It turned out tracking Spike through thick undergrowth in her party shoes and new skirt while simultaneously avoiding the flashlights of the commandos sucked the biggest amount of suck possible.
Panic had dissolved quickly into frustration, and subsequently into anger as she trudged through mud and shrubs.
Buffy huffed lividly.
If she'd thought the evening would end in a demon hunt through prickly bushes she wouldn't have worn the strappy silver shoes or anything involving mesh.
"Why am I doing this?!" she hissed as her top caught on a branch, sharp thorns scraping across her face.
She'd been out here for what felt like hours, and the vamp-tingles at the back of her neck were entirely mute. No Spike anywhere in these woods. She hated how apprehensive that made her feel.
If the occasional flicker of a flashlight amongst the trees was anything to go by, the commandos were still on the prowl and hadn't caught their quarry (or any secondary prizes), but surely if Spike was out here, he'd have caught wind of her by now and made some sort of effort to intersect this entirely unwanted hike.
So where the hell was he!?
He's gone, said the voice of painful realism in her head as she u-turned at an impenetrable mass of branches. Totally gone. Turned your back on him for a second and poof. Gone-age.
And honestly, what had she expected? She wasn't stupid; she knew he'd been staying on the fringes of her group for safety. For shelter.
But if he could fight? If he could defend himself again, even just from the demonic population, and potentially bully some demons into being his backup against Sunnydale's human population… why would he stay?
You didn't think he'd stick around for you, did you?
Not even Angel did that.
Buffy bit down a lump of emotion that wasn't—absolutely was not—heartache. It was just the shock of abandonment. She'd… she'd just gotten kinda… used to him being around. That was all. She didn't care if he unlived or died, it had just been pretend anyway. Give her an hour and she'd shake it off. Twenty minutes even, and she'd be fine.
But twenty minutes came and went as she made it out of the woods, arriving back at the start and picking her way across the glittering shards of glass on the frat house lawn.
She swallowed tightly as she headed back to her dorm, concentrating hard to put what she'd overheard behind the bush out of her mind. She wasn't worried Spike was back in the lab with all the… the 'vivid sections'. And even if he was, he'd escaped once before so… so he'd be fine. And besides, she wasn't even supposed to be worried anyway. If he got captured then that was one less Spike for her to deal with, which, you know: yay.
I don't care, she confirmed to herself again, passing the last straggling students still loitering on the dorm building steps, and heading down the hall to her room. Do. Not. Care. Not even a teeny tiny little bit.
She didn't care as she changed out of her party clothes and into pajamas.
Didn't care as she climbed into the empty bed she'd visualized him occupying that weekend. She would've slept in Willow's.
Or maybe she wouldn't have—
She shook her head hard, dispelling her treacherous imagination. It had been just pretend, and she didn't care, and she was going to sleep the deep deep sleep of the completely unwounded.
She switched off the bedside light, and the empty silence of the bedroom was suddenly as loud as the party had been. Only worse.
Cavernously quiet.
Buffy scrunched her eyes shut, breathing deeply.
Just go to sleep.
Just go to sleep and it won't matter in the morning.
It won't matter.
She felt dangerously, inexplicably close to tears. Sharp prickles stung the corners of her eyes, and she squeezed them tight.
Maybe she'd gotten a little carried away in the game, but she didn't care about being alone. She didn't care that he'd taken the opportunity to make a break for it. She definitely didn't feel lonely, it was just that the sudden alone-ness felt jarring. That was all.
It wasn't real, she reminded herself as the memory of Spike's arm around her waist and his words in her ear made her skin pebble and her heart sink.
"I want to play…"
She sniffed hard, and crushed her eye with the heel of her hand.
I wasn't done…
She swallowed hard and wriggled deeper under the covers, and after a while she dozed.
And dreamed of white labs, men with guns, demons screaming somewhere out of sight, standing in a hallway surrounded by cells. Some were splashed with blood.
A knock pulled her out of the restless sleep she'd managed to fight her way into, and she gasped out of it, breathing heavily in the dark to see if the knock had been part of the dream. Part of the nightmare.
After a couple of thudding heartbeats it came again, a heavy staccato louder than the first time.
She flicked on the light, noting the time on her alarm clock: well past late night and edging into early morning. She kicked the blankets back, crossed the room, and opened the door.
And froze.
"Spike," she stated, mouth opening and closing a few times before finishing what it had started. "You're here."
Spike smiled in what he probably thought was a disarming way. Buffy, in contrast, found herself feeling immensely armed.
"In the flesh," he replied, raising an eyebrow. "Weren't expecting someone else, were you?"
He grunted as she caught hold of his coat's lapels in an iron grip and dragged him into her bedroom.
"What happened?!" she hissed, shutting the door with force. "I told you to stay with that demon thing!"
Spike shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
"Plum got away from me," he said, and she read it as the lie it was. He wasn't even trying to make it sound truthful, and she was fully aware as to why.
Vividly aware.
"Did it?" she huffed frostily, but the frost felt like a lie too. She didn't want to face what those commandos were up to you. Couldn't bear to dwell on it. And if the demon had gotten away that was so much easier to ignore than imagining what might be happening to it if it hadn't.
"And what about you?" she asked, keeping her anger in her back teeth at least. She wasn't going to melt just because he'd finally shown up at this incredibly late hour, but she wasn't going to push back all that hard either. Not after what she'd overheard Riley say. If she probed deeper she knew what the anger was really hiding. The disgust. The horror.
"Thought I'd make a quick exit into the sewers," Spike answered. "Didn't much relish a reunion with those military assholes. They give the worst parting gifts."
Buffy let the air out slowly through her nose.
