"Why am I carrying this again?" Xander fingered the shoulder-strap of his
green canvas duffel bag as they walked through the hotel lobby.

"Er, 'cos it's yours?" Spike answered, as if he was really confused by the
question. Xander held it out at arm's length, and pointedly hefted the
four foot long bag by the strap-- with two fingers.

"Yeah, but once upon a time it was too heavy for me to carry. Needed some
vampire superhero guy to play 'Sir Walter bloody Raleigh.' Now unless we
*both* did some sucking when I wasn't looking..."

Guilty little grin from Spike. Guilty as in 'I wasn't expecting to get
caught this soon,' not 'I truly feel remorse.' Sucking in of cheeks that
really didn't need to be sucked in any further. "Well... Princess said
somethin' about donatin' some of the Sire's foofy clothes to charity,
before she left to take the witches round to her place. I might've
mentioned that you're a charitably-inclined sort of lad."

Xander tipped his hat up with his other hand so he could give Spike a
stern glare, and cold water dripped down the back of his neck. He blushed.
He could feel the heat in his face, and Spike just looked innocently at
him, as if it wasn't all his fault. Xander couldn't touch, look at, or
*think* about the hat without blushing, now, all because of Spike's oh, so
eloquent request to Angel before the lovers had left for the hotel: "Oh,
by the way-- I want the hat, mate." Insert pained 'why' from Angel. "So's
I can shag him while he's wearin' it, dolt." Just in case Angel hadn't
gotten it, Spike had waggled his eyebrows and added, "*Just* the hat."
Just another annoy-the-Sire tactic, but did he have to say the whole thing
in front of *Wesley,* too? The sympathetic glance Xander had received from
the ex-Watcher hadn't actually helped matters.

Angel had told Spike -- no, ordered him, while grinding his teeth loud
enough for even Xander to hear-- to take it. Take the hat, take the
clothes, take anything of his Sire's that he'd touched, or even looked at,
and never speak of it again. Which had sounded scarily like Giles, and had
sent Spike into little spasms of evil ecstasy. The whole exchange had
made Xander wish, not for the first time, that he could think of a way to
duct-tape Spike's mouth shut and still be able to kiss him. He was working
on a design, somewhere on track eighteen of his twenty-two track mind. For
the moment, however, all he had was a cool hat that made him blush all the
time, and a bag full of Angel's clothes.

Xander slung the bag back over his shoulder, still glaring Black Death at
Spike, but his lover/personal fashion critic didn't seem to want to take
the hint and die, or whatever it was that undead people did. Spike was
just looking around at the red-velvet-covered lobby, with an appreciative
air. Xander had to admit that the Rosa Grande was a seriously stylish
hotel. Thick carpet, comfy matching furniture scattered all over the
place, for those times when you just had to flop and sit and stare into
nothingness. Count up how much money you had left, and decide whether you
could eat tomorrow, or buy that autographed photo of the Robot from 'Lost
In Space. '

Even plastered with cartoon not-quite-M&M's advertising Multi Media 2000,
the place announced in no uncertain terms that the two of them couldn't
even afford to wait for a cab here, let alone spend the night. Xander had
only ever managed it in his misspent youth because Willow's family had
paid for his membership, and their room. Now here they were,
kind-of-sort-of being *paid* to spend the night, screw around, and have a
good time. At least, their room and memberships were being sprung for by
Angel Investigations, and Cordelia swore the whole thing could be
deducted. On the whole, a situation that approached awesomeness, if
Xander's memories of Multi-Media didn't consist entirely of nostalgia and
too many Scooby-related concussions.

Of course, he wasn't going to admit that out loud, since that would imply
that he'd been to Multi-Media before-- that he was, in fact, a complete
sci-fi geek, instead of a tiny bit of one. If he did that, Spike would
snicker at him -- which would be *such* a big change, of course, but he
could at least try to limit the vampire's opportunities. [Snicker at me
naked, fine. Then at least we understand each other. Snicker at me in
front of the cast of Battlestar Galactica, and I might just have to turn
so red I spontaneously combust.] The only thing that might put a kink in
the good times was trying to hide the fact that he was actually having a
good time. He snerked to himself; you had to appreciate the irony.

"Spike! Xander! Over here!" Oh look-- Perkywillow, standing by the con
sign-in table. Bouncing up and down on tennis-shoed feet, arms full of
various plastic bags which undoubtedly contained all kinds of fannish
goodness that Xander wouldn't be able to drool over as obviously as he'd
like to. She was accompanied by an equally-burdened Tara, who held out
manila envelopes towards them with an apologetic smile -- I'm so sorry, I
just sleep with her, I don't control her sugar-intake.

"Hey, ladies." Xander, with a last glare at Spike, led him across the
crowded lobby. When they reached the table, Xander took his envelope from
Tara. "I see you guys started celebrating early." They were both wearing
'Multi-Media' t-shirts, with not-Red-M&M and not-Yellow-M&M holding hands
on the front.

Willow nodded enthusiastically. Then looked Xander and Spike up and down,
throwing in another head-to-toe bounce. "You're all wet!" Bounce, bounce.

"You think?" Spike shook his head like a dog, if there was a breed of dogs
that bleached their hair and wore leather jackets, spraying water
everywhere. Willow and Tara ducked. Xander didn't bother, since he was
almost as soaked, shagging-hat having offered very little protection
against the sudden downpour that was still downpouring outside. Neither
had the turned-down top to the Chevy convertible, and thank God the
interior was leather and wiped off easily. "'Bout ten minutes ago it
started pissin' like a Frost Giant who just drank a lakeful of beer."
Spike's weather report was muffled by the fact that he spoke while ripping
open the free bag of M&M's attached to his registration packet-- with his
teeth.

"That's very...colorful." Tara winced at his description, or maybe it was
at Spike pouring the entire package of candy down his throat. After
smacking his lips like it had been O Positive straight from the
still-struggling tap, Spike started going through his packet, snorting
every so often.

"It's weird, though, " Willow said. "I mean, that thing about it never
raining in southern California isn't true, but it's pretty close during
this part of the summer." Tara nodded, starting to say something in reply,
but it was too late; Willow had gone full-steam into Knowledge Girl mode.
Poor Tara, if she hadn't learned to recognize *this* incarnation of her
girlfriend by now. Xander smiled politely, and waited while Willow bubbled
on. "In fact, the average precipitation for this whole area, even
Sunnydale, is about zero in June and July--- I did a study in high school,
and it's only during periods of mystical upheaval that..." She rolled to a
stop, as everyone but Spike continued to look at her. "You don't care, do
you?"

Tara, who obviously *was* familiar with Knowledge Girl, assured her
otherwise. "Oh, no, we care. It's fascinating."

"We don't care," Spike said, more truthfully.

Willow made a face at him. "Well, I did have a point. It's probably
somebody working up some big magic somewhere. That can affect the weather
patterns, and then you get all kinds of freaky stuff. It's a good thing
Angel's on the case, and whatever's going down is really going down at the
other hotel. 'Cause we all know he just sent you two along to keep you out
of his hair, and..." She didn't sound like she was going to pause for
breath soon.

"You had coffee, didn't you," Xander interrupted her sternly, finally
figuring out why Perkywillow was *extra* perky tonight. She gave him a
reflection of his own best puppy-dog eyes, but it didn't work very well
when hers were jumping up and down and screaming 'Yes! Yes! I am the
Caffeine Goddess, run around in circles, bounce off the ceiling, and
worship me!' More stern looks produced more puppy eyes, but no answer.
"Willow? Coffee?"

"Um, maybe I had a little."

"Maybe she got four free double-espressos at the central Ops table because
she helped them set up the computer gaming room," Tara said sadly, pulling
Willow away from the flyer-strewn table.

"Well, it's a con! You have to be able to stay up all night. It's
tradition!" Willow smiled broadly, bouncing even more as they walked back
through the milling crowd of assorted fans, some in brightly-colored
costumes. Tara looked mildly frightened-- of Willow, or the fans, or
possibly both.

"Willow, put down the palm pilot and the java and step *away* from the
computers," Xander teased. "You're here to have a good time, not hack into
the Pentagon so the Quake addicts can play Global Thermonuclear War."
Willow's eyes glittered, like she didn't quite think the two were
incompatible, and she hadn't stopped bouncing. It was starting to make him
a little queasy, and he looked at Spike just to stop his eyes from
bouncing up and down as fast as Willow was.

It didn't help a lot-- Spike, with his water-darkened hair plastered in
little waves against his face, made Xander want to drag him off somewhere
and lick all the rain droplets off him. Yet another fun activity that he
wouldn't get any chance to enjoy this weekend, not with the four of them
in the same room. He decided to look at Tara. She was a safe enough sight,
smiling and watching Willow with fond amusement in her dark blue eyes.

"*We*," Xander indicated Spike and himself, "are *not* here to have a good
time. Or to be kept out of Angel's hair. We're detectives." He adjusted
his fedora to what felt like a fairly rakish angle. And blushed.

Willow giggled at him. Fine. See if Xander saved her ass when the baddies
attacked while everybody was busy MST3K-ing 'The Day the Earth Stood
Still.' "I like the hat, Xan," she said. "It was nice of Angel to let you
keep it."

Which triggered another blush from Xander, and a smirk from Spike, but
Willow was too wired to notice either, thank God. Quoth Xander in his best
attempt at a Bogart voice: "Thank you kindly. Harris, P.I, and his
sidekick, Spike, the Default Good Guy. On the hunt for demons, ma'am. Or
at least people who'd hire demons to attack Angel."

"Yeah, that narrows it down, " Spike muttered absently, squinting at the
convention program. "And I'm not your sidekick, whelp," he added after a
second. "If anybody's the detective, it's me. I've got the better threads,
after all."

[Yeah, just 'cause he *looks* better, he's automatically the hero? Fine.
See if I save *his* ass, when-- Okay, fine. We all know Spike would save
*my* ass. A guy can dream, though.] While Xander was whining to himself
and mentally hauling dream-Spike out of danger for once, real-Spike gave
a startled exclamation, then groaned, holding up his nametag under one of
the fancy fake gas lamps that dotted the plush lobby. Far away from him,
as if the tag had been smeared with garlic.

"What?" Xander fished out his own, and studied it. 'Alexander L. Harris. 2
day membership, all activities.' It looked just fine. He glanced back over
at Spike's. Read the bold laser-printed text. Blinked repeatedly, just to
make sure he wasn't hallucinating. Maybe it was the light, bouncing off
the plastic casing of the tag? "William.. ah... um... Willow?"

She shrugged happily. Bouncily. Not remotely apologetically. "Well, they
wanted a real name. No 'Hi, I'm Spike' allowed. And 'the Bloody' was a
no-go, too."

Xander stared at the nametag, still blinking furiously. In denial. In
severe denial. William... "And you couldn't give him *your* name?"

"Does he *look* like a Rosenberg?"

"Well, what about Buffy's name? They at least *almost* got married once."

Spike growled, for real. Almost a vampire growl, low and gritty. "I'm
*not* wandering about telling people I'm William Summers. I *would* sooner
marry you."

Xander shrugged, not sure whether to be irritated or amused, or if he
should give in to that tiny part of himself that said *mine* whenever
Spike could be manipulated into wearing Xander's clothes, like he had this
morning. Indulge the Spike-belongs-to-me fantasy. Admit, at least under
his shagging-hat, that the thought of Spike being William Harris did
something funny to his insides. As did the sight of Spike shrugging,
wiping off the rain drops that had fallen onto the badge from his hair,
and pinning it to his Angel-inherited shirt, where it could be seen
clearly under the open duster. The vampire Xander didn't really own looked
at him, then sighed pitifully. "It's fine. I understand. No ring, no
chapel, no flowers, just a name badge, and I s'pose I'll have to do the
dishes and clean the floors and pay for my own blood and choccies..."

"Why start now?" Xander asked with a snort. "But Wills... I mean..."

Spike grabbed him around the shoulders. "What, honey? Don't you want
everybody to know how much you lurrrrrrrve me?"

[No, asshole. I'm trying hard enough not to let *you* know how much I
lurrrrrve you.] Xander elbowed him in the arm, and the girls helped out
immensely by giggling. Xander glared at Willow, hard, but the Caffeine
Goddess was about as impressed by him as she'd been by Spike. "Fine," he
said at last, shaking off his demented lover. "You're my idiot cousin from
Pittsburgh. Say it, Spike."

"I'm your idiot cousin from Pittsburgh," Spike repeated with a straight
face, in an accent that sounded like somebody from Monty Python's Flying
Circus trying to eat three Milky Ways and talk at the same time.

"Correction. You're my idiot cousin from Liverpool."

"I'm not from Liver..."

"Shut up."

"Yes, dear." Spike smirked silently at him all the way out of the lobby.

Part Two  

-Interlude in a Sunnydale Condo-

Rupert was dreaming. In the Citroen again, which ran as well as it ever
had, driving Willow and Xander home. That night, that first night,
exhausted both in mind and in body. Strangely ecstatic, because, if
nothing else, they'd survived. Buffy already gone -- dropped off a block
from her house so she could sneak in the window. Willow babbling
senselessly in his ear, Xander silent in the back seat. When was Xander
ever silent?

Willow beside him, smelling of Ivory soap and innocence, and yet it was
gone, gone with the first snarling monster that had pushed itself at her
as they'd guided screaming teens out of the Bronze, gone with the first
sizzle of holy water against a wrinkled brow. "...and we have to get to
school on Monday, so I should get home so I can sleep and do my homework,
and tell Tara all about the Harvest..."

Something wrong there, but as he stared at the road, trying to see through
the rain that his one working wiper did bugger all to get rid of, he
couldn't think what. Silence louder than Willow's nervous stream of
nonsense, and he glanced in the rearview mirror at Xander. Gone. Almost
gone. Fading from view, as if he were one of the vampires they'd staked
tonight. Rupert looked over his shoulder, and Xander was there, just...
not there. It was empty behind his eyes, though his lips formed those
words, the last ones he'd heard Xander speak, back on the dust-scattered
dance floor of the Bronze. Nothing will ever be the same again. Rupert
called back to him, but there was no answer, and Willow turned as well.
"Xander? Xander, wake up."

