****

"You brought me all the way out here just to look at a crypt?"

Spike rolled his eyes, wishing for one, just one vampire friend who could
appreciate this. "It's not just a crypt," he explained patiently, "it's my
new digs. What do you think? Some potted plants, a few throw pillows..."

"Spike." Willow shook her head and gave the tall blonde a crooked smile.
"It's a place where dead people are laying in tombs. There's not much you
could do that would make it look homey to me."

"You're being narrow-minded." Now he was getting irritated. He'd been so
caught up in the idea of finally getting out of Xander's basement that he
hadn't really considered the asthetics of his new habitat, simply that it
would be big enough for him to sleep in. "Use your imagination, Red. Think
evil, like me. It's dark, it's cold, it's forbidding..."

"It's a big marble block." Willow cocked an eyebrow. "I thought you were
looking into places with electricity and stuff so that you could refrigerate
your...food."

Spike smirked as the young woman tripped over the mention of his feeding
habits, then promptly returned to his regularly scheduled annoyance. "I
don't even know why I'm asking you," he gave her a disgusted roll of his
dark eyes, "you're just a silly slayer wanna-be with no boyfriend and an
oddly layered haircut."

For a moment, Willow was taken aback, stung. Then she remembered who was
doing the talking. "And you're so much better off?" she asked, eyes wide
with incredulity. "Mr. I Can't Bite Any Living Creature So I Sulk All Day
and Watch Soap Operas?"

Spike opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.

"May I remind you that I'm the one who's always sticking up for you, always
taking your side, always sneaking you cookies? If it wasn't for me, the
others would have let you stake yourself by now, you big baby."

"Ha!" Spike stiffened and gave the witch his most haughty stare. "You'd like
to think that you're my savior, wouldn't you, Red? Well, in case you failed
to notice, I have tried several times to bite you. Several times in a row,
in fact. If it weren't for those Army assholes, you'd be calling me Master
by now, you little twit!"

"Twit?" Willow was now well and truly seething. "At least I do some good
around here. You're entirely worthless. All you can do is wail on demons and
bitch about not being able to kill people! I'm the one who convinced Buffy
not to stake you, you know." Actually, that wasn't quite true, but she'd be
damned if she'd let him get the better of her.

"Well, thank you so much, Saint Willow." Spike's pulse was nearing normal,
which in vampire terms was somehwere close to cardiac arrest. For the first
time in months, he was feeling something besides suicidal. What he was
feeling he couldn't exactly put his finger on, but whatever it was, he was
enjoying it. "You know, Buffy's G.I. boyfriend and his little cronies almost
unloaded a submachine gun into your sorry ass, but I stopped them. What have
you got to say to that, Oh Immaculate One?"

"Immaculate?" Willow's fists were curled into tight balls at her sides. "I'm
not some simpering little girl, you know. I may not be the Slayer, but I go
up against rampaging demons and vampire armies too. I don't even want to
think about how many times I've come close to dying."

"Well, alert the media." Spike spread his arms wide and addressed the empty
cemetary. "Everybody rejoice, Willow's still alive! She's fucking
indestructible, ladies and gentleman! She certainly doesn't need me to help
her out of near-fatal situations, because she's got it all figured out!"

"You'd think," Willow hissed, "that someone as old as you would be just a
little more mature."

"Ouch." Spike put a hand to his chest, as though he'd been shot. "That one
went right for the heart, didn't it? Buffy should just let you at the
baddies with your razor-sharp wit. That'd teach 'em to mess with the forces
of good!"

"I can't believe that I went out of my way to be nice to you!" Willow
wailed. "This whole semester has been torture for me, what with Oz leaving
and everyone else finding their true love, and yet you stand here and make
fun of me like...like it's high school all over again." Willow's lower lip
began to tremble and she bit it, hard. There was no way she was going to cry
in front of Spike. No way. She was all cried out, by God.

Spike hesitated. Usually he delighted in getting in a few good hits against
the Slayer and her little friends, but if Red started bawling all over the
place, he had the horrible feeling that he wouldn't enjoy it at all. What
had happened to him? Whatever the Initiative had implanted in him was
obviously affecting his mental functions as well as his physical ones.

"Look," he shifted awkwardly and shoved his hands into the deep pockets of
his duster. "I know that the others gave you shit about the whole wolf
thing." He kept his eyes fixed on his boots. Maybe it would be better if he
had at least one of the Slayer's brats on his side. "I know...ugh. I know
how it feels to be bereaved of your love. When Dru wouldn't come back to me
I thought I was going to cave in, you know? Just crumble to the ground and
never be able to stand up again. And then I took Harm, because I thought
that if I had someone, 'lighter' I guess is the word, then I wouldn't have
to be alone, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting in so deep. But it
sucked anyway. She drove me absolutely batty. And then I get neutered and
can't even bite anyone, and I'm suddenly hanging around my sworn enemies,
and everybody loathes me..." he looked up at her, surprised to see that she
wasn't laughing at him, but rather watching him silently, brow furrowed in
thought.

"You were the only one who treated me like I wasn't some burden. When I went
looking for the Slayer and found you...well, I offered you a choice, but
truth be told, Red, I wasn't going to give you one. Killing you was never in
the plan. I always kind of liked you. You're an odd one...but in an
interesting way. After nearly two centuries, most people just blend into one
big oblivious human machine, bumbling around like a merry idiot. But you
always seem to know exactly what's happening. And when I couldn't bite you,
couldn't turn you...I was so fucking angry I thought I was going to breathe
fire. Not just because I couldn't drain you, but because I couldn't...have you."

She said nothing, but her luminous eyes were huge.

"And now I feel like the biggest goddamned pansy that ever walked the earth."

Willow smiled and stifled a giggle, but Spike didn't find anything about it
humorous. In fact, this was quickly becoming revelatory in a way he wasn't
prepared to deal with. She wasn't his type at all, for Christ's sake.
"Sure," he grumbled, "laugh at me. You should. I'm just a bloody clown at
this point, anyway. If any other vampires were around to see this, they'd
stake me on the spot."

Willow didn't know how to process any of what he'd just said to her, but she
was sure now that it wasn't just her soft heart that had always been willing
to support Spike. "You don't...", her own voice, thick with emotion,
surprised her. "You can't know how what you said makes me feel. I don't know
how it makes me feel. You're a vampire and you're, you know, handsome and
sexy and all black leathery. You could have anyone. The thought that you
even considered making me a vampire is unbelieveable. I always thought I was
so lucky to have Oz, but in the back of my mind I always thought that the
reason he liked me was because he was strange, and I was strange. We fit.
But no normal person...or non-person...would ever want me. So thank you.
And...I kind of like you too. Even though you're a total jackass."

Spike smiled widely, suddenly dazzlingly happy and only slightly alarmed at
his dazzling happiness. "So you...think I'm handsome do you?"

Willow blushed from neck to hairline. "I'm leaving." She turned and began
walking away.

"The leather does it for you, does it?" He called after her. "I knew it all
along!"

"Screw you," she retorted, but to his ears it sounded like a gentle melody.
Dru had left him, Oz had left her...and no one gave a second thought to
either of them. He had a feeling that everything was changing, that the
stars were aligning his way again.

"So," he hollered as her form began to dissolve into the distance. "Pick you
up at eight?"
 
 
 

****