Don't I know it…
"Guess your night took a bit of a turn too, huh?" he asked, tilting his head to appraise her.
"I spent the rest of it looking for you!" she growled, letting herself feel ever so slightly pleased when Spike, for once, looked almost chastened.
"In the woods?"
"Yes."
She stiffened as he turned her head with gentle fingers.
"What d'you do, get in a fight with a bramble?"
She batted his hand down from her scratched cheeks.
"More than one." She skirted around him, fishing out a towel from her laundry hamper and thrusting it at him. "Shower," she commanded. "Unless you and your sewer germs want to sleep outside; bathrooms are across the hall."
Spike took the towel with a smirk.
"Anything to get me out of my clothes, eh, luv?" he commented over his shoulder as he opened the bedroom door and closed it behind him.
Buffy stood blushing, her annoyance faltering and falling behind embarrassment.
Oh…
Right.
He couldn't sleep in his clothes after he'd been wandering around in a sewer. And naked Spike was going to need clothes or he'd… or he'd stay a naked Spike.
She turned to her closet and rifled through it. There wasn't anything. The only clean pair of pajamas she had she was wearing.
Crap…
She worried at her lip, then dug in her purse for her wallet. She extracted a twenty and headed down to the laundry room in the basement.
By sheer luck, one student's laundry had been abandoned for the night in the dryer. Feeling like a fugitive, she rummaged through shirts and khakis and gym shorts until she scored; pulling out a pair of sweatpants that looked like they'd fit Spike's lean frame. She tucked the twenty dollars into a shirt pocket and whispered an apology before darting back up the stairs.
Spike tilted his head back beneath the near scalding spray. Slayer hadn't given him any choice about it, but he had to admit that the warmth was nice, as was losing that sewer-fug from his skin.
The rest of the evening wasn't so easy to wash away.
His throat was still tight with rage. With disgust. He fingered the scar at the back of his head, the entry point those army fuckers had taken into his gray matter.
No, in hindsight, it could've been worse.
A lot worse.
In half-choked grunts Untor had told him how much worse it could've been. Fyarl didn't have enough words for all the horrors he'd tried to describe, but what blunt phrases he had managed held a multitude of them anyway.
"They cut deep… Pulled our Little One out…"
Spike shivered. Swallowed.
He'd set the demon up in a crypt down in Restfield. Somewhere the soldiers would be unlikely to look. Spent a few more hours breaking into stores with bad locks, collecting provisions and blankets and clothes. Whatever he could before the night had started to dwindle, the dark hours running down.
He could've slept there, admittedly. It was a spacious crypt, plenty of room. But his gut had tugged him back to the university campus.
Couldn't let the girl think he'd run out on her, after all.
The heat in the room dropped slightly as the door opened. A heartbeat thudded beneath the sound of water hitting the tiles and Spike turned his head towards it.
"That you, Slayer?" Spike called out and heard her catch her breath, obviously thinking she'd made no noise.
"I got you something to wear," she stammered out in confirmation.
"Weren't thinking of joining me then?" he asked, and though he'd meant it as a goad he loved the way her heartbeat tripped over itself for a second.
"No," she replied sternly.
"Shame." He shut the water off with a squeak of the taps.
"You can wash your clothes in the laundry r—don't come out!" she blurted as he unlocked the stall door, opening it an inch. "I'm going! Just… I'm going."
He heard the bathroom door slam shut, the pattering sound as she sprinted back to her room, and waited a second longer before stepping out of the stall.
A pair of gray joggers were folded on top of the towel he'd left on the row of sinks.
He toweled off and tugged them on, drying his hair as thoroughly as he could and then combing it back with his hands. It'd curl, but he couldn't do much about that.
He picked up his clothes, his duster, his boots, slung the towel over his shoulder and slipped across the hall.
Buffy was standing awkwardly in the middle of the room waiting for him. She shifted when he entered, crossing her arms as he dumped his clothes in her laundry hamper, boots by the door, coat and towel over her chair.
He bit down a grin when he caught her staring at him, blatantly and unintentionally letting her eyes slip over him.
"Happy?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, and she jolted before managing to drag her gaze back above shoulder height.
"Uh huh," she muttered. After a tense few beats she gestured to her bed. "You're sleeping here," she instructed. "I'll sleep in Willow's."
Spike eyed the frilly comforter.
"That a problem?" Buffy asked, implying as forcefully as possible that it better not be.
"You want me in your bed?" he replied, and let his grin have free reign.
"Willow would absolutely freak if she finds out I let you sleep in hers."
"But you don't mind at all?" he teased.
Buffy glared back at him, and Spike watched as she tried to hide the emotions flitting across her face.
She was angry, that was obvious. Nervous, from the curl of her fingers into a loose fist. Oh and there, that little flinch in the corner of her eyes… ever so slightly insecure.
He could work with that.
He crossed the room to her and she stiffened, frosty distance clearly the preserving life raft she was intent on clinging to. "Are you gonna tuck me in with a kiss?"
She rolled her eyes, and the insecurity dropped into annoyance.
"Goodnight."
He caught her by the elbow as she moved to walk past him. And crashed his mouth against hers.
She drew in a sharp breath through her nose but didn't pull away. Didn't push back. Didn't react for the first second until he stepped forward and her thighs hit the bedside table, and then she was kissing him back—hands cupping his face—and he couldn't help melting a little. She was so sweet to kiss, so warm, so giving.
"There's my Slayer," he purred, widening the kiss and slipping his tongue into her mouth when she gasped. "Shouldn't go to bed angry."
"I'm not angry," she lied as his hands found her hips. "I thought you left."
"Just got waylaid, honey." He pulled her closer, the warmth of her body spreading out over his chest.
No more distance…
"Come to bed."