FAMILY

AUTHOR: Little Mouse (elf_night@hotmail.com)

DISCLAIMER: Once again, Joss', not mine. Still a lucky man.

WARNINGS: For explicit m/m stuff, and violence, and remembered abuse, and language, and lots of other stuff.

ARCHIVE: Please ask first.

SUMMARY: AU! Spike isn't in 'love' with Buffy, but has told Giles' the story of Drusilla turning him. He has the chip, but no soul. Angel's in LA. Anya doesn't exist. I moved forward the 'meltdown' of Spike's chip a bit.

A/N: We interrupt this story’s regularly scheduled angst to bring you the following porn:

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Spike."

The name jolted him out of a deep sleep, blue eyes flying wide open in shock. Not a single member of his family had ever called him that except for Drusilla, and she...

...oh. It wasn’t a member of his family.

"How’d ya get in here?" he asked, staring at Willow, who had somehow managed to appear in beside of the bed.

The bed his Sire happened to not be in at the moment, Spike noted, and frowned at the red-haired girl in confusion.

"I have my ways," she said, trying for an airy, mysterious tone.

"Don’t think ya should be in here, Red," Spike said slowly, keeping the sheet firmly in place as he sat up. "Could get eaten, ya know?"

"Not within the next ten minutes, I won’t," Willow said cryptically, "do you want to be here?"

"Huh?" Spike’s brain couldn’t quite register the question.

"Do you want to be here?" she repeated, putting emphasis on the words. "I know that you ran from Angel at first, but do you want to be here now? Buffy thinks that you won’t come on your own because he’s pampering you, and Xander says..."

"Come to where?" he interrupted, still staring at her.

"To Giles’," she replied, rolling her eyes to show that he should have known that, "we’ve got a room set up, um... cloaked, I guess you’d call it, that they won’t be able to sense you while you’re in there. Angel and his vampires won’t, I mean."

Spike stared at her a few seconds longer, then shot a quick glance around the luxurious room he was in. He might not want to be back with his family - he knew that their loving act was going to start wearing thin on them soon, but he had to admit that, at least so far, this was pretty comfortable. Warm bed, a room full of games, telly, music and food, hot showers, and - okay, and plenty of sex and Sire’s blood. He might be a prisoner - a naked prisoner, at that - but as far as cages went, this cage was bloody well a gilded one.

He could only imagine what the room at Giles’ place would be like - he’d prolly have clothes, true, but he’d also have four bags of filthy, lukewarm pigs’ blood a day, a toss-up of whether he’d get a cot or bare floor to sleep on, and, if he was really, really lucky, a blanket.

Yeah - he did not think so.

"Look, Red," he sighed, "this - I don’t think this is the best idea you lot have ever had. Would just make ‘em all mad, right? And since when do you and yer precious Scoobies bother enough to try and rescue me?"

"Giles’ needs to talk to you!" Willow protested, giving him the big-eyes, ‘You Have to Help Us!’ look, "He needs to know what Angel is planning so we can start getting ready - so Buffy can train, so Tara and I can learn the right spells, and..."

"I dunno what he’s doing," Spike interrupted again, "Poof don’t tell me anything. Barely even been out o’this room."

The look on Willow’s face told him right away that she didn’t believe him.

"Giles also said that you might be reluctant to come because you like　whatever Angel’s planning," she accused, giving him a definite fish-eye.

Spike rolled his own eyes in return. "How’m I supposed to like something when I don’t even know what it is?"

"You could just be saying you don’t know what it is! You could be being a big, lying meanie-head again! For all I know, I’ll be hiding in closets again by tomorrow! I don’t like that, you know, it’s dark and musty in there and sometimes it smells really bad and..."

"Does this look like I’m part of his little plans?" Spike broke into the babble by sticking his foot, with its manacled ankle, out from under the bedclothes.

"Do you think I don’t know anything about vampires?" Willow gave it no more than a scornful glance. "That’s just metal. You could break out of that without even trying."

Spike resisted rolling his eyes again. "S’got a spell on it, Red. Can’t be opened or broke without..." He broke off as Willow, instantly fascinated, grabbed his foot and pulled his ankle up to eye level, nearly tumbling Spike off the bed.

He made a quick grab at the escaping covers, then yanked his ankle out of her hand and glared. "Watch it, Red - you’re gonna end up with an eyeful that you don’t want if you’re not careful."

"Ewww, you’re naked?!" Willow sounded disgusted, but there was a sudden gleam in her eye that had Spike a little worried, "you sleep naked when you’re in Angel’s room? You know what Buffy’s going to think when I tell her?!"

