Chapter Text
There was little good in living on a Hellmouth, but Buffy could appreciate the summers. Particularly when she had a delicious boyfriend that could take her both dancing and slaying all night.
Angel had never been into dancing, but that was all Spike and Buffy had ever done, at least according to him. Willow had coyly observed that their dancing was more sex with their pants on than what she would traditionally call it, but Buffy was not going to let that small fact stop her from enjoying her nights.
Spike’s sun challenge posed a minor roadblock to some plans. He couldn’t, for instance, come to lazy Scooby beach picnics. But Buffy didn’t think he minded so much when he saw her newly bronzed, and still sun warm, skin later.
On a balmy night Buffy and Spike walked through the cemetery holding hands. Buffy still marvelled at the small things in their relationship – how dependent Spike was on touch being one of them. He liked the closeness to her when they were in the same room, to have some of contact however he could.
She had never gotten much else but dramatic heartbreak with Angel, a lot of pining and emphasis on limitations. It had been exciting and time consuming at the time but with Spike it was about his honesty and connecting with her, finding ways to make her laugh and smile because of him. He could be selfish with his need for her, Buffy hadn’t not noticed there was moments of jealousy when he thought she wasn’t wholly his, but he reigned it in when he touched the bite mark on her neck and saw it was only his that dominated. Buffy wasn’t by any means perfect. She had to stop herself several times from tracking down Harmony or Drusilla and staking them. When girls flirted with Spike at the Bronze she dragged him away to aggressively make out in a shadowy corner. It was nice, then, to be as ridiculous as each other.
They had tagged team three vampires, one after and another but Buffy was still feeling itchy to go again. Spike had felt the same as he paused to light a cigarette. It was a Tuesday night, so no Bronze, and it was still too early for them to go home.
Spike nodded over Buffy’s shoulder. “You wanna take that one, love?”
Buffy spun into the attack. The vampire was bigger than her and stronger than she anticipated. The fight was hard won, the best kind. Spike watched her, smoking as he sat on top of a gravestone. He made occasional critique of her form, only to annoy her, but stayed back to watch. He had admitted more than once that he found her fighting to be one of his biggest turn ons, and Buffy wasn’t above giving him a show.
When she staked the vampire she popped back onto her feet, grinning at Spike, who lazily clapped for her. The voice that spoke was European but not Spike’s. “Very impressive hunt. Such power.”
A powerful vampire with flowing hair and wearing an actual cape, emerged from the shadows as if they had formed him. He had the sensual vibe of mystic and power.
“Oh bloody hell.” Spike was at Buffy’s side, his eyes dark before Buffy could react. “Drac, you prick. What’re you doing here?”
The vampire looked genuinely surprised, which ruined the mysterious air of his appearance. “William the Bloody? I thought you were in South America?”
“Nah mate,” Spike said. “In Sunnyhell fulltime.” He was wound by to fight, Buffy could see the tension in his shoulders. She moved closer to Spike’s side.
“Is this a friend?” Buffy said.
The other Vampire regained his mysterious composure, all but drawing his cape around himself. “I am Dracula.”
Buffy gasped and swatted Spike’s arm. “Get out.”
“Chrissake,” Spike muttered. “He’s not that bloody famous.”
Buffy edged around Spike. “You’re the real Count Dracula?” Buffy said. “Not just a fanboy.” He did look and sound more legitimate then some other pimply-faced fledglings she had come up against.
“I am,” Dracula said. “As I would know without question that you are Buffy Summers.”
Buffy couldn’t not be flattered. “You’ve heard of me.”
“Naturally. You are known throughout the world.”
Buffy looked to Spike for confirmation, who still looked murderous. “Really?”
“I mighta complained about you up and down the continent,” Spike said. “You also obliterated ol’ Batface. Tha’ got around.”
Buffy smothered her grin. “I guess I did.”
Dracula was flickering his eery dark eyes between Buffy and Spike. “You are claimed,” he said.
Spike turned to face the other vampire and puffed out his chest. “We are. She’s not going to get messed with, Drac, so be a good sport and sod off.”
“Messed with? Who’s messing? Aren’t we going to fight?” Buffy said.
