SOMETHING LIKE THE SUN
By Barb C. 

Disclaimers: The usual. All belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy, and naught to me.
Rating: NC-17. Warning: Full monty Pylean-vampire-demon-on-Slayer sex.
Setting: Post-Gift /AU Season 6/7
Pairing: B/S
Distribution: Ask and you shall receive, I'd just like to know where it ends up.
Synopsis: While in Pylea, Buffy discovers just how much demon there is in a Slayer...
Author's notes: This story takes place in the same universe as "A Raising In the Sun," "Necessary Evils," "My Baby Is A Centerfold," "Follow the Yellow Brick Road, or A Girl And Her Hellbeast," and "A Parliament of Monsters." It's set in the autumn before POM, and contains spoilers for NE and FTYBR.

"Buffy--" he says, and she grabs him, drags him into the makeshift tent. Words aren't enough tonight. She needs the covenant of pounding blood, the reassurance of skin on skin. She is shaking, and it's not from fear, it really isn't. Her hands capture his face, the sharp angles and the lush curves, and pull it down, a request, a demand in flesh. She crushes her mouth against his, heat into chill--his pupils give back the firelight, verdigris, scarlet, and copper, but tonight her own fires burn hotter. His hands glide over her shoulders and come to rest upon the small of her back, pulling her closer as she makes the small hungry whine that means hold me.

"I've got a theory," Willow said, poking up the campfire. Well off the main road and nearing the edges of Clan-Lord Frothgar's territory, they'd decided that it was safe to have a fire tonight, and a real dinner. "Tara always says that the demon that animates a vampire is like water--formless, mindless, taking on the shape of the glass you pour it into." She glanced across the fire-pit at Spike. "That would be us. But I've been thinking, and I think it's more like...like Jell-O."

 "Jell-O?" Buffy asked. "Fruit-flavored and prone to breaking down walls?" 

This startling image appeared to give Willow pause. After a moment she shook her head. "No, no--more like it starts out formless, but once you've poured it into a mold, it sets up. In our world it doesn't matter. Mold and Jell-O attain Zen-like unity. But here..." She gestured up at the indigo dome of sky overhead, spangled with nameless Pylean constellations. "Here the Jell-O gets popped out of the mold every time we change. That's why Spike's demon-self is so...Spikey. It's still a demon, all violent and grr, but it's been in the mold of whoever William was for over a century. It's set up pretty good by now. It's got no intellect--" 

"Hey!" Spike objected. 

"--but it's got his emotional state and attitudes. It likes the people he likes--" 

"--and wants to eat everyone else," Dawn finished. 

"Right, because it exists only to satisfy its desires, and there's no human intelligence to restrain it. Pure id."

 Buffy poked the recumbent vampire beside her in the ribs. "And this differs from Spike's normal state how?" 

Spike leaned over with a lazy growl, captured her hand and delivered a punitive kiss. Willow looked injured on her sire's behalf. "Don't you see? This means that we can predict the effect that this dimension has on how our demon aspects are expressed."

"Our demon aspects?" Buffy contemplated the stewpot hanging over the coals, and the chances of coercing Dawn into cleaning it without instigating a sisterly catfight. "What is this we, white man?" 

Why was everyone looking at her? "Buffy," Dawn said with caution, "Haven't you noticed?"

He needs no urging, no direction. Her tunic--ugly shapeless brown thing--shreds under his fingers. She doesn't care. She hates Pylea, hates its ucky clothes, hates its musicless towns, hates the mud and the fleas and the demons, demons everywhere. He nuzzles her breasts, rough new beard on his cheeks and chin grazing the tender skin as he teases her taut little nipples. When he looks up she can see herself reflected in his eyes, and her own are lambent gold. Lion's eyes. Demon's eyes. Killer's eyes. The firelight casts grotesque shadows against the walls of the tent--there are two monsters grappling here tonight.

Spike is enchanted. "Buffy," he breathes, he who doesn't need to breathe at all. "My love, my sweet, my beautiful Slayer--My mistress's eyes are bloody exactly like the sun..." 

No, this is no good. She doesn't want him to be enchanted. Isn't it her humanity that he loves? She shoves him down hard into the tangle of blankets, feeling the afternoon's rage moving still within her. "You like it when I'm dangerous, don't you, Spike?" she croons. "Does it get you hot when I do things like this?" She snatches the bone-handled knife from her discarded belt and presses it to his throat. The point dimples the pale skin beneath his Adam's apple. She caresses the hard planes of his bare chest with her free hand, feeling his nipples pebbling beneath her touch, feeling his cock stiffen and jerk against the curve of her ass. "Did you like the way I was this afternoon, Spike? Would it have been sexy if I'd killed her?" Spike doesn't answer. He's searching her eyes, looking for God knows what, but from his smile he's finding it. "Don't love me like this!" she snarls. "Don't love me when I'm sick and wrong and--"

His hand's around her wrist, and he's not quite as strong as she is, but close enough when she's distracted by a good rant. He flips them both over, and the knife thumps to the ground. Her arm's twisted up between her shoulder blades and his bony knee's in the small of her back and her face is mashed into rough damp folds of wool, the dirty-lanolin smell clogging her nose. "You don't get much say in how I love you, pet," he purrs into her ear.

Buffy had decided very early on in the annals of the Great Pylean Expeditionary Force that this live-off-the-land, Fellowship of the Rings biz was le suck, even if Spike did look rather yummily Viggoesque with a week's worth of beard.  She herself didn't feel yummy in the slightest; au contraire, she was stinky and grimy and she had, oh ultimate horror, pit stubble. The lure of the One Ring paled to insignificance beside the yearning of a Slayer for herbal shampoo and conditioner. 

