This night easily ranked in the Most Boring Patrol Nights Ever. "How hard can it be to claw way out of a paper-thin coffin?" Buffy kicked a clump of sod across the freshly-dug dirt.

That line fulfilled the universe's irony quotient. Mrs. Susan Manners sprang up from the loose dirt, fangs bared towards the blood, sweet rich blood of a waiting victim—right into an impeccably aimed stake. The vampire's face contorted in disappointment as it crumbled away to dust.

Buffy stifled a yawn. Where was she again in the mental inventory of the night? Oh yeah. All was Not Right in the world.

Buffy sauntered over to the next target, seven graves down. The demon called out to her through the layers of earth. Whether it would rise tonight, or wait until it smelled a new night, she couldn't figure. And if it did rise…would it be so wrong if she, dunno, let her stake slip down to her side, her muscles tense for the chase. Not a hunt, she told herself. Only a head-start.

"No hunting," said aloud, not trusting that shady inner voice of hers as far as Inner-Her could throw it. "And you know this night would be so much less of the bad if someone had actually picked up a phone!"

"Who are you talking to?" The newly risen vamp asked, poking his head out of the grave.

"Mausoleum, tree, feather duster—who do you think I'm talking to? Myself, you twit!" Buffy raised the stake for a killing blow, then thought better of it. The vampire was perplexed when, against all odds, actually offered an arm. He took it. For a second a pleased look flitted across his face as an all-you-can-eat Buffy buffet filled his vision. Only for a second. The patrol instinct won out. A quick plunge, and a new coating of ash fell on the freshly turned dirt.

"This blows," Buffy said, feeling no more stirring in this graveyard. Walking the street adjacent to the rolling green of Sunny Pines, she crossed her arms as though she were cold. Next up, Restfield Park.

"Hello, Restfield Park. This is Buffy, your patrol for the night. Please look to the front and rear to locate the nearest emergency exits. You will find that they all lead to pointy death. We'd like to thank you for choosing Air Buffy. Have a good flight."

She dislodged a rock in the grass. She much preferred the rolling grass hills of Restfield Park to the sterile sod of Sunny Pines, which during the rare lit hours of her life was neither sunny—shaded as it were by the large industrial complexes bordering the southern and eastern exposures—nor piney, all the great pines having been cut out of the center of the city with surgery-precision and transplanted to the edges of the city. Some impressive firs had managed to escape the knife, a cluster of the tallest tree crowns towering over what she liked to think of as her corner of Restfield Park. The Alpert crypt loomed into view--her favorite, or at least most familiar, freaky cereal box of doom—bordering a row of squat headstones where Giles had chosen to test her field Slayer skills more nights than not in her first Sunnydale year. It was the fondness, she thought, someone might have for a worn 70's-hangover plaid couch.

A vibe sliced across the sensitive Slayer section of her brain. Mobile vamp, closing in from the north, travelling more slowly than expected—little faster than a jaunty limp. Probably one of the less bright newbie vamps thinking it could score easy bread in a graveyard. She flipped a new stake from her waistband. Her heart geared up as she crouched, the muscles in her calves tensing, flexing, preparing for the attack. She wasn't going to spring. She wasn't going to launch full-tilt at the vamp. She was prepared to fight back, that's all. She was prepared and she was going to kill this thing deader than—the vampire, laden with chains, stumbled into her line of sight, hitching up short with a strangled cry.

"Oh," she said disappointedly. The stake fell to her side.

"Oh brilliant," Spike choked out, all hidden except for the shine of highlights in his hair and on the chain wrapped around his shoulders. "If this isn't the absolute worst night of my life, I don't know—" His hands edged into the low light of the conveniently lighted graveyard.

"—Are you wearing gardening gloves?" Buffy sniffed. "They look kinda… ridiculous."

The chain made no noise as it tumbled to the ground. "What could possibly rate such shoddy treatment from the bloody universe? I mean, is this funny to you? Is it? Are you bloody well laughing up there?" He pulled one glove, then the other, and threw them against the grass.

"Do you want to rough me up Slayer? Go ahead. Lay it on me." Spike stepped into the light, and Buffy, reflexively and against her conscious instincts, let out a hiss of breath. His face pitted and caked with clotted blood. Half of his body sagged, as though he had been split down the middle, gravity winning out over vampire strength. He took a few small steps forward. The stink of sulfur drilled into her nose.

"That's far enough," Buffy held her hands up. A long grimace pulled at the corners of her mouth. "You're a wreck."

"Am I?" He leaned against the closest fir, half for posturing and half, Buffy figured, for support, his legs swaying like reeds in a strong current.

"And that smell—" Her nose wrinkled. "Have you been frolicking through the city dump?"

"If you're not going to beat me senseless," Spike retorted. "Leave off."

Buffy returned the stake to striking position. To Spike's credit, he didn't bother to look any less supremely uncaring as he had the moment before. Having lost its magical power to shut Spike up, the stake dropped back down to her side. She contemplated the graceful Slayer stalk-off, leaving the stinking, oozing, beat-in vamp to his own. But sheer contrariness seemed to get the better of her. Her taking a step forward declared her intention of exactly that.

"What new toy is this?" She scuffed the chain with her foot.

"Nothin'," Spike said suspiciously. Stooping to retrieve it, he must have jerked a muscle wrongly, because a moment later, he sagged backward, a hand against his forehead as though the chip had fired.

Maybe the fact that Spike was the first person to say more than a sentence to her in six hours clouded her normally snappy Slayer judgment, but she felt the slightest emotion which she wasn't going to examine for the wounded vamp. Braving the onslaught of putrid olfactory input, she grabbed up the chain and held it out to him.

"Bloody hell," he yelped, shrinking back into the tree. "If you want to kill me Slayer, stake me good and proper."

