Authors' note: Thanks to Kari Mouke, Descendant of Doom, Steph, Mita427, Kristine, Aseret and especially Amandamanda3 for their reviews of my last chapter, they were all lovely! Amandamanda3 you always leave extremely nice reviews with your own personal thoughts – they're great! I said I would get this chapter up by the 28th and I just did it, by a couple of minutes.

Chapter 16 - Chips are down.

The past couple of weeks had been a dream for Buffy, an extremely good dream. She and Spike had been spending practically all their spare time together, he would either stay over at her house or she would sleep at his crypt and she would wake up with strong and comforting arms surrounding her. Her first pay check from the espresso pump would be arriving soon which meant she would actually have some money to pay the long over due bills and she had started to set up her own self-defence class. She had already been to the local gym and community centres to see if they wanted anyone but they didn't run any such classes and didn't want to set up any, which from Buffy's point of view was very strange seeing as the town was on a hell mouth and the people of Sunnydale should want these classes more than everyone else in the entire world. But Buffy didn't dwell on that long, she just figured that it was all the better for her because now she could set up her own class and there was absolutely no competition, she had found an untapped market as they say. Buffy had decided that she would start running a class once a week at the moment to fit in with her other job and after a discussion with Anya she was going to the use the training room at the back of the shop as her venue. At first Anya had been sceptical about having sweaty people walking through her shop until Buffy reminded her that it would bring her more customers and therefore more money, after that Anya enthusiastically agreed. Now all Buffy had to do was figure out how much to charge and then start advertising so people knew about her self-defence class and actually came to it, something which she would do straight away tomorrow morning because right now she was just enjoying the feel of Spike's hands on her body as they ran down her stomach and then her thighs playing with her velvet soft skin. Buffy moaned and ran her fingers through his hair as he moved down her body losing herself in him. Spike kissed his way down her stomach leaving a path that tingled, Buffy shivered with anticipation as he moved further down and soon she was in complete heaven, her breathing became heavy and she started gasping for air as she tried to control it. As her orgasm took hold of her she couldn't stop her head trashing against the pillow as she cried out Spike's name. After her orgasm finally finished she still lay there practically panting as she tried to calm herself. Spike had crawled up her body by then and was watching her with a satisfied smile on his face. Buffy got some control back and turned her head to look at him, her whole body was still tingling. Spike ran a hand across her face looking at Buffy with pure love.

"That was amazing." She breathed.

"You're amazing."

Buffy's late shift at the espresso pump had just finished and she figured that she'd do a quick sweep of the cemeteries before going home. She heard fighting as she came to the second graveyard and quickly ran around a mausoleum to see what was happening. She saw Spike with his back to her fighting off a demon, he'd had obviously been fighting a group of them because two lay dead around him. As Buffy was going to rush in and help him he killed the third one. Buffy was already standing behind him and she placed a hand on his shoulder to alert him to her presence. Spike was so caught up in the fight that he spun around quickly thinking Buffy was another demon and punched her hard across the face knocking her to the ground.

"Oh my god, Buffy are you o.k.?" Spike said shocked and quickly leant down to ground to help her up

"Yeah, I'm…" Buffy said dazed then seeing another demon behind Spike shouted. "Watch out!" Spike turned quickly hitting the demon firmly across the face sending it to the ground and then placed his foot on the demons' neck and pushed down hard killing it.

"I'm so sorry." Spike said as he turned back to her.

"That's o.k. I caught you on edge obviously." She said as he helped her up. Then she suddenly looked at him very strangely. "Why didn't your chip go off?" Buffy asked slowly and slightly afraid.

"I…I don't know, I didn't even realise at the time, but your right I didn't feel anything." Spike said in wonder. "Do you think it's stopped working?" He said, his hand unconsciously going to touch his head. When he asked Spike couldn't help the smile that formed on his face. To be finally free of the chip that controlled him, made him feel trapped in his own body. He caught the look in Buffy's eyes, she looked scared. He couldn't believe it, was she scared of him? What he might do now? Didn't she trust him? Obviously not from the look on her face.

"I guess we better go figure this out." He said as he turned around and began to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Buffy asked.

"Magic central, I mean you lot will probably wanna prod me with a stick or something." Spike said unhappily as he turned back to her.

"Well we should find out what's happened, if it's stopped working or if there was malfunction, we don't want the chip to be a danger to you." Buffy said suddenly worrying that Spike could get hurt.

"Or me to be a danger to anyone else."

"What?"

"Oh come on Buffy, when the chip didn't fire just then you looked scared."

"I was shocked o.k. I thought-"

"What? That I'd go off and kill the first innocent bystander."

"No. Of course not." Buffy said sincerely.

"What did you think then? Cause you were looking bloody petrified."

"I don't know, a million thoughts were running through my head, they still are. At first it was 'oh my god you're chip's stopped working you'll probably going to leave me now and go and get your old life back.' And then-"

"I'd never leave you Buffy," Spike said as he stepped closer to her and placed a hand on each side of her face. "And I love you too much to ever go and kill any humans now. You really think I'd just pick up where I left off before I got the chip?"

