A fitful night with little sleep left Buffy cranky and more confused than ever.

Over breakfast, Giles watched her play with her food and asked if everything was all right. Buffy almost told him, then, about Spike and what he had done. What she had allowed him to do. She wanted to tell someone, anyone, just to hear it said aloud. Maybe it would become more real, then. Or maybe it would fade into the incomprehensible impossibility that it truly was. But telling a Watcher that she had let a vampire kiss her hardly seemed like the best idea she had ever had. She had no desire to listen to recriminations, warnings, and disappointment. What she wanted, what she needed, was to understand what, why, how, and too many what if questions to which she had no answer were not helping in the slightest.

At school, she was distracted and taciturn. Cordelia was there, of course, trying to get her attention and win her friendship – doubtlessly to get Buffy to ask Giles again to help with her wishing demon – and during lunch Buffy considered telling her. She remembered, just in time, that Cordelia had very little sympathy for Spike, and would certainly not understand. If Buffy herself couldn’t, there was little chance for Cordelia to be able to make sense of any of it. She thought about only saying it had been a vampire and not mentioning a name, since it was the vampire part of the equation that was so hard to comprehend, but Cordelia’s story about how Buffy had loved a vamp in that other dimension would make things more complicated, if that was even possible. She didn’t want to have this, whatever it was, compared to what another version of herself had done in a different world. It would have made the experience less.

By the time the last class period of the day came to an end, Buffy had made two decisions. She wouldn’t tell anyone – there was no one she could have confided to – and she had to stop thinking about it. It would be better, much better, if she pretended that nothing had happened. She would try to stay away from Spike from now on, and be on her guards if he came to her. It couldn’t happen again. She couldn’t let it happen again. She was the Slayer, she couldn’t let a vampire get that close to her.

She couldn’t, even if just thinking about that kiss had her heart hammering in her chest faster than any hunt ever had.

Of course, it couldn’t be as simple as holding on to her resolve; she was fast learning that nothing could be simple when Spike was involved in it in any way.

She was in the middle of patrol when he first appeared – and no, she hadn’t been thinking of him, not at all. She was too busy fighting two rather slimy demons and cursing herself for not having taken her sword along. She may have become too reliant on the weapon in the little time since she had learned to use it, part of her mind analyzed coolly as she struggled to get a grip on a slippery neck to twist it and break it.

The satisfying crack finally came, seemingly too loud in the still night, and her victim collapsed when she let go of it. She turned toward the second demon, which she had sent down moments earlier with a blow to the head that had stunned it. She saw its striking claw too late to avoid the hit to her shoulder. Thrown backwards, she stumbled over the corpse of the demon she had just slain and banged her head against a headstone behind her. Her vision blackened and she fought as hard as she could not to lose consciousness, too aware that she’d die if that happened.

It took her a few seconds, when a dark figure slammed into the demon from the side, to recognize Spike. Her head still ringing from her fall, she watched, a little dazed, as he – almost literally – ripped the demon to shreds, growling the entire time. When he turned toward where she still sat on the ground, his eyes were blazing. Buffy shivered; he looked more dangerous, more feral than she had ever seen him. He stepped closer, and his face slid into his human features as his gaze ran over her, stopping for an instant at her bloodied shoulder.

“You’re OK?” he asked, offering her a hand.

She almost accepted his help to stand before thinking better of it and got to her feet on her own.

Stay away from him. Minimize contact. Do not let him get close again.

“I’m fine.”

She started turning away, but a hand on her uninjured shoulder stopped her.

“What, I don’t even get a thank you?” he asked, his tone mock-offended.

“I could have killed that thing myself,” she claimed. “You intruded on my fight. You’re not getting a thank you for that.”

It would have been more convincing, she thought, if her voice hadn’t been shaking from the pain in her shoulder and the back of her head. She might have had a concussion, too. That was the only explanation why she started backing away when Spike took slow steps toward her, his grin practically wolfish.

“You’re not fooling me, Slayer. You were in trouble, and I saved your skin. I say I deserve a reward for that. A nice reward.”

She should have known that retreating in front of him, just as she had the previous night, couldn’t possibly be good. She should have guessed the same actions would only, predictably, lead to the same results.

Maybe she did, and she didn’t care.

Something at her back stopped her – a crypt, a tree, she wasn’t sure and it didn't matter. Spike was close, very close, and her gaze went from his eyes to his grinning lips and back as he came even closer. She closed her eyes just a second before his mouth pressed against hers.

