eyeballs." Or maybe that was what she'd said in '58, when he'd suggested skipping out of Havana before New Year's Eve. And what a revolution they would have missed -- oh, those were some times.
Dru had always liked Rome, of course. Dark alleys, ruins, catacombs, plenty of people to eat. Hiding places and food, those were Dru's standards. She'd even given him hell just for moving to a place called Sunnydale, though he'd tried to explain that it was one of those names that meant the opposite, like Greenland, or the People's Republic of China. Dru didn't have much interest in history, though, maybe because she had lived through a bit more of it than he had.
But Rome was definitely a Drusilla city, in his mind. Like Havana, or Shanghai, or Prague. Prague had tried to kill her, granted, but that made it the Dru-est city of all. It was easier to imagine Buffy in Florence or Paris. He wasn't about to tell Buffy, but he had played this game quite a bit. Imagining the city, imagining the girl who would be with him. Edinburgh was Buffy; Glasgow Dru. Dru in Moscow, Buffy in Petersburg or Leningrad, or whatever the bloody hell they were calling it these days. Drusilla was the one for London, but oh, he could imagine Manchester with Buffy. He had no idea what any of this meant, except that over the years, he had seen so much of the world that he wanted to see it with someone else. And also, over the years, he'd clearly had too much spare time.
"Are you coming in or aren't you?" Buffy stepped through a door off the narrow, cobbled alley, and shook the keys at him. "Hello, undead boy?"
"Sorry?" He snapped out of daydream of sunrise in Budapest. Months there'd been, to dream of her, and now his dreams were so mixed up with realities that he could look through the flesh and blood slayer in front of him. And besides, sunrise? That was peachy, getting burned to a bloody crisp. Women made you soft in the head, no doubt about it. But, at the moment, he couldn't work up much in the way of righteous anger.
Moving to follow Buffy inside, Spike slammed into the invisible vertical plane of the threshold. His head rang. He would never get used to that. "Um, love?" Slapping the solid air with his palm. "'Are you or aren't you?' apparently doesn't add up to an invitation."
"Oh, sorry." She scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head. "Not so much hanging socially with the vampires lately.
"Yes?" He moved his hand in an encouraging 'and now -' gesture.
"Fine, come --" She backed against the wall, which was stucco, nicely sponge painted, and covered from floor to ceiling with an array of crosses.
"Oh bloody hell," Spike sighed. "It's me, Buffy."
"All of you?"
"Whoever sent me back," he said quietly. "Did it in one piece. Soul and all."
"Right," she said. "Well, maybe you should just let me tie you up or --"
The instinct to wiggle an eyebrow was almost irresistible, but he settled for a smirk.
"Cute," she said. Her eyes disagreed. She took a cross from the wall and held it out as she walked toward him. "Put up your hands --"
"Sod it, Buffy, you knew me before I had a soul and it wasn't such a bloody bad time." She froze in her tracks. Spike squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head, bit his tongue until it drew blood. The things that could come out of his idiot mouth. "I didn't mean -- Look, I'll go."
"Come in."
He looked up. Blinked. Tilted his head to one side. "Sorry?" Swatted his hand through the door, decided the opening was real, and stepped through it.
"You are sorry. You couldn't fake that look." She moved back from him, still, but said. "We got past that."
"Aye, that we did, love, and --." He moved forward, stepping as close as he dared to the wall of crosses, his eyes on them. "I knew this bird in Dublin, right? Vamp, she was, but a bit smitten with a Kahn-dai demon. You know how those buggers are, all flowy hair and biceps when they're trying to impress a girl, then they move in on her territory and it's all about the evisceration. How's it go, something with the course of true love smoothing you over? As it happens, the bird manages to get the bloke out of her crypt, he goes back and the bedroom is all done over in goat's blood. Which naturally for a Kahn-dai is like --" He gestured at the wall. "Well, like that. He couldn't get through the door without it was like his head would explode, and the way of it was, she wasn't afraid of him coming in after her. She was afraid of inviting him in. See a girl with her inner sanctum all done up to fight the fangy nasties and you might think she was --"
"A vampire slayer?"