"I don't know what to think…I do trust you… it's just I'm used to guys going all evil on me." Buffy said looking up at him hesitantly.

"Yeah well I'm not them." Spike said trying not to think about Angel when she'd just blatantly referred to him and also trying not to say 'I'm not him.'

"I know that." Buffy said softly, hooking her arm around his as they slowly began to walk together. "We still better work out what's happened, whether this was a one off or if it's permanent." She said looking to Spike at her side. He chuckled and had a smirk on his face. "What is it?" Buffy asked intrigued as to what he was thinking.

"It's just that next time the whelp insults me I'll be able to hit him." Spike said smiling. Buffy just laughed slightly and they continued walking arms linked together.

When they arrived at the Magic Box Anya and Xander were there but about to lock up and leave. They walked through the door the bell jingling above their heads and Xanders' face turned to one of despair.

"Please don't say there's research to be done, I've been enjoying our holiday of not reading." He said preparing for the worst.

"Don't worry Xand, I don't think there's much research we can do for this." Buffy said walking up the table where Xander was sitting.

"What's happened?" Anya asked interested.

"We think Spike's chip may have stopped working."

"What? And he's just standing there in a position where he could easily kill us all." Xander said standing up.

"Calm down Xander, he's not going to kill anyone."

"Might hurt you a little bit if you're mean to me." Spike said to Xander taking a step towards him, trying to scare him.

"I'd like to see you try bleach boy." Xander said taking a step closer to Spike.

"Boys," Buffy called getting there attention. "Could we all grow up please? Now we need to find a way to work out if Spike's chip is working or not."

"Hey I know we could just cut open his head do a little exploratory surgery, Spike doesn't use most of his brain anyway." Xander said. Spike knew he shouldn't rise to it, that Xander was just teasing him and in almost a friendly way, since Buffy and him had got together everyone had been really accepting about it, even Xander. He still insulted Spike of course, like right now and Spike would usually just insult him back but then at the moment his chip might not be working.

"Or I could just do this." Spike said as he stuck his arm out which connected with Xander's chest sending him flying back four or five foot where he landed on the floor with thump.

"Ow!" Xander and Spike said simultaneously, Xander clutching his back and Spike his head. "Bloody hell!" Spike grumbled.

"Xander! Are you o.k.?" Anya said running over to help up her fiancé.

"Uh, yeah I'm alright." He said glaring at Spike.

"Spike! You didn't have to do that." Buffy said slightly annoyed. She was also feeling even more afraid, the chip hadn't worked on her but was fine with Xander. It could have just been a malfunction but something deep inside Buffy told her it wasn't, that there wasn't anything wrong with the chip whatsoever. Spike's voice brought Buffy out of her thoughts.

"So how are we going to find out if this sodding chip's going wonky or not."

"I'm not sure," Buffy said thinking. "I could ring Tara, see if she could do some spell to check how it's functioning."

"I don't want any bloody spells done on me." Spike said looking apprehensive.

"I'm sure she won't do anything dangerous." Buffy said walking over to the phone to ring Tara. She quickly explained what was going on and Tara said she would get some books together and be there as quick as she could. Ten minutes later Tara walked through the door holding a small pile of books.

"Is there anything you can do?" Buffy asked standing up.

"I think so," Tara said putting the books down. "The chip's an electronic device so it gives off energy, which means I should be able to do a spell that shows the energy coming from Spike, if the chips not working properly the energy will be fragmented not pure."

"I'm not going to feel anything funny am I? When you do this?" Spike asked still feeling uneasy.

"No, you shouldn't feel a thing. It will just make some light appear around you." Tara said opening one of the books as she looked for the spell.

"Thanks for doing this Tara. Normally I would have asked Willow but well… you know." Buffy said awkwardly knowing that Dawn had told Tara recently what had happened to Willow and not knowing exactly how Tara felt about it all.

"That's o.k. B-Buffy, it's no trouble."

Tara found the spell and walked over to Spike, then she recited a few words in some language that Buffy didn't recognise and suddenly a blue glow radiated from his body. The light surrounded him reaching a radius of about a metre, Spike stared in awe of the pure blue light as did everyone else in the room, after a few second he looked over to Tara.

"So what's this mean Glinda?" He said.

"Well there's no fragmentation so the energy signal from the chip is normal, it s-should be working fine." Tara said. The glowing stopped suddenly then.

"What about that?" Buffy asked.

"That was just the end of the spell, it only lasts for about half a minute." Tara explained. Everyone went silent for a few seconds then, not knowing what to do next.

"Maybe it was just a one-off before and now-" Tara began.

"It's me." Buffy said silencing her. "There's nothing wrong with the chip, it's me." She repeated. Then she turned and fled out of the shop before anyone could make a move or sound to stop her.

TBC…