Reality began to return in the late afternoon. Giles was probably worrying himself silly. He'd come back tense with implications and second thoughts, and need to be seduced all over again. Which could be fun. Whispers and kisses and teasing, the heady scent of arousal, the way Giles' eyes got wide and dark with lust. His need, and Spike's need, and all the wonderful ways their needs intersected.
Sure enough, when Giles arrived he seemed wound up and profoundly in need of seduction. Spike switched off The Simpsons and made room for him on the sofa. "Hello, pet," Spike said, pulling him close. "Missed you all day."
Giles let himself be kissed, but then moved a little away. "We need to talk."
The most ominous phrase in the English language. Seduction it was, then.
"You're pregnant?" Spike asked with a grin.
That surprised a wan smile from Giles. "I sincerely hope that's not possible."
"This is the hellmouth. Anything's possible. Bit like Harrods that way."
"Spike. Please. This is important." Giles' lips were pale and set, and there were lines of tension around his eyes and mouth. Spike could smell his anxiety. Something was up. This wasn't about the blood.
"What is it?"
"I've learned something about Glory. She's, well, living in someone's body. A young man called Ben, who works at the hospital."
"Blimey. How'd you find that out?"
"I caught one of her minions a few days ago, hanging about near the shop. I persuaded him to tell me some things." Giles' expression left no doubt as to what the persuasion had been.
"Does she know that you know?"
Giles shook his head. "I killed the minion, afterwards, so he couldn't warn her."
"Good. Well, now we've got a way to track the bitch."
"More than that. This makes her vulnerable. I've been reading up. While she's Ben, she's got human weaknesses. She can be killed." Giles didn't seem terribly happy about it.
"But?"
"But he dies too." Giles sighed. "I've known this for a couple of days. I've just had to think about it. It's not easy, weighing one man's life, an innocent man's, against so many others."
"I'm the wrong one to ask about the value of human life," Spike said. "But if it's this Ben's life against the Niblet's, no bloody contest."
Giles half-smiled, looking rather sick. "You give me too much credit. This isn't for Dawn's sake. If Glory gets the Key, she'll destroy the world. The Key will open up all the barriers between this world and the hell dimensions. I won't let that happen. I'm willing do anything to stop it. Anything. If killing Dawn would save the world, I'd do that too. No one's life is worth what will happen if those barriers break."
There was steel under those nervous twitches and cups of tea. Ruthlessness. Yet Giles would never entirely forgive himself for killing Ben, either. It would join the other unforgiven crimes on his conscience, the ones Spike felt him brooding over sometimes. "Even I don't want the hell dimensions open," Spike offered. "There are bigger and badder things than vampires out there."
"Good, because I’m going to need your help. I don't want Buffy involved in killing a man."
Spike shrugged. "Whatever I can do. Break down doors, terrify minions, growl a lot."
Giles seemed not to hear. "I'm going to have to use magic to hold her in Ben's body. Otherwise she'll jump at the first hint of trouble, and find someone else to use. The spell will demand all my attention. I'll need you to do the actual . . . killing."
"Sorry, think I spot a flaw here. I can't kill him. He's human."
"You can kill him if I deactivate your chip."
Spike was too stunned for a moment to do anything but stare into Giles' unhappy face. "You what?"
"I can do it with magic. It won't be difficult."
Freedom. The chip gone. To kill again, to feed properly after months of hunger that could never be fully satisfied on pig's blood. To let the demon loose. To be powerful again. Evil. Himself. "You're seriously proposing to turn off the chip?"
"Temporarily. Once he's dead, I'll activate it again." Giles stared at his hands and wouldn't meet Spike's eyes.
The demon was roaring inside his head, in hunger and fury. Giles had known all along how to free him. Had never said a word. And now he wanted to use the demon. He'd use him and then lock him away again, inside Spike's head. He'd leave him to shriek and rattle the bars of his cage, knowing freedom was just out of his grasp. And Spike would never be able to forget that Giles held the key.
Spike got up, walked to the window, and thrust it open sharply, letting in the chilly night air. He stared out for a while, then said, "So you'll let me off the leash, now you need an attack dog. And snap it back round my neck when you want a lapdog again." He pressed his forehead against the cold glass.
Giles came up behind him and slid warm arms around his waist. "You're no one's lapdog, Spike."
"I guess the leash had me confused," Spike said bitterly. He tilted his head back to rest against Giles' shoulder. "I should tell you to fuck off. To do it all yourself, or make the fucking Slayer help you. She's the one whose job it is to save the world." Giles' grip tightened, and Spike felt a kiss against his hair.