"Wake up, love." He tasted chocolate, warm and sweet, being gently brushed
across his lips. "Rupert?" A moment, and the chocolate was replaced by
lips that were just as warm. A blink, and the haziness of the dream that
had been half truth was replaced by skin as smooth and dark as that
chocolate, and a pair of somewhat worried brown eyes.

"Well, I've been awakened in more pleasant ways," he said slowly, and
Olivia frowned at him, "but I can't remember when." A smile, then. And a
purr? No, she'd dropped a small black and white kitten on his chest.
"Hello, you." A greeting shared by both his sometime lover and Willow and
Tara's cat, both of whom reacted favorably. "Aero?"

"No, Flake. You ate all the Aeros. Bad dream?" Olivia curled up beside
him, while Miss Kitty kneaded sharp claws into his shirt, every so often
into his chest.

"No. No, not really. Just something that happened a long time ago." Rupert
stared for a moment at the ceiling of his loft. "I'm not a flake, and I
didn't eat all the Aeros. I distinctly remember..." He laughed at his own
Xanderish joke, and his own childish possessiveness. [*My* imported
chocolate that a vampire bought for me, and I'm not going to ask why. I'm
not. It's mine.] Besides, he couldn't distinctly remember anything. "Is it
morning? Did I sleep that long?"

She chucked, low and so familiar. Afternoons in a dingy flat in
Cheltenham, listening to horrible bands on a scratchy stereo, making love
on the floor with an empty six-pack of beer or cider bottles scattered
about them. "No, it's only about half past eight. An hour or so."

"God, I'm past it already. Taking evening naps..." Rupert rubbed his hand
through his mussed hair.

Olivia ran soft fingers through the hair on his chest, while the kitten
chased them, planting one tiny paw on her hand every so often. "Hardly,
Ripper. You fought off a pack of... whatever those things were, with...
whatever that thing was. You deserve a little rest."

He glanced down at her, and noted that the worry, or concern, or something
else, was back on her face. "Hellhounds, and it was a helm-axe."

"Yes, very convenient, how it just happened to be stuck in the light-pole
we happened to be passing when those things happened to show up." Olivia
raised a sculptured eyebrow at him.

He laughed again. "Yes, all a bit out of the ordinary, including the
hellhounds, but for some reason I'm more concerned about the fact that
it's *my* helm-axe. I lent it to Xander, rather as a joke, when he told me
he'd let Spike move back into his basement."

"Interesting choice of flatmate, but at least it means he isn't staying
here."

"Xander?" Rupert couldn't keep the surprise, and a tiny bit of hurt, out
of his voice.

"Your funny little surrogate son?" He made chuffing noises to deny it, but
she ignored him. "No, you sentimental old duffer. I meant Spike. Where
*is* he from, anyway? His accent's all over the place."

"Hell, I suspect. Or Eastcheap."

More of that Cheltenham afternoon chuckling, rippling against his skin
this time, but then it got quiet. "So your patrols aren't usually like
that? No getting attacked by hellhounds every night?"

Could he answer that in the negative with any degree of truth? Should he
be trying to? Was there ever anything *usual* in Sunnydale? What had he
once said to Wesley? Something about a lack of controlled circumstances.
"Not usually hellhounds, and I don't usually go on patrol. Not anymore."
Which answered nothing, though he'd used her word, as if it had some
meaning. "Buffy can handle it herself, most of the time, though she often
takes the others with her. They're younger; they can bounce back without
multiple hours of recuperation time."

Olivia rested her head on the pillow next to him, and he listened to the
unreasonable, unseasonable rain falling on the roof. They'd both come in
drenched to the skin, giggling like children. Two bottles each of Diamond
White, sipping it between chocolates, him telling her about the safer
ghosts, the funnier demons, had helped. Temporarily smoothed away her
fears of what he did, what Buffy did, what was real that she'd never
believed in before. Then they were young for a while, in this bed, or they
had pretended to be, listening to something scratchy and awful rising up
from the stereo downstairs. Afterwards, he'd rested, while she went to
make some coffee, and he'd drifted off into that uneasy mix of memory and
dream.

Plink and plonk on rooftop and tile outside, and something behind it like
the hiss of an amp turned up too high with nothing coming though but white
noise, or an LP that had reached its ending, and just kept circling on
that last unrecorded track. This rain had invaded his dream, twisted
things just slightly sideways, for it had been dry, hot, that night when
he'd driven them home. Driven Willow home, and Xander...

"They're children," Olivia said slowly, and it echoed the memories that
were still driving a beaten-up Citroen around the inside of his skull.
"They're children, and they face this sort of thing every day, don't
they."

He shook his head, feeling her hair both soft and rough against his skin.
"No. No, they're not. They're not children, not anymore. If they ever
were."

*****

Bounce! Bounce! Bounce! "You're gonna hit your head on the ceiling,
Spike," Willow warned him. Spike rolled his eyes and continued to bounce
on the bed that didn't have Willow and Tara's gear spread all over it.

"Am not, and don't care if I did. It's a real bed!" A sleigh bed, of all
things, dark cherry wood that curved up at the foot and head into
finely-carved knots and rolls. This place really was high-end. There was a
fridge in the room for his blood, as well, and the girls had stocked it to
overflowing with supermarket-type snacks that he fully intended to explore
at a later date. There was also a data jack, whatever that was, in the
phone, so Willow could plug in her computer and get onto the internet.
Which reminded him of his reason for getting her to show him to the room
instead of letting her lovergirl do it, as Willow had suggested.

Smack! The top of his skull hit the stuccoed ceiling with a painful crack,
and Spike grabbed his head, tucking up his legs and bouncing down on his
arse this time. "Told you," from Willow, and he rubbed his head, scowling
at her. He didn't need a mother, thank you. He already had a Sire,
somewhere off across town in a room that most likely looked exactly like
this one. Possibly snogging with his little public school wizardy type,
probably being all noble and denying that one chocolate-induced kiss had
ever happened. Much more fun when you didn't really. But then maybe Angel
wasn't in the market for another boy, seeing as his first one had turned
out so badly.

Willow got all coffee-squeaky again as she sat down on her own bed, and
gave an experimental bounce. Literally-- she squeaked. "Okay, I take it
back. Aren't the beds great? Must be a real step up from sleeping in that
barcalounger thing of Xander's. I've done it; it's nasty."

Right. The red chair. The last time he'd slept in that thing, not counting
falling asleep on top of Xander a few nights ago, was when? That Friday
afternoon before the whole choco-blood-cereal-kissy episode? "Ah, yeah.
Bloody thing puts a crick in my back like you wouldn't believe." He
bounced a bit more on his arse, and grinned. "Like the room, Red, even if
I have to share it with you and Blondie and Snore-Boy."

Willow gave him a look, as she rifled through a collection of
multi-colored sheets of paper that were scattered on her dark blue duvet.
"Do you ever call *anybody* by their real names?"

Spike huffed. "Oh, like you lot *have* real names? Buffy? Willow? Xander?
Slayer sounds like a teen facial care product, you're a Jewish tree,
donut-lad's got a real name but who ever abbreviates it that way? Your
smoochie downstairs might have a shot, but it's supposed to be Tah-rah, as
in rah-boom-dee-ay, not Tear-ah, as in tear somebody a new one. We won't
even go into *Angel*, or Windbag-Pryce." He'd almost run out of alternate
names for Angel -- there were only so many things you could say about his
hair or his poofiness before the joke got stale. "Rupert's the only one
with a decent name. And Cordelia, possibly, but it's just more fun to call
'er Princess." Plus it reminded him of Dru, in a nice,
mostly-non-melancholy way. "In short, yes, you all need new names, and you
should be honored at the ones I've chosen for you."

"Yes, because *Spike* Harris obviously gave your and Xander's wedding
invitations that 'touch of classic elegance'," Willow teased.

Bloody hell. Bad enough he had almost married the Slayer --and *that* was
all Willow's fault-- but now witchy-poo was quoting things at him that
he'd said under the influence of a spell she wasn't supposed to ever
mention again, no matter how many chocolate chip cookies she baked him to
make up for it? And Willow hadn't even been about when he'd had that
particularly mortifying conversation with Buffy, which meant-- Grr. Spike
reminded himself once again to kill the big-mouthed Slayer. Then he
reminded himself that he *couldn't* kill the big-mouthed Slayer, because
it would hurt Xander. Bugger.

He glanced down at the name badge pinned to his shirt. William Harris.
Lovely. Not that he minded displaying the fact that he belonged to Xander,
even if no one knew it, but it sounded so...human. Like a Default Good Guy.
He snorted, letting Willow take it as she would. She was plugging her
laptop into the telephone jack now, and he leaped at the opportunity. "Ah,
ah, Tear-ah wouldn't want you cloistering yourself up here away from all
the fun, would she?"

Guilty eyes from the little red witch. "I just want to check my e-mail.
Then I'll go back downstairs." Beep-beep-bip-bip song, as the thing
dialed up to the great network connection in the sky, and Spike bounced
up, moved over, and bounced down on the other bed next to her, to look
over her shoulder. "Do you mind?" she said, tilting the screen so he
couldn't quite read it.

"What, do I mind watchin' you read steamy love letters? No, but what would
your girlie say?"

"No, do you mind, you're sitting on my filksong sing-along sheets, and I
don't want to be the only one in the room who doesn't know the words to
'New Sins For Old' because it's got Spike-Butt-Creases all over it. And
you're still all wet. Yuck." But Willow clicked and typed quickly, and the
white screen was soon replaced by a yellow one. Multiple rows of dancing
cartoon rodents gyrated before Spike's eyes.

Spike snortled at her. "Come on, Red. *I* don't care if you read internet
porn. Hell, I don't care if you *write* it." She blinked at him, and he
raised an eyebrow. Nah. Not innocent little Willow... He snickered, and
she thumped him on his poor, sore head with a convenient pillow.

"Do you have some *reason* for snooping, Spike, or are you just generally
trying to be annoying?"

"I want you to teach me how to use this thing," he said honestly.

It would give him something to do during the times when he got tired of
torturing Xander by pretending he didn't know the boy could refer to
episode titles when discussing Star Trek plots. Something to do besides
avoiding the non-closeted Sci-Fi fans downstairs. Pretending he was
supposed to be sniffing round for demons when he knew damned well Willow
was right, and whatever fun stuff was happening would be happening at the
Rosa Grande East, where Angel and his Fang Gang were hard at work.

Also, it serve to distract him from at least two days worth of no sex in
his pitiful future. Forget that he'd been worried about *five* days of no
sex when this whole grand adventure started. Forget that he'd gotten
Xanderized twice today. That was then, this was now, and how was he
supposed to share a bed with the boy and not shag him senseless?
Especially with that hat around. He sighed. Suddenly having a grown-up
moment, despite being in the same city as his Sire, which always seemed to
make him shrink at least three inches in height. It wasn't that he thought
of nothing but sex--he'd gone without for months, before Xander, after
all.

It was just that the sex stopped him from thinking of the other things.
Mostly. At least until it got dark, and he held a warm body in his arms,
and wondered. How screwed up either of them really were. Where Xander had
gone, when he'd fallen away inside himself a few nights ago. What it was
that made him break down and cry in Spike's arms last night. How long he
himself had left, before Xander caught on to how much he needed the
smiles, and the touches, and holding him in the darkness, or being held.
Got scared, got wise, and pushed him away.

Red was staring at him. Wanted something from him, and he'd gone off
himself, to some broody Angel place." You want me to teach you how to use
the computer?" she asked, somewhere between suspicious and surprised.

Spike covered his own discomfiture with a quickly-snapped, "No, the remote
control for the telly." Which he picked up and flipped on. Ooh-- free HBO
-- didn't have that in the Basement of Doom. Nor a working remote. Yet
another available distraction. He turned to look at Willow, after a few
seconds of staring at someone doing something soft-core and soft-focus, on
the screen. "Yes, I want you to teach me how to use the computer. Or
rather, the internet. Sick of bein' a technologically backwards vamp; I
want to go cruise the information superhighway."

Willow stared at him, her mouth rounded into an O of surprise. He'd
figured she wouldn't be able to resist the lure of spreading her nerdism,
and he was right, because she turned the screen so he could see it.
"Ooooo-kay. I don't know whether I'm more scared at the idea of you loose
on the web, or you loose on my computer." Spike batted his eyelashes at
her innocently, and she gave him a look he'd already seen at least twenty
times on Cordelia's face in the last day, and more times than he could
count on Xander's. It was usually accompanied by the phrase, 'puh-leeeze.'
"I guess it'll keep you out of other trouble, but c'mon, Spike. Why do you
want to go out on the internet? Really."

He told her. He told her with a refined leer and a big grin, and waited
for Willow's face to turn as red as her hair, and her to start stammering
and stuttering and just generally proving that she and Xander were in fact
soul-twins. He told her in great detail, including what sort of pictures
he'd like to look at, and what genders of people should be in them--any,
in all combinations-- and the name of that site Xander had gotten his
Spike-as-Banana-Split idea from: 'Nancy's Home for Lost Boys,' or
something.

"Wayward Boys," she corrected him with a cheery chirp. He stared
questioningly at her. "It's on the Favorites list, under 'Willow and
Tara's Fun Places To Visit.' " With that, she picked up his hand, and put
it on the clicky-thing at the bottom of the keyboard. Not even a nervous
tremor in her breathing, Spike noticed with barely-concealed
disappointment. "Now, not to patronize you or anything, but are we at the
'Computer is a box that goes bing' stage, or the 'I know what the mouse
is, please show me how to use that program' stage?"

"I know what the mouse is, please show me how to find the naked pictures,"
he answered sullenly.

"Oh, Nancy's site has fiction, too. You'll like it." She leaned over him,
and her hair brushed against his, and he was thankful, for some reason,
that *he* couldn't blush.