"I'm, I thought I was—" Buffy stopped. Why was she trying to apologize to the recidivist vampire? "What is this, Spike?"

Spike puffed out his chest. "'S a genuine chain of torment. Nicked it from the shop earlier this evening—had to disarm a few mystical locks with my cunning know-how."

"You're proud of crime," Buffy said, her not complete lack of impressed writ large on the bored angle of her hip, the stake tapping against her leg, the chain tight in her fist. "You're proud of crime and you're telling me. You do realize this is mine now?"

Spike arched his shoulders in the barest shrug. "Been carrying that damn chain forever," he said. "Thing like that, weighs heavily on a person after a piece."

Slinging the surprisingly light chain around her shoulder like a scarf, Buffy moved off a few feet, giving in to her screaming nose. As she backed off, she saw Spike straighten up, his face less twisted, less like an animated corpse and more like the smug pain-in-the ass of Buffy : The College Years.

"So," she continued, scuffing at some freshly turned dirt with her heel, "that's a Technicolor assortment of bruises you've got there."

He was nodding again and about to answer—when a perplexed expression traversed from eyes to his mouth. "Are we having a conversation, Slayer?" He sounded perkier, as though more than the weight of the chain had been lifted from his small, slumped body.

"No! Completely of the no." There was that wicked smirk that made her want to punch him, if not for the extreme evidence of the good smashing-in his face had received already. "Stranger things have happened," she offered as way of explanation for her entire night's behavior, not just to Spike, but to herself, Riley, Giles, Xander, Dracula, Angel—the whole lot of them. Stranger things have happened. Unconsciously she touched her neck. Dracula's mark. A mark that she'd, at least on some level, willingly taken. Immediately she regretted the hand as the vampire's eyes drew down to the spot, quirking a quick eyebrow at her.

"That a fact?" He pushed off from the tree.

"Look—" she shifted the chain around her shoulder blades, pleasantly cool against her skin and fetchingly matched to the Weapons of Destruction / stake motif, to cover the wound. "If I find you near the Magic Shop, I'm going to stake you—no questions asked."

"Not headed to the Magic Shop," he said.

"Where then?" Buffy asked. "Not that I care. Just that I'd like to know what I should stake you for, when word comes back."

"Seeing as I'm feelin' chipper," Spike punctuated the sentence with an ironic fist to the skull that Buffy didn't quite understand. "Figured on headin' to good ole UC SunnyD for some five-card," he said.

"How dumb do I look," Buffy said flatly.

"Ravishingly dumb, pet." He rocked on his heels. "Know where a bloke could find a plastic chest this time of night?" He seemed to take special pleasure from the muh? face she knew she was wearing. "'S not important. Fancy that man such as myself could make do with whatever's on-hand. Say hello to the Poof for me."

The chain weighed on her shoulders as Spike disappeared.

***///***

Spike loitered the Lowell house Rec Room, smoking cigs and dealing himself imaginary hands of five-card stud. The rumble of an engine pulling up to the house, idling, and then roaring off into the distance cut the game short. He stuffed the pack of cards into a duster pocket, barely containing the nervous jitter in his limbs. He was strangely keyed up, but viciously suppressed any further thought on that account. Seconds later, the door pushed open and Riley shuffled in, arm around his midsection. A twang of pride in his handiwork brought a grin to his face. Take that, sodding Made in America ballocks.

Riley shuffled toward the vampire like a thrashed homing pigeon. Musta been the smell of tobacco or somesuch other olfactory clue. Or maybe it was the sulfur shrouding his duster like a thick reminder that the clean smell of dust was a much more amiable companion.

"That's far enough boy," Spike growled. "Do you have it?"

"I have it," Riley said.

"There's a plastic chest on the table in front of you. Can you find it?"

"—yes."

"Put it in and latch it shut."

"—yes."

"That's all toy soldier," Spike said dismissively. Riley stood stock still. "Oh bugger, how would Dru do it? You are released. Better for you if you don't make me say it thrice."

Riley's shoulders sagged and he toppled over onto one of the thread-bare Rec Room couches. "Spike?" He said through a great deal of haze and confusion. "Spike?" His hand went to his ribs, jaw, forehead. "The chip—"

"Don't get excited. You had a little tussle with Dracula. You and the Poof made with the big heroics and saved the poor carpenter." Spike said cheerily. "If I know spells—" and even though on his best nights he had no truck with that kind of bollocks, tonight proved to himself that even after so many years of disuse, he was pretty handy with the occasional stuff— "you should remember everything in Technicolor detail come morning." Oh there was another savage grin on his face, he was sure of it.

"There's a stake here with your name on it." Riley groped for his vest. "Where are my stakes?"

"Look, I'd love to play twenty questions with the brain damaged as much as the next bloke—" Spike said, whisking the chest under his arm. "But you can get stuffed."

"I'm not going to be down for the count for long," Riley growled. "Tell me what you came here for, and maybe I'll think twice before staking you the next time the fancy strikes."

"Ooh, big talk. Might be a little more intimidatin' if you didn't look like you were doin' qualifying rounds for Miss Intensive Care." Spike laughed with no real amusement. It riled soldier boy, but strangely didn't please him as much. "I was collecting what I was owed."

"And who on God's green earth could owe you anything?"

Spike shrugged. "Stranger things've happened."

"Spike," Riley warned. "Tell me what's in the box."

"My eleven sodding quid."

More derogatory questions were shouted after him, and for Spike's part in the little Q&A, didn't consider them worthy enough for a two-finger we're finished salute. He stalked out of Lowell house into the rosy glow of pre-dawn light. All wounds, slights, and moments of uncomfortably close reflection considered, it had been a bloody good night.