"I don’t give a flying fuck what that bitch thinks," Spike snapped, "whyn’t ya just shuffle on outta here? Maybe I don’t want to be here, but I don’t much fancy the kind of cage you lot prolly got set up. So like I said - shuffle on out of here."

Willow folded her arms, huffed, and moved on from the fish-eye to the stink-eye. "Well, tough cookies, Mr Meanie; I’m not leaving without you."

Spike gave her one of his nastiest grins and wriggled his ankle. "Tough cookies right back at ya, Red, but this says I’m stayin’ right here."

"Pfft!" was Willow’s reply, and she started digging through the bag that Spike only now noticed she was carrying. "I can take care of that in just a second."

"Ya don’t even know what it does," Spike protested, tossing the covers back over his leg and edging away from her. Most of Willow’s spells had a way of going spectacularly wrong; he had no desire for his leg to explode.

They took too bloody long to grow back.

"Don’t be such a baby," Willow snapped, pulling out a little enameled box and opening it, "Giles made these specially for locks - any locks, regular or magic." She opened the box and soft light lit her pretty face. She lifted out a tiny, glowing orb and advanced on the bed.

"Still think it’s a bad idea," Spike protested, scrambling away.

Willow just sighed and grabbed the chain - she was no match for Spike’s strength, even as weak as he still was, but she managed to follow the chain - beneath the c overs, which Spike loudly protested. When she reached his ankle - Spike wanted to kick her away but knew what the chip would do to him - she smashed the orb into the manacle’s lock.

Both of them stared at it, not realizing that they wore perfectly identical expressions of curiosity and nervousness.

The lock made a few funny fizzing sounds, spat out a couple of sparks, and then snicked open.

"It worked!" Willow crowed, then frowned. "It was a lot more boring than I expected, though."

Spike slowly slid his foot out of the metal half-circle, still a little nervous. "Ya sure it ain’t gonna explode when we stop looking or something?"

Willow scowled and opened her mouth, then paused. "No, actually," she said, giving the cuff a mildly alarmed look, "maybe we should, um, go."

Spike groaned, but rolled out of bed - taking the sheet with him. "Shuffle around, at least, an’ lemme throw on some clothes."

"Um, yeah," Willow turned around reluctantly, glancing at her oversized watch as she did, "but hurry, okay? There’s only about three minutes left."

"Three minutes of what?" Spike asked, jerking open the closet door and throwing on the first shirt he grabbed.

"Of the spell."

"What spell?" Pants were a little harder, but he spotted a pair of loose cloth exercise pants with a drawstring waist that would work.

"We’ve got another spell on the house," Willow said, glancing back to keep an eye on the anklet, like she thought it was a snake planning to bite her, "sort of a ‘don’t-see-me’ spell - I’m not sure, Giles did it. It works for about fifteen minutes but it took me five of those to find you. Xander doesn’t give good enough directions. We’ve only got about two minutes left."

"Shit," Spike said, abandoning his search for shoes, "let’s get out of here, then,"

"Finally," she sighed a huge sigh of relief, "I don’t want Angel sucking my blood out." She headed for the door.

"Deb or Dru, more likely," Spike said absently, casting one wistful look toward the curtained door to the fun room before he followed her, "they’d want the magic from ya."

"They can get that from my blood?!" Willow stopped at the doorway and stared at him.

"Yeah, sure," Spike edged past her, opening the door and peering down the hall, not fully trusting that spell. "C’mon, Red, not got much time, remember?"

"Does it work both ways?" Willow asked, scurrying after him as he darted down the dark hallway, "Is there a way I could get magic from them?"

"Dunno," Spike shrugged. There were ways - Dru had stolen more than one other vampire’s magic in all the long years that they had been together - and they’d been chased by plenty who were intent on taking Dru’s. He had no intention of telling Willow that, though.

"Because it would sure help if Angel didn’t have magic vamps with him," Willow had to hurry to keep up as Spike ghosted his way through the mansion, "It’s not that I want more magic just for me. I mean, it would be nice - does what they know about magic - would that transfer, too, if we figure out how to do it? That would be so neat! Don’t you think so?"

"I think you better quit babbling before someone hears you," Spike said, "Your spell’s about to wear off."

"Eep! Where’s the back door?!" Willow looked around, big green eyes frantic.

"I dunno," Spike sighed, "ain’t been out of that room but twice. Maybe that’s it." He had just spotted a nice, big wooden door, an elaborately carved affair. It was either an exit of the entrance to some big, important room that would probably have one or more of his Brothers or Sisters in it.

Oh, well. It was a chance he’d have to take.

He eased the door open, Willow hovering at his shoulder like a little red-haired shadow.

