Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

House of the first brothers, The Dreaming  - sometime between then and now

“Where is it?! Where have you put it ?!”

Cain grins to himself at the sound of his brother’s frantic searching. Even for him, killing the same person over and over gets boring eventually. He remembers vaguely having other interests once, but that was when he was still a man. Back when he lived in the Here instead of the There.

No one who lives in the Dreaming is really real, except for the Sandman himself of course, because in the Dreaming the minds of humans have too much power. They shape everything in it with their subconscious, and Cain is no exception. Generation after generation of humans heard his story, the story of the first murder, and it grew in the retelling as stories do, gaining power and weight and spreading through humans minds like a virus. And the more people knew the story - the more they believed - the more power they had to shape Cain in the image of their worst selves, their darkest impulses.

In the Here, he probably had hobbies, duties, a thousand mundane things to occupy his limited human time. In the Dreaming, with the weight of a thousand thousand human minds weighing down on him, he only cares about killing his brother, and even the most inventive mind couldn’t find ways to keep that fresh for all eternity.

So he’s branching out. Minor nastinesses. Pretty hurts. Death by a thousand cuts.

Even if he wasn’t Cain, the first sinner and the first condemned, he’d still hate his brother for what he isn’t. He isn’t a cultural and religious touch-stone. He isn’t part of the lore and history of Empires. He isn’t trapped in a mould too small to contain any real person. He gets to have hobbies .

Abel writes. When he’s not being murdered by Cain, it’s what he does. Not because he has to, but because he likes it. He doesn’t understand how lucky he is to have that. Something that is all his. Something no living human would ever know about him.

Cain reads his books sometimes, looking for new ideas for how to torment him, and he knows his brother is an eclectic scholar. There are diaries, and treatises on the nature of unreality. There are cookbooks for those who don’t eat and picture books for those who can’t see. Books of spells that do nothing, and limericks that contain terrible power.

The book Abel’s looking for is different. It’s special. The book Abel is looking for is a biography, the only truly accurate biography ever written of Samael, who is called Lucifer, First Star of the Morning. The work of a dozen lifetimes, containing secrets learned through all the sly and secret paths of the Dreaming. Truths told by fork-tongued demons, and lies told by saints and angels, and myths sung by distant stars.

It’s the most secret and dangerous thing Abel has ever owned. Even in the Dreaming, even for a man long dead or perhaps never alive in the first place, it is unimaginably risky to own such a thing. There are worse ways to spend eternity than as Cain’s victim, and for all his complaining, Abel knows that.

Cain has hidden the book where Abel will never think to look. He wants to know if the worry will drive his brother insane. That would be something new. It has been a long time since Cain saw something new.

“Where did you last have it?” he calls.

There’s a squawk of protest and his brother appears. His face is red with worry and anger, and he’s sweating. “What have you done with it?”

“With what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My book! The book.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much, you’re always reading or writing something. What does it look like? I shall help you look.”

“You will? No, no, this is a trap. You have taken it. You must have taken it. Please brother, please . You don’t know what you’ve done! If the book is found....”

Cain gives up the pretence. “Oh, it’s already been found. The question is whether it’s going to be used . And how many pieces old Hobb will leave you in when he finds out.”

Abel’s florid face goes pale with fear. It’s an expression Cain knows well. “You… How could you? This is, even for you this is… bastardry. Knavery! Well don’t think you’re going to get around me that easily. I’ll tell. I’ll tell the Prince of Lies what you have done, and he’ll come for you too! He’ll put you on a rack right next to mine, and you’ll finally get what’s coming to you !”

Cain might be bored of killing the same person for all of time, but he is still what the humans make him, and he can’t allow that kind of insult to go unpunished. “Oh you will, will you?” He reaches out, picks a knife from a passing nightmare. “But how will you talk without a tongue?”

Abel starts to back away. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t… please, Cain, don’t, I’ll….” but whatever he was about to say is lost in a gargling scream.

Blood splashes Cain’s face, hot and wet and curiously odourless since the advent of cinema, and he grins. Maybe there’s something to be said for repetition after all. Watching his brother choke to death on the shredded pieces of his own tongue never really gets old.

Raeburn Street, Brixton, South London - 7 April 1982

“Are you sure we’re not forgetting something?”

“For the ‘undredth time, yes, I’m sure. What’d we forget, we’re goin’ to Soho norr’on fuckin’ ‘oliday!”

“I know, I just… I can’t shake this feeling that I’m forgetting something. Something important. Maybe someone? It feels like there should be someone else with us. You didn’t invite Chas did you?”

“I already told you, ‘e’s workin’ tonight.”

“Oh yeah, you did. Garry then? Or Ritchie?”

Johnny snorted. “Like you’d ever get Ritchie in the Marquee. You know how ‘e feels about crowds. And Gaz’s back ‘ome, visitin’ his mam.”

That’s ridiculous enough to distract Rupert from his worrying. “Garry doesn’t have a mum.”

“Everyone’s gorr’a mam. Maureen’s alright. Used to go there for our tea, when dad drank the dole, and she’d allus feed us. Proper scran too.”

“What happened to Garry then?”

“Gaz was born a tosser. I blame his da. Maureen allus did.”

They’re most of the way down the street, and Rupert can’t resist turning back to stare at the flat, in case that jogs his memory of what he’s forgotten.

“Will y’stop. You’re allus fussin’; it’s like goin’ on the lash with someone’s nan! What would we ‘ave forgotten? We don’t need anythin’ ‘cept cash and bifters. If anyone else were comin’ with, they’d’ve been ‘ere by now.”

“You’re probably right.”

“”I’m allus right.”

“Oh yeah? Remember when you told me Georgie was definitely into you, and she threw her drink in your face?” There’s something familiar about that, something that feels like it’s on the tip of this tongue, something about Georgie... 

“She was just frontin’. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

“Most people don’t count scars as a sign of sexual prowess.” It’s right there, if he could just remember .

“Most people are boring. Anyway, Georgie’s wound so tight, gettin’ ‘er to unwind was always go’na be a dangerous job.”

“Well the fact that you kept trying to use her to cheat on her… best… friend…” It hits him all at once, the memory of who’s missing, of who should be with them, and he can’t believe he forgot her. “Fuck.”

“Y’ all‘ight?” Johnny asks, not sounding particularly concerned.

“We forgot her again,” Rupert says, his eyes filling up with tears. “Shit, Johnny, we fucking forgot that Roni’s dead!”

Johnny looks offended. “I didn't.”

“Then why are you here?! Why are you okay?!”

Johnny shrugs, shoulders shifting inside his leather jacket. “She's been dead a while mate, and sittin’ at ‘ome twiddlin’ me thumbs won't bring ‘er back, so I might as well enjoy life. Anyway, she knew the risks.” He walks on a few steps and turns back, looking surprised to see that Rupert isn't following him. “Y’comin’ Ripper?”

Rupert feels sick. Ronni had died for John, died because of John, because just being around him was dangerous. Once upon a time Rupert had been attracted to that danger, had thought it was exciting, but now, looking at the honest confusion on John's face, the danger doesn't seem exciting anymore, just frightening.

