Author's Note: Uh, yeah. This takes place the morning after the events in 'Pangs'. This piece was originally sort of a sequel/prequel to 'Communication', but it doesn't really have anything to do with it other than a vaguely similar B/S pre-relationship theme. But you should still read my other fic because this is a blatant self-promotion. This fic also turned out kind of...fluffy, for me at least. I'm not sure if it's too fluffy, so be sure to review. If nothing else, have a nice release from the S6 angst...
 
 

Life.

Oh sweet life...sweet blood!

Blood. Devour. Sweet and warm and fresh.

He had been so hungry. The pain, that terrible ache within him... It was dissipating. It was bearable now. It was leaving...

As the agony of his blood lust begin to fade, his awareness began to extend beyond the vital liquid he was greedily drinking. There was something...no, someone holding him up. Provider, nurturer...Sire...

He unconsciously curled himself tighter into the embrace of his companion. He couldn't move far, though. Too weak... He realized that the only thing holding him up so that he could feed was the hand tangled roughly in his hair.

He nuzzled the shoulder his head rested against lightly. Woman, he realized as he chin came to rest against the soft flesh of her breast. Beautiful woman, wonderful woman, mother, Sire... Human?

His hunger-addled mind tried to process this last fact. Warm body, steady breathing, strong pulse, blood flowing beneath soft skin: human, definitely human. Not Sire.

Who? What? Where?

The flow of blood into his mouth stopped, and he let out a soft whimper as his stomach continued to moan. Almost instantly, a second mug was placed beneath the straw he was drinking through. He sighed in relief as the tangy, coppery taste once again flooded through him.

He was beginning to be able to make out his surroundings now. I'm inside. A room. A living room, it looks like. Chairs and couches...a little kitchen off to one side, books and papers strewn everywhere. Burning lights?...lamps! I'm in someone's home.

OK, think, mate, he chided himself. How did you get here? And how did you end up half-starved? Bits and pieces of memories started to piece together as his mind regained full control over his body.

Dru, my dark goddess... She left me, he remembered with a slight pang of anguish. And then I went...to Sunnyhell! That's where I went. Gonna kill the Slayer, make her pay...

Something gone wrong. Blinding white room, smell of complete terror, trapped, walls closing in, don't drink the blood it's drugged, they do experiments on you... Captured! He'd been captured, that was it.

For a second he began to struggle, believing himself to still be in that prison. The woman beside him just gripped his scalp tighter, rigidly locking his head in place and forcing him to keep drinking.

It's over, he suddenly remembered, instantly calming down. I escaped...I went after the Slayer... They'd done something to me, couldn't feed, tried to but couldn't bite...

Ran away, they were chasing me... Was so hungry, couldn't feed, couldn't eat, no one to help me... Couldn't tell anyone, couldn't trust anyone, no one'd understand... except her. She'd understand, can't let me die, not like this... Went to the Slayer...

The flood of memories stopped soon after that, and he realized with horror where he must be. In fact, now that it occurred to him to check, the smell of the woman beside him wasn't so much human as...

"Slayer?" he practically whimpered, dreading to hear the response to his inquiry.

"I would say that's it's nice that you've decided to rejoin us in the land of the living," that brash, obnoxious, and oh-so-sarcastic voice began, "but it's not nice, and you're not living."

"Slayer..." he sighed, and for just one instant he was too weak to maintain his end of their mutual loathing. Rather he closed his eyes again and buried his face in her shoulder.

"You better now?" The hand on his hand lightened its grip a bit. It was almost...caressing? him. "Not that I care," she suddenly snorted, and her hand suddenly released him.

His head lolled to the side for a second before he managed to summon enough strength into his neck muscles to hold his own head aloft. It took great effort, and he wasn't sure how long he could maintain it.

"What happened?" he asked, desperate to hide his complete and utter helplessness.

She seemed to somehow realize his predicament, though, and repositioned her hand in his hair without comment. With her free hand, she reached over to grab a third mug of  microwave-warmed blood and didn't speak until he'd begun drinking again.

"Giles woke up this morning to find you in game face and snarling up a storm. He called me over to make sure you didn't break out of your restraints while he ran to the butcher's. He tried you feed you, but you practically ripped his hand off. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to bite the hand that feeds you?"

Spike managed to give her a hate-filled glare and was quite proud of himself given how weak he was feeling at the moment.

"You started screaming in pain then," she continued softly. "It was like... like what you said happened when you tried to bite Will. But you still wouldn't let Giles feed you, so I told him to get out so that I could take care of it."

He finished the blood and easily pulled free of her grip, feeling his strength returning by the second. "S'pose you think I owe you one now, Slayer?"

"One?" her voice was indignant. "You barge in here, trash my Thanksgiving, go psycho on Giles, make me force feed you through a straw, and you think you only owe me one? You owe me for eternity for this, Spike!"

"No one said you had to help me," he scoffed. "And I don't owe you a thing! It's all your fault all of this happened in the first place!"

"My fault?!" she exclaimed in indignation. "How could this possibly be my fault?!"

"If I hadn't'a come after you, those bloody commandos never would'a got me!"

"So it's my fault that you tried to kill me? What bizarre fantasy world are you living in, Spike?"

"I would have stuck to our deal and never come back if you hadn't turned Dru against me!"

"Dru was a skanky ho! I didn't need to turn her against you! She would have done it all on her own!"

His eyes narrowed. "Don't you ever talk about Dru like that! 'Least I wasn't fool enough to shag the soul outta Peaches."

"How was I supposed to know about the curse? There is no way you can blame that one on me, buster!"