*****

Down in the Dealers' Room, Xander felt a tap on his shoulder, and jumped.
"Uh, what? I wasn't looking at...um... anything." The anything he hadn't
been looking at was a pile of adult-rated fanzines, the kind he really
never *had* looked at when he and Willow had attended the convention in
middle school. Though he'd snuck a peek at some of the interesting ones--
the ones whose covers had semi-nude drawings of Trek girls on them-- the
summer after their freshman year of high school. The last summer that
they'd come here.

Tara smiled at him. "Okay. Well, when you're done not looking at anything
over here, I thought you might want to come over and not look at the
jewelry and knives table with me. I'm thinking of buying Willow a new
pentacle, and they've got some nice ones. Just thought I'd ask your
advice, since you've known her longer than I have."

Xander blinked. Longer, sure, but Tara had to know her *better*, didn't
she? Since they were lovers, they ought to know each other... [Yes,
because you know Spike better than any random demon off the street knows
him, right? Aside from his ticklish spots and his natural hair color?]
"Well, I *know* her, but not in a.. y'know. .. um... biblical... I should
just not follow that thought, right?"

"Probably." She had that 'Xander's so cute' look on her face, which was
great because it meant he hadn't offended her, but also annoying because
the only females who ever seemed to get it were other people's moms and
women who were dating other women. It was also disconcerting, because he
was pretty sure he'd seen that look on Spike's face a couple of times in
the last few weeks.

"So... you like the convention so far? It's trés cool, no? I mean, in a
totally geeky, not at all my usual kind of--"

Tara put a hand on his arm. "Xander, Willow told me you used to go to
these things together."

"Oh." He looked down, realized this meant he was looking at the pile of
adults-only zines, and looked quickly back up. "Oh. Well, yeah. It's just
Spike has enough chances to make fun of me, y'know?"

Right, so why are you living with him, he finished for her mentally. She
just nodded. "Willow figured it was something like that. Don't worry, we
won't blow your cover," she tugged at the brim of his hat, "Detective
Harris." Tara picked up the top fanzine, which had a picture of Kirk doing
something to Spock that he'd *never* done in the series, on the cover.
"Oh. Wow. Um." She put it back down. "So. Yeah. It's fun. Kinda neat to
meet people as weird as me, even though I'm not necessarily a big science
fiction fan."

"That'll change. Wait 'til Willow drags you into one of the all-night
screening rooms. And you mean people as weird as you, besides us, right?"
He grinned at her, and she shuffled a little, holding her shopping bag in
front of her, looking at the floor. Then she looked up and grinned back.

"Well, I wasn't gonna say it."

"Guess this could seem a little tame, compared to hanging out with the
Slayer." A grade-schooler in full Minbari ceremonial dress ran past, being
chased by a teenage Obi-Wan, who whapped Xander on the head with his
plastic lightsaber as he passed. "Or not. Ow." Xander pushed his hat back
into place. "It's nice to free the inner geek anyway, once in a while."
Tara looked at him, and he sighed. "Okay, it's nice to be allowed to admit
that I'm *always* a geek."

"Me too. Quick, before Spike gets back, let's go be geeks together." Tara
stared to haul him off towards the shiny-and-sharp-things table, then
stopped. "Um, were you gonna buy that?"

Oh God. What did he have in his hands? Something with Kirk and Spock on
the cover? Maybe at least it was Janeway and Torres. [Ivanova and
anybody?] Xander looked down. He was holding a model of the U.S.S.
Defiant. One that, in fact, he already owned. Blink, blink. He put it down
with a little shiver--whether of relief or just wigginess that he hadn't
realized he was holding it, he wasn't sure.

"No. I..." At Tara's curious glance, Xander shook his head. "I used to
always pick up a model for a friend of Willow's and mine. He wasn't a Trek
fan, but he liked putting things together, so we'd hang out in my basement
after we got back from the con, and build stuff. Try not to sniff the glue
fumes too much."

Summer of ninety-six, and what was the last thing he'd brought back for
Jesse-- a Trek model, like this? No, it had been a full-scale castle, with
a drawbridge and a moat you could fill with water. A little too Dungeons
and Dragons even for Xander --for the great book of geekerdom sayeth that
interbreeding between the sci-fi geeks and the fantasy geeks can be
dangerous-- but it had been fun to build. The two of them, just laughing
and drinking Pepsi. Eating way too much junk food-- probably Three
Musketeers, because they were Jesse's favorite.

"That sounds fun. So, are you gonna buy it for him?"

Xander shook his head. "Not a lot of point. He's dead." He'd forgotten,
just for a moment. That the last time he'd been here, things had been so
different. Tara stared at him, and he shrugged. Didn't know what else to
say. "Hellmouth got him. It happens." Three musketeers became two, became
three, four, seven-- became the Scoobies. It happened. Tara didn't reply,
and when he tried to catch her eye, she started looking at the floor
again. "It was a long time ago, Tara. Hey, c'mon. Lighten up. Let's go
look at expensive pewter stuff that we can pretend we have the money to
buy. Then we can go buy less expensive plastic stuff that we don't have
the money to buy either." Xander tugged on her arm, and was rewarded with
a little smile as he pulled her across the open convention-hall floor.

"You know, you're still dripping all over everything," she pointed out.
"Don't you want to go upstairs and change into some dry clothes?"

"And lose valuable Spike-free geekage time?" Xander studied himself as bet
he could. The black silk shirt he'd inherited from Angel was a little
clingy when wet, granted, and his cargo pants would probably shrink, which
would make Spike happy. "Does it look that bad? Are people staring at me?"

Tara shook her head. "No. Well, actually that girl over there was, but I
think it's a compliment." She pointed subtly towards the table full of
recordings-of-questionable-origin, where Xander could see a woman with
long dark hair, her face mostly turned away, picking through a large stack
of DVD's. If she'd been staring at him before, she wasn't now.

"You're crazy," he told Tara. "But in a good way. You fit right in."

Part Three  

"Spike's insane-- have I mentioned that?" Willow asked, slipping into a
seat in the darkened screening room next to Tara, a few hours later.

"I think you've said something along those lines," Tara answered. [Only
about ten or twelve times.] On the screen, still clips of a black and
white Doctor Who episode were being flashed, with subtitles and a
soundtrack in the background. It was all about the little guy in the fur
coat, who was being chased by the clunky robot things who couldn't climb
stairs, but were somehow supposed to be the most terrifying monsters on
the face of the planet. She was trying to understand the attraction, she
really was. "What's he doing now?"

"Oh, last time I checked, he was in the filksinging room with Xander,
making up new words to 'What You Gonna Do With A Cowboy.' I didn't even
know Spike listens to country, and I'm not sure I wanted to. No, I mean
before that. I came back to the room to drop off some fanzines and found
him stretched out on his and Xander's bed, downloading I don't want to
know what, with about forty of those little free packs of M&M's spread
around him."

Tara shrugged. "So he likes chocolate. We knew that." She'd only had about
fifteen packs of M&M's so far herself, today...

"He was separating out all of the blue ones. He says they're evil, and
shouldn't be allowed to touch the others. And I always thought Drusilla
was the crazy one." Willow's eyes got big. "You realize we're gonna be
sleeping in the same room as an insane, M&M-segregating vampire?"

Tara couldn't resist giggling at her. "You realize you could've just left
off everything but *vampire*, and a year ago I would've completely freaked
out?" Willow conceded the point with a tilt of her head.

There was weird stuff in an Alabama hill town, of course, Tara's own
family being among the weirdest, but it couldn't begin to compare with
what she'd experienced in Sunnydale. Even the Hellmouth's ever-present
vampires seemed pretty tame, compared to the other things she'd run into
since she met Willow. After having been chased through the dorm by spooky
undertaker guys, chased through the fine arts building by Willow's
wolfed-out ex-boyfriend, chased down the hall by a hairy, naked,
opposite-of-Jonathan monster --was she sensing a pattern, here?-- it was
hard to get creeped out by a plain old bloodsucker, insane or otherwise.

Besides-- Spike? [Please. Like he's gonna have any time to spare from
trying to keep his hands off Xander, to bother us. God, I wish those two
would just come out, already.] "Anyway," she said to Willow, trying for a
lascivious grin, and probably just looking goofy, "Who says we're gonna be
sleeping?"

Willow smiled, then frowned. "With Spike and Xander in the room? *I'm* not
doing anything else, no matter how much Xander begs."

Tara looked innocently at her. "Pervert. *I* meant all that coffee you
drank. You'll be up until three."

"Yeah, but then I'll crash and burn and sleep like a dead woman. You won't
be able to tell the difference between me and Spike."

"Um, yeah. I think I will." Willow had better legs, among other important
features, although it might be a toss-up as to who had the best lips. Tara
leaned across and kissed her girlfriend. Nope. Definitely Willow. She
glanced around. What the heck, it was dark, no one could see them, and
anyway, who cared? She'd seen two guys standing in the middle of the lobby
earlier, embracing in a not-quite-R-rated manner and cleaning each other's
tonsils at the same time, and nobody had even batted an eyelash. Like two
girls kissing in the back of a darkened room were going to draw any
attention, with all the monsters and aliens and life-size comic book
characters running around? "Mmm. By the way, I think I see why demons
might want to set up shop in the middle of a science fiction convention,
after all."

She pointed to the fully made-up *somethings*, all under five feet tall,
who were lined up at the front of the room, sitting cross-legged on the
floor and watching the screen with unwavering attention. Then she kissed
Willow again, while her lover was distracted. Willow nodded, a bit
dazedly. "Uh-huh. Good point." After a moment: "Yeah, I kinda forgot about
all the opportunities for camouflage. But Spike says he can smell real
demons, so we should be okay. Besides, I called Cordelia's room at the
other hotel to check in, and she said there's some people from Wolfram and
Hart registered there. That's the firm of evil lawyers who keep trying to
mess with Angel." When Tara didn't answer her, didn't move, in fact,
Willow laughed. "Okay, eviler lawyers."

"Spike can smell demons?" Maybe she hadn't heard Willow correctly.

"Well, he wouldn't know if somebody was *possessed* by one, or something.
But he said he could tell if one of these guys was a human in a costume,
or something else."

Tara relaxed in her seat. Holding a little panic in reserve, if
necessary, but deciding that if Spike hadn't spilled all her secrets by
now, he either didn't know, or didn't care. "Oh."

"Except Spike lies a lot, so even that might not be true." Willow was
still coffee-bouncing, even after several hours. Kind of rocking against
her. It was nice. "Look, let's face it, Angel sent them along to get them
out of his way, not to protect us from bad guys. Whatever's happening has
got to be over at the Rosa Grande East." She pointed at the screen. "I
used to hide behind the couch when those things came on. Xander would sit
on the floor in front and protect me." Tara watched, as the black and
white image flickered, and was replaced by another.

*****

-Interlude at the Rosa Grande East-

Cordelia Chase was a beautiful woman. Lindsey had to give her that much.
She thought she was hard, too, but that very desire to be strong, to be
something more than pretty, was her own personal handle. He could see it,
almost, growing out of her spine. Made of flesh and bone, hot and hard
like that certain part of him couldn't help getting when he was around
her, around any woman. His, though, after years of practice, his wasn't a
handle, and hers was. He could reach out and grab, reach out with his
plastic hand, and twist, just so, push and she'd walk any direction he
chose.

"Lindsey. " Standing outside his hotel room like she'd just accidentally
wandered past, like she didn't know he was here, and him just coming out,
and oops, so sorry. "What a surprise. Did you get evicted from the rock
you were living under?"

"It's always such a pleasure to see you, Cordelia. Were you on your way to
a...business meeting? Or from?"

On the third floor of a hotel like this one, there was only one kind of
business meeting she'd be attending. She was dressed for it, but then she
always dressed for it, an impeccably-chosen wardrobe that never screamed
anything, just implied whatever you wanted it to, so she could deny it
later. I'm a struggling actress, though Lindsey MacDonald, at least, could
see through every character she'd ever played in front of him. I'm a rich
man's daughter, though she wasn't anymore. I'm an expensive whore, though
she thought she wasn't. Unless you counted working for a vampire with a
hero complex, and that wasn't expensive, not for the clients. Whoring for
the Powers That Be, who took you and used you and left two dollars on your
dresser in the morning. He'd rather be the honest kind of whore, himself.
The law school kind.

Her perfect model's face didn't even twitch at his suggestion, but he
hadn't expected it to. "Oh, please. Hooker jokes? And lame hooker jokes,
at that? The guy I dated in high school could do better than you. Oh,
wait, the guy I dated in high school *has* done better than you. He may be
a stockboy, but he's still got a soul."

"And he's registered across town, at the other branch of this very hotel.
Did you know that?" No need to pretend he didn't know everything about
her, from which dentist put on her first cap, to what brand of toothpaste
she bought at the Buy-n-Save. No need for her to pretend that she didn't
know what he, they, Wolfram and Hart, knew.

"What makes you think I care?" Which meant she knew, and she cared. He
could almost see the handle forming, swelling out of the bare, tan skin
between her shoulderblades.

"Did you know he's got a boyfriend?" Harris and Harris, and Rosenberg and
McClay, and wasn't it just a cosy little room over there at the RG West,
he was betting.

Since the fiasco with Faith last year, the two brightest stars of the
Special Projects team were determined never to look like fools in front of
the big bosses again, so he and Lilah had dug deeper into Angel's past,
and those of his employees-- especially where those pasts combined.
Sunnydale, California, where they rolled up the streets when the sun went
down, had more vampires on any given rolled-up street corner than sat on
the W&H board of directors. Plus Angel's ex, the non-incarcerated Slayer,
and her little band of kids, one of whom Cordelia Chase used to be. Three
of whom were sharing a room across town, and Lindsey still didn't know who
the fourth guy was, but Alexander Harris didn't have a brother, so there
was a good guess.

Now Cordelia was laughing at him. Impressive laughter. Almost believable.
"Xander? Has a boyfriend?"

"What, aren't you overjoyed that you ruined him for all other women?"
Waiting for the twitch, but it never came, because she thought she was
hard. Just a little more, then. Just a little more, and he could reach out
and push. He stood, silent, patient, reaching for just the right thing to
say. Maybe something about her not being able to keep a man?

