A Certain Level of Trush: Part 1
by Theory Queen
Takes place after "Anne," shortly after Buffy returns to her mother's house. After that, it has nothing to do with the series, another "alternate universe" kind of story.
All the characters are the creations of Joss Whedon. I merely twisted them to do my evil bidding.
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Spike sat in a chair near Buffy’s bed, watching her sleep. The moonlight shone in the window, lighting her golden hair that was fanned out across the pillow. He had come to her room every night for the past week, ever since he got back to Sunnydale. At first, he’d intended to take advantage of his invitation into her house and just kill her, but then he began thinking, and that was always a bad sign. He doubted that, even with her being out of practice and asleep, that he could take her on successfully, so instead, he studied her.

She was having a dream, he could tell. She tossed and turned repeatedly, and fragments of sentences spoken in her sleep reached his ears. “Where did you come from?” she asked. Spike looked up sharply - she might have been talking to him! “Angel,” she said in a pleading tone. Spike relaxed. She was dreaming about Angel.

She was dreaming about Angel. She walked through the graveyard in the early afternoon, and saw him coming towards her. “Where did you come from?” she asked him.

“Hell. Don’t you remember? You sent me there,” he replied, walking on past her.

“Angel!” she called after him, pleading. He stopped, but didn’t turn around. She went to him and put her arms around him from behind, feeling his sun-warmed shoulder against her cheek. Wait. Sun-warmed? She turned him around and looked at his eyes. “Are you a vampire?”

“What do you think?” he asked, looking up at the sun and shielding his eyes as she’d seen him do before, in another dream. “What vampire can possibly walk in sunlight?”

“I can, for one,” came a different voice. The two of them looked to see who had spoken. Spike was approaching them, the sunlight so bright on his platinum hair that it almost hurt to look at him. He continued, “Yeah, it’s ‘cause we’re a whole new breed of vampire. Isn’t that right, Angelus?” He looked directly into Buffy’s eyes. “Vampires who love the slayer.”

“Spike?” Buffy asked, curiously unafraid of him.

“Spike?” Buffy asked. Her visitor’s eyebrows shot up, and he stood up warily.

“’Ello, pet,” he said. He was halfway to the window to make his escape when she spoke again.

“What do you mean?” Buffy asked.

He was puzzled for a second, not having spoken, before he realized she was still dreaming. She was dreaming about him, now! He felt a cocky grin cross his face at the thought of this beautiful young woman having dreams about him. Not that he hadn’t had the odd dream that featured her, either! He just doubted hers were on the same, uh, level as his had been.

He was still grinning a moment later, when her eyes opened. Quick as a cat, she was out of bed and had him pinned against the wall of her bedroom, with a stake at his chest and one arm across his throat. “Now, what do you mean, vampires who love the slayer?” she asked conversationally, as if they were just having a casual chat.

Spike raised one scarred eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, slayer,” he managed to say. What on earth had she been dreaming about? He swallowed painfully as her forearm pressed into his throat. “If you’ll let me go, I’ll just be on my way,” he smiled hopefully at her.

Strangely, though, he didn’t see any malevolence in her eyes - just confusion. “This is real,” she said, trying to figure it out. Spike nodded as well as he could with her arm against his throat, but he could feel her attention wandering from him. With any luck, he might get out of this after all. Buffy continued, “and your walking in sunlight - that was a dream.” He nodded again, and shifted his weight, preparing to make his break. Buffy looked him in the eye. “So, is your being in love with me real, or a dream, Spike?” she asked.

Spike’s eyes widened. “No offense, slayer, but it sure wasn’t real life!”

Buffy fixed him with a glare. “Then why were you in my room tonight? And last night? And the night before? I can still sense vampires a little, you know, even in my sleep!”

“I’ll keep that in mind -“ Spike promised. Quickly, he raised his arms and broke her grip. Her stake went soaring across the room, and catching her off balance, he threw her backwards onto the bed. Spike lightly brushed his lips against hers and finished his sentence, “ - for tomorrow night! See you then, slayer!” and was gone out the window before she could react.

Outside, Spike cursed himself. Why the hell had he done that? For that matter, why did he go to her room every night? It wasn’t to hunt anymore; after their brief alliance, he just hadn’t had the stomach for killing her in cold blood, and - he was honest with himself - he didn’t think he could take her in a fair fight anymore. He didn’t know where she had spent her summer, but she had come back different, with an edge. And if she could sense his presence even in her sleep, he would have been in trouble anyway.

He lit a cigarette and started home. He thought briefly of Dru, and hoped she was happy with the ex-psychologist vampire he had passed her off onto. He was grateful to the guy for getting Dru out of his hair. With her, Angel, and all his “minions” gone, he was quite alone. And since his deal with the slayer had hinged on Dru, he felt no qualms of conscience about going back to Sunnydale now that she was gone.

Not that he’d felt a qualm of conscience in a couple of centuries anyhow, he reminded himself, flicking his cigarette butt to the sidewalk ahead of him. Something about the slayer just sort of made him want to be better than he really was. It was getting annoying.


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