“You know, I'm not really feeling it. I think I'll just go home.”

“Suit yerself. I'll see y’around.”

“Not if I see you first,” Rupert says, like he always does, only this time he means it. “Enjoy the gig.”

He stays standing in the road, watching John walk away, and vows to himself that whatever happens, he's not going to end up like Roni. He's not going die trapped in the gaps of the universe for the sake of a man who wouldn't even mourn him.

Chapter Text

The Magic Box, Sunnydale, California - November 2nd, 2001

“I would fuck all of them, and then kill all of them to punish them for being unfaithful to their wives!”

Buffy sighs. They all make a point of trying to include Anya in things, but she always makes them weird. “No, that’s not how it works. You have to pick one person to fuck, one to kill and one to marry.”

“But that is ridiculous. I am with Xander, why would I marry someone else?”

“You were fine with fucking someone else,” Buffy points out. Giles’ ears go pink when he’s embarrassed, and listening to their conversation, they’re slowly edging towards scarlet. It’s probably all the swearing.

“That was as part of taking vengeance on them. Vengeance doesn’t count as cheating.”

Willow snorts. “I’m pretty sure Xander would disagree with you on that.”

They’re saved from hearing whatever Anya would have replied to that by the sound of the shop bell.

“Well I'm clearly in the wrong place,” a voice with an unmistakable twang of Liverpool says from the doorway. “No way my old mate Ripper would be running a fancy place like this!”

Giles startles, almost dropping the figurine he’s pricing. “John? Johnny C?”

“The original punk rock demonologist at your service,” the voice replies, and its owner steps down onto the shop floor where Buffy can see him properly.

He’s handsome, in an unshaven Sting tribute band sort of way, messy blond hair and a five o'clock shadow like he’s just woken up, even though it’s nearly half-past four. (Not that she doesn’t know how that goes). His trench coat is either third hand, or he doesn’t know how to look after his clothes. His white shirt looks impressively clean compared to everything else he’s wearing until you notice that it still has the fresh out of the shop creases.

He looks like trouble with a capital T, but she can’t quite put her finger on why.

“You know this guy, Giles?”

“Since I was eighteen. It’s been a long time though.” Giles steps out from behind the counter and holds out a hand to shake. To his obvious surprise, he gets hauled into a hug instead.

“Too long,” the stranger says, and his voice is a little rough in a way that could be cigarettes or could be emotion. “You managed to get even posher, you great southern pansy.”

“Whereas three decades in London have done nothing to refine you.”

“It's part of my charm. Any chance of a cuppa? You can't get one for love nor money in this benighted country.”

Giles smiles. “I get Twinings shipped in ‘specially. The duty is ludicrous, but it's worth it.”

“I'd’ve settled for PG Tips,” the man called John says, grinning.

“You introduce yourself to everyone while I put the kettle on.”

Giles disappears into the back of the shop a little too quickly, Buffy notices, like he wants to get away from the man even though he’d greeted him as an old friend. Buffy hopes like hell this isn’t the start of another Ethan situation.

The stranger smiles round at them all. His teeth are tobacco-stained and a little crooked, and there’s a scar on his cheek that crinkles oddly and makes the smile lopsided.

“John Constantine, at your service.”

“Constantine?” Anya asks. “The Laughing Magician?”

“Now there’s a name I haven’t heard for a while, especially not from a human. Or…” Constantine says a few phrases in a guttural growling language Buffy doesn’t recognise, and Anya replies in the same language.

Constantine laughs and responds, and Anya leans forward, eyes bright with interest, and it’s probably incidental that the position gives John a clear view of her boobs if he chooses to look. Probably. Still, given that they’ve already established that Anya’s ideas of what will upset Xander are kinda confused, Buffy feels like it’s time to intervene. She clears her throat and feels a little vindicated when Anya starts, looking guilty. They had totally been flirting in whatever demon language that was. “Hi, I’m Buffy.”

John nods. “The Vampire Slayer. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Who from?” She’s learned to distrust humans who already know who she is, and she’s pretty sure this dude’s human.

“Vampires mostly.”

Not a good sign. “Do you socialise with a lot of vampires?”

“Only the social ones.” He turns to smile at Tara, clearly not interesting in any response Buffy might have to that. “I don’t think we’re been introduced. Call me John.”

“Oh, er, I’m Tara,” Tara says, blushing a little. “And this is my g-girlfriend, Willow.”

John gives Willow a searching look, and when he smiles there’s something else behind his eyes, something watchful that hadn’t been there before and Buffy doesn’t think it’s got anything to do with them being gay. “Witches?”

“Yeah. And Anya called you a magician?”

“It’s an inherited title. One of the nicer things people call me. I prefer to think of myself as a petty dabbler. Too much magic will make you go blind if you’re not careful, so I leave the magician-ing to other people where possible.”

Willow and Tara exchange significant looks that Buffy pretends not to see. Things have been strained in their relationship lately, and she’d have to be blind not to see that it has something to do with magic. Time for a subject change. “You’re from Liverpool, right?”

John grins. “Based on the age, I’m going to guess mum’s a Beatles fan, yeah?”

“Yes actually. I’ve seen Hard Day’s Night so many times.” Saturday evenings in front of the TV while she and her mom painted one another’s nails and girls screamed at just the sight of the Fab Four. It was only a few years ago. It feels like lifetimes.

John shakes his head. “Beating heart of the industrial bloody revolution, and all anyone remembers us for is some long-haired wankers who could barely play their instruments.”

“You could barely play your instrument,” Giles says, emerging from the back room with a teapot and mugs and a carton of milk balanced on a tray. “You’d never picked up a guitar before the band, you told me so.”

“Was that the night we didn’t fuck?” John asks with a wicked glint in his eye, and too Buffy’s astonishment, Giles doesn’t even look shocked.

“We never fucked, so that doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“Yeah, but that was the night you nearly gave in.” He winks at Anya. “I plied him with a bottle of Blue Nun and secrets I’d never told anyone before.”

“ ‘I’d never played a guitar before Membrane’ wasn’t exactly the crown jewels. Anyone who heard you play could have told you that.” Giles is doing that face he does when he doesn’t want you to know he’s smiling, and Buffy realises with a jolt of fascinated horror that this is flirting. Giles is flirting. Even with Jenny Calendar, there’d been a lot more embarrassed stuttering than actual flirting. 

“You still came to all my gigs though.”

“You somehow managed to get bookings at my favourite clubs.” It’s not even subtle flirting. This is a side of Giles Buffy has never seen before, and she’s not sure she likes it. It’s like watching her dad flirt.

“Bollocks had you ever been inside Inferno before we played there. They’d have turned you away at the door if you hadn’t come in with us.”

“Oddly enough, I don’t count London’s premier demon bar as one of my favourite drinking establishments.”

“Christ Ripper, who stuck a broom-handle up your arse? I’ve held you up while you puked in a skip, there’s no need to be all proper.”