It started as slowly as the first time, with Spike taking the lead and Buffy trying – and failing – not to lose herself in the feel of his lips and tongue. Her mind was blank but burning when she started returning the kiss.

It reminded her of the first time she had felt Spike’s lips on her, pulling at her blood in triumphant excitement, and at the same time it couldn’t have been any more different. She had been embracing death, then, and now all she wanted was to live, and experience this, over and over, until nothing existed but the fire consuming her mind and body.

She gasped, breaking the kiss, when Spike’s left hand slid from where it was grasping her arm and splayed over her breast. Shaking her head lightly, she opened her eyes to find Spike’s just in front of her. What she saw in the midnight blue scared her, and she broke free from his hold.

“Not again,” he growled, reaching out to catch her arm.

She pulled free. “You’re right. Not again. This has to stop. We’re enemies. That’s all we are. Enemies. We can’t…do this. Not again. Never.”

She realized she was babbling at the same time as she noticed Spike was stepping toward her again. There was only one option left to her. Once more, she ran.



Night after night, the same thing happened.

It started just fine. Spike would find the Slayer, sometimes he’d patrol with her first and sometimes he’d go straight to the best part and kiss her. She’d let him, she’d even join in, and accept small touches. And then she’d snap, stop it all, and flee.

Night after night, she left Spike hard and frustrated and craving her more than he thought possible. It had been going on for a week, now, and had to stop.

This time, when he kissed her, he wrapped both arms around her, trapping her against his body. She was hot as hell, searing him wherever they touched. He wanted her so much; she was all he could think about. This time, he wouldn’t let her go. This time, he was going to take her back to his apartment, and make her his in all possible ways. This time…

He didn’t even know how she managed to get away from him. He stared at where she had escaped, stared at her lips, at the fast rise and fall of her chest as she breathed heavily, and he could have told to the second when she would start making excuses and promises to stop that she wouldn’t keep.

“Don’t. Say. A. Word,” he growled, narrowing his eyes as she opened her mouth. “I’ve heard it already. Don’t need a repeat.”

For a moment, he could almost have believed she was apologetic. But it couldn’t be. She was having too much fun playing with him.

For once, she didn’t flee right away, stopped, maybe, by his refusal to hear her parting excuses. She watched him as he pulled out his cigarettes and lit out with hands shaking from frustration. He held her gaze the whole time. The first hit of nicotine calmed his nerves just enough that he trusted himself to speak again.

“You’re killing me!” he snapped.

His gaze hardened even more when a smile tugged at her lips for just an instant.

“Slayer here,” she said, the same hesitant smile tinting her words. “It’s kinda my job to kill you.”

“Then do it the proper way! Shove a stake through my heart and end it, rather than playing hard to get! I’m a man, and a vamp, and I need to shag!”

If he hadn’t been so annoyed and agitated, he might have noticed that all traces of amusement had left her when she replied.

“Maybe you should stop coming to me then and find someone else. Because that’s so not going to happen.”

Throwing the cigarette away in a raging gesture, he strode back to her, barely refraining from shifting to his game face.

“I don’t want someone else,” he growled, inches from her face. “I want you. I want to shag you and stop dreaming about you. I want you to be there when I go to sleep and still there when I wake up and I want to shag you any bloody time I feel like it. I barely feed anymore because I’m so obsessed with you and you don’t even see it!”

He hadn’t planned to say any of this, and he could see even as he said it that it was a mistake. The lines at the corners of her eyes or the way she suddenly stood very stiffly in front of him left no doubt about that. And still, it felt good to have it out there, to have her now exactly how much he wanted her, and how much their kisses were driving him mad.

“I think,” she said very slowly after a few seconds, “that you should stay away from me.”

Spike looked at her incredulously. “Stay away? Have you heard a bloody word—”

“I’ve heard that you’re obsessed with me,” she cut in, her tone hardening. “And I’m not liking the sound of it. The truce is off. If you keep getting in my way, I’ll stake you. I’ve had enough of your games.”

Up to that point, she had always been the one to break away when she was uncomfortable or angry with him. This time, though, she stayed where she was, arms hanging loose at her sides, her apparent relaxation completely at odds with the determined and threatening vibes coming from her.

Spike wanted to shout at her. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to provoke her into a fight, and test whether she meant her words. He wanted, with the burning fierceness of frustration, to fuck her, again and again, until she pleaded in the same breath for him to stop and continue.

None of it would have helped anything.

With a final glare, he stormed away.