Meanwhile, Cordelia smacked her palm against her forehead. "God, you're an
idiot, Lindsey. I guess I am, too, because I almost believed you for a
second." She shook her head, perfect hair swinging over her shoulder, and
gazed at him, some kind of enlightenment spreading across her face along
with that superior little smirk. "Not that I care -- if he had a
boyfriend, I'd be happy for him -- but you mean the guy he's registered
with." A little gasp of real laughter, or was it just a very good
fabrication? "Huh. Boyfriend."

She stopped smiling, and gave him a hard look, then-- and damn it, he
couldn't see though it. Didn't know who was wearing the clothes or what
they meant him to think she was, today. The handle was shrinking before
his imagination's eye, and Cordelia moved close to him. God, she was warm.
Maybe he was spending too much time around vampires, or lawyers, but god,
she was warm, and her skin was inches from his. She bent close to him,
breath warm, too, across his cheek. Knee just so, just poised where it
could bend to wrap around his leg, or jerk to send him doubling over to
the ground, and he wasn't sure.

"What are you two doing here, really? I mean, Lilah can skank up and down
the halls trying not to look sneaky, you and Angel can paw the ground at
each other, and Wesley can act all calm and supportive and English and
then run around like a chicken with its English head cut off when whatever
this is comes down, but don't you think we could cut through all this shit
and just *get* to it already?" Her hand sliding down, towards his --no,
fuck, it wasn't a handle. There. Just brushing the edge of his fly, just
an accidental, oh so sorry, fancy meeting you here.

"Nothing," he answered. Choked, really, and she laughed again. "We're not
doing anything. All perfectly legal--" Another laugh. "And above board."

And now *she* was choking. Laughing too loudly for him to know whether it
was real or fake, acting the bitch or being one, or truly amused at him.
She was also pulling away. "Oh, God, Lindsey, that was a good one. I've
really gotta hand it to you. You almost had me." She brushed him, once,
again, another plausibly-deniable accident, then she was off down the
hall. Away, long legs striding around a corner and gone, just a view of
her ass, swaying like a last goodbye.

"Well, that worked." Lilah opened the door behind him, all the way,
stepping out of the shadows of the unlit room, leading their wide-eyed
blonde guest behind her. "I was *very* impressed."

"I've got her --them-- right where we want them," he said, still staring
at where Cordelia wasn't. "She'll run off to Angel and get him all
paranoid about what we're doing here. They'll spend the weekend going
absolutely insane, and all because I told her the truth-- that we're not
up to anything. Nothing we weren't already doing, anyway."

"Which she'd never believe, coming from you. Yes, very clever, Lindsey.
Very darkly ironic. And I'm not going to complain about being *hired* to
mess with Angel's head. Not even going to ask too many questions,
considering it gives us a chance to parade our new friend past him and see
if she catches his eye. But I have to know something."

Lilah bent down close to him, and was she a thousand feet tall, or had
Cordelia just made him feel shorter than he really was? She was as close
as Cordelia had been. Honey-colored hair touching his collar, lips almost
coming onto contact with his earlobe, a faint odor of some expensive
perfume, and yes, she was cold. There was something to the lawyer jokes
after all, unless she had a cosier relationship with the board of
directors than he'd thought. Her breath stirred the little hairs inside
his ear.

"Did you almost have her, Linds, or did she almost have you?" Her fingers
brushed him, too, and she winked, then she was past him and down the hall.
Their biggest Special Project --whom they were *definitely* not supposed
to have taken along on this little private venture, but try to tell Lilah
that when she had an idea up her sleeve-- followed her, with a last look
back at Lindsey. A little smile from *her*, too, and he didn't have a hope
of trying to read *that* one.

Part Four  

"I'm telling you, I smell something weird," Spike said, as the four of
them walked down the endless white corridors of the fourth floor,
following the signs that allegedly led towards 'The Best Room Party Of All
Time.' Willow had wondered out loud why Spike was suddenly so gung-ho on
the subject, since he was the one who'd dragged them out of the screening
room and across the hotel, but Xander knew. Free food. Probably free
booze. And the chance for Spike to be the center of attention, yet again,
since he was currently walking around in vamp-face, and everybody thought
it was just excellent make-up.

"You said that last time, and it turned out to be an excuse to wander into
the sports bar and order imported beer," Xander pointed out. Under his
breath, where no one but Spike could hear, he added, "After stealing my
song."

Spike turned around and poked him in the chest. "I bought you a cider,
didn't I? And for the last time, I did *not* steal your bloody song. I was
just sharing the joy with all the geeks and geekettes. Spreading the
lurrrrve. Besides, what's yours is mine, and what's mine is yours, all
that rot. Community property, *darling*."

"You bought me a cider, and your beer, with *my* money. Community
property, my ass. I don't see a ring on this finger." Xander held up his
left hand. Which was a mistake, of course. Willow and Tara started in with
the giggling that seemed to be his theme music for this trip, as Spike
cocked his head, pulled a skull-and-crossbones ring off his right middle
finger, and jammed it onto Xander's left ring finger.

"Ooh, how romantic," Willow said, ducking away from the Xander-Noogie that
she so richly deserved.

"Didn't use your money, anyhow-- check your wallet." Spike turned the
corner and groaned. "More bloody corridors. Tunnels and corridors, that's
all I ever see. You ever feel like your life's one endless Doctor Who
episode?"

Willow nodded, while Tara gave a half-assed humor-the-crazy-vampire smile.
Xander debated adding something about them needing a rock quarry that they
could pretend was an alien planet, to make the atmosphere complete. He
didn't, though. This was a trap. It had to be. "I have no idea what you're
talking about."

Spike stopped, leaned against the wall, and laughed at him. "Come on,
Harris. Come out of the closet and bring your anorak with you."

It was definitely a trap, and Xander was *not* falling for it. "I repeat,
I have no idea what you're talking about." [Step away from the lighting,
Xander. God has a good aim, and he doesn't like little boys who break
the...um, which Commandment was that?] He was a little hazy on them, these
days, but he was pretty sure he'd blown at least three or four just since
he woke up today. Was there one about sleeping with one's evil undead
roommate, or was that covered under coveting thy neighbor's ass? Anyway,
it was the lying one that he was worried about at the moment. "I'm not in
any kind of closet, and if I were, why would I have a passenger train in
there with me?"

Spike goggled at him, and Willow giggled at him, and none of it was fair.
Here he was, in what should be one of the most fun places in the universe,
with the exception of maybe a hot tub with a naked Spike, and he wasn't
allowed to enjoy it, because non-naked Spike would think he was a complete
goober if he did. [He already thinks you're a goober, Xander. Why not give
in and enjoy it?] his brain taunted him, but he was firm. Resolute.

"Xander, an anorak is a jacket," Willow informed him gently.

"Okay, so why am I supposed to bring my jacket out of this closet that I'm
not in?" Xander responded. "No. Don't answer that, don't wanna know, it's
obviously some smarmy English vampire thing, and by the way," he pulled
Spike's ring off his finger and held it up, "this would be so much less
insulting if it wasn't the one you gave Buffy." That said, he plopped the
ring into Spike's hand and took off, striding quickly down yet another
hallway. He had a sneaking suspicion they'd either been going in circles,
or this hotel was designed by M.C. Escher. [Art-appreciation class strikes
again. Look, Willow, I remembered another piece of academic trivia with no
value to my future career as a laid-off supermarket employee.]

Spike caught up with him long before the girls came around the corner, and
drizzled evil promises into his ear as they walked. "If you'll admit
you're a Trekkie, I'll tell you where the hot-tub is..."

"I'm not a Trekk-ie, I'm a Trekk-er... and... oh, shut up. What makes you
think I wanna be in a hot-tub with you, anyway? You're annoying and
obnoxious, and you did *too* steal my song." It was hard to concentrate on
how annoying Spike was when he had his tongue stuck in your ear, however.
Hard to walk down the hall, too, but he managed it.

"Maybe. Didn't steal your cash, though." Spike reached into his jeans
pocket and pulled out a wad not quite big enough to choke a horse, but
maybe a small Shetland pony. How he managed to *fit* anything in his jeans
pocket was still a mystery to Xander. And Spike was telling the truth--
that much money hadn't come out of Xander's pocket. Which meant, of
course, that Spike's hands had been groping around in his pants earlier
for purely personal reasons.

"Who *did* you steal it from, then?" Xander asked him, staring at the
money, plagued by visions of hotel detectives chasing them down. "God,
they're gonna arrest us. Honest, sir, he's my idiot cousin from Liverpool.
He's out on a weekend-pass."

"Not from Liverpool. God, Paul McCartney's from Liverpool. Do I sound like
Paul McCartney?"

"No, you sound like Rowan Atkinson, with a little Eric Idle thrown in.
Fine, North London. Wherever the hell you're from."

"Barking."

"What?" Was Spike? Really? Completely? Barking mad, as Giles had said on
numerous occasions, only usually about Xander? He looked away from the
money, at the knobbly white ceiling, letting Spike's arm around him guide
him down the hall, and letting Spike's tongue return to doing whatever it
wanted to do, which was apparently to swipe cool, raspy paths across his
cheek-- in between muttering growly English nonsense like:

"Barking. It's a little seaside village. Pretty much a suburb of London
now, but a bit on the poncy side. Another one of those things where if you
tell Rupert, I'll have to never shag you again."

Xander didn't want to think about never again, so he concentrated on
Spike-as-sex-fiend, and pretended it was specifically directed at him, as
opposed to just being eternal vampiric horniness. "Please. Like you could
go for a week without shagging me, let alone never again." It was easy to
pretend, since Spike's mouth was on his neck, now. Where were the girls?
Shouldn't they have caught up? Hadn't he and Spike stopped moving at some
point? Why did he care when Spike's lips were sucking gently at his pulse
point, fangs just touching, barely denting his skin, making him feel like
Spike really couldn't live without him, had to have him there in the
middle of the hallway and damn whoever came around the corner. So easy to
pretend. "So this Barking thing is like the you not having written really
bad poetry for a living while you were living, thing."

"Didn't do it for a living, did it for art. Or possibly love, though on
reflection she was an incredibly silly twat." Anyanka --and the name
stirred a thought in Xander's brain, but he couldn't quite dredge it up--
would've turned Spike into a leper, if she'd heard him, and Xander told
him so. Spike shrugged against him. "She's a dead twat, Xander. Don't
think she cares about me insultin' her good name. Anyhow, I clarked at a
law firm for a living. Pretty much a big step up for me, becoming a
demon."

Great, Xander was being felt up by an almost ex-lawyer, as well as being
dragged into his unlife of crime. "Who'd you steal the cash from, Spike?"
If it was Angel, he could probably spare it. If it was Giles, Xander would
make sure Spike paid it back. If it was some random stranger, well, Spike
was wearing *Xander's* last name on his shirt. A shuffling sound on the
carpeted floor around the corner indicated that Willow and Tara had
finally almost caught up with them, and Xander pulled away quickly.

"I didn't steal the bloody cash," Spike protested, straightening his
collar. "I sold the weapons in the trunk to Angel, since some police bint
nicked all of theirs." Well, at least he'd cleaned up the language, though
Xander didn't hold out any hope that it was in deference to the presence
of girls. Women. Whatever. Spike was just varying his extremely colorful
vocabulary.

"Oh, *that's* what you had in that bag in the trunk. The one that didn't
have Spike in it," Willow said thoughtfully as she and Tara appeared in
the hall behind them. She held out a paper sign that read 'Best Room Party
of All Time Has Been Relocated To The Seventh Floor,' and Xander groaned.
"So where'd you guys get weapons to sell?"

"Found 'em," Spike answered defensively. Willow scrutinized him, and he
did the chest-puffing thing, which could go on all night, if somebody
didn't cut in.

Xander took the sign from her. "Amazingly, he's telling the truth," he
explained as he tried to remember where the elevators were. "We found them
in this cave, out by Miller's Beach. A Dagonish Demon used to live there,
but the place hadn't been touched for days. Spike figures it's dead,
wherever it is."

"You guys are patrolling together, now?"

"He makes good demon-bait," Spike said succinctly. "Take him along and I
have an eighty-percent chance of running into somethin' I can actually
hit." That, and they could make out in any number of dark, semi-public,
but not quite, spots along the way, Xander noted to himself with a purely
internal smile.

Tara chuckled. "Well, you did say Xander was a demon magnet, Willow." Her
girlfriend elbowed her gently in the ribs. Shut up, Xander's not supposed
to know we think his taste in women sucks. If they only knew about his
taste in men.

"No, you're right, I *am* a demon magnet." Xander defended Tara, a little
too late to save her poor ribs. "Might as well put it to good use. At
least this way some nasty things get beat up, and I get half of the
spoils. " He turned to Spike. "Community property, remember?"

He never *had* gotten the chance to go through the bag to see if there was
a weapon in there he could use; he certainly wasn't going to give up his
share of the proceeds. Hand held out flat, the universal symbol for give
me my money and give it to me now. Spike grumbled and mumbled, tried to
look big, then tried to look cute, but under the triple glare of two
witches and a Xander, he rolled his eyes, folded, and handed Xander half
of the cash. Tucked into the pants and thank-you-very-much, it's been a
business doing pleasure with you. Or something like that.

Two hallways and a drinking fountain later, they finally found a double
set of elevators. When both arrived at the same time, Spike grinned, let
the women get into the almost full one ahead of him, then gripped Xander
by the collar as he was about to follow. "Oops. No room. See you on the
seventh floor, girls." Willow started to dart out, but the doors shut in
her face, and Spike manhandled Xander into the empty elevator.

"Nice, Spike. Very subtle." That was what Xander was trying to say,
anyway, but since he said it into Spike's shoulder, as the vampire was
pushing the emergency stop button, it came out a bit indistinctly. "See,"
he added, his fingers making their way around to the back of Spike's
shirt, sneaking beneath, touching the smooth skin of Spike's back, "You
just can't keep your hands off me. Never shag me again, my ass." He made
little rain-pattering motions up and down his lover's spine.