"Just watch me," he pouted.

"Baby," she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Er...I, er, take it that Spike is back to normal?" an anxious voice broke up their little sulk-fest.

"Giles!" Buffy sprung up from her seat on the arm of Spike's chair as if she had been burned. "Um... yes, Spike's fed. And as annoying and snarky as ever."

"Ah yes... good." Giles was cradling a bandaged hand, Spike now noticed. "Or not good," he paused to consider the now-lucid and still somewhat dangerous vampire scowling at him. He gave out a short exasperated sigh and pulled off his glasses to begin cleaning them. "What are we going to do with him?" he asked Buffy, polishing one of the lenses.

She looked at the absolute murderous expression on her mortal enemy's face. For some reason he seemed to be giving Giles the evil-stare-of-death. It was at that point that she realized that he still had dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was still tinged slightly blue, and his shaking was due not to anger but to frailty...

"Get some rest, Giles," she suggested. "You look tired. I can handle Spike."

"Yes, well, I suppose being kept up all night by a howling vampire does tend to leave one a bit... exhausted," he replaced his glasses on his nose. "We can discuss this in the evening."

After Giles left the room, she watched Spike collapse back into the chair, closing his eyes wearily. "You should probably get some sleep, too," she suggested softly.

"Stay..." he whispered softly, his eyes still shut.

Buffy gave him an incredulous look.

"They're after me. Don't want to be alone," he explained, not even needing to see her to know the expression on her face.

"Way to keep your priorities straight," Buffy flung her hands up in the air in exasperation. "Because it's sooo much more likely that a bunch of commandos are going to track you down and burst through that door than, say, me staking you!" dripping sarcasm again.

Spike smiled slightly. " 'Least you staking me would be a fitting death."

"Ugh! You're deranged, you know that?"

"Mmm-hmm," he was drifting off now. "Thanks, Slayer."

"For what?" she demanded.

"Fer getting the Watcher out of here so I can sleep..."

"Figured it was the only way to get you to be quiet for more than ten seconds straight."

"Mmmf." That had sounded like a tired laugh.

She stayed silent for a minute, half expecting him to break her reveries with a sarcastic remark. "Spike?" she finally said hesitantly. No response. "You still awake?" The only answer was a low rumbling sound that it took Buffy a second to place. Once she did, she had to cover her hand with her mouth to hold back her giggles.

Deciding that it was probably a good idea to get out of the room before she burst out into hysterics, she went upstairs to see if Giles was still awake. He was, and was standing in the hallway, digging through a handful of parchments, mumbling to himself.

"Wow, you can even research in your sleep," she teased.

Giles' head shot up in surprise. "Er... yes, well, I'm... not sleeping... as I'm sure you can see."

"You OK?" Buffy asked. " 'Cuz you seem more flustered than usual."

"That would be because there was a vampire in my living room all night," he agreed. "Is he...?"

"Asleep," she affirmed. "For now. Giles, what are we going to do with him?"

"Well, I suppose the first thing is to make sure that he really is harmless."

"And if he is?"

Giles sighed. "We need to get whatever information he has out of him, and then we have to decide whether or not to..."

"Stake him?" she grimaced slightly.

"It is what you do," the ex-Watcher pointed out.

"Yeah, but while he's harmless and tied to a chair and after we went through all the trouble of feeding him..." she protested.

"He is still a soulless demon," Giles pointed out. "You shouldn't feel like it's... Murder?"

"Unsporting," Buffy clarified.

Giles couldn't help but smile slightly at that. "Unsporting, yes... I can see how you might feel that way."

She gave him a small grin in return. "Just promise me one thing?" she turned serious again.

"And that is?" the pensive look had returned.

"Let me finish him off."

"I suppose that would be... sporting," Giles agreed.

"Thanks," she let out a breath of relief that she hadn't even known she'd been holding. "And you," her voice took on a mock-parental tone, "need to sleep. Shoo, shoo!" she snatched the scrolls from his hands. "Go now! I'll keep the big, bad vampire from annoying you back into consciousness."

He gave her a grateful look and turned to go to bed.

Slowly she descended the stairs, absentmindedly setting the parchments down on an end table as she made her way over to her sleeping foe.

"What have you gotten yourself into this time?" she sighed, brushing a few errant peroxide blond curls from his forehead. "And what are you going to do about it now?" Even she wasn't sure whether she was referring to herself or the unconscious vampire.

He unconsciously leaned into her hand, and the low vibration in his throat intensified.

"That's the problem with change," she informed him. "Things that used to be so clear are suddenly hazy, and... how am I ever supposed to kill a vampire who purrs so adorably?!" She finally couldn't refrain from commenting on his amusing condition.

She began giggling again as the vibrations deepened and tickled her hand.

"And thanks but no thanks for throwing another monkey wrench into my life," she said, trying to sound annoyed but failing miserably.

"Who knows what comes next," she began to pull her hand away but stopped when he started whimpering, "but one thing's for certain. With you around, things are bound to be... interesting..."

He murmured slightly as if in agreement, and she sighed when she realized that extricating herself from this situation would probably only succeed in waking him up. She sat back down on the arm of the chair and let his head return to its resting place on her shoulder.

"What am I going to do with you?" she yawned, the purring sound relaxing her as well. "What are you thinking?"

Safe, comfortable, content... Belong here.

And the two mortal enemies slept.

I'm still not sure about that ending. This one had a good start and kind of fizzled out, but it was calm and fun to write. Be sure to give me lots of feedback, since this one'll probably go through a few re-writes...