Buffy took a deep breath once she was out of the house, heaving the sweet tension-free air into her lungs to rid herself of the sour taste that had poisoned her mouth all day.

Now that the sun was setting she was officially one day down, but it was still another night and another day before she could shove Spike back onto Giles' sofa.

Counting the minutes, she thought as she entered Restfield cemetery, stake already drawn and begging for some use. After the last twenty-four hours, her nerves were thoroughly overwrought. There was officially no more wrought left.

It didn't help that she'd woken up with that creepy song stuck in her head again. It was so unnerving and it made her hackles rise.

She'd dreamed she was in Sunnydale UC after dark, walking the empty corridors lined with silent classrooms. Riley was somewhere, had been right next to her at one point, but she'd lost track of him when the little girl's voice had started singing down the corridors…

"Can't even shout,
Can't even cry,
The gentlemen are coming by…"

Rounding a corridor she'd come to windows overlooking the quad. The ground was covered in a thick roiling fog. Something in the way it moved made her feel sick.

Like it was watching her too.

"Looking in windows,
Knocking on doors,
They need to take seven,
And they might take yours."

She turned then, and there was the girl at the end of the corridor between her and the exit, holding a box close to her chest. "Seven what?" Buffy tried to ask but no sound came out of her mouth.

"Can't call to mom,
Can't say a word,
You're gonna die screaming,

But you won't be heard…"

And then there he was again. That dead-looking man in a severe suit and grinning with silver teeth, the sight of which had her lurching violently awake. Sleep had evaded her for the rest of the night.

And still, there was no word from Giles…

Probably distracted with ooky old people romance. Ugh.

On the point of romance, at least the damage had been relatively minor with Riley. It was all back on track there after a gushing phone call in which she might've laid the giggling on a little thick. It had paid off though with a potential coffee date planned for tomorrow at the Espresso Pump.

She'd managed to persuade him that nothing was going on between her and Spike and that he was totally the most aggravating asshole she knew. He was the most aggravating asshole most people knew—even if they'd only met him for a minute and a half—so it didn't take all that much persuasion.

"And you chose his name for your fake fiance because…?" Riley had prompted and she giggled lightly like 'Oh what a funny joke'.

"Because, it's ridiculous, right? An actual person, walking around, calling themselves 'Spike'in all seriousness with a straight face? That's insane." She laughed again, and this time he joined in with a relieved chuckle of his own.

But it was insane. It was all insane, but particularly expecting her to babysit Spike without having a rage-induced aneurysm was completely loony-tunes. She could barely stomach him for seconds at a time, why Giles thought they'd be able to tolerate each other for a whole weekend, in the same house, breathing the same air (or not as the case may be) was entirely beyond her.

Sure, denying Spike his blood had been just enough petty revenge for that quivering needle of her temper-gage to creep down from nuclear-explosion back into the safer orange zone of I-seriously-need-to-kill-something, but his insufferable sneer was still a prickly heat between her shoulder blades.

As though the world was deliberately trying to push her anger back up into the red, Buffy tripped over a hand clawing its way out of a grave.

She righted herself and waited over it, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

Come on, come on, come on, I really need a good slay, here.

A forearm was now out of the dirt and she was ready for it, oh she was ready for it.

Until it stalled, pawing ineffectually at the grass under its gray, mud-clogged fingertips.

"D'you need help there, or…?"

The ground underneath her feet bulged slightly and then fell back again. The fledgling had gotten stuck.

Oh for God's sake! This is just embarrassing!

She scowled, crossing her arms over her chest as a second hand made its way out of the soil, only to wave frantically like it was drowning in its grave. It would be funny if she had even a molecule of a sense of humor left.

"Alright, this has gone on long enough."

She reached down into the dirt—gross—and hauled the vampire out by the lapels of its funeral suit—double gross. As soon as it was free of its grave it lurched towards her, freshly turned earth darkening its hair and falling into its sulphuric yellow eyes.

"Okay, here we go!" Buffy cheered, perking up at the thought of a satisfying fight to get rid of the lingering Spike-fury. She could pretend it was his stupid anemic face that her fists were dishing a good pummeling into.

She backhanded the vampire to get the fight going, landing a hard blow across its jaw. It stumbled back—

And landed on a protruding tree branch at just the right angle, exploding dramatically into dust.

"Wha—no, ARGH!" Buffy stomped her foot, not caring that she was completely throwing a tantrum at the loss of some tension-reducing violence. "NOT FAIR, stupid freaking—!" Her already extremely articulate sentence trailed off into a frustrated growl. "Why do I even bother!?"

She stalked off, kicking clods of earth until her anger simmered back down to merely boiling.

"Okay, fine, super-super fine, there has to be other no-good fangy types around," she huffed out around gritted teeth as she marched over the silent graves, stopping at one that looked like it might be freshly dug. "Come on out, evil! I'm just a young, helpless, college girl with a completely defenseless neck! Not even wearing a scarf!"

She paused patiently incase whatever undead lurking beneath the soil was just as incompetent as the first.

But there was nothing. No one. Not an un-soul around.

What a pointless evening...

There was a stake-based pun there somewhere but she was too aggravated to figure it out.