Saving the world wasn't his job. He was a vampire. A big bad vampire, not one of the white hats. There was nothing in it for him, except the obvious. His reason, his reward, was the man holding him. His reward for being a good dog, and doing as he was told. This damned middle-aged depressive with his moods and his moral qualms. This Watcher, the natural enemy of the demon that had turned William into immortal, powerful Spike. This Watcher, who kept calling on him to be a human being again. And who now needed him to kill.
You bastard, Spike thought. You bastard.
He turned into Giles' embrace, burrowing into the man's heat and scent. He wanted to make a joke, but none came. Sex would help, would at least make him feel better. "I need you," he whispered in Giles' ear, letting it answer everything.
* * * * *
It was a couple of days before Giles felt ready. He preferred to do magic in a quiet room with the things he needed close at hand, not in the open or in haste. Luckily, after some more research he found ways to do most of the work in advance. He prepared a literal binding for Glory: a cord that would go around Ben's neck, make him compliant, and hold Glory in his body. He ignored Spike's ironic mutterings about leashes. Spike refused to let him practice with the chip, but that was straightforward, more a charm than a spell. Giles doubted he'd have difficulty.
They found Ben by the simple expedient of calling the hospital to learn when his shift ended, and then lying in wait. It was easy enough to loop the cord around his neck as he crossed the parking lot. Held by the spell, Ben sank to the concrete, concealed among the cars. No one would see. Then a deep breath, a brush of fingers to Spike's forehead, a few words and a mental nudge, and the chip was blocked, isolated behind a barrier of magic.
Giles stumbled backwards, away from Spike, and closed his eyes. He heard a muffled cry from Ben, and then Spike's loud swallows. Trapped in Ben's dying body, Glory thrashed against the binding and pounded on Giles' mind like a hammer. He called up every scrap of power he had to hold the spell in place. Then she dimmed suddenly as Ben died, and she followed him into death as quickly as water spiraling down a drain.
Giles opened his eyes and saw Spike looking at him, demon-faced. He was crouched beside Ben's body, holding it in a parody of an embrace. "Is that it?" Spike asked, sounding irritated. "She's gone?"
"Yes."
"Not very exciting after all that buildup."
Not exciting at all. It had been easy, anti-climactic. As easy as killing a man, and that happens every day.
Spike released Ben and stood up, yellow eyes almost glowing in the faint light. His lips and chin were smeared with blood. Then he smiled, a rueful smile on a face that should have been terrifying, and wiped the blood on the hem of his black t-shirt. It didn't even show.
Giles watched as Spike struggled to restore his human face, and finally succeeded. He doesn't want to upset me, Giles thought. Looking at that face and thinking of the demon it hid, he felt a rush of sympathy for Spike. Giles had his own brutal impulses, dark forces in his mind that sometimes kicked and screamed and pleaded to be let out. It hurt, but he fought, and won. Spike wasn't even granted the dignity of choice. The chip controlled him, muzzled him, caged him like an animal. Yet there was a man in Spike's head, as well as a demon.
Spike came over to him. Giles could see a dry smear of blood on his chin. He shivered, but didn't move away. "Put the leash back on, then," Spike said. His voice was harsh, abrupt, and he was shaking.
Giles started to reach for him, to undo the spell, and stopped. He looked at the man who shared his bed. Spike was more than a devastating fuck, more than sex appeal and sarcasm. Far more than a demon. He deserved better than a leash. Giles didn't want a lapdog, he wanted Spike in all his irritating splendor. Free. "No," he said.
"Have you gone mental?" Spike caught him by the coat and shook him, not gently. "Without the chip I'll kill. And you'll end up putting a fucking stake in me. I don't think we want that."
"You don't have to kill." Giles tried unsuccessfully to free himself. "We'll find blood for you, just like before."
"But I want to kill." Spike laughed angrily. "You need your head examining. You've started to think I'm like you. Is that what you imagine, Rupert, that I'm basically a decent bloke with some things in his past he doesn't like to talk about? A bad temper and a ruthless streak? You stupid bloody fool. I’m not even a man. I'm a demon in a man's skin."
Suddenly Giles could believe that Spike was almost a hundred and fifty years old. He looked it, in his bitterness and rage. "You're more than that. You said so yourself. Spike is William and the demon both." He touched Spike's cheek, and Spike growled low in his throat.
