10: DEGENERATE
"If you can't learn to treat me like a real person, with feelings, if you can't...

"Then no kind of partnership between us is going to work."

She'd felt like protesting that Spike the Soulless didn't have feelings, but she knew it wasn't true. He had feelings, and she'd obviously just hurt them.

It was disconcerting how she could do that without realizing.

She watched his back as it moved steadily down the sidewalk. Why do I care so much? she asked herself. It's just Spike.

But it had been just Spike who had helped her with Angel, just Spike who had driven her to LA and stayed with her, kept her caring about living. Just Spike, who was behaving so out of character, who was turning out to be so much more of a person that she'd initially thought.

It wasn't that she liked him or cared anything about his feelings in any other instance. It was morality, the idea that her treatment of him earlier had been wrong. He'd deserved more, and Buffy felt self-disgust gnawing at her, threatening her if she failed to apologize.

"Tonight," the vampire told a room of fellow minions. "The plan goes into motion tonight."

A cell phone rang, and black fingernails unclipped it from the leather waistband of a plaid skirt. "Tonight, Amber," the real estate agent's sharp voice pronounced. "You said I'd get results tonight."

"No, I said there would be results tonight. Didn't mention you getting 'em."

"I need the vampire and the Slayer. I want results, soon."

There was a pause while the rebel resisted complying. "Sorry, didn't year 'ya. Bad reception." Amelia could imagine the vamp smirking.

"You better get your results tonight. Because I want mine tomorrow morning."

After an hour of waiting, Buffy discovered that life was quieter without Spike. It was more peaceful, definitely, but in a suffocatingly quiet way. Time moved more slowly - uncountable seconds stretched onwards.

It was boring.

Buffy tried to imagine how she'd phrase an apology, but she knew apologizing was not her forte. Even when she acknowledged that she was wrong, she couldn't bring herself to admit it face to face. He's so...crude, and...Spike-like...

"Hey." The voice came from behind her, and its owner didn't smell human to Buffy's vampire nose. "Spike! Long time no see, huh?"

Buffy agreed with a noncommittal shrug. "Uh, does - Do I...know you?" she inquired cautiously.

The vamp grinned sinisterly. "Spike does. And believe me, you're gonna...Buffy." Pleasure danced in Amber's excited eyes as she pulled the trigger of the stun gun. "I suspect you'll know me pretty well after the next few..."

The body slumped over. Amber shrugged mid-sentence and motioned for a minion to pick up the unconscious vampire in front of her. "Whatever. Let's just get her to the house before she wakes up."

The minion blinked. "This one looks male to me, Mistress." At her glare, he stuttered, "Just sayin'..."

"That Real Estate Slutswoman said to get her the vampire named Spike. I know that Spike's in some chic's body, cos I've seen it. I'm guessing that she's in his. And I figure, if Spike and the Slayer are working together, this girl must be part of the party, too, which means the Vampire Slayer will come looking for her. I figure that Spike and this Buffy girl must have some kind of deal since they've been sticking together, so if we've got the the girl..." Amber left the obvious conclusion dangling.

The minion smirked and nodded slowly, attempting to feign comprehension.

Amber didn't care about her minion's obvious lack of brains. He was mainly muscle, anyway. She was much more concerned with the questions she might be able to answer very soon. If she had the girl, then soon she could expect to have Spike and the Slayer.

Why had Spike and Buffy switched, and what about the switch made it to Amelia? And why was Spike so different from the Spike she'd known?

There had to be reasons, and it was likely they were all lined up and ready to be discovered. Amber noticed a young woman crossing the street alone, but decided to let her go another day without dying. The vamp was feeling generous - her week had just gotten immensely better.

At first Buffy hadn't known where she'd been.

Then the walls, and the lockers, and the students had made her realize that she'd finally returned to Sunnydale High. She searched the faces of the crowds for her friends, still wondering what she was doing back home...