"Of course I can keep my hands off you," Spike challenged, demonstrating
this in no way whatsoever. Fang-nibbling at Xander's collarbone where the
unbuttoned neck of the black shirt left it all exposed and helpless for
any random English vampire who happened to be walking by. "You think I
have no other facets besides badness, endless sex appeal, a knack for
languages, and a brain full of useless trivia? *I *can control myself. I'm
a hundred and..." slurp, suck, slurp "...years old, Xander. You're the
teenager."

"I'm almost twenty," Xander protested, and he wondered what he was arguing
about. The evil demon he was in love with was starting hot and heavy
foreplay in yet another semi-public place, which would have had him
cringing if it were Anya, the former evil demon he *hadn't* been in love
with, but with Spike... Eyes closed, staring at the pretty afterimages
left by the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, Xander leaned back and let
Spike... let Spike... He pushed the cool lips, the strong arms, away, and
he couldn't tell whether the growl came from Spike, or from within
himself.

"Wha..?"

"I'm almost twenty, and you're permanently twenty-four, even though you
try to act like you're some jaded vamp-of-the-world, and you can't keep
your hands off me." Maybe it was true, and maybe it was a game of pretend,
but saying it out loud made Xander realize it was true enough the other
way around, most of the time. So Xander crossed his arms and didn't bother
to keep the smugness from his voice now. [Yeah, that's right, *I* resisted
*you*. You and the porno jeans and the hair and the smirk and the fangs
and the accent and the fact that I love you, Spike Harris.] "You're
addicted to the Xander-lovin'."

"Yeah?" Grrr-arrgh growl, and had Spike just called him something nasty in
Fyarl?

"Yeah." As a mature, almost twenty year old, Xander resisted the urge to
stick out his tongue, especially since he mostly felt like sticking it
into Spike's mouth. He resisted that urge, too.

Spike glared at him with glowing gold eyes. Since that didn't have any
effect other than to widen Xander's smirk, Spike proceeded to glare at him
*harder.* Xander leaned back against the elevator wall and smiled. His
Higher Brain Functions, whom he'd long ago told to fuck off, but they kept
showing back up, were proud of him. Little Xander --his dick, not the five
year old who just wanted Spike to cuddle him when they were in bed
together-- was yelling at him that he was missing one of the weekend's few
opportunities to get his fix of Spike-lovin'. Xander himself was somewhere
in the middle on the subject, but he was enjoying the view of Spike
shifting his jaw, clenching his fists, and desperately trying to look
casual. For about three seconds.

"I propose a little wager, then." Spike was suddenly all smooth, seductive
blond panther-cat again. Muscles that had been twitching at him seconds
ago were relaxed. Looking soft enough to reach out and-- no. *Not* touch.
Spike was almost literally purring at him, and Xander, amazingly, didn't
fall into the trap. He just looked at Spike with calm curiosity. Like
Spike was Willow, talking about Hellmouthy weather patterns. "We're not
gonna get a chance to shag with the chits in the room anyhow, so let's
just make it easy on...you. No groping. No fondling. No hands or mouths
below the belt. First one to feel the other up loses, and the winner
gets..." Spike lifted an eyebrow.

"Yeah?"

"Hmmm. Gets to buy the loser a whole new wardrobe. I'm sure Princess C.
would be happy to take us shopping in the discount fashion district, so I
can spend what's left of *my* weapons-lugging-about money on you."

"You already gave half my clothes away, so I think we're even in the money
department," Xander accused. "*And* you burdened me with at least a week's
worth of Angelwear, so why do you need to buy me more?"

"Eh. Piffle. Doesn't count. I'm talking real clothes. Stuff that actually
fits you. And leather. When I win, you're wearing leather."

Leather? *Wearing* leather? Xander's mind boggled at the thought, though
not necessarily in a bad way. Still, this thing had possibilities other
than Spike managing to completely sway Xander to the Kinky Side of the
Force, he realized. "When *I* win, you're wearing *colors*. Green, Spike.
Blue. Possibly magenta." Spike's eyes almost crossed at the last word, and
Xander knew he had his lover on the run. "Plaid, Spike. Plaid."

"You wouldn't make me wear plaid. You've got a soul, an' all." Spike
didn't sound too sure.

He was right, unfortunately. Xander wanted to dress Spike up in clothes
that would make Xander immediately need to rip them off, yes, but because
they made Spike look hot, not because he couldn't stand the sight of them.
He might wear the occasional tropical print shirt, but he had *some*
standards. Xander shook his head sadly. "True. No plaid. But green,
definitely."

"Fine."

"Fine." No hands below the belt, huh? Xander took stock of where
everyone's hands were currently. Well, his and Spike's hands. Willow's and
Tara's could do whatever they wanted to, over in the other elevator. One
of Spike's hands was on his ass, one on the back of his neck. Xander's own
were technically above the waist, but not very far above, since they were
shoved as far down the back of Spike's too-tight jeans as they would go.
"When does this bet start, may I ask?"

"In about thirty seconds." Spike kissed him.

Forty seconds afterwards, the doors opened to let them out onto the
seventh floor. Xander took a deep, ragged breath, hoped he didn't have any
obvious fang-marks on him, and wondered what he was getting himself into.
Then he decided it was way to late to start wondering that.

Willow and Tara were standing in the open area near the elevator, chatting
animatedly with-- "I *told* you I smelled something weird!" Spike stalked
over to the little group, and grabbed the tall figure by the collar. Well,
the front of his shirt, since Spike couldn't quite reach his collar.

"Oh, hey, Spike. Xander! Hi!" The Kaillif demon pulled loose from Spike
and threw an arm around Xander's shoulders. "I didn't know you were
heading here."

Willow was putting two and two together to come up with the square root of
sixteen, obviously, because she turned a little green, as she studied the
forehead horns, and the jaw horns, and the slightly pointed ears, none of
which were any more make-up than Spike's brow ridges and yellow eyes were.
"You're a *real* demon, aren't you."

"Yeah, he is," Xander answered for him. "Willow, Tara, this is Weido.
Spike and I met him when we stopped for dinner last night." To Weido, he
explained, "We didn't know we were coming either. That is, we weren't
heading here, specifically. I mean, why would *we* be heading for an
science fiction convention?" Spike sniggered at him, but he ignored it.
"And Spike wasn't saying you smell weird--" A grunt of indeterminate
meaning from Spike, which he also ignored, pointedly. "--He just meant he
thought he smelled another demon."

"Makes sense. We weren't either. Heading for the convention, I mean. But
when I found out our shipment was coming to this hotel anyway, I decided
to stay for the day."

"You're a real demon," Willow repeated.

"Ah, yeah. " Weido didn't actually have eyebrows, but he scrunched up his
face in a way that indicated he wasn't sure the red-headed human girl was
all there.

"But you like Empire Strikes Back, and hate the Phantom Menace," Willow
said slowly.

"Yeah. Please-- Jar Jar Binks?" Weido made a face that was the same on
human or demon: blecch.

"I kinda liked Jar Jar," Xander commented. They *all* turned to stare at
him. He shrugged. "It was something about his tongue. Or maybe the ears. I
don't know; he was cute."

Spike pulled Xander out from under Weido's arm, and threw his own arm
around Xander. "Don't mind him. He's my idiot cousin from Sunnydale, out
on a weekend-pass."

"Sunnydale? You live on the Hellmouth?" Weido looked impressed.

"We all do," Willow said proudly.

"Should've known, with these two hanging out togeth..." Weido stared at
them for a second, and Xander felt like crawling out from under Spike's
arm, too, for some reason. His lips moved faintly, and Xander realized he
was reading Spike's nametag. "Oh... hey, I didn't know you guys were
*together* together. Xander, I wouldn't have let Jesha go on flirting with
you like that if I'd realized."

Jesha had been flirting with him? She hadn't spoken a word the entire time
they'd been sitting in the next booth at the ghost-diner. [Geez, what kind
of signals did she think *I* was sending *her*, then. And---wait--- ] All
twenty-two tracks of his mind caught up with each other.
"To...together...?" Xander choked.

Now Willow was laughing, her culture shock at meeting up with a demon who
liked science fiction --Xander remembered the feeling himself-- apparently
nothing compared with the idea that Spike might *actually* want to be
married to somebody like him. "Oh, God, Spike and Xander?" She buried her
face against Tara's shoulder, and just laughed. "I mean, *we're* together,
but *them* ? Hahahahahaha...." It went on.

"Um, yeah. What she said," Xander told Weido, and now he did duck out from
under Spike's arm. "My personal demonic tormentor just needed a last name,
and my loving friends decided to give him mine, without asking my
permission."

Spike pretended to pout. "See, I told you he didn't love me anymore," he
said as if confiding to Tara, who continued to humor the crazy vampire.
"Gave me back the ring, and everything."

A slow nod from Weido. "Uh-huh. Okay. Whatever you say. Should I tell Jesh
that you're available, then, Xander?"

Xander gulped. Six feet of muscular dark demoness... no. He had enough
troubles with his own demon; he didn't need yet another. "Ah... Maybe not
so much. With the availability." He leaned suggestively against Spike, and
hoped he could explain it all away to Willow and Tara without being struck
by too many bolts of divine lightning. Somewhere in the middle of that, a
detective-like thought occurred to him. "Ah... shipment. You guys wouldn't
by any chance have delivered something nasty that's gonna ruin the entire
weekend?" After all, Spike had told him that Kaillifs were usually
bruiser, bouncer, muscle-for-hire badguy types. Weido and his brother and
sister had seemed nice enough in the diner, but that was a no-touchy,
no-hurty zone. Out here?

Weido grinned. "Not unless you can think of something nasty to do with two
and a half truckloads of M&M's." Spike undoubtedly could, but Xander
slapped his hand over Spike's mouth before he could say so.

After a bit of final chitchat about why the only redeeming feature of the
Phantom Menace was the whole Padawan thing, Xander's insane fascination
with Jar Jar notwithstanding, Weido took off down the hall. Only, however,
after also telling them that the Best Room Party of All Time was now on
the eleventh floor, from whence he'd just come, and they were giving away
free chocolate. Not M&M's, but the real stuff-- apparently there was an
international chocolatiers' convention at the RG East, and somebody on
staff had brought some of the samples over.

"Right, Angel dies, slowly," Spike whispered to Xander as the four of them
got into the same elevator. Xander nodded in agreement, and realized he
was still pressed up against Spike.

Willow was looking at them questioningly, and Xander moved away, wiping
himself off as if to get rid of Spike-cooties. "You'd have to see that
guy's sister to understand. I've done the demoness thing, and believe me,
one's enough. This one... Picture Faith, with Weido's build and coloring."

"Scary visual places," Willow agreed. "Well, you're supposed to meet up
with old friends and make new ones at these things, but I wasn't expecting
that to include demons. Aside from the normal one."

"Spike's normal?" Xander ducked a half-hearted smack at his hat from
Spike. "Weido's hardly an old friend, though, since we just met him
yesterday. I already met my requisite old friend for the weekend-- "

He gave her a just-between-Xander-and-Willow smile, and she sent it back
to him, maybe with a little pinch of Xander's so cute and he may need to
be fed cookies. The tiniest flicker in her eyes, and he wasn't sure he
liked what he saw reflected there. The guy looked just a little
too...bruiseable, to quote Spike. He started to finish the sentence, but
the elevator dinged. The doors opened. Outside stood somebody who made
Weido's sister Jesha look like a fluffy bunny.

"Supaiku..." the Asian woman hissed with a sound like the rain that was
still falling outside, that battered steadily against the window at the
end of the hall, and Spike cursed. Low, but Xander could still hear it.

"Bugger."

Part Five  

Nineteen forty-one, and Drusilla had a new game. A wonderful game, Spike
had discovered, though he'd been dubious about it at first: they were
angels of mercy. Washed ashore on some nameless pacific island when they'd
tried to escape the fall of Singapore, they'd disappeared into the
nighttime jungle, and watched. Watched from the hot, wet shadows as the
women were separated from the men. Marched off into Japanese internment
camps. Sent out to the jungle under guard to chop wood, gather what herbs
they could find, if a woman wandered off now and then, there wasn't much
hue and cry. Perhaps the other prisoners were punished, but that was just
an added bonus from Spike's and Dru's points of view. She'd hear the
screams in the night, beg him to make her scream that loud, and he'd do
his best.

Then she had rolled her eyes one night, back up into her head, and swayed,
and danced, and when she stood up straight again, she had a new game. In
the middle of the night, they'd slip vampire-silent into the women's camp,
past the bored and yawning guards. Search out the ones on the punishment
poles, the ones left to fry and die in the hot sun, and put them out of
their misery. Ending of pain, and he'd never thought it could be a good
thing, but Dru was right. The looks in those women's eyes when the two of
them approached. Seeing well-fed, pale European faces, hearing English
voices greet them quietly, and tell them that it was all over. All the
pain, all the starvation, all the fear, and it would end that night, in
one quick razor slice, one moment of loss, then heaven, or whatever they
believed in.

There had been fear and madness, and there had been silent stoicism, but
not one of them had ever screamed. Then there had been the few, the few
who looked them straight in the eyes and saw them for what they were when
they changed, and had lifted their heads to bare their throats. Not
giving, not truly willing, nothing like taking from someone who loves you,
but welcoming; if their hands hadn't been tied, they would have spread
their arms wide. The blood had tasted like rich, dark chocolate, or at
least in Spike's memory, it had.

They'd bumped into her purely by accident: Drusilla had heard a
particularly beautiful scream coming not from the punishment poles, but
the sick hut, where they wouldn't usually go. Not that they couldn't drink
the blood of the ill, not that it didn't have its own strange bouquet, but
it was harder to slip in and out without being noticed by the sharp-eyed
women who passed for nurses. Dru had pulled him by the hand, though,
grinning like she'd found herself a new dolly, and he'd followed. They'd
tiptoed up and watched through an open flap of canvas as a sun-reddened,
emaciated teenaged girl, dying from the last stages of beriberi, had
moaned and screamed and almost sung, then fallen silent, but fitful.