“Dracula won’t fight you,” Spike said. “He’d get a better kick outta claiming you. As it stands, she’s not available,” Spike sneered. “Also, good thing you are here. You still owe me eleven quid.”
Dracula sniffed. “I don’t recall this.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Spike muttered.
“OK, we’re done now,” Buffy said, and dove at Dracula with her stake. He disappeared in a vapour mist, reappearing behind her. “Hey. That’s cheating.”
“Ol’ Drac’s got gypsy tricks,” Spike said, standing back and watching. “Parlour fancies to scare the kiddies.”
Dracula ignored Spike and focused on Buffy. “This is not the time.” He flapped his cape and turned into a bat, flapping off into the sky.
“You can turn into a bat?” Buffy said.
Spike rolled his eyes. “Did your Watcher teach you anythin’? No. Dracula just has gypsy tricks and spells.” Spike narrowed his eyes. “You were impressed with him.”
“Well,” Buffy said. “He is Dracula…”
They argued the point all the way to Giles’, where they were to meet up with the other Scoobies. Spike was still fuming as they sat down and Buffy recounted their run in with the Prince of Darkness. She did try and downplay her enthusiasm but it wasn’t every day that she met a bonified celebrity.
“I told you that he’d heard of me right?” Buffy said. “Count Famous heard of me.”
Spike slammed the fridge door, scaring poor Tara who was getting water for herself and Willow. He had been rooting around for a packet of blood for something to do with his hands, no doubt. “Fucking hell. You are not mooning over bloody Dracula.” He stomped back into the room. “He’s a prat who ruined vampires’ lives with his sodding book, and he owes me eleven quid!”
“Spike and Dracula have history,” Buffy said. “Actually, what is your history with him?”
“Dracula and I hung out a few times,” Anya piped up. “Back in my Demon days. Once or twice.” She sighed wistfully. “He’s pretty cool…”
“Not you too,” Spike groused. “I’m not taking any more of this crap.” And he slammed out of the apartment.
“Was I a little too fan-girly?” Buffy said.
“It’s hard not to be,” Anya said.
“Really?” Xander said. “What is with you women and vampires?”
“Vampire sex is very erotic,” Anya said. “And they have great stamina. Right, Buffy?”
Buffy went very red and Willow jumped in to divert the conversation before it hit uncomfortable territory for them all. “How did Dracula do his bat thing?” Willow said. “Actually, Giles, I bet you know,” she added too loudly. “A-and you would have been super helpful being there. To like, help. Right guys?”
Giles leant forward in his seat. “There’s a lot of myth surrounding Dracula. I imagine the way to defeat him would be to separate fact from fiction.”
“Spike said it was gypsy tricks,” Buffy said. “The bat and vapour stuff.”
“Could very well be,” Giles said. “He has been alive for centuries. ”
“Great point,” Willow said. “That’s so Giles to come up with the stuff we’d never think of.”
“We need to get to some serious research,” Buffy said. “He said we’d ‘meet again soon’, but I’d rather avoid that until I’m well prepared.”
“Why don’t we just load up on stakes and crossbows and ambush him now?” Xander said. “Cut him down.”
“No, Buffy is right. Dracula’s too slick to fall for the usual stuff,” Anya said. She put her hand on Xander’s knee who didn’t seem too happy about it. “He’s very resourceful.”
“So we hold off,” Buffy said. “No killing until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
“Alright,” Giles said. And he launched into dividing up the research between them. Buffy tried hard to focus, knowing how important it was to get this right before Dracula tried anything again. But she was having trouble concentrating on something that wasn’t his dark, penetrating eyes. She wondered what it was about him that made him feel so charismatic.
They made plans to meet again in the morning, and Buffy headed home hoping that was where Spike had gone. She found him in the kitchen with Joyce, drinking hot chocolate their conversation cut short as Buffy walked in. Buffy took a moment to admire the pure domestic picture of her Big Bad boyfriend.
After the Initiative had rolled out of Sunnydale, Buffy had been worried about bringing up Spike’s living situation to Joyce, but Joyce and Spike appeared to be even better friends than Buffy had thought. Spike was giving Joyce money, from where he was vague about but had promised it wasn’t by theft, and Joyce had never mentioned him moving out.