"Oh my - What are you doing here?" The Slayer looked at Cordelia's expression of revulsion and fear.

"You're back?"

"Xander," Buffy replied, bewildered, "Of course I'm -" Xander shook his head disbelievingly and melted into the chaos -

Principal Snyder walked by dressed like a Burger King whopper, and shook his finger at her. "Funny, I thought I kicked you out. Oh, to think I'll get to do it again...I think I'm tingly!"

The background noise grew, doubling and complicating and replicating...She thought she heard someone hiss frantically, "Someone get Buffy!"

But guys, she tried to say, I'm right here - but her voice made no sound no matter how loudly she screamed. She became dimly aware that she wasn't herself, but taller, deader, blonder, and male...

She was standing in front of herself, lethal and angry. "I told you never to come back, Spike. No one wants you.

"You love me, is that it?" the Buffy was shouting. Somehow the scenery had changed, the voices died away, but the hazel eyes were still as dangerous as ever and Buffy couldn't look away. "You have a thing for the Vampire slayer? That's gross, and obscene, and I said to leave Sunnydale, and never come back. Never..."

Buffy awoke groggily. A pain tickled her chest... "Never come back..." said hazel eyes... She realized blood was dripping down her chest from an artistically jagged cut. "Thought that might wake you up," drawled the gleeful, purple-haired goddess of nightmares.

Spike stalked angrily through the grave markers, not allowing himself to feel embarrassment about his escape.

His escape from her. She was insanity, she was repose, she was torment. She was so unbelievably frustrating, with her insecurities and her prejudices. Spike sat down on a headstone and pulled black nail polish out of his pocket. Painting his nails had often had a calming effect on him.

He wondered what he expected from her. He knew there was something, because he was always ending up disappointed.

It was so much easier to be evil. He considered returning to Dru, where foreplay didn't make his lover cry...

And somehow just considering shagging someone else felt like cheating on Buffy. Spike didn't know when it had happened, but at some point the Slayer had crossed from being a sexy enemy to being...something else.

Some time in the past 72 hours they'd spent side by side, he'd started caring, more than usual. He cared more than any normal vampire could care about the Slayer. What was she to him? Were they friends?

Could emotions shift so quickly? Spike thought of Buffy and Angel, and the comparison engendered a new, terrible realization. He tried to think of anything that could disprove the notion, but the longer he thought about it the more true it seemed.

What if he was in love with the Vampire Slayer?

It was everything impossible. A vampire and a Slayer were mortal enemies, destined to constantly battle for all of time...This was the sexy, deadly, lovely Slayer, one whom he'd failed to kill time and time again -

His theory seemed inescapably, terrifyingly impossible to disprove. All evidence pointed towards his devotion. He'd refused Drusilla, for Buffy.

But Dru...he loved his Dark Princess more than anything. Drusilla was his love of a century, his Sire, his history, his everything...

No, he concluded with relief, making his statement stubbornly simple. I don't love the Slayer as much as I love Dru. I only love her a little bit, which is fine. After several minutes of explaining his emotions to himself, Spike was convinced that while he was in love with Buffy, sort of it was really a lot more like a crush. A crush, he could handle.

His spirits were light due to erasing the confusion from his mind. Slayer'll come round, he told himself as he paid the rent for the night. He would have bet money on her showing up in an hour or so, ready to reach an understanding. The understanding, he thought with a smirk and a wave of arousal, would most likely give the maid some considerable work to do in the morning, making the bed. Slayer'll come round, and then we'll have some fun.

Buffy shifted away from Amber's small, child-like hands, and winced at the pain the motion brought her chest. "Bitch," she growled.

Amber clapped her hand in front of her mouth. "Oh, what language!" she exclaimed with apparent horror.

"So what's the lame plan this time?" Buffy ground out.

"I want Spike. I don't know his new look too well, so you're gonna help me out. You're gonna bring him to me."