Why exactly had she thought this trip would be a good idea again? They barely even knew this Lorne guy. Right, Angel's big brown puppy eyes and her own guilt at missing the fishing expedition which had pulled him out of the Bay only a few weeks ago. Killer combo. And in the beginning everything had seemed so simple: Go to Pylea. Protect Dawn, who was necessary to open the dimensional portals to and from. Visit the Library of Whatsis to find the Chronicles of Whosis. Return home in triumph. Check, check, and check--but no one had mentioned losing half their supplies in the portal, or the cross-country hike, or the posse on their tail or...

"I can't believe nobody bothered to tell me about this!" Buffy held up the tin plate from their one and only mess kit and examined her reflection. Tilt the makeshift mirror as she would, her face was only a shadowy featureless blur in the dented metal. "Is an 'Excuse me, Buffy, but you appear to be turning into a demon?' too much to ask?"

 Spike shrugged and went back to tamping the tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe with one thumb. An amazing amount of twiddling had to be done to pipes to get them to work, and then half the time they went out anyway. He spent so much time getting ready to smoke that he hardly got any smoking done. She was definitely going to encourage him to take one up when they got home. "Sorry, pet," he said, "but with everything else going on, it wasn't first on my mind." He sucked on the pipestem and cocked his head to one side appraisingly. "'Sides, it's fetching. Suits you."

 Willow nodded agreement. "It doesn't happen all the time. Mostly when you're slaying. Or mad. Or, uh..."

 "Jonesin' for luuuuurve," Dawn sing-songed, fluttering her eyelashes. At her sister's horrified expression, she morphed the flutter into an eye-roll. "What's the big deal? Giles told us about the Slayer/demon connection back in the Mesozoic Era. Not exactly breaking news here."

 Well, yeah, but there was a huge difference between Giles's dry, scholarly analysis of Slayer origins and the actual sprouting of demon parts. "What if I start growing horns? Or scales? Or--" Buffy held the tin plate closer and scrunched her face up in an attempt to detect incipient symptoms of demonicity. "Slime? How can you take this so casually?"

 "Honestly, Buffy," Willow said in soothing and nearly-as-academic-as-Giles tones, "Spike and I ARE demons. Slayers just have a few demony aspects. I don't think you have anything to worry about." 

Buffy skimmed the plate at her. "Yeah, nothing EVER goes wrong with demon aspects. Until I descend into gibbering madness and my brain explodes." 

Dawn stretched her booted feet within melting distance of the fire and heaved an elaborate sigh. "The telepathy thing wasn't part of the Slayer package. Pylea just brings out whatever's already naturally inside you, right? Spike and Willow turn into horrifying scaly monsters, and you're complaining because you've saved yourself a couple hundred bucks on colored contacts?" 

"That's easy for you to say! You're--"

 "Your average, everyday walking dimensional portal?" Her sister feigned a yawn. "Yeah, I have no idea what you go through." 

Dammit, it wasn't fair when everyone she knew was just as Chosen as she was. Buffy folded her arms across her chest and lapsed into a pout. "Fine. But if I go all Brundle-Buffy on you in my sleep, don't say I didn't tell you so."

"Seems to me I recall you loving me when I was a good bit more demonic than you are now," that dark-chocolate-and-cayenne voice continues, a low-down dirty thrumming all along her spinal cord. "What was that, Slayer? A pity fuck? All's right with the world when you can play Miranda, condescending to pat Caliban on the head, but now you've had a reminder there's a bit of the beast in you..."

She struggles only enough to let him know she could still kick his ass if she really wanted to, because for just this minute it's such a relief to be helpless. "No!" Suddenly it's the most important thing in the world that he realize just how much it wasn't that. But she can't explain what it was. There is no part of him she doesn't love, even the scary parts, even the parts she hates at the same time. Why can't she ever explain? "Spike... William... No. That was...it was different."

His weight shifts and his voice gentles. "You think what you are is news to me? I've seen it burning in you every time we've shagged, love. Every time we've fought. All of what you are." 

She's sobbing into the blankets now, the dry wracking sobs of one who's shed too many tears over too many years. "I almost killed her!"

"She almost needed killing." There's pain in his voice, but no sentiment. "That's your fucking raison d'etre, Slayer. Killing us."

"Don't you get it?" she screams. "I wanted to kill her!"

He is relentless. That's no small part of why she loves him. "Nature of the beast, innit? Question is, what're you gonna do about it?"

The suns were sailing up the blue lake of the sky as they slogged to the center of the meadow, but the long flower-strewn grass that swished around their ankles was still dew-sodden and fresh. Their footsteps left a long, ragged wet swath across the unspoiled green. The forest held the meadow in the palm of its hand, great shadowy firs and solemn pines rising out of pearly morning mist. The thin white curl of smoke from their campfire scored the dark background of the trees. Buffy was uncomfortably reminded of one of the last trips her family had taken before the divorce: Dad had hauled them all up to Yosemite for a wholesome family weekend. Dawn had spent the whole weekend whining about missing her Saturday morning cartoons, Mom had had a number of caustic comments on how really, Hank, they could have afforded to stay in one of the hotels, and she herself had been in a sulky fifteen-year-old temper the whole time because the last-minute vacation had messed up her date with Tyler Harrison and her life was OVER.

 Buffy stopped in the approximate middle of nowhere and rubbed her arms. "You're sure about this, Will?"

 Willow nodded with the enthusiasm of someone about to get tick-dipped. "What if it happens by accident when there's people around? It's better if I learn how to handle it out here in a bystander-free zone." She divested herself of tunic, boots and jeans, and stood shivering in the wet grass, stripped down to a loose chemise kind of thing. Fredericks of Pylea. "Besides, I--I need to do this."