“Oh there you are, Buffy,” Joyce said. She sounded disappointed.
“Uh oh?” Buffy said. She ran through a mental catalogue of everything she had done in the last twenty-four hours. “Did I forget to do the dishes?”
Joyce ignored him. “As the only one in this house not keeping Slayer hours,” Joyce said instead. “I’m going to bed.” She squeezed Spike’s shoulder and kissed Buffy on her way out.
Buffy took Joyce’s seat and snagged Spike’s mug for a sip. “Are you OK?”
Spike’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. “Surprised you’re here and not off salivating after the ‘Count Famous’.”
Buffy winced. “I might have gotten a little excited…”
“A little?”
“Dracula shmacula. You’re the only vampire I want.” Buffy fluttered her eyelashes and smiled. “Have the bite marks to prove it.”
Spike huffed and reached out to tuck the hair behind Buffy’s ear so he could see his bite mark. “You’re not going to run off with Mr Eurovamp?”
“Never,” Buffy said. “Even if he has a devastatingly hot accent.”
“Oi, I have a hot accent.”
“Mm,” Buffy kissed him. She could taste the remints of hot chocolate, which should have been gross but she was enjoying. “I love your accent. Love other things too.”
“Other things?” Spike curled his tongue behind his teeth. “Like wha’?”
“I could tell you here or we could go upstairs and have the full demonstration…”
With unfair vampiric speed Spike hiked her over his shoulder. Buffy laughed and slapped his ass, which only made him run faster.
-
Buffy woke with the feeling that there was something outside her window. She was tangled in sheets and Spike’s arms, who was sleeping like the literal dead at her back. Buffy carefully extracted herself, put Spike’s discarded shirt on, found sweatpants on the floor, and went downstairs.
It had been a clear night when Buffy and Spike had been out patrolling, but now there was fog on the lawn and clouds rolled over the moon. Buffy opened her backdoor but didn’t step out onto the porch. A part of her wanted to waltz out into the night, but a small part of her that was the Slayer, held her back in place and she strained to hear.
The fog rose and solidified into Dracula. “Good evening, Buffy Summers.”
Buffy crossed her arms, all too aware she was not battle ready. Not only didn’t she had underwear on but her weapons were upstairs. “This is ‘soon’, is it?”
“No,” Dracula said. “I simply came to admire you.”
“Admire away,” Buffy said. “You’re not coming inside.”
It looked as though Dracula hadn’t moved but in a blink he was in Buffy’s face, his dark eyes boring into her, drawing her inside their depths. Buffy almost stepped forward over the threshold as she felt herself being pulled by a need that burst spontaneously in her gut. “We are kindred,” Dracula murmured. She could feel it, a thread between them that grew stronger the longer she stared. She was looking at her kindred, at the missing part of herself…
Spike had her by the elbow, yanking her non-too-kindly back into the house as he punched Dracula in the nose.
“Ow,” Dracula howled and reared back.
“Get the fuck away from my girlfriend, you nit,” Spike hissed.
Dracula glared and the handsome, mysterious face was twisted into something demonic without his fangs even ascending. “You were the Slayer of Slayers, now you’re-“
“Yeah, yeah,” Spike sneered. “Now I’m hers. Right scandalising.” He pointed his finger in Dracula’s face. “If I see you here one more time, around any of her lot, I’ll put the stake through your fame-whoring heart myself. You understand me?”
Dracula sneered and looked past Spike at Buffy, who was watching everything in a daze. “He is unworthy of you.”
His words snapped reality back into Buffy. It was only Spike catching her around the waist and holding her back, that stopped Buffy from trying to stake Dracula with her bare hands.
Dracula stepped back into the gloom. “When we shall meet again, it will not be pleasant for you, Slayer.” He vanished, evaporating once more into fog.
Spike kept a hold of her. “Think it’s time we took care of old Drac?”
“That is of the yes,” Buffy said. She looked back out into the night. “He’s not going to come back?” She thought of Joyce sleeping upstairs.
