"So, care to tell me what else has you distracted? I know it can't all be school and contemplating what I might want you to do to my admittedly impressive body," Spike grinned at her as he sat across from Willow at a coffee shop.
With a glance at all the other people, most of them busily focused on their own tables and conversations, Willow sighed. The girl at the register was green out of the corner of her eye, green with little horns on her temples. And the girl by the window with the pink and black streaked hair almost falling out of a corset was pinkish with the same strange white eyes as the librarian. There was a lanky kid with some friends, and he seemed to have small antlers... No, whatever was going on wasn't going away.
"Not really, not here." Willow sipped at her coffee, and gave a more obvious glance around the room. "Too many people, and some conversations are best done in private."
"So you are thinking about my sexy body," Spike teased.
Willow blushed, not quite willing to say how often his body had been in her mind. But that was a much better idea for anybody listening to have than to hear that she was seeing things. Or looking for real witches. "You're normally better than Anya about public and private conversations."
"Take away all my fun..." Spike grumbled.
"This place is way too public for some of your ideas of fun, and I like the coffee here too much for some of your other ideas of fun," she countered.
No sooner had she finished her coffee than she found herself strolling along the sidewalk with Spike. They wound up in a lovely little park area that was deserted at this hour, and he guided them to a bench. "Now we're alone. Feel free to spill those ideas or have your way with me."
"I can guess your preference..." Willow murmured. "But no, that isn't on the agenda for tonight. I've been trying to find local witches."
"Why? You seem to be doing pretty good as far as I can tell," Spike slid an arm around her shoulders.
"Either I'm having really specific hallucinations, or there's a bunch of demons in town, playing humanish. And I don't know which, or why I'm seeing it, or why now, or what it means for the future." Willow sighed and leaned against his shoulder.
"Same people looking the same way?" Spike asked.
Willow nodded, "So far it seems like it. The same people are consistently the same... human when I look straight at them, not so much out of the corner of my eyes. Each of them has the same differences that they always have. The school librarian's pinkish with white eyes. One of the guys who always crosses the courtyard between my Monday classes has green scales and spikes down his back. There's a girl who looks like a red cyclops."
"Have you been trying to match them to some of those old books of demons the watcher had?" Spike paused, "Wait, you don't have those anymore, do you?"
"Digital. I put them all on CD's. And yes, I have been looking, and yes, a lot of them have been matching up. The girl at the coffee register tonight... she didn't look human." Willow admitted.
"Her scent was a bit off, that would explain it," Spike murmured.
Willow twisted to look at him. He'd noticed something off about one of the same people - it wasn't just her! "She didn't smell human? I'm not hallucinating?"
Spike pulled her close, "That still doesn't tell us why now, or what the bloody hell it might mean."
"Knowing that I'm not hallucinating is a good start. I was starting to worry about my sanity," Willow admitted.
"Some kinds of crazy are still sexy," Spike grinned.
"Considering some of your history, I guess you'd know," Willow managed a smile. "But I was hoping if I could find safe local witches, they might be able to help me find answers."
"I guess that makes sense," Spike started playing with her hair.
Willow just leaned against him for a while, letting time flow as she cuddled against the vampire that had changed her life. The one that she'd never be able to get out of her heart, even if he had broken it before. The one that she hoped wouldn't break her heart again. "I think I need to start checking the coroner's website and police reports again."
"Looking for people that I can thump? I do like a good spot of violence now and then," Spike mused.
"It'd be nice if there aren't any demons for you to track down and thump." Willow paused, and then sighed. "Nice, but I'm not going to hold my breath on it."
"We've already found other vampires, damn few of us are willing to play nice with the mortals, as the saying goes," Spike paused, muttering something about the chip.
Willow sighed, once again glad that he was still all chip-impeded. She doubted it would last forever, and strongly suspected that it could be removed by a talented enough surgeon. But finding said talented surgeon and convincing him, her or it to remove a safety-chip from a vampire… not something that she expected to happen anytime soon. Her own prior efforts to find a magical option for removal, or to find a way to block said magical removal had brought her to the awareness that manipulating something that small was very tricky when it was surrounded by something else. If you didn't want to damage that something else it became very, very tricky. She could easily yank the chip out of him, but that would probably shred his brain into red goo, and while that might or might not be fatal, she really doubted that it would be anywhere near good for Spike. Possibly not for the rest of them, depending on the resulting brain damage – it might be drooling twitching unresponsive husk brain damage or it might be rampaging vicious thing with no attention span or anything resembling morals, ethics or restraint.
When the chip failed, or somebody found a way to block or remove it, what would Spike do? Would he go back to treating humans as happy meals on legs? Would he kill or turn her, if she was still around? Would he pick up his one-time hobby of torture, with or without railroad spikes? Willow didn't know, and wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to know.
That brought up the memories of vampire-Willow, with her leather and the licking, and the naughty hands. Someone that Willow didn't want to become. Not that she wanted to be all brooding and unable to have a satisfying sex life like Angel of the awful curse. There had to be something in between… and if there wasn't, she could make something. Just in case.
"You have too many thoughts, Red," Spike murmured, stroking her hair.
"I know," Willow smiled. It wasn't the first time she'd been told that.
"If you do find more witches, they'll probably try to convince you to stay away from me," he whispered.
"Nobody but you can convince me to stay away," Willow countered. She didn't add that it didn't seem to have worked very long this time – he was part of her life again. Not as much as before, but give him time and half a chance, and here he was again. To get rid of him, she'd probably have to kill him, and put the ashes in crystal or something. And unless he broke her heart again, why would she want to do that?
"Bugger that, I like you here," Spike retorted.
Willow just giggled. "Given that I haven't found these maybe theoretical other witches, I'm just going to be glad that I'm not hallucinating and therefore crazy."
"But you've got leads on them," Spike's fingers were playing with her hair again.
"A couple. Celtic heritage group and a religious tolerance group. That might mean pagan, which might mean witches," Willow explained.
"S'long as they aren't fluffy bunny vegetarian tree huggers," Spike shuddered.
"You're thinking hippies, not pagans," Willow teased.
"And hippies are bad to eat. Most of them have too many drugs in their systems. Learned that at Woodstock," Spike gave another shudder. "I spent an hour watching my hand make trails of funny colors."
Willow shouldn't have found that funny, but she did. Maybe she was only a little crazy?
End Second Best 20: Still Mostly Sane