“I seem to remember it was you who puked in the skip.”

John pulls a face, like he’s trying to access long-forgotten memories. “Yeah, maybe. But it was me who bailed you out that time you punched the doorman at the Troubadour and got yourself arrested.”

“ Chas bailed me out. You turned up in yesterday’s eyeliner and an ‘all coppers are bastards’ shirt and tried to stick ‘gays bash back' stickers on the desk. You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested as well.”

“At least I turned up!”

“Yes,” Giles says, relenting. He looks desperately sad suddenly. “You always did.”

John doesn’t seem to have noticed Giles’s abrupt change of mood. He raises his mug of tea. “To the good old days.”

Giles mirrors the action, a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “May we never relive them.”

“Cute,” Buffy says, taking her own mug. She’s still not a big fan of tea, but it’s impossible to spend much time around Giles and not develop at least a bit of a taste for it. “So is this a social visit, or did you need something?” She can’t put her finger on what it is, but something about John is putting her hackles up. Maybe the way Giles is looking at him like his heart is breaking, maybe the fact that he speaks Demon and hangs out with vampires, maybe something more… mystic mumbo jumbo. There’s something about him that feels off to her, like he’s setting off her spidey-senses or something.

“I heard Ripper was palling around with the Slayer these days. Thought I might call in a favour.” Giles looks horrorstruck, and John shakes his head. “Not Newcastle. I’m not in the business of killing kids if I can avoid it.”

“Good,” Giles says, with surprising vehemence. “The Council has asked three times, and I’d have given you the same answer I gave them.”

Buffy wants to know what the hell ‘Newcastle’ is code for that Giles would defy the Watcher Council over it and that John talks about it like it’s an automatic death sentence. What could be worse than Glory? Does she really want to find out?

“I wouldn’t do that to you, mate. Not to you, or your girl.” Buffy bristles at being called Giles’ ‘girl’. She’s not a girl, she’s (somehow) a grown woman, and she’s her own person, thank you very much. “This is much less dangerous. I’ve got a Rhymer after me, and I can’t get rid of by myself.”

Anya looks amused. “How did you manage to anger a Rhymer?”

“Stopped the Pitriders getting their hands on one of Abel’s books which had made its way to the mortal plane. It ended up with a book dealer I use sometimes. He called me to say he’d had skeletons on motorbikes hanging around his shop shouting about some book they wanted every night for a week, and there’d be a discount in it for me if I got rid of them. I’ve met Brandor and his boys before and they’re not the brightest sparks even by demonic standards, no offence meant love, so I figured why not? Do my good deed for the day and get half price books into the bargain.

“What I didn’t know is that Brandor was collecting the book for Sparklefleck, who wanted it because it’s supposed to contain details of some secret weakness of the Morningstar’s, and Sparklefleck figures if Etrigan gets to get a promotion to Prince, then why not him? Then I swan up, nick the book, and here he’s left with a whole rebellion planned and no secret weapon. Only reason I’m not dead yet is he thinks I read the book before I had the stupid thing destroyed, and can be tortured into telling him how to beat the Prince of Lies in an arm-wrestling contest.”

“Did you read it?” Giles asks.

“Tried to. Bloody thing didn’t make any sense. Pretty sure it would only have been legible from inside the Dreaming, and I’m in enough trouble without the Endless on my tail as well. I tried telling Sparklefleck that of course, but it’s like trying to argue with Doctor Seuss. You can’t have a sensible conversation with someone who speaks in verse. Can’t be done.”

“I’m sorry, you want my help to fight a demon called Sparklefleck who talks in rhyme and whose henchmen are skeletons on motorbikes?” Buffy asks, incredulous.

“Problem?”

“No, just wanted to say that sentence out loud. That is the stupidest demon name I have ever heard.”

“I met one called Jyzm once,” John says. “And the best thing was, he had no idea why everyone he met thought it was so funny. He’d started doing possessions under an alias because otherwise, his victims were usually laughing too hard to seal the pact.”

“That is pretty bad,” Willow agrees. “But it’s still more threatening than Sparklefleck. That sounds like a magical unicorn from a kids cartoon.”

“All Unicorns are magical,” Anya says, in that condescending way she has of correcting the mere mortals among them. “It’s in their nature.”

“Not the ones in cartoons,” Willow argues.

Anya frowns. “Why not? Without magic, Unicorns are just big horses with spikes on their heads. I don’t think we should encourage children to befriend non-magical unicorns.”

“Getting them to avoid all unicorns’d be favourite,” John says. “Bunch of judgemental wankers.”

Buffy is sort of fascinated to know what his problem with Unicorns is, but she’s more interested in the demon she’s going to be fighting. “The rhyming thing, is it as annoying as it sounds?”

“It’s a sign of status,” Giles says. “In the hell-dimension they’re from, the Rhymers rank above even the Lords of Hell. I read somewhere that the rhyming was supposed to be a way of showing off how clever they are, but I don’t know if it’s true.”

“I asked Jason Blood once, in one of the rare moments of lucidity when he remembered what century it was and stopping thinking I was my own great great great some more greats grandfather,” John says. “He said it was like those Chinese emperors who grew their fingernails long to show they didn’t need to do any work. Rhyming everything shows off that you’re important enough to not have anything better to do.

“On the other hand, Zee said Etrigan once told Zatara that it was a rule imposed from above by the Princes as a way of stopping rebellions. Hard to plot when having a simple conversation can take all week. They both make sense, but I’d believe Etrigan over Blood any day. He may be a demon, but at least he doesn’t keep forgetting it’s not the 1400s anymore.

“And yes love, it’s exactly as irritating at you’re imagining.”

“Okay cool. Sounds horrible. How do we kill him?”

“Lots of brute strength and the traditional holy artefacts usually does the trick,” John says with a shrug. “And holy artefacts I can lay my hands on no problem, but I’m a bit lacking on the brute strength front.”

“Holy weapons are for vampires,” Buffy says, glancing at Giles for confirmation.

“The demons John deals with are rather more… traditional than you’re used to,” Giles says, looking awkward. Anya is being unusually quiet and is watching Giles like he’s a kid on America’s Funniest Home Videos about to go down a slide. What does she know that Buffy doesn’t (apart from a whole lot of really gross stuff about demons)?

“Traditional like what, horns and a pointy tail? Because we’ve done horns and pointy tails before.”

“Traditional as in Christian,” John says. “This isn’t just a hell-dimension. This is Hell with a capital H. The one the Council likes to pretend doesn’t exist because acknowledging it means living your life in the sure and certain knowledge that Heaven and Hell exist, and most people are never going to earn themselves the trip upstairs.”

Willow puts up her hand like she’s in a lecture. “Question. If Hell exists, and you mentioned the Morningstar earlier which I’m pretty sure is one of the other names for Lucifer, does that mean Angels exists? God?”