“Not with me here,” Spike said. “I warned Joyce not to let anyone in, but it usually doesn’ stop him.”
The Scoobies were unnerved about the second encounter, but they had gathered a little intel on Dracula in the hours since. It was Willow that led the meeting and Buffy would have thought it strange if she wasn’t so anxious.
“I have to go tonight,” Buffy said. “I can’t have Dracula running around Sunnydale, not when he’s got thrall and bat tricks. Plus he’s hellbent on turning me.”
“He’d want to claim you,” Spike said. “Not turn you.”
Buffy frowned. “Why? He seemed so mean about you claiming me?”
“No, only that you claimed me,” Spike said. “I’m a vampire that let a Slayer claim him without at least turning her. Besides being treasonous to my kind, it makes me look like I’m your pet. Dracula’s the kind of sod that would love claim you, make a big trophy of it and parade you around.”
The others looked uneasy. Except Xander who was being more twitchy than normal. Giles sighed. “We will have to do it tonight.”
“We?” Buffy said. “You can’t go, Giles, none of you can. It’s not safe.”
“You certainly can’t if he’s capable of getting you under thrall,” Giles said. “I have hunted demons before, Buffy. I’m prepared to do it.”
“I’ll do it,” Spike said. “Been meaning to settle a few scores with Dracula.”
“I think Buffy should go,” Xander said. “And I’ll deliver her!”
Everyone but Spike ignored him. Spike eyed Xander off whose gaze bounced around the room. “What’s wrong with the whelp? He’s more…weird than normal.”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Xander said. “Today is another glorious day with our Dark Prince. Ah. Beta.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Harris is under a thrall.”
“He’s what?” Willow said.
“Are you sure? Isn’t he normally like this?” Giles said.
“He’s Dracula’s spy,” Spike said. “Dru used to like to put random humans under it, make ‘em living dolls for her before she killed them. What’d he promise you?”
“Immortality,” Xander said. “And, ah, I’m not.”
“Uh huh,” Spike said. “We need to tie him up before he hurts himself. Also, he’ll know where we’re going.”
They had Anya babysit Xander, which she protested, and Buffy, Spike and Giles set off for the Gothic castle on the outskirts of Sunnydale. There was a no trespassers sign on the wrought iron gate, but candlelight in the windows.
“Bloody typical,” Spike said. “No bloody class.”
Inside the castle the halls were a maze. It reminded Buffy of the way the haunted mansion party last year felt, when they got separated and sent down into their own versions of torture. Buffy had to ask Spike what had happened to him. He had never willingly given her an answer before.
“We have to stick together,” Buffy said as she turned to see she was alone. “Well. Fine.”
Buffy found Dracula in the grand dining room. He was waiting for her by the stone fireplace, the light doing things to his face that made him look even more beautifully haunted. He turned as she entered, and without the cape she could see he was thinner where Spike was muscular and carved.
“Ah. Slayer. I knew you would come.”
“Is that so?” Buffy made her away around the dining table with the ornate chairs. “Because you think I’m under your thrall?” She pulled her stake from the waistband of her pants. “Care to make a bet?”
Dracula raised a hand. “Put the stake down.”
“OK.” Buffy dropped the stake onto the table and winced. “Ah. I…wanted to do that?”
Dracula prowled towards her. “I know why you came.”
Buffy’s eyes darted to his mouth. “You think I want you to bite me?”
“You don’t?” Dracula waited as Buffy lost her will to speak. “Stop me. Stake me.”
“Any minute now,” Buffy said, but her hands weren’t cooperating. She had a knife in her boot Spike had gifted her, but she couldn’t even bend to retrieve it. All of her felt as if it was in an iron clap.
“You know why you cannot resist?”
“’Cause you’re famous?”
Dracula shook his head. “It is because you do not want to.”
“No…” Buffy thought of blue eyes and steeled herself. “No. I have Spike.”
“He will not find us. We are alone.” Dracula had reached her standing within touching distance. He smelt of soil, and a little of motor oil and some kind of heady wood. “Always alone,” he whispered.