 "Look, just because Spike would lick an electrical socket if Angel told him not to--" 

"It's not about Spike." Willow tucked her hands into her armpits. "Or kind of it is. It was so--so romantic when he was all scaly and you just up and kissed him! You don't know how much I wish...I mean, it's totally my own fault I'm a vampire, and I know I'm lucky that Tara stayed with me at all, and you guys getting my soul back--but sometimes I feel like it's not getting any better between me and her, you know? She's--" Willow broke off, her face tightening with pain. "She's scared of me. And how can I blame her when I'm scared of me, too?" Her lips firmed in determination. "But this is as bad as it gets, right? Confronting the pure-grain demon-ness head on."

 Buffy was moderately certain that there was a flaw in this reasoning. Possibly several flaws. "Well, if your theory's right, we shouldn't have anything to worry about, should we? You like all of us, so your demon half ought to like us too. In a scary obsessive demon way."

 "Well, there's a thing about that theory," Willow admitted. "When Angel was here, he said he kind of tried to tear Wesley and Mr. Gunn into kibbles and bits. The only person that demon-Angel liked was Fred, and he'd never even met her before. And that was 'like' in the sense of 'didn't try to eat immediately.' So it's possible that the theory needs tweaking." She squinched her eyes shut and clenched her fists. "Here goes nothing."

 "Will! Wait a--"

 But it was too late. Willow swayed like the grass she stood in, balanced on the knife's edge between pain and pleasure. Her eyes went wide, flashing golden in the morning sun, the familiar crunch and snap of the change into game face extending through her entire body. Her skull flattened, a razor-fanged snout Pinocchio'd out of her face, and scales erupted all over her body in a fairly awesome Masque-in-X-Men kind of way. Hair receded into a coarse reddish mane running from the base of her skull down the serpentine length of her neck. Willow dropped to all fours, flexing deadly fishhook claws, and shredded her way out of the confining chemise with a hiss, her ears flat and mane bristling. 

Buffy had never been really clear on what kind of demon animated a vampire--whether they were all alike, or if it was a Pokemon thing and you had to stake them all. Demon-Willow looked like Demon-Spike in a lot of ways: claws, fangs, scales, horns--but she was less with the muscle and more with the slink, and in startling contrast to his subdued grey-green color scheme, her scales were a brilliant emerald streaked with tawny gold. Aw. My Little Hellbeast. Buffy held her breath and extended a hand. "Good Willow," she whispered. "Nice Willow." Willow's lips peeled back over her fangs, and she backed away with a snarl, hackles a-bristle and tail (longer than Spike's, with some majorly nasty-looking barbs on the end) lashing. This was most definitely not a Lassie-come-home moment. "It's me, remember? Best friend Buffy." 

Was that really true anymore? She and Willow had drifted apart in the last few years, each of them caught up in work and couple stuff--Willow with Tara, her with Riley and then Spike. And of course the whole destroy-the-world thing, never easy on a friendship. They hardly ever just hung out together anymore, and she should so do something about that when they got home, pig out on ice cream and rent Bridget Jones and perve on Colin Firth, except maybe Willow would rather perve on Renee Zellweger and that was exactly why they never had girls' nights anymore because ever since the gay thing she wasn't sure what constituted a girls' night for Willow and maybe they should actually talk about that some time except that would require the moving of lips and conveying of complex emotional concepts, things that Buffys were pretty terrible at doing in conjunction-- 

Demon-Willow moved like an unholy fusion of snake and mongoose, unpredictable and deadly. A mailed paw lashed out in a lighting-swift bid to separate Buffy's nose from the rest of her face. Buffy dodged and held both hands up. "Back it up and chill it out, Will, we're not going there. There will be no Honey, I Slayed your Girlfriend conversation with Tara, got it?" 

Willow froze, her eyes glowing like evil fireflies. Buffy followed the line of her gaze to the forest's edge. Spike was silhouetted in the shadow of the trees, just back from his early-morning hunt. Something cute, furry, and quite dead dangled from his jaws. He set his prize down and stalked towards Willow, extending his reptilian head. Nose met nose, and Willow's ears swivelled cautiously forward. She slunk round and about her sire, sniffing him thoroughly all over, and finally rubbed her cheek against his. Spike returned the greeting with an enthusiastic whipping of his stubby tail, and gave a little stiff-legged bounce, away and back again. After a moment's hesitation Willow followed him, and the two vampires bounded away through the long grass.

Buffy took a deep breath, releasing a tension she hadn't realized was there. She walked over to collect the thing Spike had brought them. It looked like a miniature deer with zebra stripes. She picked the damp, exsanguinated critter up and held it at arm's length, wrinkling her nose. Vampire spit, ew. "You're cute," she announced. "I think I'll name you Lunch." 

She'd definitely been in the wilderness too long.

"How'd it go?" Dawn asked, as Mini-Bambi sizzled over the fire. She stood on tiptoe and shaded her eyes, watching the vampires frolicking in the sun--and boy, how many things were wrong with that sentence? "I'm gonna go over and--"

 A cold shiver wrung Buffy's spine, and one of her least-favorite memories bubbled up: Willow, soulless, just after rising, spitting laughter and venom. "Don't," she said flatly, Slayer, not sister. "Let Spike handle her for awhile." She walked over to the packs and picked up her sword, the sword she'd taken from the body of the third demon who'd tried to kill her in Pylea. It hadn't been in the greatest shape--nicks, and rust--but she'd oiled it up and spent a couple of hours with the whetstone Dawn had stolen from the inn in Leetle Cheeping giving it a new edge. It came free of the scabbard with a smooth, cool snick! and she held it up, impaling the morning sunlight. 