"Oh, it’s a garden!" she exclaimed, sounding relieved until she spotted the high stone wall that surrounded the pretty patch of flowers and fountains. "Oh, no - what now?"

Spike frowned. "Well, we could go back and try to find another way out..."

Somewhere in the house behind them, there came an ear-splitting roar of total outrage.

"...or," Spike said slowly, staring at the house with his own eyes huge, "you could hang on to me and I can get us over this wall."

"Works for me," Willow said in a tiny, frightened voice.

"Yeah - c’mon, then," Spike wanted out of there - and he wanted out of there now.

That was Angelus’ ‘I’m Going to Kill Someone’ roar.

Willow put her arms around his neck and he slung an arm around her waist in return. Hoping he was strong enough for this, he held her tight and leapt to the top of the wall. He just made it - wobbled a bit and had to hang on with his toes - but he did it.

"Hold on tight," he warned Willow, looking down, because the ground was a lot further away on this side. Trust Angelus to find himself some kind of damn walled fortress.

They hit the ground with a jarring thump - Willow lost her hold and landed on her arse. "Oof!"

"Sorry," Spike said absently, not really concerned. He looked back at the house, where several voices had now joined in to the angry howls. "Think we better run, Red."

"I think you’re right," she said, scrambling up, "C’mon, Giles and Buffy are waiting."

Spike started to say something - stopped - thought furiously - then, "I dunno, Red - I think we got a better chance if we split up. Two targets are harder to catch than one, y’know."

"‘Kay," Willow didn’t protest, since the howls were getting louder - and closer. "I’ll - um - see you there, then." She took off in a flurry of curly hair, fuzzy sweater, and long skirt, her bag flying out and nearly whacking him in the stomach.

"Maybe in the next century," Spike muttered, shaking his head at her naive trust, then he was rabbiting away through the darkness, his blood-bond telling him that Angelus was getting closer to where he’d been - prolly following his own blood-bond. Well, he had an idea of what to do about that. He darted through a small stand of trees, recognizing his surroundings as being on the very outskirts of Sunnydale. He grabbed a few leaves as he went, and took a few detours through some gardens once he was in town, then headed straight for his crypt.

He’d have liked to lay down some sort of misleading scent trail like he had before, but instinct told him that he didn’t have enough time. He scattered the leaves and flowers he’d gathered around the outside and throughout the inside of his crypt, knowing that Deb, Tomas and Dru would recognize them even if the others didn’t. He couldn’t remember the exact names of the vegetation, but he’d seen them used often enough. They ought to work.

He made sure a few flower petals were stuck to the rug - thankfully still hiding his trapdoor - then dropped down into the musty darkness.

A quick sniff gave him no scent of anyone, vampire or human, who had been here besides himself. Satisfied, he fixed the rug and bolted the trap door, then collapsed on the bed, exhausted. His nerves were wrapped wire-tight, and the chip was giving him little warning shocks - he knew he needed to calm down before it decided to jolt him a good one. He shook the dust off of his pillow, then snuggled down under his little pile of purloined blankets.

Then swore softly when he realized that he already missed the comfort of the heated bed he’d shared with Angelus.

He hated being cold.

He hated his Family more, though, so he forced himself to forget it, resolutely ignoring the hunger he was already starting to feel and shutting his eyes. He let his muscles relax, going limp against the old mattress. If he was asleep, it would make Angelus’ blood-bond to him a little weaker.

Which would, in turn, strengthen his little deception.

He should be safe long enough to come up with some sort of plan. Maybe he could lurk about, following his own Family’s scent trails so they’d be confused about his, until he actually did figure out what was going on. He’d certainly suffered through enough of Angelus’ elaborate planning in the past to have a good chance at discovering what the plot was.

Then he could use his knowledge as bargaining power with Giles - going to see him sometime when the rest of the Scoobies, and most particularly, the Slayer, were all somewhere else. The man was a lot more likely to make a deal with him when those kids weren’t around to distract him. He was pretty sure that Giles wanted Spike gone every bit as much as Spike wanted to get away. He could barter Angelus’ plan for some spells to keep his Family from finding him, then get back to Los Angeles. He might even be able to trade his knowledge for spells and some dosh to help him on his way.

He’d go back to the same motel - hell, he had to retrieve his duster if nothing else! - and maybe even some of the same clubs. His Family would never dream he’d be so stupid as to go back to where they’d found him - it would be the last place they would look.

He could get back to earning the cash he’d need to leave the country; Angelus didn’t know about his plan to hide in plain sight as some boring little artsy-poet sort in some equally boring little European town. He could still do that.

Nodding a little, satisfied at his logic, he slipped back into his rudely interrupted sleep.