Sleeping, dreaming, and a shadow had separated itself from the other
shadows of the hut, moving over her bed like a thundercloud, gray and
formless. Then she had stilled, though she breathed quietly, and
Drusilla's smile had been as wide as the crescent moon above. Watching, as
the girl's breathing slowed and faltered, and disappeared to the hush of
the night. Gray smoke, gray fog, had drifted towards them. Spike had
pulled Dru back, unsure, away from the hut and into deeper shadows. That
separate shadow followed them, and Dru laughed softly. "It's a friend,
Spike. One of us. So beautiful, like cobwebs in a ball, like a pretty
china doll..."

"I am Japanese, actually," the cloud had said in sing-song accents, and
had shaped itself as it spoke into the woman who stood before him now.

*

"Reikoku," Spike said, moving a little closer to Xander, but trying not to
be obvious about it. She bowed deeply, a little ironically for this day
and age, and gestured for them all to exit the lift before it closed on
them.

"It's been a long time, Supaiku," she almost hummed, using the name that
Drusilla had loved to hear, so close to his own. Dru had said it was like
a little song in her head. Rei's English was unaccented now, and as
textbook perfect as it had always been, though she'd discovered
contractions somewhere along the line, along with twentieth century
clothes. "You've changed greatly, I see. I like the hair."

He ran a hand over it reflexively, and wondered if he was getting as
coiff-conscious as Angel, because the inane thought popped into his head
that he needed to re-bleach, soon. Even Buffy had noticed his roots.
Reikoku was looking keenly at him, but she looked that way at everyone, so
he couldn't really hold that against her. It was Willow who finally broke
the silence.

"Are you gonna introduce us to your friend, Spike?" The witches must both
have picked up something of what Rei was, because they leaned against the
wall, hands clasped not-quite-casually; though someone else who wasn't
Spike, who knew people, or Xander, who knew Willow, might not have caught
it. Xander did, Spike knew, because he could hear the heartbeat next to
him speed up: a notch faster when he'd said 'bugger.' A notch faster yet,
the moment Willow and Tara's hands had touched.

"Yes, please. I'd like to know just what sort of power could persuade
William the Bloody to keep company with humans." A smile, all very
friendly, but if people thought Spike looked like a shark when he smiled,
it was only because they'd never met this one.

"Oh, he's not keeping company with us," Willow ventured bravely. "He's...
he's our bodyguard. We hired him!"

Spike smiled a little at that, flashing on Willow in his crypt the night
after he'd helped rescue her ex, another plate of chocolate chip cookies
in her hands. [He might be an evil bastard, but he's *our* evil bastard,
eh?] Nice of her to try to salvage his long-lost dignity, though it wasn't
much of a step up, as Rei was only too happy to point out:

"So? Is this true? You've taken to working for a living? How amusing,"
Reikoku's lips closed as if in a private joke, then skinned open again for
another shark-smile. "I myself am between commissions at the moment, but
if you need a job when this one is finished, I can introduce you to a
good agent."

Spike? Work for a living? Xander nudged his elbow, and Spike turned to
give his lover an incredulous look. [Right, I'll find a way to help with
the bloody rent, but it won't involve working for anybody *she's* working
for, you perfectly edible dolt. Not if you want me to *try* to be a
Default Good Guy.] Xander's lips gave a nervous twitch, then the hint of a
smile, and Spike realized he'd just been teased, quite professionally,
with that Xander Harris bollocks-under-pressure humor he was coming to
love almost as much as he loved Xander Harris.

He snorted. "Sorry, Rei. All booked up for the foreseeable future."

"Lucky you. Guarding humans, to whom you have yet to introduce me. I shall
be forced to introduce myself, I suppose. My name is Reikawa Reikoku." She
bowed again, then stuck out her hand English-style, though nobody moved to
take it.

"Means river ghost. First part does, anyhow. Terribly creative, since she
threw herself in a bloody river when she was seventeen," Spike supplied
for them.

"I thought so, at the time," she said with an ironic tone. "I was young
and stupid, and hadn't yet met anyone who could teach me the finer points
of naming oneself after construction implements."

Tara opened her mouth, wonder of wonders. "You're a gh...ghost?" Which had
to be the classic Scooby-Doo line of all time, and somewhere Spike was
sure Buffy was beaming, that she'd taught the chicklette so well.

"She's a gaki. Which is sort of a ghost, and sort of a vampire, and sort
of a pain in the arse," Spike grumbled. "She eats dreams. You lot really
want to socialize? Fine. Rei, these are Willow, Tara, and Alexander, my--"
He winced. "Bodyguardees. Bodies. Whatever. We done here? We have a party
to get to."

Long, pale fingers through long black hair, almond eyes laughing at him,
as they laughed at everyone. "The Best Room Party Of All Time?"

Xander groaned. "Don't tell me-- they've moved it to the Rosa Grande
East."

She laughed, and it was the sound of something brittle and glassy,
breaking into a thousand pieces. She and Dru had almost made music
together when they'd laughed, high and low, after they had got off that
little island, and were tearing up Tokyo during the later years of the
war. "No, it's just down the hall."

Hungry gaze raking over the kids now. Always wanting something, Rei was,
which was probably why she and Dru had gotten on so well together. This
was mostly a professional gaze, though, trying to suss out what they were.
To see if she could profit from it somehow, because first and foremost,
Reikawa Reikoku was a mercenary-- not in the fighting sense, but in the
sell yourself to the highest bidder sense. Spike had always admired that
about her, and he still did, just not when that gaze was directed at
something, or rather some one, who was *his*.

"So, your... employers, Spike? What's so important about these ones, then?"
He'd been about to ask her what she was doing here, just out of
professional curiosity, but the question threw him, and he was silent for
a moment. Reikoku licked her finger, and held it in the air. "I smell
power, that's true enough."

Willow stepped an inch forward, in front of Tara. "That's right. We're
witches. Powerful witches." So don't mess with us, lady, was the unspoken
kitten-growl that accompanied it, and Spike suppressed a smile.

Rei nodded, an elegant movement of her bone-china face, sharp chin. "So
powerful that you need a vampire to protect you?"

"Well, no. I mean, yes. There's people who might want to hurt us, and they
don't all respond to magic." Which was truer than Willow knew. Spike
looked sharply at her, and beyond the nervousness in her eyes, there was
something else. Maybe she had an inkling--big-eyed Tara, gripping her
hand, obviously did. Reikoku was a predator, if a relatively harmless one,
and magic wouldn't do much against *her*, for instance.

"So. And the boy?"

The Gaki looked Xander up and down, and Spike forced himself to be casual.
Less than casual. "Oh, him? Just their tagalong. He can't do anything
special."

Xander stepped forward. "Well, I can play the flugelhorn." His dark eyes
flicked across Rei's amused expression, and he backed up again. "Okay,
badly, and not since eighth grade. But I kick ass at Scrabble, and I can
name twenty-three different ways to get your skull cracked without
actually having to visit the emergency room."

She laughed again. Windows shattering in a thunderstorm. "Oh, I like this
one. Useless, perhaps, but not boring, and I could use a new pet; they
wear out so easily these days. May I buy him from you, ladies?"

"No, you can't. He's ours," Willow said firmly, with less kitten than
full-grown lioness in her voice. Reikoku inclined her head graciously.

Spike moved away, much as he wanted to be moving closer to Xander. *His*
pet, dammit. [Calm down, already, Spike. Nothing she can bloody *do* to
any of you.] He couldn't quite figure out why she was raising his hackles
after decades of not having seen her, and finally shrugged it off as the
work of that demon-animal-thing he had crammed down so low in his
subconscious he could barely hear it whining at him these days. Just
territorial bollocks. "Lovely catching up and all, Rei, but we done here?
The chits want to go dancing."

"Not much room in there for dancing." she said politely. "But you should
enjoy the party, Spike. There's an abundance of expensive chocolate, cheap
liquor, and cretinous humans whose blood will be tainted with both, I
imagine. I prefer them uninebriated, myself. They have such wonderful
dreams, these children who pretend to live in other worlds-- their little
lives are so mundane, but when they sleep..." Something of the rapture of
feeding passed over her face, and Spike felt the echo in himself-- the
hunger they both shared, she for something easily replaced in most, he for
the last flowing of life's blood. "I truly am pleased to have discovered
these conventions; they're a feast, old friend. Enjoy your banquet, and I
shall go off to mine."

He nodded, still thinking, still remembering. Rei bowed again, and faded
into smoke, which drifted off down the corridor in the opposite direction
from where she'd indicated the party was.

After a moment of silence, Willow took a deep breath. "Ooookay. Wanna tell
me what that was, and how I can never, ever meet one again?"

Part Six  

An hour and a half later, Willow was wishing they'd just stayed in the screening
room and watched the Tomorrow People marathon. It was long past late, the party
was long past loud, and Willow was long past bored. Eating way too many imported
chocolates could only make up for so much blaring music, cigarette smoke, and
tipsy passes from earnest-looking Java programmers. After politely declining at
least three different mixed drinks, each accompanied by a proposition of varying
degrees of subtlety, she and Tara had taken to necking passionately whenever
anyone came near them. It worked, but it was less than fun, since she really
didn't want an audience, and neither did Tara.

Why had she thought the Dad-forbidden room parties were such a cool thing, way
back when? Merely because they were forbidden, and it had seemed like something
so much cooler than staying up all night in the room with Xander, cramming
themselves with snacks until they got sick, and watching the free cable?
Frankly, that didn't sound too bad right now, except for the snacks. She'd been
trying to get Xander alone all day anyway, and kept being foiled. Cordelia's
computer problems, Spike whining about not wanting to ride in the trunk again,
Spike nudging her upstairs so he could learn how to look at porn sites on the
web-- and hadn't *that* taken every ounce of acting ability she had, not to
freak out when he told her.

The bleached pervert --as if she could talk, of course-- was nowhere in sight.
Sure, tell them all creepy bedtime stories about this Japanese ghost thing, then
disappear off into the smoky room, after assuring them that Reikoku couldn't
actually *do* anything to them except nibble on their dreams a little, unless
they were really sick and weak, which they weren't. Fine, but what was she
*doing* here? Just nibbling on conventioneers? Xander had tried to get Spike to
call Angel, to let him know that there *was* somebody from the Dark Side over
here, but Spike had pooh-poohed that idea. 'Call Bat-Vamp if y'like, but don't
blame me if 'e laughs his arse off at you. She's *harmless,* kid. Like you."
Xander had turned away and shrugged, and maybe he hadn't heard Spike add, 'Like
me,' and maybe he had, but he didn't make the call, and Willow had let him lead,
rather than make him feel even more inconsequential. She liked Spike --he was
funny, and even sometimes nice, for a soulless demon-- but he could be a really
insensitive bastard. For a soulless demon.

"Hey, did you see where Xander went?" She had to shout at Tara, because someone
had cranked a Korn album up to brain-cell-killing levels.

"I think he said he was going back up to the room," Tara shouted back. "When you
went to get me that Pepsi. Either that, or he was going to go look at the moon."
Highly unlikely, since not only was it still raining-- though Willow had stopped
being able to hear it drumming on the windows about four clicks of the volume
knob ago-- but it was a new moon out there beyond the clouds. Nothing to see.

"You wanna go back too? I think I'm about to fall off that caffeine high and
plummet to my death, and I'd rather do it with a bed around. Preferably one not
covered with half-drunk systems analysts." Tara shook her head, but it wasn't
'no,' it was 'I have no idea what you just said,' so Willow just pointed to the
door. *That* got an enthusiastic heads-up, and they rose from the couch,
narrowly avoiding a giggling woman in a t-shirt that read 'My friends went to
Hell, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt and a Chinese puzzle-box. Think I
should open it?' They'd almost made it to the doorway when a little guy in
purple nylon wizard's robes, complete with stars and moons, popped out of the
suite's kitchen, which wasn't much bigger than he was.

"Hey, I'm David-- I'm hosting this little shindig. You ladies leaving already?"
He was pitifully cheerful, really, and he didn't sound drunk at all, unlike the
rest of the overpopulated population of the room. Willow smiled and nodded, not
wanting to tell him that the Best Room Party Of All Time was giving her the
Excedrin Headache Of All Time. Not sure if he'd hear her if she tried. He kept
babbling at them, and they kept smiling at him, and it looked like it was going
to be the Longest Room Party Of All Time, too, until Tara finally tapped her
surreptitiously on the arm, and mouthed the word 'Go,' at her. 'You sure?' back,
and a nod, and Willow was out the door, her lover having thrown herself to the
proverbial, if friendly, wolves.

As she slipped her key card in the lock and opened the door to their room, she
could hear the sound of water running. Either Xander was here, and in the
shower, or somebody had left the sliding glass doors open and the rain was
coming in. Nope. The empty room was dry and warm and toasty. [Well, good. Maybe
I can get a few minutes alone with Xander after all, then.] She tossed her
goodie-bag of imported --blech, had too much already-- chocolate on her bed,
then knocked softly on the bathroom door.

No answer, and she could still hear the shower running, so Willow opened the
door, just slightly. It wasn't a clear shower curtain, after all. "Xander?" She
pushed the door open a bit wider, and stuck her head in, so he could hear her.
"Xander, can I talk to y"

Feet. On the floor, which was a good place for them. There was something she was
supposed to be noticing about those feet, aside from the fact that they were
awfully pale for a guy who'd spent last summer in Oxnard, washing dishes,
occasionally dancing on stage--which she was never supposed to tell anybody--
and getting an all-over tan on the roof of the crackerbox apartment he'd rented.
A tan that had lasted all year, and wasn't in evidence on those feet that she
was supposed to be noticing something else about, something that she couldn't
hold onto, because her eyes were traveling up, even though she told them not to.
Up to lean white calves, slim thighs, and---

Ass. She was staring at Spike's ass, and there had to be a special Hell reserved
for girls who dated shiksas and practiced witchcraft and stared at naked vampire
ass. She'd have to ask Nana Rabinowitz, who was the expert in those matters.
Jewish hells, not naked Spike ass, which was standing in front of her, rounded
and pale, and he had a tattoo? Of

"Tigger?" she squeaked, unable to stop herself. Spike turned around, and all
thoughts of feet and asses and bouncy stuffed orange tigers disappeared from her
brain, and she remembered why she should never, ever, drink coffee anymore,
because she was pretty sure it was at least five minutes past her bedtime, and
she was still awake.

