Harris would get over it eventually, probably. Though it would be just Spike’s luck if this was the thing that killed the boy for good. If, after everything, his unbelievable recuperative abilities turned out to be a fluke, or that last little scuffle with Red left the boy entirely too human. Spike didn’t know which one he was hoping for. It would be so much easier if he died, if he didn’t have to face that again. Face Xander. Because he knew what he had done. And Spike was a soulless monster, but what had happened was so far away from any conception of what he actually wanted it was unrecognizable, and he felt utterly removed. Had that really been him? In that room, in that skin, doing those things? Because what he wanted…

What he wanted was sweeter. Not always gentle, no denying that, but always so much better. Xander would cling to him, long legs strong around his waist and hands brushing frantic patterns on his skin. Cling and close and kissed, fervently, devoutly; the sweat and the breath and the warmth a living thing between them. And he would laugh. Joy and relief at finally being where he belonged, ride him with abandon and purest pleasure, and Spike would laugh, and worship, and force desperate, needy sounds out of the boy, because he would need – would want – that badly… want Spike. But the image utterly failed to arouse anything but sick shame in him, pushed out of the way by a recent reality that was red and white and all over dead like front-page news.

Xander had been so still. Hadn’t cried, or fought, just moaned a bit, husky pained noises in the back of his throat, grinding out of him with every thrust. Even shoved into that wall as hard as he was, his hands had been free and he hadn’t so much as moved them. Hadn’t fought at all, in fact, and probably wouldn’t have. And Spike wondered if he could have gone slower, could have thought, for two seconds, given the boy a chance, or prepared him even a bit. Wondered if it still would have been rape. But Spike knew the answer to that.

And resented… Resented everything. Himself. Glory, and watchers, and fucking Harris and his impossible sweetness. It was his fault. Why the chip was immune to Xander Harris and Xander Harris alone was a mystery and a fucking travesty, because if ever there was a victim he didn’t want, if ever there was a moment for debilitating pain… it was then. Now.

William the Bloody was easy prey right now, and he knew it. His composure – his anger – had abandoned him, and he stumbled through a cemetery in the middle of town, lost and horrified and moving simply to move. Because his legs were too stupid to stop. He would have been an easy target for any demon, a boon for some lucky fledgling earning his fangs, and part of him knew it – the part of him that was unfazed by anything the lingering sensibilities of his long lost humanity were traumatized by knew it. He almost wished some nasty would crawl out of the woodwork and hand him his arse on a piece of pine. There was the insane urge, lying somewhere in his marrow, to run to the Slayer, to tell all, thanatos and sunlight, because she would stake him – real or not, friend or not – she would have to. And still it would have been easier, by far, than facing Xander before the sun came up. Easier than anything, and his thoughts had been whirling around the same fucking cobbler’s bench for what felt like eternity, so frantic and wasteful and stupid that he didn’t realize he was being hunted until he was caught.  

She had always been a song on the edge of hearing, a stray beam of blue-ice moonlight on the last blooms of the chocolate cosmos. Spike shouldn’t have been surprised. She was always there, just after the worst of it, to lift him out of the muck, and he was as caught by the sight of her from fifty feet away as he would be in any prison cell, tangled in barbed wire and wine. Her eyes were lit up black in the yellow glow of a distant street lamp, full of him.

“Between the essence and the descent,” she sang, smiling like death, head thrown back, teeth a monument to their purpose, and he glided toward her because his feet would not stop. “Oh what a fallen shadow you are, my love!”

He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Well and truly was, because for all that he had been thinking about her because he always had a pot of her simmering on a low back burner, he hadn’t been thinking about her. “Dru.” Even her name after all these months was a balm, and his feet finally came to a rest at the hem of her skirt.

“Oh my sweet,” Her arms were cool and narrow as they wrapped around his neck. Hands, strong cords of pure power, drawing him in, pulling him to safety. And he was home, absolutely where he belonged and desperate to believe it. “Mummy knows,” She crooned, icy sharp fingers resting against his scalp as she brought their lips together, sweet and biting like he remembered, “Hear the hounds and their baying in your head, so loud my sweet, so close, but we can out fox them. Mummy knows.”