"That's such a brutal word you know. Slayer," he said. Rolling it around in his mouth, relishing the weight and flavor of it.
"Whereas vampire has the nice ring of Sundays in the park with kittens." She pointed at the wall behind him. "I don't know if those can hurt you, but you may want to look before you back into them." He turned, shuddered, and shied away from another wall of crosses. And another Buffy, and no one else in the room. A wall-size mirror.
"Extra security," she shrugged. "Equipped by the council as a measure against double agents."
"And don't those funny buggers think of everything," he said. *Except for how damn hot that could be. In front of a mirror, watching me and her, except it's just her.* He knew better than to mention it, at least not yet. Besides, from the sudden blush on her cheeks, he imagined she was thinking the same thing.
She hastily turned to a window in the back and dropped the shade. "In case we stay up talking all night, and get lost in the conversation."
"So I don't get all burnt up again so soon. Girl hasn't forgot how to entertain. Not been talking to Angel then?"
"Excuse me, Sir Spike of the Dizzying Segues?"
"You said, you've not been social with the vampires lately, so I take it -- not all buddy with the Forehead Ranger."
"Oh," Buffy groaned. "Spike, I so do not want to talk about Angel. Worrying about what he's up to is giving me such a load of grief and -- don't smile."
"Me?"
"This is serious. I've always thought of him as the one I can really trust and it turns out -- have you heard of Wolfram and Hart?"
"You know what, pet? This sounds like a long, boring story, and maybe the kind of thing we should be discussing over, a nice chianti, or a Guinness?"
Buffy shook her head. "I've got Gatorade. Kind of shopping with little sis in mind, these days -- she's away tonight, we won't wake her. But you're right. Boring, depressing story, and obviously, you've got a better one. Come on. Where've you been? Spill. I want to get on the CrystalLink to Giles and Willow and the others."
"Whoa, whoa!" Spike held up his hands. "Let's leave this witch and watcher linkup out of it for a minute, OK? I came here to talk to you. I've been thinking about how to tell you this story. I've sort of rehearsed it, and I've about got it down, so, you game?"
"All ears," she said, with an appropriate gesture. She sat on a divan lined up against a wall, to Spike's relief, away from the crosses.
"OK, let me see if I have it --" Spike tilted his head back, as if reciting, "I didn't get burnt up, like you thought. I was gone for a while and, a few months ago I got back, don't know from where. And since then, I've been around. Found out you were here. Came and saw you."
Buffy stared at him. "That's your story? You didn't get burnt up, you were gone, you're back. That's it? And the past few months you've been --"
"Holed up in a basement? Talking to invisible people? No, and no." He knocked on his head. "Sane as ever."
They both said simultaneously. "For what that's worth."
"Spike, I know the readjustment may be hard, but we really need to run this by Giles. And Willow, and -- don't you see, there's so much that needs explaining."
Spike nodded. "Right." Suddenly weary and hungry, he slouched into a chair across from her and rolled his head back on the cushion. "And I'm glad you didn't get burnt up, too."
"I --" Buffy blinked. "I said that. I did say that." He shook his head. "Well, we were --" She pointed at her lips.
"And here I thought that was just how you say hello to an old friend."
"Stop." She ran a hand through her hair, sighed, and sank back on the sofa. "Spike, I'm glad you didn't get burnt up. Enormously glad. You --" She swallowed, leaned forward, and looked at him. "You're happy about it? Right?"
"You mean, did I spend my time away from earth rolling in green pastures, dreaming of puppies and apple pie, and listening to Velvet Underground bootlegs?"
"Don't mock that."
"Well, I di'nt. OK? I was here, and then I burnt, and then I wasn't, then somehow I got unburnt, and I was here again. Incorporeal for a while, but not so much of a heaven or hell type state. Hate to say it, love, but I think that's what ends up being there for most of us. You might have hit the lottery the first time around, but --"
"Believe me," she said. "I thought of that. It's one of the things that kept me from -- . After I was back, if I'd thought I could just get it over with here and go back where I was. I wouldn't have even had to work on it. Just -- like you said one time, get careless and let some vamp slip in and have a good day."
"And the other?"
"Sorry?"