Alone? Buffy had been alone since she was Called. She had lost people, over and over, walking out and dying on her. She had trail of people left behind because she was the One Girl in All the World. Except…
“There is so much I have to teach you,” Dracula said. He was circling her now. Buffy got the unnerving impression that he was looking at her like a feast. “Your history, your power. What your body is capable of.”
“I don’t need to know.”
“You long to. And you will have eternity to discover yourself.” He was back to facing her, hunger in his eyes. “But first, a little taste.” When he opened his mouth his fangs had grown without the bumpies.
Buffy steeled herself. “I won’t let you near me.”
“I didn’t mean for me.” Dracula pulled an elegant knife from his pocket. The blade shone in the candle light. “All these years fighting us, your powers so near to our own and you never once wanted to know what it is we fight for?” The blade flashed light as it nicked an artery in his exposed arm. Blood bubbled up.
“I’ve tasted it before,” Buffy said. She licked her lips.
“Not the same as my own,” Dracula said. “I can show you your true nature, if only you taste it.” He held the blood to her.
Buffy took his arm, she felt the coolness of his skin. She thought of Spike, of holding him down last night as she bit his neck, drew his blood onto her tongue while he told her he was hers alone.
Buffy used her hold to throw Dracula onto the dining table.
“What is this?” Dracula said.
“I’m not touching your gross blood,” Buffy said. “I told you. I belong to Spike.”
Dracula had rolled off and onto his feet. “Come to me.”
Buffy felt none of the pull that had been there before. She shrugged. “Nope.”
“But…”
“I think the thrall has gone out of our relationship, haven’t you?” Buffy smirked and grabbed her abandoned stake. “You want to see my true nature? You’ll have to come here.”
Dracula roared and charged her, but Buffy jumped over him. The fight was one of the best she had ever had. Dracula was a skilled, older vampire and she had finally cracked his cool persona and provoked the demon who was in it for the kill.
When they fell to the floor, Buffy’s stake over his unbeating heart, Dracula roared and threw her across the table. Buffy grabbed an old torch from the wall and the fire flared. Dracula recoiled from the stary embers.
Buffy threw the torch, flame first, at him but Dracula had gone to vapour and swept across the room. Buffy saw it start to collect on a walkway above the room, and she ran along the table to leap and stake him as he solidified. “How do you like my darkness now?” Buffy said.
With an agonised face he fell to ash on the staircase and Buffy sighed. Until she saw Spike charge into the room with his own flaming torch held high and away from him.
“Spike! What’re you doing? Put it down!”
Buffy started to run but Spike had taken off for the stairs and the ash pile. He put the naked flame to the ashes and they burst into a fiery outline of the once great vampire, who withered and shrieked before falling once more to finer ash.
“Oh,” Buffy said. Her heart was thumping and her retinas burned with the image Dracula’s burning corpse. She jumped into Spike’s arms, who easily took her weight and backed them into the wall. Buffy bit down on his lip until she tasted blood.
Spike moaned and squeezed her ass. “Hell, Slayer, you wantta play vampire and damsel?”
“Agh,” Buffy said but kept kissing him, smearing blood across both of their lips.
Giles (who Spike later told Buffy he rescued from the pit of Dracula’s vampire wives with too much sardonic glee) came into the room, still looking mused and dazed.
“I hope this is celebratory?” Giles said and looked pointedly elsewhere until Buffy detangled herself.
“Of the big kind,” Buffy said. “No more Mr Euro-trash.” She nodded to the burned ashes. “If he does his tricks again I doubt he’ll want to stick around.”
They burned the castle down to be sure. Spike delighted in watching the flames lick skywards, as Willow and Tara chanted the spell and Giles kept watch. Their faces were lit by the inferno and nobody worried about drawing the attention of the authorities. In a place like Sunnydale, a burning, seemingly abandoned castle, was the least of their troubles.
“That should erase him forever,” Willow said when the fire burned itself out. “Unless he’s turned into a bat again…”
They all glanced up at the smoke filled sky but no one saw a dark shadow. After promising to see Giles in the morning, Buffy had taken Spike home.
