In The Space Between

Writer's Note: You've got it, Miravisu. I'm hoping to power through this baby straight through to a satisfying conclusion. I've let her sit for far too long… Thank you also, Rhiannon. You have both convinced me that there are still people who want to read this ancient little beastie.

"Come on," she whispered softly, her breath catching in her throat in a delicate way that seemed to set him on fire.

With his free hand, he brushed away the few strands of her damp hair that had fallen over her eyes. "Right then," he said finally. "Lead the way."

Chapter 12: These Fickle, Fuddled Words Confuse Me

"I'm a bit confused," Buffy admitted, as she strolled through Giles' front door. "Usually I encounter something on my way over here at this time of night."

"Calm before the storm, pet," Spike replied, shifting on his feet as he stared through the door's opening into the warmth of the living room's light.

"And you would know how exactly?" Xander quipped from inside the living room, where he stood looking very unhappy about the massive text held open in his arms.

Spike glared at him dispassionately. "What don't you people understand about the phrase, "demon dimension"?"

"What do they…" Giles muttered just under his voice, raising his gaze from the tiny script that sat on the table before him. "Please, Spike, come in. I believe you had mentioned at some point… or perhaps it was the previous you… that you know several demon languages? I could use another pair of eyes to look through the As'karana texts. There's…"

"Thirty volumes," Spike finished dully. "Don't tell me you have all of them, Watcher."

"Oh, but I do!" Giles replied, an expression of pride across his face as his mistook Spike's knowledge for appreciation. "In nearly pristine condition, as well. In the original…"

Spike shook his head. "You sure get your jollies in strange ways," he muttered, picking up one of the slim, nearly indecipherable texts anyway.

Xander stared at the exchange. "Wait. Wait wait wait. You mean, all this time, fang-boy could have been helping with the reading?"

From the couch, Willow choked back a laugh, while Anya pursed her lips. "Why should he have?" she asked her boyfriend in a surprisingly serious tone. "We didn't exactly give that Spike any incentive to help us, did we?" she added. "No monetary compensation, no respect for his knowledge or skills. I wouldn't have helped us either."

From behind the volume he held, Spike's gaze lifted to Anya. "Thank you," he said pointedly. "Why exactly is it these wankers don't listen to you more often, pet?"

Anya shrugged, "Lack of resource-usage savvy."

Xander stared back and forth between his girlfriend and the vampire, sputtering slightly. "What the…" he sighed, "You know what? I'm just going to accept that I'm wrong here somehow for some reason." He sat back down beside Anya, rubbing his temples.

Anya smiled at him in delight. "You're learning so well!" she said brightly, giving him a hug that lingered just a little too long. "Guess who's going to get sex tonight?"

Willow shifted just a little further away from the couple, meeting Tara's warm gaze with a weak smile. Their hands interlaced somewhere in the space between the couch and the armchair.

Buffy let out a long sigh, slowly uncrossing and then re-crossing her legs where they rested lightly on the top of Giles' dining room table, pointedly ignoring her mentor's disapproving stare. "Ok," she said finally, "We've been at this for hours. What exactly are we looking for and how is it going to help us any more than what Spike's already told us?"

Every pair of eyes in the room swung to Giles in search of an excuse to leave the dusty tomes in their laps. "Well," Giles sputtered slightly, removing his glasses to rub at them with an old, soft cloth, "We know that in the other dimension, Buffy was able to use the Dagon sphere and Olaf's hammer to help dispose of Glory, but also that this didn't necessarily kill her. Either we need to figure out how she was ultimately disposed of and by whom in that reality, or we need to find our own method."

"Don't see why you don't just kill Ben," Spike interjected. "I'm almost sure that's how Glory was off-ed in my world. Never came out in my world, but I'm sure someone with some guts managed it."

"Kill Ben?" several voices gasped in horror. "Why on earth would we kill that poor guy?" Xander added. "What the hell does he have to do with this?" Giles demanded. Only Buffy sat silent, her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she listened to Spike. "Are we entirely sure he's not at all evil anymore?" Tara's whisper to Willow echoed in Buffy's ears. She watched Spike wince at that one. He looked tired again. They'd been through something like this several times now, she was certain of it.

"Ben is Glory," Spike ground out, spitting the words like bullets. "Glory is Ben." He glared at the people clustered on the couch and armchairs from where he leaned in the doorway of the kitchen. "Why can't you lot get it through your thick skulls?"

"I don't understand."

"That… can't be right."

"Wait. Ben knows Glory?"

The chorus of voices was too much for Buffy as well. "What about patrol?" she interjected suddenly, much to everyone's surprise. Spike rose an eyebrow at her. "I think that me and Spike should go patrol. Don't you, Spike?" she added, a tense, half-smile on her face as she addressed him, "Let's go patrol." The group watched in confusion as Buffy literally dragged the vampire out into the night with her.

"Well, that was weird," Xander said finally.

"Understatement of the year," Willow added. "What exactly do you think Ben has to do with any of this?"

"You've mentioned the Ben thing before," Buffy said seriously, before they had gotten too far down the block. She listened to his tired sigh before she continued. "That's Glory's only weak link, isn't it?" she pressed on. "I can't quite wrap my head around what you keep trying to explain. It's like the second I get it, I lose it again. So, I'm just going to trust you to keep it straight, ok?"

He was staring at her again. She was starting to get used to the strange pressure of his gaze when he was surprised by something she said or did. The Buffy he'd known must have been significantly different, at least the frequency of this particular look seemed to suggest it. "It's a spell," he said finally. "Near as I can figure. We had trouble with it in my dimension too." He paused, "But, yeah, this must be the third or fourth time we've gone through that detail since I've gotten here."

"Sounds frustrating," Buffy replied sympathetically. "And you know what's best for dealing with frustrating?" She met Spike's wary gaze this time as she smiled, "Killing evil things."

His grin was worth the awfulness of the joke.

She had already begun to mirror his movements, Buffy realized with a start, as they tackled a small cluster of vampires they had flushed out of a particularly dusty crypt. It was as if he knew exactly how to read her, and she was almost there. Every smirk and lift of his eyebrow, every twitch in his form was a message she could decipher with ease. They only had one stake, she had realized after they'd already begun the attack. It turned out to be less of a problem than she'd anticipated. She had taken out the first vampire, and the moment her hand had drawn back from the exploding cloud of dust, Spike had gently plucked the weapon from her hand and sent it home into the second vamp. Without missing a beat, she had swung around, tackling the third enemy. A quick jump kick and a few punches later, she found herself wishing she'd argued about keeping the stake. And then she heard Spike call her name. A rapid jerk of her head, and the vampire standing between her and Spike was a small explosion and a stake was flying at her, and into her waiting hand.

The rest of the fight passed just as quickly, the stake flying back and forth as quickly as she and Spike did across the damp grass. Within moments, they stood alone in the cemetery. Buffy gasped for breath, staring at Spike in shock, "That was… amazing." She said finally, between deep breaths, "We're awesome."

Spike replied with a grin, "Duck, love."

Buffy watched him with amazement from her crouched position on the ground, not even looking behind her to check if the stake had met its mark in the vampire who had been attempting to sneak up behind her. "Seriously," she continued, accepting his hand as he pulled her up, "We are awesome!"

"You've really no idea, Slayer," he replied with a self-satisfied smirk. His hand lingered on hers just an instant longer than they needed to, but Buffy found herself really not minding.

She wondered if her type of cookie had chocolate chips in it.