"You said one reason. The other would be, what? All the joy life sends? Family and friends? Christmas and puppies and half-price sales at Bloomies?"
"You."
"My turn to say - Sorry?"
"Oh quit." She hugged her knees and pulled them close to her chest. "You knew damn well that was what I meant. And don't smile. I hated you most of that time, Spike. At least, I believed I did."
"You always did know how to make a bloke feel good about himself."
"That's the way it was, Spike, then. It wasn't just some game, either, whatever you thought. I really hated you, and I hated what was happening. But you gave me something that tied me to earth. To life. Let me feel something, whatever it was. All my friends were trying so hard to be there for me, but I shut them out. I hated them too in a way, more than I hated you sometimes. But I'm grateful to them. And to you. Even if you had your own reasons, you helped me."
"Buffy." He dipped his head and looked her in the eye. "Buffy, you know the reason."
"Say it, then. If I have to say my part, you have to say yours."
"I loved you, Buffy. For years, I knew it. And maybe before I knew it. Maybe as long as I've known you." He shook his head. "I actually was not aware that there was a problem with me not saying it enough."
"Loved?" she repeated, like that was all she had heard.
"I don't have any plans to stop. Because believe me, Buffy, if I knew how --. I loved you. I love you. I will love you."
"OK, Spike, you don't have to conjugate it."
"Hey," He jumped back and spread his hands. "I didn't even bring that up."
"Conjugate, Spike. Like a verb."
"Well, I know it's a verb. I -- oh."
"So Spike." Buffy turned onto her knees and moved closer. "We get to the heart of things here. Did you
come here to conjugate me?"
"No! Well, yeah. I mean. What I mean is --" He went into reciting mode again, tongue racing ahead of his scared and baffled brain. He didn't even try to locate his heart. "Buffy, I don't have a lot of friends. I'm back on this earth, some powers that be somewhere might possibly know why, but I'm not holding my breath that they're gonna get all share-y. So where else am I going to turn except to a person who treated me like a man? Always looked on me as a friend."
"You worked on that little speech too, huh?"
"Not bad?"
"Very eloquent. And total bullshit. You said it yourself, Spike. You weren't talking about us. It was me and someone else neither of us wants to mention. But what you said was that we'll never be friends. We'll fight and we'll, what's that nice word, shag, and we'll hate each other until we quiver --"
"You liked that one? I picked it up from a troubadour in Bucharest, before Dru and me ate him. The part about "love's bitch," though, I added that myself."
"For God's sake, Spike. What else do I have to do?" Buffy leaned over, grabbed his shoulder, and kissed him fiercely on the mouth.
She pulled away and stared him in the eyes. Spike swallowed, "Well. That's a start." Buffy slid into his lap and started working on his belt. He pushed his face into her chest and tore a button away with his teeth. Buffy bent down and pressed lips to his, kissed the button out of his mouth and spit it across the room.
"Slayer," he groaned, then gasped, "Sorry about the shirt."
"What the hell," she said. "I need an excuse to go shopping."
(END Chapter 3)
They walked the dark streets in silence, Spike sneaking occasional glances at Buffy, trying to make her blonde California looks fit with the Old World surroundings. Ever since Andrew had told him that she was here, Spike had tried over and over to picture Buffy in Rome. Imagination always failed him. He knew the city well: ancient, haunted, appetizing and carnivorous at once. And far too thick with posers for his taste, both in the human and sub- terrestrial crowds. He hadn't been able to visualizee Buffy in one of those pulsing overcrowded clubs, packed tight with naively biteable Americans and willing Eurotrash victims.
If he concentrated, he could almost put her in motion scattering bread before pigeons in the Forum, loafing in a café or riding past Trevi Fountain on one of those dippy motor scooters. Daylight or twilight images, ones he couldn't have seen himself. As schoolboy William, he had read "Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage" (by then, shamefully out of fashion)behind his tutor's back, and like every mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know wannabe, had nourished youthful dreams of cutting a decadent Byronic swathe through the continent. But the state of the family finances after his father's death had turned even the obligatory pre-University continental tour into an unpardonable extravagance. His mother had assured him that they would scrape the money together, but William had been the one to insist on responsibility, and with one thing and another he had never made it to Italy while there was breath in his body.