*****

Xander had forgotten how much fun these things could be, if you let go. If you
could afford to let go. He'd gotten into a brief argument with two
engineer-types at the party, about whether the Marty McFly who ended up with the
girl at the end of Back to the Future Three was really the same one from the
first movie, because the timeline change had created a parallel universe. He had
reached the point of staring at the diagram this guy had drawn on the screen of
his Palm Pilot, before he realized he'd been discussing heavy sci-fi stuff in
front of Spike, who'd done nothing more than grin, wave, and head off for the
wetbar. Not worth teasing him? Truly didn't care? Just wanted to get drunk and
forget he was shagging a geek? Which, Xander finally admitted to himself, he
knew Spike knew.

But Xander couldn't quite bring himself to admit he knew, so he had left,
finally. Gone walkabout in the hotel, and he was surprised he hadn't gotten
lost. Thought maybe he could find Weido, maybe even try to explain about the
whole Spike and I are together but they don't know we're together thing, but
Xander hadn't seen him anywhere, and didn't know what room he was in, or even if
he was staying at the hotel. He wandered aimlessly, stopping to stare at signs,
listening to conversations, and trying not to think too hard about what Spike
had said about him.

He knew Spike was just downplaying him so his old buddy-in-evil wouldn't think
the Big Bad was hanging out with a human, let alone fucking one, and that was
fine. He was happy to protect Spike's rep, so at least *one* of them didn't feel
like a loser. (Not counting the cabana shirt this morning, which, frankly, Spike
had deserved. And he *did* look cute in it.) And Xander *knew* he wasn't
completely useless--if nothing else, he could always clean weapons, carve
stakes, and provide his friends with discount grocery products, assuming he got
his job back after the owners' kids went back to college. He could shag Spike
stupid, too, quote unquote.

The words had stung, though-- tagalong, can't do anything special. All those
Zeppo things he'd thought he was long past, had tossed over the side of Uncle
Rory's car into the Sunnydale night when he'd driven the Chevy Bel Air around
town after fifteen minutes in a motel room with Faith. A year and a half later,
and where had that guy gone? Had Faith choked the life out of him, and somebody
else walked away? He'd had a dream like that, once, he vaguely remembered. Or
maybe he had survived, but got lost on the way back from Oxnard last summer,
leaving just the old tenth grade loser behind. Because the words had still hurt,
and Xander hadn't wanted Spike to know. To know he cared that much about
*Spike's* opinion of him, no matter what anyone else thought. The vampire whose
ass he hadn't thought was worth kicking back in December, and now...

Wandering. Hands in his pockets, and yes, his pants had shrunk, though probably
not enough to make Spike happy. Couldn't go out and look at the moon, since it
was still raining, so he eventually made his way down to the main floor, past
the up-all-night college kids who'd had a few too many strawberry daiquiris in
the sports bar, and were now scattered all over the lounge, having deep
philosophical conversations. Shades of last year's beer-cursed philosophy
majors, but he'd listened in anyway. 'Take Beaker as Christ,' he heard one guy
say in a perfectly serious tone. 'If you consider Doctor Bunsen Honeydew as
Pontius Pilate' And they all wondered why he didn't apply to UC Sunnydale, when
yeah, he could probably get in if he tried? His grades weren't *that* bad,
really. He wasn't *that* much of a loser. At least he didn't worship Muppets.
(Except for Gonzo, but everybody loved Gonzo, right?)

He finally got tired of trying not to think, and just plain tired, and decided
to head back to the room. Maybe sleep. Maybe stay awake, watch TV, and not
acknowledge that he didn't want to sleep without Spike there, cool against him,
arms around him, purring in his ear. Which wasn't something they could do even
if Spike were *there*, and not somewhere back at that loud, smoky party getting
not-remotely-blasted on the free beer. Maybe they sold Spike-sized teddy bears
in the gift shop? [Because *that* wouldn't provoke any questions from the
girls...] He had to grin.

Xander found himself at the door, without even really realizing how he'd gotten
there. Homing device in the keycard? Still grinning when he got inside, trying
to pretend the techno-geeky doorlock didn't remind him of crew quarters on the
Enterprise, it took him a minute to notice that he wasn't alone. There was
Willow, sitting on the edge of her bed, staring off into space. [What, brain
suckers? Hypnotized by the Master-- the Doctor Who one, not the vampire one?]
"Willow?"

She blinked, slooooowly. "Uh"

"You okay?"

"Spike."

"No, Xander. That's it, you're never drinking coffee again."

"Noooo. Spike. Shower. Naked." Her feet tapped a muted nervous beat on the
carpeted floor, and she had a pillow on her lap, which she was stroking
obliviously with the back of her hand.

"Yes, I convinced him to shower naked, and use the laundry machine for washing
his clothes. That was before Tara did that no-more-wrinkles spell, and he just
can't seem to get out of the habit, now." No laugh. Uh-oh. Had Spike gotten
*Willow* in a semi-broody mood, too? Or had she just blown out that brilliant
mind with too much unfamiliar caffeine? "Willow, what are you talking about?"

"Spike. Shower. Naked."

"Oh." The image flashed in his head, and after shaking off the urge to drool,
Xander finally put Willow's words together in a way that made a nasty sort of
sense. He walked over to the bathroom, knocked on the door, then walked in
without bothering to wait for a response. It wasn't as if Spike ever did.
"Spike?

Water-sodden blond head stuck out of the curtain. "Yeah? Oh, s'you. C'mon in."

"I don't think so, considering that Willow is out there. Wil-low. You know.
Flashee number three for the weekend?"

Spike hung his head, and actually looked guilty. Real guilt, not
sorry-I-got-caught guilt. "I did *not* do that on purpose. I was just standin'
about waiting for the water to get hot. Not my fault Red barged in." Blue eyes
got very wide, almost truly innocent, then narrowed, and proved that Spike was
indeed an evil demon. He opened the shower curtain a bit more. "Sure y'don't
want to barge in too?"

It took most of Xander's remaining almost twenty-year-old maturity to resist the
offer. [No, Willow's out there, no, I don't care how cute he looks when he's
guilty, no, I don't care that one of the things I *can* do is hold my breath in
the shower. Plus I'm *not* letting him pick out clothes for me, at least any
more than he already has. No, no, no.] "No, thanks. I've got to go try to put
Willow back together. Hopefully shock treatment won't be necessary." He shut his
eyes, backed out, and closed the door.

"Ah, so. Spike, naked," he said, returning to Willow's side. She nodded, brain
apparently crawling back to some semblance of working order.

"Um, yeah. Do youdry mouth, here. Do you have anything hard, to suck on?" Her
eyes widened, wider than Spike's had been, and she bent over, hiding her face in
the pillow. "Oh, God, I did *not* just say that."

He sat down next to her, and patted her on the back. "Could've been worse. You
could've said it to Spike."

Her head shot up. Now her face was pink, and Xander made a note--if she started
in on the hat, he just had to mention Spike. Shower. Naked. "Oh, God. Gods," she
moaned. "Any of them. Just pick one, and let him, her, or it kill me now."

"Leviathan?" Xander asked with a straight face. She stared at him. "How about
Gozir?" A sliver of a smile on Willow's lips. "Ares? C'mon-- leather, beard,
smirk... You'd die happy."

Greenish eyes twinkled, and finally Willow laughed. "Only me. Only Willow
Rosenberg could walk in on *Spike* naked. Did you know" her voice lowered. "Did
you know he has a tattoo? Of Tigger?"

"Ah, no," Xander lied, and waited for the lightning to strike him. When it
didn't, he smiled at her. "But thank you. That'll give me blackmail material for
a few days, at least. Oh, speaking of tattoos--" He jumped up, rolled across his
own bed, and grabbed his smaller duffle bag. "I forgot to give this to you
before." He tossed her the plastic bubble container, and she squeaked.

"Ooh! Hello Kitty! Thanks, Tara's been wanting to" Willow dropped the bubble
into the bag on the table between the beds, not finishing her sentence. "This
would be the part where I don't tell you something that would make you crack
another 'doing spells together' joke, and you pretend I didn't start to." Xander
made a show of thinking about it, then nodded. Willow stared off into space for
a few more seconds, and he thought maybe shock treatment would be necessary
after all, but she finally shook her head, and spoke. "Brush my hair?" He wasn't
sure he'd heard her correctly, and he made her repeat it. He had.

But he hadn't. Hadn't done that since it was so long she could sit on it. Since
it was a darker red, close to the burnt umber crayon in the sixty-four colors
box, and she'd parted it so you could see her widow's peak. Once upon a time,
before it got weird between them, before touching her meant giving her some kind
of hope that it meant something other than 'you're my best friend, you're my
twin sister, and I love you.' Before they'd kissed, and all the insanity that
had followed after. Once upon a time, he'd sat in her room, with a hairbrush in
his hand, and the brush hadn't had any naughty Spike-induced connotations to it.

He was sitting behind her. Somehow he'd gotten the brush from her bag without
even thinking about whether he was going to say yes or no, and he was sitting
behind her. Soft bristles, and he stroked them down through her hair. It felt so
weird, to be doing it at all, and for her hair to be so short, compared to the
way it used to be. He used to say that she had Barbie-doll hair, because you
could brush it and brush it, and she never screamed when you pulled it
accidentally. He must have asked her about it once, because Xander had a little
film clip in his memory of Willow turning to him and saying, 'Yes, it hurts, but
I like to have my hair brushed more than I care about that.'

So it was her hair that was the trap, the thing that made him stay there on the
bed, listening to the rain outside, and the gentle sshsh of the bristles,
parting copper Miss Clairol curls. Every so often, he'd have to touch it, just
to separate a tangle, even though she wouldn't scream. It was soft, as soft as
Spike's, though he could feel the warmth of her skin near the roots, like he
never could when he put his hands in Spike's hair. It was her hair that
hypnotized *him*, so that he didn't move, didn't jump and run and duck and cover
when after an eternity of just sitting, she said, "So, do I get to meet him?"

*

In third grade, Xander's mom had stopped packing his lunches for him. Not
because they couldn't afford it, not because she was mad at him, as far as he
knew. Just because she was too tired. For months, he'd gone without, or cadged
from Willow and Jesse. Lived for those days when some kid had a birthday party
in class and brought ding-dongs or chocolate cupcakes. Finally Willow had gotten
this big serious look on her face and hauled him aside on the playground.
Sitting on the swings, twisting the chains around and unspinning so he didn't
have to look at her, he had listened to her ask him why he didn't have a lunch,
and he had shrugged.

He didn't have any real explanation. If he'd asked his mom, she might have
either dragged herself out of bed and made it, or at least told him how to do it
himself. It just hadn't occurred to him. It was his problem, and you didn't ask
for help with stuff like that. Willow had taken him home with her after school,
and asked *her* mom to show them how to make their own lunches. Sheila Rosenberg
thought it was sweet that they were growing up so fast, taking responsibility--
and Willow had never told her the truth. Never told anyone, not even Jesse.

*

"I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I said I have no idea what you're talking
about," Xander answered her slowly, now, never stopping his hand from
shush-shushing the brush through her hair.

"About as much as Spike believes you when you say it about not being a sci-fi
geek," she answered.

[She doesn't know it's Spike,] he thought. [At least she doesn't know it's
Spike. God, I *think* she doesn't know it's Spike. What if she knows it's
Spike?] Here came the panic, or at least the babble that would let his brain
take a few seconds to decide whether it was too late to panic or not. "Yeah,
well. I know Spike knows and he knows I know he knows and I know he knows I know
he.."

"Xander?"

His brain had made its choice. "Yeah. Sorry," he said, more calmly than he'd
ever expected. "I take it you didn't actually think the person you saw in my bed
on Scooby-Snack-making-day was a girl." Willow shook her head, and the brush
caught on her hair. It must have hurt, but she didn't make a sound, other than
to answer him.

"Not unless she has very big feet. Does she have very big feet?"

She didn't know it was Spike. He could lie. He damn well wasn't ready to *say*
it was Spike, not when he didn't even know how Spike felt about anybody from
Sunnydale knowing, jokes about shagging loudly near Willow and Tara aside. Not
when he didn't know how Spike felt about *him.* But he'd done enough lying for
the night. One more would just taste bitter and nasty in his mouth, like last
night's tears had, early this morning, like something had died there.

"No. He doesn't have very big feet." Brush. Shush. His fingers on her hair,
keeping him calm. "That was pretty observant, Ms. Rosenberg. Also sneaky, since
you let me think you didn't know."

Silence for a moment, then another little jerk of her head. "Sorry. I didn't
really know what to say. Didn't know if you wanted me to say anything. And,
um... I didn't have to be all that observant to notice the shoebox in the glove
compartment." Was it too late to just run back downstairs and talk to those guys
about joining the Muppet Cult? Xander was thankful Willow couldn't see his face,
and she was probably thankful he couldn't see hers. "The box that says 'TV
drawer' on it? The one with thethings."

Ahh, yes, the things. The trick handcuffs and the lube and the leftover
courtesy-of-Anya condoms, which they had yet to have need of, but at least
Willow thought he was practicing safe sex. Which it was, if you considered
anything done with Spike to be safe. Spike! Shit, naked picture of Spike in
there, covered with whipped cream and topped off with maraschino cherries...
[No. Breathe, Xander. Inhale, exhale, yeah, that's it.] He'd taken it out and
put it in his wallet when he was packing the drawer. [Right, we now return you
to Xander's fiftieth nervous breakdown, already in progress.]

"Oh. That one."

"Cordelia kind of hit a pothole. And it fell out." Willow was looking down now,
because he could see her hair parting at the back of her neck, see the little
darker hairs along the nape, that old burnt umber color. "She didn't see what
was inside or anything. Just me. She was a little more worried about not hitting
pedestrians. *Tara* was a little more worried about Cordelia not hitting
pedestrians."