"It's not enough. Not to keep me from killing. William was always a pathetic bastard, how's he going to control a demon?"
"You can do it. I have faith in you, Spike." He wanted to. He wanted to believe Spike was strong enough for anything.
"For fuck's sake!" Spike shook him again. "Do you know what's happening in my head right now? The demon's telling me to kill you, so you can't put the chip back." Spike abruptly let him go, shoved him away. "If I kill you I'll end up as barking mad as Dru. Don't let me hurt you, I need you, you fuckwit. Put the leash back on before I kill you."
"I don't want to be your jailer," Giles said through his sudden terror.
"We don't have a choice. Call it being my conscience, if that makes you feel better."
It hurts enough already being my own conscience, Giles thought. He laid a hand on Spike's forehead, undid the blocking spell, then pulled Spike into his arms and held him until he stopped shaking. Over Spike's shoulder Giles could see Ben's corpse slumped against a car's rear wheel. He closed his eyes and tried to think of the lives they'd saved. "We'd better get out of here, Spike," he said.
Spike stepped away, and for a moment Giles saw hopeless anguish on his face. Then it was gone and he was expressionless, closed. "Yeah, let's go," he said.
It was a bad night for both of them. Spike paced and drank into the small hours, refusing comfort, snarling if Giles tried to touch him or even speak to him. Finally, Giles went to bed, but couldn't sleep. A couple of hours before dawn Spike came in and sat on the edge of the bed. "I feel like taking a nice stroll in the sun, later," he said flatly.
Giles took his cold hand and squeezed it. Spike didn't respond. "I'm sorry, Spike. But you did the right thing."
"Maybe. But it doesn't bloody help." He stood up. "I'm going."
"Stay out of the sun," Giles said. Spike nodded and was gone.
Giles lay for a while staring at the ceiling, then rolled over onto what had lately become Spike's half of the bed. There was nothing of him there, of course. No warmth, no scent, nothing. I told myself I'd do anything to stop Glory, Giles thought. Give anything. No matter the cost. But I didn't think it would be this.
* * * * *
Spike stood outside Giles' door, listening. Inside, he could hear Giles shifting in a chair, and pages turning too rapidly for him to actually be reading. There was a deep, smoky odor of whiskey. Below it, a very faint scent of Giles himself, barely detectable at this distance. Spike inhaled, looking for more. Yesterday he'd had to stop himself from digging through a pile of bedsheets and unwashed clothes for something that still smelled of Giles. He wasn't that desperate, he'd told himself, wasn't a lapdog, wasn't pining for this fucking unbearable bastard of a man.
It was over a week since he'd killed Ben. Since he'd been freed, and then held out his neck for the leash again. And walked away afterwards. He'd gone on a spree, drinking all over town until his money ran out. He'd nearly picked up a woman in one bar, and a man in another. But in the end he didn't want either of them, and had said so as cruelly as he could. He'd started fights with several powerful demons, beaten all of them and killed one. In an alley littered with used condoms and crack pipes, he'd tried to bite a prostitute, passed out after the nuclear explosion in his head, and barely woken in time to get home before sunrise.
For the last two days, broke and seething, he'd channel surfed in the afternoons and wandered aimlessly at night. And now his wanderings had taken him here.
He stood, eyes closed, and listened to Giles' restlessness--sitting for a few minutes, fidgeting, getting up again. Switching the television on, then off, opening the refrigerator door and closing it without taking anything out. Spike recognized that awful nervous tension all too well.
He listened, and sniffed out familiar scents. Feeling like a stray dog, caught between the call of the hunt and the call of home. Or a man, caught between instinct and conscience, between anger and love. But definitely caught.
Giles, inside, was still fidgeting and fretting. Spike knew he was unhappy. Lonely. Pining.
Giles needed him. He was not Spike's jailer, not his master. Just a man, as Spike had known all along. And if Spike was being tamed, then Spike had chosen it.
Anyway, tamed might be the wrong word. Giles had torn his own flesh with his teeth to give Spike blood. He might keep that wildness hidden, but Spike knew where to find it.
He heard music, suddenly. The Ramones. One of Spike's favorite albums. And Giles', too, since it was in his collection.
Oh, bugger it, he thought. I can't walk away from this. I want it too much.
He reached for his key, then decided to knock instead. It had been a while, and it wouldn't do to take his welcome for granted.
He knocked, and Giles answered. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked thinner. "Hello, Spike," he said. Smiling. "I've missed you."
Spike kissed him. He smelled wonderful.
Date: Summer 2003
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