“Most of the rulers of Hell started out as servants of the Presence,” John says easily, like he isn’t shaking the foundations of most world religions. “They rebelled, got cast out, decided that they might as well enjoy themselves if they were going to be stuck down there and turned into right bastards. On the other hand, I’ve met the Wrath of God a few times and he’s a dick, and the Stranger isn’t much better, so I doubt an eternity in the Presence is any better than an eternity with a lot of self-righteous former angels kicking you in the googlies just for the fun of it.”

“So you’re saying Christianity is right, and we’re all going to hell?” Tara asks tentatively. Buffy isn’t exactly surprised by what John’s saying, in light of her own experiences of the afterlife, but this has got to be quite a shock for Tara given her upbringing.

“I’m saying Christianity is as much bollocks as every other religion, they just have more power when it comes to shaping the unreal,” John says. “But basically, yeah.”

“I’ve never been more pleased to be Jewish,” Willow says fervently.

“As far as I’m aware, religious belief doesn’t let you opt-out,” John says with a shrug. “Unless you happen to have an idol to Rama Kushna hidden on your person. My advice is try not to think about it. You can’t do anything about it, so just ignore it and get on with your life.”

“Although to be clear, not thinking about it doesn’t decrease your likelihood of going to Hell,” Anya says brightly.

“Hang on,” Buffy says. “You said demons used to be Angels, but Anya was a human before she was a demon.”

“The Princes of Hell are mostly Fallen Angels,” John says, “although not all. The rest of them are a mix. Some born demons, some former humans, a few chthonic gods whose mythology got twisted up.” He pulls a face like that last one means something personal to him. “Anyanka here is none of those. She’s a demonic entity, not a true Demon. There’s a difference, although for the lower levels it’s basically theological. Desire demons are desire demons, whatever belief system they came from. Vengeance demons are vengeance demons. It’s only when you get up to the Lords and Rhymers and Princes that things get a little more complicated.”

“Where do Vampires fit into all this?”

“They don’t, mostly. Their origins might be magical, but they’re still from the Here rather than the There. Their position in the demonic hierarchies is exactly the same as humans - at the bottom, being shat on by the beings with real power.”

“I thought you liked Vampires.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Some of them are okay, once you get to know them, but most of them are assholes, and even the good ones are bastards.”

“That reminds me,” Giles says, and his tone is mild in a way that makes Buffy think that, for whatever reason, his words are intended to hurt. “How is John Mitchell?”

“Wouldn’t know,” John says shortly. “By the time I got out of Ravenscar, he was back with Herrick’s mob and you know how I feel about fascists.”

“I’m sorry,” Giles says, sounding like he’s regretting the deliberately cruel question. “I hadn’t heard.”

John shrugs. “Not like we were married. He was never going to stay away for long. He’s got no willpower, and you know what vampires are like about blood-ties. Worse than knobs.”

“Blood is thicker than water.”

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. It’s bollocks either way, but you’re going to quote crap at me at least do it accurately.”

Giles laughs. “Play it again, Sam?”

“Oh god, don’t you bloody start. I got enough of that from Mitchell.”

“Wasn’t he in Casablanca? I seem to remember him telling me that.”

“According to him. You can’t bloody see his face mind, so we’ve only got his word for it.”

Giles laughs. “God, you hung out with some pricks back then.”

“What does that say about you, mate? Anyway, some of ‘em were alright.”

“Georgie was alright.”

“Georgie wouldn’t give you the time of day from what I remember. Always was a smart one.”

“Your taste’s improved since though. How’s Zatanna?”

“Good, last I heard. We don’t talk so much these days what with Nick, and that thing where I got her dad burned alive, you know how it is. But it’s not like you can get a divorce for a soul-bond, so she’s stuck with me.”

“I heard about Nick. God, John, I am so sorry, it…”

“Save it,” John says, voice suddenly hard. “You didn’t know him, and you didn’t kill him, so I don’t need your sorrys.”

There’s tension in the air that you could cut with a knife, and Buffy would love to listen to them reminisce about people she doesn’t know and references she doesn’t get, she really would, but Giles looks like he might cry if John snaps at him one more time. “What are we going to do about your demon problem?”

“They’re after a book, right?” Tara asks. “Could we just… give them a different one? You said they’re not very bright.”

John considers this. “Might work,” he agrees. “It would definitely work on Brandor and his boys, they’re thick as mud and I doubt they’re big on reading. Sparklefleck would be harder. Despite the name, he’s not stupid.”

His musings are interrupted by the shop bell as Xander arrives from his shift. He’s changed his shirt, but he’s still in his work pants and boots, and there’s a definite smell of cement and brick dust when he comes to kiss Anya hello.

“So what did I miss?” he asks.

“This is John Constantine,” Anya says brightly. “He knows D’Hoffryn and he speaks Ashmahaar. Also, I have a question for you about infidelity.”

“That so?” Xander says, glaring at John.

John raises his hands. “Don’t look at me mate. I’ll own to the first two, but I’m a married man.”

Giles coughs something that sounds suspiciously like “bollocks”.

“Alright, me and Zee aren’t exactly exclusive. But I don’t sleep with vengeance demons, even recovering ones. That never ends well for anyone.”

Xander looks back at his fiance, and Anya nods. “Not him. We were playing a game. Marry, eviscerate something…”

“Fuck, marry, kill?”

“Yes! And I wanted to know whether you would feel it was cheating if I seduced someone as part of the duties of a vengeance demon. Not that I am one, anymore. Just hypothetically.”

“I don’t want to know how that came up in a game of fuck marry kill. And yes, I would. And I would be very upset. And possibly cry. In a manly way. Manly tears.”

“Humans are very confusing,” Anya says with a sigh.

“That’s what I’m always saying,” John agrees. “As to what you missed, I’m here because I’ve got a demon after me, and I heard old Ripper Giles was pals with the current Slayer. Thought I’d call in a favour.”

“Oooh, tell him what the demon’s called,” Willow says.

“He’s called Sparklefleck.”

Xander breaks into a slow grin. “Seriously? Sparklefleck ? That sounds like a magical unicorn from a kids cartoon!”

“That’s what I said!”

“It gets better,” Buffy says. “Apparently he only talks in rhyme.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh yes. And coming up with rhymes on the fly means they all sound like William bloody McGonagall,” John says.

“I have no idea who that is, but I’m going to guess from context he’s a very bad poet.”

“Famously so,” Giles says. “We were just working out a plan of action for dealing with Sparklefleck and his minions when you arrived.”

“Do the minions also talk in rhyme?”

“No, but they are skeletons on motorbikes, so there’s that.”

“Okay, now that sounds awesome. In a gross, demon-y sort of way.”

“Like they should be airbrushed on the side of a panel-van,” Buffy agrees.

“They’re really not,” John says. “But they’re also not much of a threat. They’re pretty new to this whole demon thing. Etrigan killed them 10, 15 years ago, and even allowing for the time differences between Here and There, they’re still pretty green. Hit them hard enough and they’ll go to pieces.”

“Figuratively and metaphorically,” Willow says.

“So the problem is Sparklefleck,” Xander says, snickering at the name.

“Rhymers are tough. And Sparklefleck’s held his place in the hierarchy of Hell for centuries, so he’s tougher than most.”