“Dru…” the curve of her face was soft beneath his thumb, and she leaned into it, smiling like a cat and letting her eyes sink shut, letting Spike study the lean, whipping lines of her. She was dressed all in black, nothing like the flowing white and creamy gowns she’d favored for the last twenty years. This was dark, and sleek, alluring, but patently dangerous, and it was strange to see her in a long narrow skirt and pointed boots, showing more skin at her neck and shoulders than she had in decades. It was new, it was modern, and Spike longed for the curls of lace and satiny ribbons at her wrists and throat, contented himself with fingers full of dark hair that still spilled down her back. “What’re you doing here, princess?”

This, at last, inspired a disappointed pout that Spike was intimately familiar with, scraping off some of the sheen of surreality that cocooned him, “Daddy’s no fun anymore.”

“Could’ve told you that.” Christ, she’d seen Angel? Without him there to protect her? And the brooding old bastard hadn’t called either. Not so much as a cursory nod to let him know that his lover of a hundred years or more was back in town. Because nobody was better at Dru than Spike, and even Angel knew it. He felt cold, so far away from the heart of his family, but it was just another little dart of ice on the howling mountain, and her frown expected more of him, so he asked again. “What did he do, precious?”

“Naughty boy, playing with matches. So many pretty patterns, and pretty girls with pretty skin, and no more than a mouthful for grandmummy and me. Oh my Spike, it hurt, it hurt… dragon’s tongue and roaring quiet as velvet. Oooooh, it burned!” He knew that feeling, knew what it was to be trapped in the middle of an inferno while flames licked up his face and a beam crushed his hips to pulp, knew it well, and shushed her, soothing, crooning with kisses to her crown, like he’d never been away at all. She’d saved him then as well. And she calmed down slowly, tilting that wicked little girl smile up at him, “But I know the cure.”

Spike let himself be maneuvered, even let himself be twirled, feet spinning around in the freshly mown grass as he clutched at her waist and let her dance him into whatever dream she liked. It stopped abruptly, and they came to a stop with his backside resting against a headstone and Dru still wearing that Cheshire cat grin. She hiked her long skirt up to pale thighs and dropped to her knees, giggling and tugging at his jeans with nimble fingers. He let it happen, even reveled in it, the part of him that adored her petting at her hair as she drew him out, flaking crumbs of rust onto her tongue. It was Xander she was dragging away from him with her clever mouth, and he wanted, irrationally, to stop her, protect this little that was left of the boy, but this was Dru. This was queen and country, maker and majesty; this was God, and he could no more deny her than he could swallow the sun.

When he came, it was with a low moan, like his guts had been dragged out and spindled – not entirely pleasant – but Dru sat back with a pleased little grin and tucked him away with a proprietary little pat, proper as a tea party. He held his hand out to help her to her feet, and she pressed her mouth to his, surprisingly chaste. “You taste of Judea root and asphodel.”

“Not anymore.” There was a smirk on his face that he hadn’t put there, but couldn’t quite bring himself to dismantle either. Dru. “What was that for, love?”

“Ash to put the fire out…” She hummed contentedly, voice just a hair rougher and it made his skin buzz with the familiar sensation of being near her, being with her as she wrapped herself around him and sent him spinning through the grass once more, narrow hips swaying and jerking as she danced to the tune in her head. He trailed behind her, bemused and in love, trying not to anticipate how long the mood would last because when she’d gone, the color had gone out of the world. He remembered, dimly, seeking it in a bottle, seeking something like solace at the face of eternity without her, but it seemed so long ago, and he wondered that the taste of her hadn’t brought the color and the chaos back to sing under his skin. Because things weren’t the same… but they were. She was back and the tightness, the emptiness in his chest was still there.

He told himself it was uncertainty. It was the wound of betrayal still eating at him, the sting of her having left one too many times and the sick, helpless, prescient knowledge that eventually she would leave again – fickle, perfect, madwoman. He knew that, but not whether she would take him back, take him with her. God he wanted to go, and it would be fucking glorious to get away from the hellmouth and all of its associated crap. No more horror movie, no more Stepford, no more perfectly manicured lawns and sweet suburbanites sacrificing goats and babies to ancient gods. No more paramilitary units mucking about inside his brain, no more playing to witches and frat-boys and fucking circumstance. He could disappear into the Nevernever and never think about this slayer or bumbling children or broken, dark-eyed boys ever again. It would be his fucking salvation just to walk away, and he would follow Drusilla anywhere.