Dawn gave her a sideways frown from behind a swinging curtain of chestnut hair. "What's wrong?"

 "I don't know. Just a feeling. Demon-type Spike warmed up to you right away, right?"

 "Yeah. And you saw when we caught up to you guys--he was out-of-his-head happy to see you."

 So it couldn't be that Willow didn't recognize her. As Dawn strode off in search of firewood, Buffy watched the Follies du Vampyrs. Willow wasn't just randomly bouncing around out there--she was systematically quartering the meadow, exploring, cataloguing, poking into every gopher-hole and hummock with single-minded curiosity. As she watched, Willow-beast rose up on her hindquarters, cat-snake head darting back and forth. Her eyes narrowed to topaz slits, calculating angles and distances. For an instant those eyes met Buffy's, and the acid fury seething in them snatched Buffy's breath away. 

In the space of that one lost breath, Willow metamorphosed into a streak of viridian and gold, shredding flowers to bright confetti beneath her claws. Buffy leaped to her feet, sword in hand, racing her own heartbeat across the meadow. Dawn froze at the sight of the hellbeast charging towards her: Wide blue eyes, startled pink mouth, a flower for the trampling. Only for a second. She grabbed a gnarled branch from the pile of firewood and hugged it to her shoulder like a mutant Louisville Slugger. Willow-beast eluded her clumsy swing and sprang, her jaws gaping in a shark-toothed grin. 

A lichen-colored blur smashed into Willow mid-leap and sent her tumbling. Buffy pulled up short, gasping in relief. Roars and snarls and caterwauls split the warm summer air, sending clouds of jewel-bright tree-lizards swarming into the sky from the surrounding forest, shrilling their alarm. When the dust cleared, Spike was looming over his get, his eyes red with fury and his clawed forepaws pinning her shoulders to the ground. Very deliberately, he set his fangs at her throat. Don't want to hurt you. Doesn't mean I won't.

Willow struggled for a moment, but Spike was half again her size, with the compact muscularity of a pit bull, and the struggle swiftly became a submissive, seductive wriggle. Her eyes managed to be ingratiating, sly, hurt, and sullen all at once. Just playing. Can't puppy take a joke?

Spike's teeth indented the supple golden hide of her throat a fraction of an inch more, but Buffy knew from long personal experience that he was two seconds away from rolling over in the face of feminine entreaty--in this case, probably literally. She gripped her sword and stepped forward, her face like flint. "I think that's enough for today, Will." 

Her answer was a baleful glare. What simmered in those eyes wasn't the impersonal violent glee Spike had taken in tearing apart Leetle Cheeping. That molten loathing was very personal. Even Spike seemed taken aback, and with a twist that would have broken the spine of any normal creature, Willow-beast squirmed free, aiming straight for Dawn.

Moved by a rage as pure and piercing as the blade she carried, Buffy lunged. The sword's point slammed into Willow's side, grated along a rib and plunged deep into the lung--for a vampire, just a flesh wound, but more than enough to get Willow's attention. Willow yowled and twisted, claws flailing the air, and Dawn fell back with a, crimson hash-marks blossoming across her shoulder. Buffy yanked her sword free and Willow broke for the trees with a screech of thwarted fury. 

"Dawn! Dawn, love, are you all right?" 

Spike was human again, cradling the shocky Dawn in his arms. He looked up at Buffy, his eyes as full of dumb, pleading confusion as any beast's. Buffy looked from her sword, still red with Willow's blood, to the life seeping drop by sanguine drop from her sister's shoulder. Something deep and furious roiled up within her and she realized, dimly, that she was growling, and the eyes reflecting back at her in the newly polished blade were as golden and wrathful as Willow's had been. "We've got to find her," she said, and every word was a blade at Willow's throat.

What's she going to do? How the hell should she know? Why does he always have to push like this, ask questions she's not ready to answer? Just once can't he let her wallow? If she turns, if she throws him off, she'll see herself in his eyes again. Spike is a mirror she can't shatter, can't turn to the wall. "I hate--" Willow? This world? Herself? 

Spike's arms tighten around her. His breath is cool and charnal against her neck. Smooth ivory skin becomes ridged and scaly hide, and that sinful mouth and aquiline nose lengthen into a long toothy muzzle. Just before human speech leaves him he growls, "This, Buffy?"

"No," she whispers, small and fierce. "Never that." 

His erection prods her backside, unabated. The shape of him is different now, but the weight is familiar and he still lists to the left, and that makes her strangely, absurdly happy. She grinds her hips into the silky-steely length of him with a little whimper, not sure if she's trying to buck him off or turn him on. It's like a full-body cuddle with a Gucci handbag, from suede-soft belly to the hard glossy ridges along his spine. She arches against him and claws dig sharp and sudden into her ribs, kneading her flesh, and his deep purring growl rumbles through her top to toes. A long sinuous tongue lashes out, licking the salt from her cheeks, and then his jaws clamp down on the back of her neck.

"Tighter," Dawn directed. "Not that tight! Do you want to cut off the circulation in my arm? For all we know, around here it would turn into Reanimated Zombie Arm and try to strangle me."

"And there would be great rejoicing," Buffy snapped, tying the bandage off. She stood up, hugging herself. The cave wasn't big, little more than a crack in a tumble of weathered boulders, but it was the only place they'd been able to find which was both enclosed enough to qualify as a dwelling-place and sturdy enough that an irate vampire wouldn't be able to rip it apart, thus rendering the lack of invitation moot. It had taken a good hour to find it, and another to move camp and get Dawn established there. She had to believe it was time well lost, but any more delay and she'd rip herself out of her own skin in frustration. "You're going to be all right," she said, wishing it weren't as much a question as a statement.