“Oh yeah, Hell is real,” Willow adds. “Apparently. And Heaven. Giles didn’t think that was worth mentioning at any point in the last 5 years.”

Giles takes off his glasses and polishes them, the way he does when he’s avoiding eye contact. “As John said, there’s very little you can do about the afterlife apart from worry about it, so I thought it best not to mention it to you.”

“We’ll come back to that,” Buffy says. She’s been trying not to think about it too much because she doesn’t want to break down in front of the others, but the idea that he’d known, he’d know she was in heaven and he’d still let Willow bring her back… Or worse, he’d assumed she was such a bad person she must be in Hell… No. She wasn’t thinking about that now. Focus on the Demon killing. Demon killing she can do. “They’re after a book they think John has. Tara was wondering if we could give them a fake book instead.”

“Can we not just give them the real one?”

“I destroyed it,” John says. “It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d want falling into the wrong hands.”

“Okay, so fake book then. That makes sense. But how do we stop Mr-Poet-Demon from just reading it and coming back for revenge when he sees it’s the wrong one?”

“You said you couldn’t read the original?” Giles asks.

“It was written in the Dreaming, nothing from there makes any sense. Might be it was only legible while you were asleep. Or high. Or on the verge of death. Could be it was only legible on the third day of a waxing moon. Or at 3:57 on the third Tuesday in March. People spend their whole lives trying to decode single pages of books like that; I wasn’t going to waste the rest of my life on this one. Not like I’m the one planning to start a dust-up with the Lord of Gehenna.”

“So if we make a book he can’t read…”

“He might just buy it. At least for a while.”

“I don’t know any spells to do that,” Tara says worriedly. She’s much chattier with John that she usually is with strangers and that’s worrying Buffy. There’s still something about him that doesn’t feel right. “I mean, I can think of lots of spells that make text readable, but not the other way around.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be able to cobble something together. Enough pigs blood will make any spell work in my experience.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Xander pulls a face. “A really gross plan.”

The Magic Box, Sunnydale, California - 2nd November, 2001

“Okay, so what's the 411?” Buffy demands the moment they’re alone. John has left to go back to his motel for the night, Willow and Tara have gone to pick Dawn up, and Anya and Xander have gone home. “You're acting all pleased to see him, but you winced when he walked into the shop, and you've been looking like someone stole your cookie whenever he's not looking. Is he another Ethan? Do we need to thwart him?”

Giles sighs. “No no, nothing like that. It's personal.”

“Personal like what? Bad break up, he stole your favourite grimoire, he threw up on your best Ramones shirt? Come on Giles, you know personal never stays that way around here.”

Giles looks away, staring at the wall like he’s trying to avoid eye contact. “When we were in our twenties, John went through something unimaginably terrible. And it was my fault. Every time I look at him, I’m reminded of what I did.”

“Wow. Okay, that’s pretty serious. Want to tell Aunty Buffy all about it?”

“Not especially.” He glances at her and pulls that face that means he’s going to tell her even though he thinks he shouldn’t. “Do you want a drink?”

“That bad?”

Giles pours himself a scotch, swirling it around the glass and staring at the golden liquid as he answers. “We’d known each other for years. We moved in a lot of the same circles. Punk music and magic have more of an overlap than you might expect, but it still wasn’t a big scene. We were… friendly rivals. Always trying to outdo one another. Bigger and better spells, more girls seduced, more alcohol drunk, that kind of thing. Things just kept getting bigger and bigger, until eventually, I got cold feet. I told him I was done, and when he called me for help, I said no. I didn’t want him in my life.

“The next time I heard his name, it was on the news. He was being arrested for terrorism. He pleaded insanity, got shipped off to an asylum. I got the address from a mutual friend, but I never plucked up the courage to visit.”

“Terrorism.” White guys don’t get arrested for terrorism, they get news stories about how they’re mentally ill. Maybe things are different in England. She has vague memories of the IRA being on the news when she was younger, but John isn’t Irish either.

“He was trying to banish a fear elemental that had attached itself to a little girl. He and some others planned to summon a demon to destroy the elemental, but they lost control. The demon dragged the little girl straight into Hell, and their collective fear made the elemental stronger than ever.

“At some point the building caught fire. Everyone else who’d been there and who hadn’t already been killed got the hell out, but John had been watching when the demon took the girl. People say he looked into Hell itself. Whatever he saw, he couldn’t take it. He had a breakdown. When the police and fire brigade arrived, they found John sitting outside a burning building, holding what was left of the girl’s body. Then they got the fire under control and they found the bodies of all the people the fear elemental had killed. The only way they could make sense of it all was to say it had been a bombing.”

Buffy is far too used to Demons to be shocked, or even upset. “That’s horrible and all, but I don’t see how that’s your fault.”

Giles has been looking sad since John first walked into the shop, but now he looks defeated. Worn down and old in a way she’s never seen him look. “He called me, right before. Asked for my help. I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him, blamed him for his girlfriend’s death, and hung up on him.”

“Okay, that’s definitely personal. It’s still not your fault though.”

“Isn’t it? Mutual friends give me updates on John every now and then, and every time it’s something awful. His oldest friend dead. His husband dead. His father in law dead. Separated from his wife. Sectioned again. His father murdered. Cancer. Every time I think things can’t get worse for him, they do. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so awful. And so much of it can be traced right back to the night I didn’t help.”

Buffy lays a hand on his arm, offering comfort she knows he won’t take. “I know how you feel, I do, but if you’ve taught me anything it’s that you can’t blame yourself for things like that.” He’s supported her through some of the darkest times it’s possible for a person to go through, but she doesn’t know how to do the same for him, not when this has clearly been eating at him for years .

“How can I not? He was my friend, and I let him down.”

Nothing about John had screamed reliable to her. “And he never let you down?”

“That’s the worst of it,” Giles says, topping up his whiskey. “He never did. He was a bloody awful friend, flakey as anything, stole two of my girlfriends, stole money from me more than once, used to use my flat for really messy ritual magic and expect me to clean up, hit on me constantly no matter how often I told him I wasn’t interested... But he always came when I needed him. Didn’t always help mind, but he always came. And I didn’t.”

“You were scared.”

“Terrified. Honestly terrified. Things had been escalating for a while, but after Roni…” he trails off, staring at nothing, but just as she’s thinking she should say something he speaks again. “John’s girlfriend, Veronica. Nice girl, not the brightest spark, but God she worshipped John. Would have done anything for him. But he was sinking deeper and deeper into the magical world, spending more time with demons and spirits than humans some days. She tried to follow him like she always did, but she didn’t have a cursed magical legacy to protect her. 

“There’s a knack to it, to walking with one foot in the human world and one in the magical. Slayers have it naturally. Watchers are trained for it. Some people, like your friends, teach themselves. John can do it without thinking. Ronnie couldn’t. She didn’t mind the gap, as we used to say. She fell in, got consumed by the darkness. Faded away until it was hard to remember she had ever existed. We weren’t all that close, but she was still my friend, and every time something triggered a memory I’d realise all over again that she was gone. A couple of hours later, she’d have faded from my memory again until something reminded me, so every time felt like the first time I was hearing the news.