They meandered towards the Bronze, away from the scene of his crimes. Dru, in her sweet, mad way had tumbled and frolicked all the way, humming something about the dancing sea and burning cow feathers. Spike ordered her a plate of hot wings and prayed that none of the scoobies were out on the town. That would have been the last thing he needed, and there were no explanations; no reason he should even care. But he did, and it was strange to be sitting there drinking a beer and watching Dru hunt, the hot wings just a prelude to the real thing. Her eyes flicked over face after face, discarding them in search of something special, just like always, something sweet, she said, and honey ripe, and Spike couldn’t enjoy it the way he normally would, all-too-aware that this was Buffy’s stomping ground.

Dru was still sucking hot sauce off her fingers when she dragged him into the fray, swaying her slow clinging waltz despite a pounding beat and the writhing, uncoordinated bodies all around them. It was a rainforest of marshy sweat and breath, humid and close, and close to her. Just like old times. It was the same. It was coming home, but the house had not been empty, and there were little things. Things he could get used to, he supposed; the mattress was that much more slept in, the books on the shelf were out of order and he could not read their spines, but it – she – was the same. A place to breathe after someone left the window open, and she hummed against him, brow rolling across his with sleepy contentment, his hands at her neck, caressing the supple softness there because he could, because it made her sigh, quiet, and purr. But the plum and anise sweetness of her mouth was tangled up in Judas tree and asphodel, and he couldn’t get the flavor out of his head. Tried to drown it.

It wasn’t any audible language that told Spike Dru had found what she was looking for, just a lift and a flutter of her eyelashes, a coy glance towards the catwalk, and when Spike got the message and began to move, she kissed him, deep and sweet. To the rest of the world, they were just another couple, maybe dressed a little differently, a little older in this venue, but a couple, harmlessly – annoyingly – wrapped up in each other and now desperate for a little privacy. Part of what made hunting with Dru so very successful, so very fun, was that clinging coupledom, because everyone trusted a man who was clearly in love with another woman; no one expected the object of such devotion to twist around and steal the life out from under them. Xander would never hunt with him this way, but he wasn’t thinking about that.

Dru’s pick was a fresh faced pair of children, barely in their twenties and sweetly stuck in puppy love. He knew it the minute he saw them, sun-brown and vital, wearing pastels. He clung close all the way up the stairs, rocking his hips against hers for the sake of fun and the illusion, already tingling with longing, fangs ready to drop. She hushed him with sweet nothingness, twirling toward the couple, all black silk and poison while he retreated to the shadows, waiting. He watched her closely, knowing the game, knowing the touch as she scraped one dark red fingernail down the boy’s neck. Enough to surprise him, make him turn away from his girl who scowled at this stranger in their midst. She was sweet, he suspected, a nice little thing from a decent family who never let strapping Johnny there put one to her back in high school. She wasn’t ready for this. But Dru stepped smoothly between them, repeating the gesture on the girl to mark a soft line from earlobe to breastbone, the barest caress. She flushed prettily, and Spike licked his lips.

He would never know what she said to them, how she called them to her, but it worked every damn time, and they stumbled over themselves trying to follow her into the shadows, for the promise of adventure and romance. The young brute – mountain of a boy – crowded behind them, clumsily groping Dru through her blouse while the vampire licked a wet stripe up his girlfriend’s neck, sensuous, mysterious, and untamed. And then the hidden snake twisted and bit. It was a flick of the wrist that sent the girl from alive, thrilled and trembling, wet with possibility, to dead, neck at an angle and in Spike’s arms. Her boyfriend’s throat was gone before he realized anything had changed.

Spike bit. He fed with rapturous abandon, teeth in deep and tearing through something soft and hot like he’d been fantasizing about…forever. Christ, she was fucking perfect – it was bliss. Pure and clean copper and brimming with the fizzy sweetness of the soda she’d been sipping at all evening. And when her heart stopped, when the blood was succumbing to gravity far too early for Spike’s tastes, he pressed his hands over her pretty tits in their pushup bra and pressed, her whole body jerking and pumping hot gushes into his mouth like she was a fucking squeeze bottle. It was glorious.

Dru was smirking when he let her body sag in his arms, licking the tips of her fingers with a scandalously satisfied tongue. He wanted to fuck her. Leaned in close to pet down the front of her skirt, smoothing, promising, and sucked a stray drop of blood from her sharp clavicle. “Soon, my silver knight. Soon.”