 Dawn nodded. "I'll be fine. If she comes back here, I'll get her to narrate her evil plan or something, and keep her occupied. But she won't, because you guys are going to track her down first and go Crocodile Hunter on her scaly ass." She looked from Buffy to Spike. "You can do it. Don't make me get out my pom-poms."

 That got the ghost of a smile out of Spike, but one look at Buffy's face exorcized it. "We'd best be off," he said. "Trail's cold enough as it is." He cupped Dawn's cheek in one hand. "You take care, Bit." 

They set off at a jog for the forest's edge where they'd last seen Willow. Spike crouched atop a fallen log, head thrown back and nostrils flaring to catch the scent. In the loose Pylean trews, with his hair a wild curly mess and his nose and bare shoulders a peeling, sunburnt red, he looked like a crazy Englishman playing at Robinson Crusoe. Buffy inhaled along with him, a reflex that never did a darned bit of--her eyes widened and her lips curled back over her teeth in a silent snarl. A faint elusive scent that made her Slayer's sense tingle, a scent that was both vampire and Willow. She growled softly. She couldn't pin down where it came from, exactly--

"This way." Spike took off, and she followed, trusting his keener nose to lead them. The suns were high now, copper hammers on the tops of their heads, and the mist had burnt completely away. She forced herself not to look over her shoulder--the cave was long out of sight--concentrating instead on the chase. Dead leaves and pine duff crunched beneath their boots as they coursed along between the trees, dodging thorny tangles of blackberry and festoons of wild grape. Just like racing through a cemetery, except with fewer tombstones. 

Good to move, at last, to expend her rage in action. Good to run with him at her side, to stretch her limbs beside her rightful match and mate. Better still to hunt with him, share with him the terror of their prey and the bloody satiation of the kill. She drew even with him, sniffing hungrily for traces of the red-haired one. Together they plunged down a mossy slope and into a brush-choked streambed, where both scent and pawprints disappeared into the rushing water. He cast about for a moment, upstream and down. "Bugger! Clever little bitch, Red is." 

The spoken words tore through the haze of the moment. Buffy blinked. Buffy. She was Buffy. He was Spike. She felt like one of those mornings where you arrive at work without any memory of driving there, and the panicked skip in her heartbeat had nothing to do with the run. "What set Willow off?" she asked, more to reassure herself that she could still speak than because she wanted to know.

Spike ducked his head, brow furrowing as he examined the opposite bank of the stream. "No idea." 

So very lying through his pointy white teeth. "Spike..."

"Ah. Well." He looked as if he'd have taken a free ticket back to Glory's penthouse if one had been offered. "One idea. Probably rubbish."

 "SPIKE!"

 "Right," he said, heaving a sigh. "You know how vamp families work, right?"

 She tried to avoid knowing that kind of stuff. "More or less. Vampire A sires Vampire B, object, mayhem, and is thereafter the boss of them."

 "Not quite that simple." He straightened and raked a hand through his disordered curls. "Suppose we were all vampires--"

 "We're not all vampires." Her voice was harsher than she'd intended.

 Spike looked irritated. "I'm attempting an analogy here, Slayer! Supposing we were all vampires, you'd be the Master, and I'm your consort, but I'm also a Master in my own right--got minions of my own, and such. Willow's my get, and Dawn's yours, and the Scoobies are your minions, which makes Will your minion as well as my get--" 

She fought down the urge to claw at his nose as Willow had. "They are NOT my minions!"

"What I'm trying to say is, I think Will's trying to move up in the world. Social climbing, like. She knew she couldn't take you on direct, so she went for your get." He shot her a pleading look. "What she done to Dawn--you know I love Bit like she was my own, but if Will'd wanted her dead, she'd be a bloody sight worse off now than that little tag of a scratch." 

Buffy opened her mouth, realized nothing good was going to come out of it, and shut it with a snap. After a moment she said, "I try. I really, really try to understand--but I'm not a vampire, and you know? I don't want to get this. You didn't see the look in her eyes, Spike. That wasn't ambition. She hates me. She hurt Dawn because it would hurt me--and she didn't care that it would hurt you, too." 

Spike folded into a dejected slump, and Buffy made one of the wisest decisions of her life and dropped the subject. "We don't have time to waste traipsing up and down this stream. You're the id expert--which way will she go from here?"

He rubbed his chin, avoiding her eyes. "She's not been feeding well. She'll be hungry, and I don't think she's in a mood to hunt rabbits. She'll go back to the road." 

Spike's intuition proved correct. Half a mile out from the stream they picked up Willow's trail again, heading back towards the last farm they'd passed. Buffy growled her satisfaction and raced on.  They'd avoided Pylean civilization since the day of the Great Leetle Cheeping Massacre, only once sending Spike and Willow into a village for supplies, as they were the only ones whose faces weren't currently adorning the large WANTED! REWARD! posters tacked up in every town square for twenty leagues around--at least, Spike's human face wasn't. How long was a league, anyway? 

Ahead of them the forest gave way to open fields: shaggy-leafed crug-grain, tall stalky corn covered with tiny blue-kerneled ears, and leafy rows of blood-turnip. Spike sighted down the rows of greenery to the rambling thatch-roofed farmhouse and barn, the muscles in his jaw tightening. "If we're lucky, she'll have fed and still be sleeping it off." He looked back at Buffy, the steel in his face dissolving into forlorn hope. "Not likely they'll be human here, is it?"