"Remind me not to let Cordy drive again. Except in case of apocalypse." Which
was nice and safe, and didn't answer anything that she hadn't actually asked,
and didn't require him to lie, and he could come up with Cordy-clichis all
night, if he needed to, but he didn't. He just waited for her to actually ask.

"Are you okay?" Which wasn't what he expected her to ask. What he expected her
to ask had the word 'Who' in it, and the response he didn't know if he could
give started with William, and ended either in 'Bloody' or in his own name,
depending who you asked.

"Am I yeah. I'm fine, Wills." Of course he was okay, aside from the occasional
brain liquification thing.

"Is that 'I'm fine,' as in 'I'm fine, Mulder?' When you're really pregnant with
an alien baby and have nose cancer?" Willow's voice was soft. Quiet as it had
been that day on the swings.

"You got me. I'm due in November." He was close enough to smell that she and
Tara were wearing the same perfume, something he'd noticed in the dealers' room
and remembered without even knowing he knew it, something that smelled like
lemons and vanilla.

"Xander" She'd said it the same way years ago, when it was all about learning
how to make peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Her coffee high had finally
worn off, and her voice was steady and calm. "You're not fine, you're jumpy and
happy and sad and down and up and down, and you're eating chocolate like
Hershey's just went out of business."

"Willow, don't even joke about things like that."

"Xander" There it was again, and he was ready to follow her anywhere, if she
could show him how to make everything right. Was being in love with Spike as
easy as learning how to make a peanut butter, chocolate, and vampire sandwich
for lunch? "It's okay," she said slowly. "You don't have to be afraid of anybody
being freaked, or" He hadn't stopped brushing, but at last she turned her head,
and he'd have to brush her *ear* if he wanted to continue, so he put the brush
down in his lap. "Well, no, people will be freaked. You're not an idiot, you
know that. But nobody who matters." He couldn't lie if she asked. Couldn't lie
if she asked. Didn't want to let her think it was about something it wasn't
about, anyway. He was as quiet as he knew how to be, but she could hear him
breathing, or the wheels in his head turning, or she was reading his fucking
*mind*, which was a terrifying thought. "That's...not what's wrong, is it."

Xander put a hand on her shoulder. Half afraid she would look at him, half
afraid she wouldn't. "No. It's not about it being a guy." He pulled her back.
Close to him, so they were sitting the way they used to sit, before it mattered.
His arms wrapped around her, his head on her shoulder, mouth near her ear. "It's
just..." What was it just? It couldn't be just that it was the guy with the
Tigger tattoo. Couldn't say it, though he wanted to. So, another truth. Maybe
the more important one. Quiet, because he didn't know how loud the shower was,
quiet because he couldn't be sure how good Spike's hearing was, though he could
apparently hear Angel's and Wesley's lips smacking against each other across
Angel's demolished basement apartment. "It's just that I'm in love with him."

She stiffened a little in the circle of his arms, then Willow leaned her head
back, resting against his. "Oh." Soft. Quiet. Just rain, outside, tapping on the
glass. Finally, she added, a little more conversationally, "After three weeks?
That's fast."

Huh? It had been two, not three, but still too damned close, and what the hell
was she talking about? "Three weeks?"

"Since Anya broke it off."

He let out a sigh of relief. "Oh. No. Well, maybe. I mean, I've known him for a
lot longer than that, but I wasn't cheating on Anya, or anything." Pause, while
the reason the name kept buzzing in his ear finally came clear. "Oh hell." A
questioning noise. "Anya. I knew there was something. I was supposed to call
her, see if she's all right." He couldn't see the hand he had resting on
Willow's arm, but he'd bet the ink from Cordy's pen had faded away by now.

Willow pulled his arms a little tighter. "She's fine. Tara and I saw her
Thursday afternoon. In fact, I *told* you that when we went bowling. Weren't you
listening to a word I was saying?" Well, his mind might have been on other
things, like watching a certain ass in a certain pair of tight jeans execute
three spares in a row. He made a noncommittal sound, and she exhaled at him.
Xander's so cute, et cetera. He glanced at the phone, and Willow must have felt
him turn his head, or she read his mind again. "It's the middle of the night--
you can call her later. Maybe you should worry about Xander, instead of Anya,
for the moment?"

"Nah. Xander's fine. Really." Quiet, quiet, couldn't let it get *too* quiet or
he'd have to admit that they were having a Taster's Choice Coffee moment. "He's
so fine, as a matter of fact, that he's used his most excellent detective skills
to figure out that you brought home extra chocolate from the party." He peered
over her shoulder at the crumpled bag next to her, that smelled of Swiss mocha
and other enticing things.

"Blech. Take it. Eat it. May you have much joy of it." She handed him the bag,
and he kept one arm around her while he unwrapped something possibly more evil
than Spike, and popped it into his mouth. He hugged her again. She called him a
copycat, and he gave her that noogie she'd avoided so deftly, earlier.

Then, when she asked, he whispered to her around a mouthful of brandy and
chocolate. Whispered the things that he hadn't been able to say to anyone else.
Why, if there was a why, and how Spike made him feel-- safe and loved and afraid
of losing it, all at the same time. A few-half truths about what his undead
roommate did and didn't know. He whispered everything but who, and occasionally
thought as he listened to himself not say it, that life might have been easier
with Anya, even though he didn't love her.

Part Seven

-Interlude in a Sunnydale Parking Lot-

Of all the ridiculous places to have a flat tire, her car had to pick *this*
one? Right outside the all-night Sunnydale Bowl-O-Rama, about the only place in
town besides Wal-Mart and the supermarket that *was* open 24 hours? Granted,
there were men in there who could change a tire, which was about all most men
were good for besides sex and opening peanut butter jars. But these would be
big, smelly, beer-drinking men, who would laugh at her bedraggled rain-wet
dress, laugh at her tiny happy cute green Plymouth Neon, and call her 'little
lady' to her face, when they weren't trying to fondle her ass. No thank you,
Anya would be perfectly happy to try to change the thing herself. If she could
get the spare tire out, and find the jack. If she could be sure she knew what
the jack looked like.

"Can I help you with that?" came a man's voice from the shadows between a pickup
truck and a Honda Accord, and she controlled the urge to jump. Woman alone,
darkish parking lot, possibility of vampires and only moderately good with a
stake, plus no ability to curse strange human men with penis rot But the
strange man was pretty small, from the height of the umbrella he was holding,
which hid his face, and his voice sounded young. She could take him if she
needed to. He held out the little umbrella in her general direction, and she
gave him a stare that had turned bigger men into trolls, before realizing that
if she couldn't see him, he probably couldn't see her.

"That's not exactly helpful, since I'm already soaking wet," she told him
honestly. "If you have a tow truck and don't feel like charging me, that would
be helpful. Or a very large blow dryer. Or a handy dimensional portal that would
get me the hell out of Sunnydale-- I could specify at least five nicer
dimensions, one of which is perfect if you don't like shellfish." No response.
Maybe he liked shellfish. "Or if you can change a tire, that would also be
helpful."

"None of those, really. I guess I make a pretty crummy Sir Walter Raleigh." He
was still trying to hand her the umbrella, so she finally took it. Needless to
say, it dripped on her head.

"That's actually a good thing. He was pretty much a pig-- kept hitting on the
Queen even after he was married and only got off execution so many times because
he sent suck-up letters from the Tower and whimpered all the way to the chopping
block. I told her she should've cut off something besides his head, but would
she ever listen?" Anya finally got a look at her would-be rescuer, and stopped
reminiscing. "Oh. It's you."

Short brown hair plastered flat to his head, perpetual confused look, finally
accompanied by a shy smile. "You remember me?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I?" He might have bespelled all of Sunnydale into
believing that he was the center of the universe, which was somewhat pathetic,
but he still had the most lickable shoulders she'd ever seen, and they weren't
remotely forgettable. She still had no idea why Xander hadn't wanted to ask him
to a threesome when she bugged him about it; she never could get that boy to do
anything adventurous.

"Well, most people don't. I... did you used to be a demon?" He frowned, as if
trying to snatch something from that months-ago time when he'd known all there
was to know about the Scoobies, and they'd looked to him for guidance on
everything from fashion to fighting. Anya nodded enthusiastically, picturing a
certain page of a certain swimsuit calendar that no longer ever existed. Things
were looking up. "Well. It's Anya, right? Um. I can't change a tire, but I do
have triple-A. You want to come inside with me?" He offered her his arm, which
was more gallant than anything Walter Raleigh had ever really done, and she took
it.

*****

Bounce! Bounce! Bounce! This time Spike made sure to duck his head, and he
didn't hit it on the ceiling. He *did*, however, get a pillow thrown at him by
his lover, who had just finished tucking an almost-catatonic Willow under the
covers of her bed. The sound of the shower mixed with the sound of the rain
against the windows, a sort of surround-sound shsh-ing noise.

"Why are you doing that?"

"Because," --bounce-- "that's" --bounce-- "what Tiggers do best!" Bounce. Xander
made a face at him, then grinned, a little shyly. "Besides," Spike added, with
his own grin, "it's a real"--bounce--"bed." Even if they couldn't use it for
the obvious purpose, it still didn't have a too-thin mattress and a murderous
support bar that kept threatening to permanently do his back in. Even sans Magic
Fingers, this was pure Class-A, double-spring delight.

"What makes you think you're sleeping in it?" Xander asked. Spike stopped
bouncing and took a close look at him. He didn't *seem* pissed off.

"You mad about me flashing Red?" Willow didn't even turn or murmur at the sound
of her official Spike-given nickname. Dead to the world. Xander shook his head,
dark curls tousled from hours of wearing the Fedora that was now hung neatly on
the cherry-wood hatstand in the corner.

"No, that really wasn't your fault. For once." Well, no, though Spike had done
a certain amount of triumphant smirking behind the closed shower curtain once
she stammered and backed out. Teach *her* to not be embarrassed by pics of naked
blokes shagging on her computer screen.

"Didn't fancy me takin' off at the party, then? Just thought you'd like to *not*
be a science fiction geek in peace, for a bit."

Xander shook his head again. "No. I 'm not mad about anything. You're just not
sleeping in that bed. You'll cheat, and then you'll try to pretend *I* lost the
bet, and I wouldn't want to tempt you to do anything that diabolical, given your
Default Good Guy status." Which was Xander's way of saying that if they slept
together, Spike wouldn't be able to stop himself from trying to hold him. Even
if Xander didn't quite know that was what he meant, Spike couldn't deny it.

The noise of the shower shut off, and a waterlogged Tara in shorts and a t-shirt
came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, towel around her neck. She stared
for a while at the sight of Spike making up a pallet on the floor, between the
wall and Xander's bed: extra bedding from the closet, hotel pillow with his
duster rolled up beneath it. "You're sleeping on the floor?"

Spike wriggled his toes, newly warm in a borrowed pair of Xander's socks, and
slipped under his duvet. "Not sleeping in the bloody chair. Sick of chairs."

She stared at him for a moment longer, then at Xander, already tucked up nicely
under the bedclothes, with half a bag of imported chocolates on one side of him,
and a pile of M&M's next to it. "Or you could be grown-ups, and sleep in the
same bed."

"He's/I'm sleeping on the floor," they replied in unison. When Tara gave them an
odd look, Xander offered her some of his chocolate. Distraction. Smart boy. She
refused, babbling some ridiculous nonsense about having had too much already. He
offered again, this time with a look on his face that would make it *very*
difficult for Spike to sleep on the floor tonight. "You know you want it." he
sing-songed. The blonde witch looked at the floor, looked back at Xander
Spike's boy really would make such a fine vamp-- he had an evil streak a mile
wide. Finally, chocolates in hand, Tara turned out the light, and padded past
Spike to get to her own bed.

Spike moved a little closer to Xander's bed, lying on his back, staring at the
grainy patterns on the ceiling, which he could just barely see in the pitch-dark
room. Wondering if he shouldn't try to convince Xander to tell the girls, after
all. Just so they didn't have to sleep alone. Either of them. Not sure, in the
darkness, with the percussive sound of the rain outside washing Spike towards a
sleep he wasn't certain he wanted to meet, whether he could deal with another
night like the last one.

After a few minutes, a warm hand dropped down. Accidentally? On purpose? It was
better than nothing. Much better than nothing. Spike pushed his pillow up
against the side of the carved bedframe, and wrapped his own fingers around
Xander's.

*****

A gasp. Tara woke in the night. Morning, really; it had been technically morning
when she'd fallen asleep. There still wasn't a speck of light peeking through
the curtains, though, and the rain still beat against the glass doors on the
other side, next to her bed. Willow was warm and silent in her arms, sleeping
like the dead, just like she'd warned, so it hadn't been she who had made the
noise. Another sound, small and low, and another intake of surprised breath.
Then the shuffling and sudden creaking of the other bed, as someone got in.

"Xan... pet, you all right?" Whispered, but still loud enough for her to make
out over Willow's steady, soft breathing, a sound Tara never even noticed
anymore, it was so much a part of herself.

"Hmmm? Yeah. M'fine, Spike." Xander's voice was rough with sleep, confused,
*his* breathing loud enough for her to hear.

"You had another nightmare."

"Yeah, I..."

"Tell me. Can't bite 'em up if you don't tell me."

"Don't remember."

The sound of Spike, *Spike*, sighing. Once. "Xander..."

"No, I mean it. I remember being scared, just don't remember what it was. No big
deal; they're usually like that." Silence, for a long while. The only sounds
were the rain, three humans breathing, and one vampire not. Then Xander's voice
again. "This is in no way you attempting to cop a feel while thinking I won't
count it because you're being all uncharacteristically well-behaved, right?"

"No, this is something entirely different, and much more diabolical. It's called
cuddling."

Silence again, and if there was any more, she didn't hear it. Tara stared at the
darkness for a while, gently stroking Willow's hair. Not wondering how it was
possible for a demon to love. How could she wonder? Finally the rain and the
rhythm of someone's breathing, she couldn't be sure whose, lulled her to sleep.