They left the corpses in a shadowy corner, arranged in a lewd parody of their previous vital intimacy. He spared a thought for Xander, wondering if he’d dreamed these deaths, felt this played out on his skin – if Spike had killed him yet again – and he didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be. But he wasn’t thinking about that.

Dancing together out of the Bronze laughing, damn near frolicking because Dru was ticklish and sensitive after a good meal, and he liked to hear her giggle, stumbling across a cluster of junkies in the park, two idiot boys and a girl who tasted like sassafras. They shared the boys between them, hot and urgent and bitter as coal, but saved the girl for later, left her sprawled in a stupor of tripping thrall beside the bodies of her friends. Spike didn’t know what the fuck they were on, but it made the world spangle like glitter and stretch taffy-sticky complicated, hot pink and brass. The stars burned in him and he roared, triumph and terror while Dru wriggled and bunched her long skirt up to her waist and planted her narrow arse on the high back of a park bench, legs spread in half-order half-invitation.

Spike took her up on it while the world glowed green and bright, shoving two fingers into her and fucking into her rough and deep, thumb flicking over her clit with near bruising force. She gasped and moaned, clinging wetness and a high pitched whine that went straight to his balls, unable to wiggle on her precarious perch, trapped by balance and his arm that held her wide and open. This, as he mouthed her breast through her silky blouse, this, as she gasped and sang high and breathless with want, this was being a vampire. This was him and all he needed. This, and fuck the black-eyed whore who’d made him think otherwise. But he wasn’t thinking about that.

Fuck the black-eyed whore before him, Madonna jerking helplessly on his fingers and finally breaking into babbling pleas, the spears of angels and jism of saints if only he’d fuck her, please and the devil’s tongue fuck her. He chuckled, taking pity, only stopping the rutting  long enough to replace his fingers with his dick, slamming her hips against his, making her yelp. Making her howl and scream as he did it again and again, bouncing her on his cock, hard and sweet in uncomplicated orgiastic revelry.

It felt like it took hours to come down, get off and sink, sated, into the grass where Sassafras girl was staring at them with something like fear and love. They shared her between them, smearing her sticky red in the cooling blood of her friends and licking it off. They left her alive, only just rolling home in clouds of mescaline fire as the sun broke long shadows around them and, gray, edged over the eastern sky, then tumbling home high on blood and fucking and each other like they had always been. Laughing and tripping down the ladder into the safety of shadows where they were trapped.

Trapped in safety and in silence and in her wide smile that soaked into him from several feet away. She sprawled on the creamy sheets, hands and feet spreading and stretching and taut as a bow string before slumping into kitty-cat relaxation, practically purring her contentment. He wanted to keep her, keep this. Strong and sensual and the sire he remembered before the world all went to shit and she skipped off with the first in a string of slimy demons ten miles long. He wanted to live in this moment forever, spin it out the way she’d promised, so many lovers and fiascos ago in that alley when he’d been someone else. Wanted to keep her at least tonight before the world came back, before she left him again how many weeks, months, or years in the future, and he had just the thing.

There was a recessed alcove, a natural little something worn away by patient drip and time and Spike had hidden it behind a tapestry and kept precious things there, things he wouldn’t like Dawn to see. Not that he cared, because he wasn’t thinking about it, but a fourteen year old girl didn’t need to be seeing her babysitter’s lucky Kobold skull, the journal he kept stashed in it, or, and these made Dru’s eyes light up when he dragged them, clanking into the room, his shackles.

“Caging birds, my William?” She asked him, a little glee and a little malice making it easy for him to roll over her, press her to the mattress and just enjoy her. For a little while, she let him. But it was just a little, and she rolled them again, grinning while the chains dug into his shoulders.

“Know how much you like ‘em, pet.”

Her kiss was drugging, demanding and gentle by turns, perfect as she rocked in the cradle of his lap, just feeling him, the way he had never been able to get enough of her, “Sweet stupid boy, with your heart in a jar by the bed” she cooed at him, teeth a gentle press on the outside of his lip while she ground and wriggled and distracted him in all the best ways possible. “So easy to steal on the way out the door.”

And Spike felt cool metal slip across his wrist and catch just before she sat on his cock. 
_______________________________

I didn't expect that either. Onward brave soldier.

Okay - I have to share. My nerdiness demands it - The chocolate cosmos is a THING! I did not know this - I did a lot of Googling for random stuff for this chapter and I was really excited to discover the existence of (what looks like) evil prim roses, and I had to let you in on it.