The house was quiet and Spike had kissed her on the staircase, his hands in her hair. He smelt of smoke and she whimpered, remembering how Dracula had burned close to him.
The urgency in the castle was lost to something more tender as they undressed each other in their room. Spike had been living at Rovello Drive long enough that he was embedded into the room. His clothes shared space with her own, his books filled her empty shelves and he had records downstairs with her mothers. Spike had his own mugs in the kitchen for his blood, and he had bought Buffy a soft blanket that she kept at the end of their bed, curling up in it late at night. It all felt like home, even the way that Spike knew which sheets were Buffy’s favourite and he made sure not to get blood on them.
Spike kissed down Buffy’s exposed body, mapping her skin to his memory. Buffy loved all the ways they had sex: when Spike was more demon and pounding her into the mattress or against a crypt, or when they had to keep quiet and they would bite down on their own knuckles. But she had a soft spot for when Spike made love to her like this, when he tried to memorise her all over again, taking care to lavish all of her body with his attention, remind them both of who they were with.
As he rolled his hips, filling her up and dragging it out on the knife edge of too slow until she was desperate and needy, he put his lips to her throat. “Mine,” he whispered and she felt his fangs sink in as his hand slid between them.
Buffy exploded under him, saw flames behind her eyelids as she came mouthing, “yours. Spike.”
When Buffy came back into herself she was laying with her chin propped up on Spike’s chest, his hands tracing patterns on her back. Buffy kissed the cool flesh under her.
“How do you and Dracula know each other?” Buffy said.
Spike huffed a sigh and looked at the ceiling. “We’re old foes.”
“Why? What happened?”
Spike had started to talk about his past but only in the last few weeks. He was hesitant, she knew, because he didn’t want her to think badly of him because the bad was still a part of him. Buffy herself wasn’t sure if she wanted to know everything. She navigated each of his confessions with fresh uncertainty.
Spike eyed her. “You don’ wanna know, love.”
“Ooh, now I do,” Buffy teased. “Come on, honey. Tell me, please?”
Spike, who could never deny her, groaned. “Fine, fine. Years ago, Dru and I had a thing with him while we were in Transylvania before his book. Briefly, it didn’ last ‘cause Angelus and Darla found us and we were off again.”
Buffy felt the too familiar stab of jealousy that made her want to sink her teeth into Spike. “He’s your ex?”
“We didn’ date,” Spike said. “Wasn’ holdin’ hands and going to the movies, pet. Just played around for Dru’s sake. I didn’ fancy the pounce.” Spike tilted his head and smirked. “Are you jealous?”
“No.” Buffy rolled off Spike.
It only encouraged him more and he propped himself up on his elbow to leer down at her. “Not nearly as good a shag as you, darling.”
“Shut up.” Buffy pulled the covers over her face, which was going red against her will. She seethed in the humid dark while Spike laughed.
Spike ducked under the covers to look at her with the gooey-moon eyes that made Buffy want to melt into him. Buffy curled on her side and Spike smoothed down her wayward hair.
Buffy couldn’t let the moment sit. She wiggled and blurted: “Dracula said something about his blood.”
Spike’s good humour faded. “You didn’ drink it.”
“No,” Buffy said. “God, no. I’m just saying that he was saying that he could show me my darkness? If I drank it? Is that a thing?”
“Ah,” Spike said. “Dru could do that too, when she wanted to.”
“What is it exactly?”
“Lil’ power bit,” Spike said. “Can reveal inner truths kind of thing, supposed to reveal your nature. ‘Cause with vampire blood it’ll only reflect back at you the bad. I did it with a few times, didn’ much like it.”
Buffy, as she had to whenever Spike talked about Drusilla, actively didn’t picture them together. “Why didn’t you like it?”
Spike sighed. “When she did it to me it used to feel like I was burning. Like I’d swallowed the sun. Dru’d get mad, claw at me and babble.”
“But you can’t do it,” Buffy said. “I’ve drunk your blood.” She touched her bite mark and Spike purred under her.
“No,” Spike said. “I can’ do it, don’ have that kind of power. You were curious.”
Over the months of being together, Buffy marvelled at how it was that Spike got her. There was so little he had to ask, normally he would make these statements which were more voicing aloud to her thoughts she couldn’t unjumble from her mind.