Oh, bloody hell. Where was this ridiculous mental whine coming from? He could spend an eternity in the Eternal City, and he doubted if he would get to like it anymore. And he had seen Rome by day often enough, over the years. In the pictures. Not that Drusilla had ever understood his fascination with flickering images. She liked a good night at the movies as much as the next vamp -- darkness, confined space, no one outside listening for the screams. But she never cared much about what was on the screen, which was much less interesting, he supposed, than the spectral images floating around in her brain, pretty much all the time. But Spike didn't have the vision thing, and he liked the occasional glimpse of the world under the sun. Besides, he figured that once a bloke had fed and shagged, he needed something to pass the time.
Of course, he'd gone cold turkey off of cinema raids back in 1980, after he and Dru had almost gotten burned to death in Sydney. There was an angry mob outside, and he'd gotten a bit caught up in the end of The Empire Strikes Back -- not normally his sort of thing, to be sure, but, "That walking garbage can thing is his father? Makes no bleeding sense!" To which Dru had replied with a withering glare, "If you send your goslings down the path of pins and needles, they will come home to nest in your eyeballs." Or maybe that was what she'd said in '58, when he'd suggested skipping out of Havana before New Year's Eve. And what a revolution they would have missed -- oh, those were some times.
Dru had always liked Rome, of course. Dark alleys, ruins, catacombs, plenty of people to eat. Hiding places and food, those were Dru's standards. She'd even given him hell just for moving to a place called Sunnydale, though he'd tried to explain that it was one of those names that meant the opposite, like Greenland, or the People's Republic of China. Dru didn't have much interest in history, though, maybe because she had lived through a bit more of it than he had.
But Rome was definitely a Drusilla city, in his mind. Like Havana, or Shanghai, or Prague. Prague had tried to kill her, granted, but that made it the Dru-est city of all. It was easier to imagine Buffy in Florence or Paris. He wasn't about to tell Buffy, but he had played this game quite a bit. Imagining the city, imagining the girl who would be with him. Edinburgh was Buffy; Glasgow Dru. Dru in Moscow, Buffy in Petersburg or Leningrad, or whatever the bloody hell they were calling it these days. Drusilla was the one for London, but oh, he could imagine Manchester with Buffy. He had no idea what any of this meant, except that over the years, he had seen so much of the world that he wanted to see it with someone else. And also, over the years, he'd clearly had too much spare time.
"Are you coming in or aren't you?" Buffy stepped through a door off the narrow, cobbled alley, and shook the keys at him. "Hello, undead boy?"
"Sorry?" He snapped out of daydream of sunrise in Budapest. Months there'd been, to dream of her, and now his dreams were so mixed up with realities that he could look through the flesh and blood slayer in front of him. And besides, sunrise? That was peachy, getting burned to a bloody crisp. Women made you soft in the head, no doubt about it. But, at the moment, he couldn't work up much in the way of righteous anger.
Moving to follow Buffy inside, Spike slammed into the invisible vertical plane of the threshold. His head rang. He would never get used to that. "Um, love?" Slapping the solid air with his palm. "'Are you or aren't you?' apparently doesn't add up to an invitation."
"Oh, sorry." She scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head. "Not so much hanging socially with the vampires lately.
"Yes?" He moved his hand in an encouraging 'and now -' gesture.
"Fine, come --" She backed against the wall, which was stucco, nicely sponge painted, and covered from floor to ceiling with an array of crosses.
"Oh bloody hell," Spike sighed. "It's me, Buffy."
"All of you?"
"Whoever sent me back," he said quietly. "Did it in one piece. Soul and all."
"Right," she said. "Well, maybe you should just let me tie you up or --"
The instinct to wiggle an eyebrow was almost irresistible, but he settled for a smirk.
"Cute," she said. Her eyes disagreed. She took a cross from the wall and held it out as she walked toward him. "Put up your hands --"
"Sod it, Buffy, you knew me before I had a soul and it wasn't such a bloody bad time." She froze in her tracks. Spike squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head, bit his tongue until it drew blood. The things that could come out of his idiot mouth. "I didn't mean -- Look, I'll go."