“It frightened me more than I can say. I knew I didn’t have John’s knack for balancing on the edge. I couldn’t spend an evening partying with demons and then step back into real life the next morning without a thought. I knew if I didn’t get out, really out, I’d end up the same way as Ronnie. Forgotten and abandoned to fall between the cracks of the universe.”

“Like Marcie?”

“Possibly. But Marcie didn’t go anywhere, she just became invisible. Roni wasn’t just gone, the Between ate up her whole timeline so that she’d never existed at all. Rather like what the Order of Dagon did with Dawn, except in reverse.

“Is that why you were so opposed to me having friends, back in the beginning?”

“I monitored them obsessively. I’d bump into them just to check they were still solid, drive past their houses on the way home from work to make sure they still existed when you weren’t there. I fought with myself constantly about whether to train them, the way the council had trained me, but in the end, it wasn’t necessary. They taught themselves. They integrated the supernatural into their normality, rather than being overwhelmed by it. It was fascinating to watch actually, from an intellectual standpoint.”

The idea of it, of Willow or Xander just fading away to nothing until even she couldn’t remember they’d ever existed, is unimaginably horrible, and however bad the idea of it is to her now, the reality of watching them and waiting for the point of no return must have been worse. “That must have sucked.”

“It did. Sometimes it still does. I look at them and I wonder why they can do it when Ronnie couldn’t. When I couldn’t. But dwelling on the past never helps. I did write a short monograph on my observations, to help in the training of the next generation of Watchers. That helped a little.”

That’s so Giles that she can’t help smiling, even though this really isn’t a smiling kind of conversation. “And now John’s back, bringing all this stuff you tried to forget with him, and you’re freaking out.”

Giles closes his eyes and rubs his temples as though he’s trying to dispel a headache. “He was so alive. More alive than anyone else I’ve ever met. Not happy, rarely that, but so completely vital. It was impossible not to like him, even while he was walking off with your wallet. Everyone knew he was a crook, everyone knew he was a pervert. Most of us knew he dabbled in magic far darker than the rest of us were really comfortable with. But we still liked him. He’s always been charming, but there was a time back then when he was magnetic. The band he was in were bloody awful, even by the standards of unsigned Punk bands, but we still all went to every gig because there was something about John up on the stage that was irresistible. Half the scene was in love with him and the rest of us wanted to be his best friend.

“When I compare that to the man who walked into the shop today…”

“He looks worn out,” Buffy says. “Worn thin.”

“He looks old. He looks like his life has been exactly as hard as it has been.”

“How old is he?” Buffy asks suddenly. If he and Giles knew one another as teenagers, they must be pretty close in age, but they don’t look it. As long as you’re not looking at his eyes, John doesn’t look a day over 35. His eyes are those of someone who has lived too long and seen too much, but that’s no indicator of age. Buffy sees those same eyes in the mirror every morning, and she doesn’t know whether to be relieved or hurt that none of her friends have noticed.

“He was born in 53, couple of years before me.”

That would make him late 40s. Normally Buffy wouldn’t think anything of it, but she can’t shake the feeling that there’s something fundamentally off about Giles’ old friend, and his apparent agelessness is only adding to her suspicion. She considers raising it with Giles, but he’s got enough to deal with. And it’s not like she can trust him to be objective, not when talking about John is making him look like his heart is breaking.

“So what now?”

Giles starts, jerked out of whatever reverie he’d been in by her words. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you going to say anything to him?”

“What would I say? Hey mate, sorry about that time I let a demon frame you for murder? Sorry I avoided you for two decades? Sorry every joke you ever made about me having it easy because of my class proved true?”

“Maybe just start with sorry?”

“He wouldn’t want it.”

That was probably true - the way he’d reacted when Giles tried to offer condolences for the death of whoever Nick was suggested John was the kind of person who mistook sympathy for pity. Even so, Giles might need it even if John doesn’t. This has clearly haunted him. “You don’t think he’d forgive you?”

“I don’t think he should. Some things you don’t get absolution for.”

Chapter Text

The Sea View Hotel, Sunnydale, California - 3rd November, 2001

They set up in an abandoned hotel in the bad part of town. Tourism was never big in Sunnydale, and the last few years have not been kind to small business owners.

Willow’s kind of worried it’s too obviously a trap, but John had assured them that the Pit-riders aren’t bright enough to figure it out, and Sparklefleck (still funny, probably never going to not be funny) doesn’t know enough about humans.

The book they’ve ended up using is a leather-bound copy of Dunns Scotus’s Ordinatio, which is both old enough to look convincingly magical, and the only book Giles owns that he’d been willing to part with.

John had looked at it with poorly disguised derision when Giles handed it over.

“I thought you’d vomited out all the choirboy in you the first time I got you gin-drunk.”

“I did say it was my least-favourite book. And it’s not like you can dispute the philosophy of haecceity - I seem to remember it being the basis of most of your improvised spell-work.”

“Just because I know how to tell a cat from a dog doesn’t mean I need to turn that into a fucking 5 stage proof of the existence of God. I know the cunt exists, I just don’t see why I should care.”

“The subtle doctor didn't know. I don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate the eloquence of his writing. And theologians like him are a part of our history.”

“I’m a queer boy from Vauxhall mate, I know our fuckin’ history. It’s the middle classes who like to forget.”

They’d looked all set to keep going all night, and Willow wasn’t sure whether it would be friendly bickering, like when she and Xander argued about which Starfleet captain was best, or whether they were working their way up to a real argument. There is something between them, something more than old friends just catching up, and Willow doesn’t know what it is but she’s pretty sure it isn’t good news for the rest of them. Ghosts from the past only ever bring pain, in her experience.

She and Tara have layered the book with just about every encryption and confusion spell they could find, and then John had waved his hands over it and said something that sounded suspiciously like “Mumbly mumbly mumbly meed, make this book hard to read” but which he insists was an actual spell.

He’d complimented Tara’s spellwork too, and it’s not like Willow is jealous or anything it’s just… well okay, maybe she’s a little jealous. She works hard on her spellwork, and she knows she’s good, really good, but it would still be nice to hear it sometimes. Buffy and Xander don’t know enough to give compliments, and all Tara wants to talk about it how Willow’s an addict or whatever. Or she did. But Willow’s not thinking about that, because she’s got to keep it cool for the demon-slaying and thinking about what she’d done… Yeah, not thinking about that. Still, it’d be nice to get a “good job” once in a while.

Not thinking about Giles and his old flame. Not thinking about Tara and… Not thinking about that. All that leaves is demon killing, but they’re at that stage of a hunt where they’re just sitting around waiting, which isn’t exactly thrilling.

John’s drawn a circle around the book, filled with mystical symbols which he says are all “a load of old bollocks”. Willow recognises some of them from her books, books which definitely contain real spells, so she thinks he probably means they don’t mean anything when combined like that. If the books have real magic in them, they can’t be bollocks.