After a fruitless hour making a full circuit of every grave twice, Buffy stomped back home, all pent up with nothing to kill.

"Completely wasted Saturday," she grumbled as she took a breath outside the front door.

She forced a cheerful smile onto her face for her mother. It'd be fine. Spike was in the basement; she didn't even need to look at him. It'd be the absolute bare minimum of contact with him until Sunday night.

Might make that Sunday morning, she thought, her smile turning slightly less fake at the idea of marching an on-fire Spike back to Giles' house as she opened her front door.

Onto a scene that froze her to the spot.

"What the fu-"

"Buffy!" Her mother snapped from her seat on the sofa. "Language!"

Buffy shut her mouth promptly, turning red as Spike sat beaming in the living room armchair, closing the book on his lap around his finger.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth, do you?" he sneered, taking a swig from the mug of tea in his hand.

Her mug. The pretty yellow one with the daisy pattern.

"What is he doing out of his chains!?" Buffy all but shrieked, gesturing wildly in Spike's direction as he lounged with a ridiculous air of affected comfort.

"Well really, Buffy, I don't think it's right keeping guests shackled," Joyce said smoothly, taking a sip of her own tea.

"He's not a guest! He's a prisoner! An evil, mass-murdering, prisoner! We do not let evil mass murders wander around upstairs!"

"Unless they have a soul, right pet?" Spike chimed in.

"Shut up!"

"Oooh, Slayer, how you wound my delicate heart," he jeered at her less-than-witty repartee, taking another swig from her mug.

She rounded on him then, all the aggression that had gone unspent on patrol begging her to reach for her stake. "The only thing delicate about it is that it can burst into dust if I shove a number two pencil through it!"

"Aside from the dust that's true of most hearts, luv."

"Alright, that's enough out of both of you," Joyce said sternly, fixing them both with an exasperated eye. "Buffy, you know I hate to go against your wishes, but Spike is chipped and in your rush to patrol, you forgot to give him his blood. He was very agitated when I got home."

"MOM!" Buffy yelled, her head whipping to her favorite mug in Spike's pale hand. Dark red tendrils of blood trickled down the inside of it.

Not tea.

She swallowed a livid screech as a satisfied smile crept across his mouth.

Joyce winced at the outburst still ringing in the air and tactfully added, "Spike, now that Buffy is home perhaps you could read your book downstairs." She cast a pointed look to her daughter that all but intimated she would be very grateful if Buffy could refrain from any more book-slaughter.

Another blush darkened Buffy's cheeks.

Spike finished his blood with exaggerated slowness and left it on the coffee table as he sauntered past her toward the dining room. She caught his collar just as he skirted around her, pushing him forward into more of a march through to the kitchen, and didn't release him until she had the basement door open.

"Move—" she growled, shoving him towards the steps. He took the first couple in quick succession to stop himself tripping all the way down, turning to raise an eyebrow at her over his shoulder as she followed him into the basement.

"What's the matter, luv?" he crowed as he took the stairs with obnoxious little bounces. "You seem a bit high-strung."

"I just don't like finding my mother entertaining disgusting blood-sucking creeps," she said coldly, pushing him in the direction of the cot and the chains.

"Mm, and right entertaining she is too," he said with a dirty chuckle as he turned to face her, dismissing the insult in favor of further goading. His proximity and the leer in his voice made her fists itch. "Think you're just pissy because I have my own relationship with Joyce and it don't involve you," he continued, a lecherous grin curling his lips.

Buffy tried to incinerate him with a glare as she forced his knees to bend with two hands on his shoulders—making him sit down hard on the cot with a thump—but it didn't seem to phase him in the slightest.

"One more word about my mother and it's gonna be a much warmer walk back to Giles' than you're anticipating," she threatened as she chained up his hand still holding his book.

He sucked his teeth in a show of complete indifference. "Sure. I'll get right on cowering in fear, soon as I finish this chapter." He smirked, his chains clinking as he raised his arm, offering her the book. "Unless you wanna rip this one in half too?"

She could feel his eyes on the pulse at her neck that was broadcasting her rising blood pressure, and her hand ached to reach for the stake tucked at the back of her skirt.

"If I catch you lurking around my mom again, I will rip you in half."

Spike chuckled lightly and ignored her threat.

"Don't worry, pet. I'll make a great stepdad," he replied, completely unconcerned as he shifted back against the brick wall, tucking the fingers of his still free hand into his pocket so his thumb framed his crotch, readjusting the bulge in his jeans. "Firm but fair."

His wink caused her own eye to twitch.

"I'm packing four stakes right now, Spike. More than happy to make it three if you don't zip it. Do not. Tempt me," she bit out, yanking his other hand out of his pocket and forcing it into the shackle by his head.

Spike raised an eyebrow, his eyes glinting with a look that made her ears burn.

Oh, GOD, he's probably getting off on this—

"Maybe that's the problem," he parried with an obscene curl of his tongue around his teeth as he spread his legs just a shade too wide, framing her knees. "That you're tempted."

Buffy scoffed as she clicked shut the second padlock. What kind of desperate skanks did that work on?

"Not even if your dick closed the Hellmouth," she said over her shoulder as she turned on her heel and pounded the stairs back up, accompanied by the sound of his snickering laughter.