"Come in."
He looked up. Blinked. Tilted his head to one side. "Sorry?" Swatted his hand through the door, decided the opening was real, and stepped through it.
"You are sorry. You couldn't fake that look." She moved back from him, still, but said. "We got past that."
"Aye, that we did, love, and --." He moved forward, stepping as close as he dared to the wall of crosses, his eyes on them. "I knew this bird in Dublin, right? Vamp, she was, but a bit smitten with a Kahn-dai demon. You know how those buggers are, all flowy hair and biceps when they're trying to impress a girl, then they move in on her territory and it's all about the evisceration. How's it go, something with the course of true love smoothing you over? As it happens, the bird manages to get the bloke out of her crypt, he goes back and the bedroom is all done over in goat's blood. Which naturally for a Kahn-dai is like --" He gestured at the wall. "Well, like that. He couldn't get through the door without it was like his head would explode, and the way of it was, she wasn't afraid of him coming in after her. She was afraid of inviting him in. See a girl with her inner sanctum all done up to fight the fangy nasties and you might think she was --"
"A vampire slayer?"
"That's such a brutal word you know. Slayer," he said. Rolling it around in his mouth, relishing the weight and flavor of it.
"Whereas vampire has the nice ring of Sundays in the park with kittens." She pointed at the wall behind him. "I don't know if those can hurt you, but you may want to look before you back into them." He turned, shuddered, and shied away from another wall of crosses. And another Buffy, and no one else in the room. A wall-size mirror.
"Extra security," she shrugged. "Equipped by the council as a measure against double agents."
"And don't those funny buggers think of everything," he said. *Except for how damn hot that could be. In front of a mirror, watching me and her, except it's just her.* He knew better than to mention it, at least not yet. Besides, from the sudden blush on her cheeks, he imagined she was thinking the same thing.
She hastily turned to a window in the back and dropped the shade. "In case we stay up talking all night, and get lost in the conversation."
"So I don't get all burnt up again so soon. Girl hasn't forgot how to entertain. Not been talking to Angel then?"
"Excuse me, Sir Spike of the Dizzying Segues?"
"You said, you've not been social with the vampires lately, so I take it -- not all buddy with the Forehead Ranger."
"Oh," Buffy groaned. "Spike, I so do not want to talk about Angel. Worrying about what he's up to is giving me such a load of grief and -- don't smile."
"Me?"
"This is serious. I've always thought of him as the one I can really trust and it turns out -- have you heard of Wolfram and Hart?"
"You know what, pet? This sounds like a long, boring story, and maybe the kind of thing we should be discussing over, a nice chianti, or a Guinness?"
Buffy shook her head. "I've got Gatorade. Kind of shopping with little sis in mind, these days -- she's away tonight, we won't wake her. But you're right. Boring, depressing story, and obviously, you've got a better one. Come on. Where've you been? Spill. I want to get on the CrystalLink to Giles and Willow and the others."
"Whoa, whoa!" Spike held up his hands. "Let's leave this witch and watcher linkup out of it for a minute, OK? I came here to talk to you. I've been thinking about how to tell you this story. I've sort of rehearsed it, and I've about got it down, so, you game?"
"All ears," she said, with an appropriate gesture. She sat on a divan lined up against a wall, to Spike's relief, away from the crosses.
"OK, let me see if I have it --" Spike tilted his head back, as if reciting, "I didn't get burnt up, like you thought. I was gone for a while and, a few months ago I got back, don't know from where. And since then, I've been around. Found out you were here. Came and saw you."
Buffy stared at him. "That's your story? You didn't get burnt up, you were gone, you're back. That's it? And the past few months you've been --"
"Holed up in a basement? Talking to invisible people? No, and no." He knocked on his head. "Sane as ever."
They both said simultaneously. "For what that's worth."
"Spike, I know the readjustment may be hard, but we really need to run this by Giles. And Willow, and -- don't you see, there's so much that needs explaining."
Spike nodded. "Right." Suddenly weary and hungry, he slouched into a chair across from her and rolled his head back on the cushion. "And I'm glad you didn't get burnt up, too."