 He spoke out of concern for Willow, not her victims. His conscience, such as it was, was an intensely empirical affair, dependant on connection, however tenuous. It would be asking entirely too much to expect Spike to harbor warm fuzzies for humans from another dimension entirely. And that was only sensible, right? Why should she care about Ma and Pa Kent? They were nothing to her, or...or...no, that was wrong. Panic fluttered in her chest. Of course it mattered. How could she think it didn't matter?

 Asking too much was something she specialized in. "Not so lucky for them, is it?" she said, and took a thorny pride in the curt, weary twitch of his lips. "Spike, I--it's Willow. Believe me, I don't--we've just got to find her." 

That was the problem. It was Willow. There was only so far that It's the demon's fault would stretch. Willow hadn't been a demon when she'd allied with the First Evil and nearly killed Dawn using her as a power source for one of her not-quite-thought-out spells, or when she'd destroyed Spike's soul and very nearly the rest of him to magic Buffy back to life.  Xander had a few dozen steel pins in his legs courtesy of Willow, Tara was miserable, half the problems of the last year could be laid on Willow's lap, the thoughtless little bitch. No. That wasn't right either-- 

She could feel Willow's presence as they crossed the fields and crept stealthily up to the farmhouse, a magnesium flare in her bones. Spike stiffened beside her, growling low in his chest, and the scent of fresh blood slapped her in the face. Demon blood, bitter and rank; animal blood, bland but still alluring. And underneath the blood... 

Vampire. Willow. Hurt-Dawn-hurt-her-back-NOW!

Buffy surged out of hiding and across the barnyard with a feline leap, ripped the barn door half off its hinges and flung the shattered boards aside with a vengeful roar. Her fingers closed on a long jagged shard of wood. He was yelling--distraction; she'd listen later. Sunlight flooded into the barn's dark confines in her wake, illuminating the long aisle running between the stalls. Two flehegna, the ox-like creatures the Pyleans used as beasts of burden, lay stark and dead in the nearest stalls they'd half demolished in their dying frenzy, their throats torn open and their bellies ripped out. Blood and offal poured out into the dirt, offerings to some mad god, and flies flew up in clouds as She prowled forward, stake in hand. He was at her shoulder now--that was right and proper, but He was still talking. She snarled, wishing him silent; she'd close that mouth in more pleasurable ways later. He snarled right back, and that, in its way, was right and proper too. 

The Gathwok farmer lay spread-eagled in a pile of straw, pinned in place by the pitchfork through his throat. His pale, warty, red-eyed face was frozen in a rictus of pain and terror, and his tongue was a bloody rag within his gaping mouth. He hadn't died quickly. A set of two-inch claws had laid his torso open from gut to sternum, and a dozen jumbled, glistening organs lay in a straw-flecked heap beside the body, piled like bloody fruit. Each one had been carefully extracted, and, from the claw-marks and nibbled bits, examined.

"Quite the scholar, our Will," Spike (Spike, he was Spike, that was important, she had to remember) muttered. 

"Rroooouuuoooooowwrr!"

An emerald streak plummeted from the hayloft overhead, bowling her over and knocking the stake from her hand. She screamed in anger and slammed the heel of her hand into Willow's nose, drawing her knees up to fend off the hind claws kicking for purchase in her belly. She flung Willow off, slamming her into a support pole hard enough to make the barn shake, rolled to her feet and grabbed the pitchfork, wrenching it free of its anchorage in the dead Gathwok Clanner's throat. Willow hissed and skinned up the pole, flinging herself towards one of the open windows. Too late; Spike intercepted her in mid-air and the two vampires crashed to the ground, Spike going fangy and scaly as they hit. Willow broke away as Spike kicked his way out of his entangling britches. For an instant she looked towards the broken door and freedom; then her eyes went bloody with malice and she hurled herself at Buffy with a scream of challenge.

 She was fast. Maybe even faster than Spike. She twisted around the flashing tines of the pitchfork like a striking cobra, claws plowing scarlet furrows in Buffy's thigh, and darted away, eyes bright with vitriol and tongue lolling out in hellbeast mirth. 

Buffy fell to one knee, flipped the pitchfork end over end, rammed the handle into the ground and shoved herself upright. Weight on her good leg, she pivoted, swinging the pitchfork in a deadly arc. Willow soared over the tines and right into Spike's one-two sledgehammer paw-blows to her head. With a yowl of betrayal Willow kicked and rolled, and Buffy thrust the pitchfork through her ribcage and into the packed earth of the barn floor. Willow screamed, thrashing and struggling, bloody froth flying from her jaws. Ignoring her burning leg and the blood streaming down it, Buffy lunged for her dropped stake and turned back upon Willow in fury, relishing the fear that ignited in those tawny eyes. 

"Bit off a little bit more than you can chew, didn't you?" she snarled, jabbing the stake against the soft hollow where Willow's left foreleg met her torso. The words came out thick and clumsy, from someplace far away. Some distant part of her mind noted that she was speaking with the slight lisp that came with fangs. "You want to take me on, bitch, you take me on. Not my sister. Me!  What did I ever do to you? Tell me, Willow! You almost killed Spike, you almost killed Dawn, you almost killed me, you almost killed EVERYBODY! What did I do to you?"

Whatever answer lay written in those resentful eyes, Buffy couldn't read it. Willow cried out, a come-hither trill of promise and fear. Spike crawled across the bloody ground and nosed her horn-crested head with a little whine. Willow whimpered, licking his muzzle and baring her throat in extravagant entreaty. 