Xander is on the other side of the room, talking quietly with Anya. Willow’s known Xander a long time, and she knows what he looks like when he’s uncomfortable. It’s harder to tell with Anya, but she’s not sure either of them is really happy. She’s not sure whether she’s supposed to say anything. Xander’s her friend, and she doesn’t want to see him hurt. On the other hand, it’s his mistake to make, and it’s not like she’s a world expert on happy relationships here.

Nope, not thinking about that.

Tara’s in the corner, talking to John, and that stings a little. It’s not that she thinks there’s anything there, Tara is very gay, and for all John’s been nicer to Tara than anyone else, including Giles, there’s none of that kind of interest in his expression. If anything the concern in his eyes has been almost fatherly, and that’s a whole weird mess Willow’s not going to touch. But things were supposed to be better between her and Tara, things are better between them, and yet Tara would still rather talk to Giles’s old boyfriend or whoever John really is than Willow.

Jesus, she sounds like a stalker. She sounds like Xander at 16 and that’s never good. Tara is her own person, and Willow respects that, and she’s not going to be weird about Tara making new friends in the magical community. More friends are good.

Okay, focussing now. Thinking about things that don’t make her sound weird and needy even in her own head. Things like the sound of motorbikes outside, getting louder by the second.

Is it pathetic that she’s excited about demons arriving to interrupt her inner monologue? Stupid question, of course it is.

“Places people,” Buffy says, quiet but commanding. The kind of voice you can’t help but listen to. Death, Hell, it changed her. She’s harder now, colder, more intimidating, but it’s a brittle sort of hard, like she might shatter if you apply the wrong sort of pressure to her. It frightens Willow. Buffy’s always been vulnerable, emotionally, but never fragile like this. Not even after Angel.

Willow shakes herself out of her dark thoughts and finds Tara coming over to her, and even just the sight of her makes Willow’s heart beat a little faster, makes her want to smile even with Demons nearly upon them. Tara is so perfect and beautiful and smart and gentle and so much everything Willow wants in the world. “You ready?”

“Yeah. Ready as I’ll ever be for skeletons on motorbikes I g-guess.”

“I know what you mean. You look really pretty by the way. Is that a new dress?”

Tara smiles, soft and fond and this , Willow has to keep this, no matter what. “It’s old. You’ve seen me wear it like a million times before.”

“Oh. Well, maybe you’re just especially radiant today. What did John want?”

“I don’t really know. He was asking about my family. He said something about my magical signature being familiar, whatever that means.”

“Maybe he knew your mom back in the day? From what you’ve told me, it sounds like she was a pretty powerful witch.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Tara glances back at John, her expression troubled. “I, er, I told him about the whole demon thing. I don’t know why. He’s really easy to talk to. One minute I was talking schools of magic, the next I was giving him my whole superhero origin story. He seemed really interested though. He said I reminded him of a little g-girl he knows. I think maybe he was talking about his daughter.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. Really weird. Not creepy though, not like that, just…”

“Weird?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think his deal is?” Willow is trying not to look forward to his inevitable villain-heel turn, because fighting Giles’s old friends is never any fun, but she can’t seem to turn off the petty possessive bit of her brain lately. She’s not the person she was before Buffy died, and in her more introspective moments, she’s not sure she likes the person she’s becoming instead, but she doesn’t know how to stop.

“I don’t know. Does he have a deal?”

“I think so. I mean, he says he’s Giles’s old friend, but there’s definitely something more going on there.”

“Do you think they dated?”

Willow pulls a face. “I know it’s childish, but I cannot think about Giles having a sex life. That’s just too weird.”

Tara laughs. “Like he’s your dad.”

“No, he’s definitely Buffy’s dad. But it’s still weird. I’m pretty sure he’s straight though.”

“John isn’t.”

“No, I’d picked up on that. Do you think we can trust him?”

Tara looks genuinely surprised. “Why not? He seems nice. And Giles trusts him.”

“Strange magic users are never good news. I mean there’s you, obviously, you were a stranger, and a magic-user, and you’re amazing. And there was Miss Calendar, she was pretty cool. But apart from that… New magic users are always trying to open portals to hell dimensions, or make Halloween costumes come to life, or turn all the adults into teenagers, or… Actually, you know, thinking about it I think this might just be a ‘Giles’s old friends’ problem. Which still doesn’t rule out John.”

“He doesn’t seem like the living Halloween costumes type?” Tara offers, and Willow has to forcibly remind herself that Tara having friends is a good thing. Getting jealous because she has a new friend, or mentor, or whatever it was John wants to be to her, is just really pathetic, especially when they’ve already established that he doesn’t want anything creepy.

“I guess we’ll find out. It’s kinda late to back out now.”

The motorbike engines have been getting louder as they spoke, but now they’re definitely right outside. Buffy cocks her crossbow and steps back into the shadows, and Willow regrets (not for the first time) that there aren’t really any cool gearing up moments to be had in offensive magic. In the movies, the magic users always make some kind of mystic hand gestures or summon lightning or something. They never just hide behind a stack of empty storage crates and try to remember how to conjugate the Latin verb for ‘to shield’.

Tara takes Willow’s hand and squeezes it tight as they take their places though, and that’s worth a hundred cool gearing up sequences.

There’s a brief moment of tense silence, and then the door shakes with impact. Three more solid hits and it flies off its hinges, landing on the ground only an inch away from the fake protective circle.

Standing in the doorway, lit by the flickering halogen light, is a skeleton. It’s wearing leathers and has a chain wrapped around its torso. On its head is an old-fashioned motorbike helmet, the kind that looks like it should be being worn in a WWII movie, except that this one has metal horns welded onto the top of it.

It’s so ridiculous that Willow’s having a hard time processing that it’s real. She’s seen a lot of very stupid supernatural stuff since she first met Buffy, but nothing like this. Until this exact moment, she hadn’t known that it was possible for Demonic skeletons to look like they were trying too hard, but this guy is definitely trying too hard. He looks like he’d tried to design an outfit to make himself look tough, and instead he just ended up looking like he cares way too much about being cool.

He’s the least threatening Demon she’d ever seen, and she’s including Spike’s friend Clem in that.

“I know you’re here, Hellblazer!” he shouts, and Willow really wants to know how he talks when she’s looking at his neck and it’s nothing but a few bare vertebrae. Presumably it’s magic, but what kind? Is it a spell or is it something that’s inherent?

John steps dramatically out of his hiding place, his coat billowing impressively behind him. The effect is slightly spoiled by the half-smoked cigarette balancing in the corner of his mouth. “It’s been a long time, Brandor. How’s the afterlife treating you?”

“Don’t fuck around, Hellblazer. I’m not in the mood. Hand over the book, and I’ll consider not using your intestines as bunting.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Brandor sniggers. “What, you going to try and challenge the Morning Star yourself? Fancy yourself Lord of Hell?”

John shrugs. “I’ve beaten Him before.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Cheap trickery.”