"I --" Buffy blinked. "I said that. I did say that." He shook his head. "Well, we were --" She pointed at her lips.
"And here I thought that was just how you say hello to an old friend."
"Stop." She ran a hand through her hair, sighed, and sank back on the sofa. "Spike, I'm glad you didn't get burnt up. Enormously glad. You --" She swallowed, leaned forward, and looked at him. "You're happy about it? Right?"
"You mean, did I spend my time away from earth rolling in green pastures, dreaming of puppies and apple pie, and listening to Velvet Underground bootlegs?"
"Don't mock that."
"Well, I di'nt. OK? I was here, and then I burnt, and then I wasn't, then somehow I got unburnt, and I was here again. Incorporeal for a while, but not so much of a heaven or hell type state. Hate to say it, love, but I think that's what ends up being there for most of us. You might have hit the lottery the first time around, but --"
"Believe me," she said. "I thought of that. It's one of the things that kept me from -- . After I was back, if I'd thought I could just get it over with here and go back where I was. I wouldn't have even had to work on it. Just -- like you said one time, get careless and let some vamp slip in and have a good day."
"And the other?"
"Sorry?"
"You said one reason. The other would be, what? All the joy life sends? Family and friends? Christmas and puppies and half-price sales at Bloomies?"
"You."
"My turn to say - Sorry?"
"Oh quit." She hugged her knees and pulled them close to her chest. "You knew damn well that was what I meant. And don't smile. I hated you most of that time, Spike. At least, I believed I did."
"You always did know how to make a bloke feel good about himself."
"That's the way it was, Spike, then. It wasn't just some game, either, whatever you thought. I really hated you, and I hated what was happening. But you gave me something that tied me to earth. To life. Let me feel something, whatever it was. All my friends were trying so hard to be there for me, but I shut them out. I hated them too in a way, more than I hated you sometimes. But I'm grateful to them. And to you. Even if you had your own reasons, you helped me."
"Buffy." He dipped his head and looked her in the eye. "Buffy, you know the reason."
"Say it, then. If I have to say my part, you have to say yours."
"I loved you, Buffy. For years, I knew it. And maybe before I knew it. Maybe as long as I've known you." He shook his head. "I actually was not aware that there was a problem with me not saying it enough."
"Loved?" she repeated, like that was all she had heard.
"I don't have any plans to stop. Because believe me, Buffy, if I knew how --. I loved you. I love you. I will love you."
"OK, Spike, you don't have to conjugate it."
"Hey," He jumped back and spread his hands. "I didn't even bring that up."
"Conjugate, Spike. Like a verb."
"Well, I know it's a verb. I -- oh."
"So Spike." Buffy turned onto her knees and moved closer. "We get to the heart of things here. Did you
come here to conjugate me?"
"No! Well, yeah. I mean. What I mean is --" He went into reciting mode again, tongue racing ahead of his scared and baffled brain. He didn't even try to locate his heart. "Buffy, I don't have a lot of friends. I'm back on this earth, some powers that be somewhere might possibly know why, but I'm not holding my breath that they're gonna get all share-y. So where else am I going to turn except to a person who treated me like a man? Always looked on me as a friend."
"You worked on that little speech too, huh?"
"Not bad?"
"Very eloquent. And total bullshit. You said it yourself, Spike. You weren't talking about us. It was me and someone else neither of us wants to mention. But what you said was that we'll never be friends. We'll fight and we'll, what's that nice word, shag, and we'll hate each other until we quiver --"
"You liked that one? I picked it up from a troubadour in Bucharest, before Dru and me ate him. The part about "love's bitch," though, I added that myself."
"For God's sake, Spike. What else do I have to do?" Buffy leaned over, grabbed his shoulder, and kissed him fiercely on the mouth.
She pulled away and stared him in the eyes. Spike swallowed, "Well. That's a start." Buffy slid into his lap and started working on his belt. He pushed his face into her chest and tore a button away with his teeth. Buffy bent down and pressed lips to his, kissed the button out of his mouth and spit it across the room.
"Slayer," he groaned, then gasped, "Sorry about the shirt."
"What the hell," she said. "I need an excuse to go shopping."
(END Chapter 3)