Comprehension seized Buffy in a white-hot blaze of fury. She snarled, whirling on Spike, who laid his ears back, looking from one of them to the other beseechingly. There were no more words in her, but they'd never needed words. Choose! was in every line of her body, and Spike, with one sorrowful look at Willow, rose to his feet and padded over to stand at his Slayer's side. With a snarl of triumph Buffy raised the stake on high, and Spike threw back his head, and howled. 

The black despair in that long-drawn wail burnt through the haze in her mind like the suns burning off the morning fog, slammed her back into herself with a suddenness and force that left her rigid and shaking, her muscles afire with tension. Buffy. I am Buffy Summers. I don't do this. I won't do this. She stared down at the stake in her hand, her fingers curled about the splintered wood like some pink and alien starfish, and flung it across the barn as hard as she could. 

Hope and adoration made luminous golden moons of Spike's eyes--no fear in him, not of her, not even now, when she was holding onto herself by shreds and tatters. She took his horned and terrible head in both hands and kissed his cold leathery nose. "Mine," she said. "So she can see." 

Spike looked startled, and then he reared up, wrapping his forepaws around her shoulders and clamping down hard on her shoulder with his fangs. Gritting her teeth against the firey pain in her thigh, she took his full weight, and aimed a pointed glare at Willow: Mine. Got it? Spike worried her shoulder lovingly for a second before letting go--none too soon; she could feel him getting excited back there, and damned if she was going to bow that far to demon instincts, no matter how tingly that scary newly-ascendant part of her was getting in turn. Point made, Spike hopped off and strode over to Willow. He placed one forepaw on her throat, and jerked his head at Buffy, beckoning. 

She crawled over and knelt at Willow's side, staring into those incandescent eyes. Connection. There had to be a connection, right? Solid, concrete. Vampires didn't deal in abstractions. If Tara were here, or Xander--but they weren't. Slowly, she placed her hand next to Spike's (claws, oh God, she had claws, tiny delicate claws next to Spike's huge ebony scimitars, but claws!) and gazed down at Willow for a long moment.  She took hold of the pitchfork handle and tore it free in one smooth motion. Willow howled, and Spike threw his full weight against her, pinning her down with a gentle savagery as he began to clean her wounds, long pink tongue lapping away the blood and barn-filth. 

Buffy got up and tore a strip off her much-abused tunic, dipping it in the watering trough at the nearest stall. She dropped to her knees again and began to help Spike wash away the grime. "Willow," she whispered. "I don't know how much you understand. But however mad I am at you--and God, I'm mad--we're friends. I want--you're not my minion, get it? You're my friend. You've saved all our lives a million times. You're the smartest person I know, and I--you didn't have to do any of this. You chose to stick around Sunnydale and fight evil, and--I know you gave up a lot to do it. Look, I'm probably never going to finish college, and you know what? I don't care. I suck at college. But you don't, and you gave up going to a good one for me. And--and--you lost your magic to save Spike's life. OK, he wouldn't have been in danger if you hadn't messed up the portal spell, but when you realized you'd made a mistake you gave up everything to fix it. I don't know if I ever said thank you for that. I don't know if there is enough thank you for that. I love you, Will. I don't know what I'd do without you, and I don't want to find out. And Spike loves you too, even if he won't say so because he's a big ol' jerk, but he does. And--" 

Scales fused and melted back into pale creamy skin, peppered now with rusty flecks, like dried blood--Spike didn't freckle, but Willow sure did. She lay splayed there in the bloody trampled straw, naked and vulnerable as a shelled snail, and crumpled in upon herself in wordless, shattered horror, tears welling up in her big green eyes. 

They don't fit together in quite the same ways any longer. But they've always been inventive and this is far from the first time she's been down on her hands and knees with her ass in the air, leaning hard into his thrusts as the newdifferent shape of him stretches and fills in newdifferent ways. And it's good, maybe not better, but good, the sharp bright pain of his fangs exerting just enough pressure to hold her still as he pistons into her, the joyful litany of snarls and growls and whines in her ear. There are constants in the universe: no matter what shape he takes, Spike never shuts up during sex. 

He comes again before she does, seizing up with a rapturous yowl. Self-restraint is not in Demon-Spike's vocabulary. She collapses face-down in the blankets, warm and tingly and not there yet, but that's OK because this was for him, really. But Spike is Spike is Spike; he slides out and flops down between her legs, blissed out and panting. A second later a cold nose nudges its way between her lathered, aching thighs and takes a deep appreciative sniff. That tongue flicks out again and--oh. OH. This almost makes up for the lack of fingers. He's always had a talented tongue, and now it's twice as long and flexible and--OH! Half a dozen delayed orgasms hit her at once and she writhes and moans and claws at the blankets and oh, God, that rumbly purry growl with his nose buried good and deep in the moist warm folds of her, the vibration going straight to her clit.  She's melting like ice cream and he's licking her up like he's on a mission from God not to let a single drop hit the sidewalk, and she bucks and howls again, and again--

Buffy hadn't wanted to take anything from the farmhouse.  Spike was more practical--the owner was dead now, and nothing to be done about it, and if they didn't loot the place someone else would. They fought about it, of course, but in the end she gave in and Spike arrived back at the cave like a larcenous Santa with a sackload of presents slung over one shoulder. Dawn was going through the spoils now--real food, bread and eggs and fruit and bacon, better blankets, changes of clothes. Buffy turned away and leaned against the cavern wall. Maybe she'd appreciate it tomorrow. How many demons she didn't know at all had died, she wondered, as a result of their mission on behalf of a demon she barely knew? Would it matter more or less if Lorne were human, or if that farmer had been? 