“I’ve been feeling….different,” Buffy said. “For a while.” She licked her lips. “Something changed in me after I found you.”
Spike held very still beside her watching with his predator bright eyes in the gloom. Buffy kept her fingers to her bite mark, feeling the indent of her teeth.
“There’s a darkness inside of me,” Buffy confessed.
“The Slayer,” Spike said.
Buffy nodded. “I’m scared of how I feel sometimes. Things like how I look at you and I want to sink my teeth into you.” She swallowed. “How badly I’ve wanted to slay…to hunt. I don’t feel normal.”
“Baby,” Spike whispered. “You’re not normal. You’re the Slayer.”
“But what does that mean?” Spike had nothing for her because Slayers weren’t supposed to be understood – isn’t that what the Council had done, to keep them under thumb.
Spike drew her to him and kissed her until Buffy rolled to straddle him, her teeth aching.
-
Buffy went by Giles’ apartment the next day, feeling jittery. Apparently there was something big because Giles had laid out the little cookies for her, the good kind with the chocolate frosting. Instead of making Buffy feel at ease it increased her anxiety.
“Why do I rate little cookie treatment?” Buffy said.
Giles sat with the tea pot. “I have something to tell you.”
Buffy folded her hands in her lap. “Actually, I have something that I’d like to talk to you about too.”
“Well you go first by all means.”
Buffy took a deep breath and tried to remember everything she and Spike had rehearsed last night before they drifted off to sleep. “You haven’t been my Watcher for a while. I haven’t been training and I haven’t really needed to come to you for help.” She saw something unnamed pass across Giles’ face. She continued on. “And then this whole thing with Dracula, and being with Spike…It’s made me face up to some stuff.” Buffy stood and wiped her hands on her thighs. “I’ve been going out a lot. Every night.”
Giles nodded. “Patrolling.”
“Hunting. That’s what Dracula called it and he was right. He understands my power and he saw darkness in it that I hadn’t been willing to see. I need to know more, about where I come from, what this Demon essence is that’s inside of Slayers. If I could understand it, even control it, I could be better.” Here Buffy sat and took Giles’ hand. She so rarely took fatherly comfort in him but she needed it. “But I’m scared. I know it’s gonna be hard and I can’t do it without you. I need your help. I need you to be my Watcher again.”
Giles squeezed her hand back and he smiled, and maybe it was a trick of the light but his eyes looked shiny. “Yes, I can do that.”
Buffy breathed a sigh of relief. “Great, amazing. Spike said you would but I was…not worried. Just. Thank you. Oh, I should shut up, you wanted to say something?”
“No, no,” Giles said. “Nothing at all.”
“OK.” Buffy stood and Giles stood too. Before she could rethink it, Buffy hugged him. He smelt so Giles, of old books and a musk that he wore that clung to his sweaters. “I’ll see you tomorrow? I have to go, Spike promised Dawn we’d take her to the movies.” Buffy briefly rolled her eyes.
“Of course,” Giles said. “I’ll comprise a new regime, we can talk tomorrow.”
“Thank you. I’m serious about doing this right,” Buffy said before she let herself out.
Buffy met Spike and Dawn at the ice-cream parlour across the road from the cinema. Dawn was waving her arms enthusiastically with the biggest cup of ice-cream in front of her. Spike was smiling at her in pure indulgence.
When Buffy sat down Spike kissed her. “All good, love?”
“Ew,” Dawn said. “Can you not suck face all the time?” She had ice-cream around her mouth, looking all of three instead of fourteen.
Buffy rolled her eyes. “You’re a mess. Honestly, we can’t take you anywhere.”
“No one invited you,” Dawn said.
“Oi,” Spike said. “Movie time, innit?”
Buffy got up and took Spike’s hand. Dawn scoffed the rest of her ice-cream and whined around a brain freeze. One of these days Buffy would have to schedule a proper date with Spike and not let him give into Dawn’s pleas to tag along. Their whole summer had been taken up with babysitting Dawn that part of Buffy was excited to start back at college and get a break.