A Slayer couldn't afford thoughts like that, but they kept popping up anyway, two for the price of one. She shook her head and walked out to the mouth of the cave, where they'd pitched their ratty little rope-and-blanket tents.   Spike had Willow fixed up in a little nest in the nearest one, ast there was a tacit agreement that she didn't get an invitation to the cave just yet.  He watched Willow with hawk-eyed attention while she fed on the weird pink-eyed muskrat-looking thing he'd brought her. 

"So," Buffy said, sitting down cross-legged by the side of Willow's pallet. "About this theory of yours." 

Willow pushed her dinner away with a shudder. Her wounds were half-healed already, but she was pale and papery, a locust-shell husk of herself.  "Yeah. Strangely, I have a few ideas about that." 

Buffy bit her lip. She had no idea where this conversation ought to go, but it seemed vital that it go somewhere. "And those would be?" 

"The whole thing with Spike...God, I'm so embarrassed." Willow's shamed eyes dropped to her hands, white fingers knotting in the sleek brown fur of her meal. "I don't really--I mean, I don't, because Tara, and you, and I'd never, and I don't, not that way, not him. But..." she waved a hand helplessly at Spike. "He's my sire. If we were all vampires--"

"Which we're not," Buffy interposed with a glare at Spike, who'd gone a trifle glassy-eyed at the prospect.

 "Sorry," he mumbled. "Went to my happy place there for a minute." He picked up the drained muskrat and scrambled to his feet. "I'll just get rid of this, why don't I?"

 "Anyway, I have this huge urge to call Oz the minute we get home and tell him that I now totally understand about the Veruca thing," Willow said despondently. "Apparently the demon of me is a big ol' ho."

 "Seems to be going around," Buffy muttered. 

"And the rest of it..." Willow leaned back, closing her eyes, and licked the bright smears of muskrat blood staining her lips.  "I should have realized Angel was the clue. When we're turned...whoever we are then, that's what shape the demon gets poured into. What it sets up as. That person, those feelings, minus a soul and plus a whole lotta bloodust. Angel's demon-self isn't who he is now. It's who he was, all those years ago, hating the whole world. And mine--mine's who I was. Who I'd built myself up to be.  And I--I wasn't a very nice person when I made Spike turn me." 

She was shaking. Buffy reached out, hesitated, her hand hovering over Willow's. They used to touch, didn't they? When had they stopped? She order her hand to drop, her fingers to close on Willow's wrist. She wasn't sure Willow noticed, but maybe that wasn't important. 

"It's not like the demon part of us can't change. Look at Spike. But the thing with me and Angel, we've got souls, and so the demon part of us doesn't have to change. It's just...suppressed. And when it gets unsuppressed...of course I hated you." Willow's eyes lifted at last to meet Buffy's stunned gaze. "You're the one who had the bright idea to force a soul on me, Buff. And the me part of me? Grateful, believe me, but the demon part of me, not so much." She let her head roll sideways, staring into the fire. "You can't know what it's like, that... freedom. To look back on all the stuff I did and not care, or--or think it was funny, and cool, and want to do it again. That was my heaven.  And to have that taken away..." She rubbed the bandages across her ribs and winced. "I think there may be some resentment issues from the me part of me, too." 

Buffy remembered Dawn lying pale and stunned across scrawled cabalistic symbols, remembered the horrible flayed thing which she and Spike had discovered in the sewers, remembered the First restoring her memory of a very different heaven. The burden of that bliss lies in the back of her mind like a burning coal even now, banked for the most part, but every now and then flaring to painful life. Her fingers curled around the imaginary circumference of a stake.  "Yeah. I get that." She took a deep breath. "You know what you have to do, right?"

"Never let that thing out of me again," Willow said fervently, pressing her cheek into the blankets. 

"No! I mean, we'll put you on a leash and a Hannibal Lecter mask if we have to, but you were right--you need to learn how to control this thing. How to control yourself." She clenched her fingers into a fist, banishing the feel of phantom wood, and looked down at her pink, shell-like, and entirely human nails. "Or it'll control you." She willed a smile into reality. "So first thing tomorrow? Walkies!"

Afterwards they lie tangled up together. That's another constant, his craving for contact, for connection, which grants her leave to crave it as well. She strokes him, tracing the subtle mottlings of grey and green that chase across his flanks. He stretches and melts back into human shape, kissing her shoulder. There's a tiny trickle of blood on her collarbone where one of his fangs broke the skin, and he licks it off slowly, savoring the tastes of salt and copper, murmuring sleepy post-coital endearments. It doesn't even occur to her to marvel that Demon-Spike paid no attention to it.

In Pylea, Spike has a reflection. When he's all demony the fact that he can see himself delights him, and he'd preen for hours if she'd let him. When he's wearing his human face he pretends it's no big deal--thoroughly modern vampire here; he's seen himself in photographs and security cameras a million times. But she still catches him sometimes, gazing into pools in fascination, wiggling his eyebrows and making faces. Spike in demon-form is still, somehow, Spike, refined down to his most basic elements--impulsive, violent, loving. The intensity and purity of his emotions is both terrifying and seductive. Spike the man loves her; Spike the demon worships her. This is the wellspring of everything creepy and obsessive in vampire love, but at the same time it's an enduring tribute to the man Spike once was. William is long dead, but he stamped his legacy on Spike unto eternity.

Giles always said that there were two kinds of monster. If the day comes that her human shell is stripped away, what will be left behind? Whatever lives within her is hers to shape, hers to mold with every decision she makes, every thought she harbors. She clings to Spike in the darkness, loving the monster in her arms with all her might, and hoping that someday she can learn to love the monster in her own heart.