“What, was I supposed to challenge Him to a fuckin’ boxing match? Obviously, I tricked Him. That’s what humans who make deals with the Devil are supposed to do. He’s probably not even mad about it.”

“He’s building a special pit just for you, and even you can’t escape Death forever.”

“Oh I don’t know, I’ve got a few ideas about that. Now are we going to do this thing, or are you going to stand around talking bollocks all evening? Some of us have things to do.”

Brandor’s teeth clack together angrily. “You’re really challenging me to a fight? Just how stupid are you?!”

“Stupid enough,” John says, and he makes a gesture Willow can’t quite follow even though she’s looking right at him, and his hands are engulfed in yellow flame, the room filling up with the rotten-egg smell of sulphur. “Haven’t you heard mate? I’m the laughing magician. I eat cannon-fodder like you for breakfast.”

Brandor waves his hand, and the rest of his gang shoulder through the doorway to join him. They’re dressed much like he is, in old school punk gear and bike leathers, except for the one wearing a hooded black cloak and leather gauntlets, like the worst Ren Faire costume ever.

They’re carrying weapons, some swords and maces and flails, some traditional biker weapons like broken pipes and chains.

“You’re outnumbered ten to one, Hellblazer. But please, be my guest and keep playing the big man. I’m going to really enjoy crushing you.”

John grins like a man who just heard a really cruel joke, and gestures for the rest of them to come out from their hiding places. They’re still outnumbered, but Willow prides herself that they at least look pretty threatening. Buffy has a massive battle axe strapped to her back, her crossbow aimed firmly at the lead skeleton’s head. Anya has a holy sword that she insists she knows how to use, while Xander had opted to stick with his baseball bat. It's not blessed or cursed, but if all goes to plan the demons won't get a chance to find that out. Willow whispers a spell that will make her and Tara glow, and buffet them with magical winds. It doesn't do anything useful, but it looks impressive, and that's what counts.

“Humans,” Brandor says, sounding extremely unimpressed. It’s a reaction Willow’s heard from demons before, but from this guy, who John says was a human himself until pretty recently, it just adds to the general air of someone trying way too hard to make the cool kids like him.

Buffy adjusts her aim and shoots the skeleton beside him square in the chest. It explodes with a noise like a xylophone being thrown down a flight of stairs, the bones disappearing as they hit the ground. “Humans.”

It's hard to tell what expression a skeleton is pulling, but Willow’s pretty sure Brandor is trying to sneer when he says, “You think you killed him, girly? All you've done is send him back down to hell.”

Buffy just shrugs. “He's not here though, is he.”

“We’re not giving you the book,” John says, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “If you want it, you're going to have to come through us.”

“Sounds good to me,” Brandor says, unwrapping the chain from his torso and hefting it threateningly. “Get them, boys.”

The skeletons look at one another, obviously waiting for someone else to make the first move, and then one with a leather jacket and the number 666 etched into the bone of his forehead waves his broken pipe above his head and yells “Blood and Gasoline”, and they all surge forward to attack.

Willow isn’t a hand-to-hand fighter and never wants to be, but she’s had enough experience of fights to the death than she knows when to duck. She keeps the crates she’d been hiding behind to her back, to stop anyone sneaking up on her, and concentrates on not getting hit.

If this was a real fight, with a real threat, she’d just roast them all and have done with it, or freeze them to the spot and let Buffy work out some of whatever’s bothering her so much, but they need the Pit-Riders to think they’re no real threat, so they’ll believe it when they steal the book. Turns out looking like she's fighting, doing just enough damage to be believable but not so much that they scare them off, is surprisingly challenging. She throws up shields as often as she can, and puts power into spells which look impressive but aren't much more than magical fireworks, blinding and disorientating but not doing any real harm.

Beside her Tara is doing the same, her expression serious and her shoulders squared. She looks beautiful.

John has dropped the Hellfire in favour of throwing haymakers. At first, Willow thinks he's not using magic at all, and then she catches a shimmer of sulfur yellow along his skin when Brandor’s chain catches his shoulder, a flicker around his feet as he dodges out of the way of a thrown axe. Little defensive magics, the kind Willow’s never mastered. They’re not tricky, exactly, and Tara uses them sometimes, but Willow’s always been more focused on jumping ahead to the big stuff, the stuff that could save all of their lives not just her own.

Xander is probably fighting as hard as he can, which is to say not very hard at all. But the skeletons are keeping a wary distance from his bat, probably afraid it’s magical in some way, so he’s managing to keep an area around him free just by swinging wildly and unpredictably. Anya is doing more or less the same thing, wild strikes and swings with her sword, and Willow can’t tell if the fact that she hasn’t hit anyone is deliberate or not.

Buffy is obviously pulling her punches as best she can, but there's only so much she can do. She's the Slayer, and despite how heavily armed they are, these guys are pretty shit demons. Willow sees two of them go down under her axe, their bodies vanishing as soon as they hit the floor, and just has to hope that Buffy hasn't forgotten that they're supposed to be faking.

The Pit-Riders might be terrible demons, but they’re not completely stupid. They figure out pretty quickly that Buffy is the real threat and focus on her, five of them dogpiling her at once. (Which makes them officially smarter than most vampires Willow has met, who seem to think that you’re supposed to wait your turn before attacking anyone, even if that person is super-strong and carrying a stake).

Willow throws (probably too much) power into a shield for Buffy, and pretends not to see the Ren Fair skeleton edging towards the book.

Just as he reaches the edge of the supposed magic circle, John ducks a swing of Brandor’s chain, misses his footing, and falls dramatically, his flailing hand conveniently smudging the lines of the circle and rubbing out one of the Norse runes.

With a noise of triumph, Ren Fair snatches up the book. “I have it, Brandor I have it!”

Brandor sighs, which tells Willow everything she needs to know about what sort of person Ren Fair is. “Yeah Steve, I can see that.”

“We should tell the boss!”

“Tell you what, since you did the stealing, how about you do the summoning too, hand it over personal-like.”

“Yeah! Man, I can't wait to see Etrigan’s fa…”

He trails off under the force of a glare from Brandor so intense that even without a face, it’s obvious.

“You know we’re not supposed to say that name!” one of the skeletons who had been attacking Buffy hisses, in what it clearly thinks is a whisper.

“Shut the fuck up, Kyle. Steve, just hurry up and summon the damn boss.”

“Yes, Brandor. Sorry. Um…” Steve the Skeleton raises his gauntleted hands, one of them still clutching the book, and intones the words as though they’re a prayer, instead of bad fridge poetry. “Oh great Demon harken to me, Sparklefleck I conjure and abjure thee!”

There’s a moment of silence, then a flash of light and a crack of thunder that’s almost loud enough to drown out Steve’s muttered “Oh fuck” as he explodes in a shower of blackened bones. Unlike the bones from the Pit-Riders Buffy killed, these don't disappear, and Willow’s pretty sure that means he's really dead.

The book falls as Steve explodes. Just before it hits the ground a yellow arm, scaled like a lizard, plucks it out of the air, the pages falling open in the massive hand. Gradually the smoke clears, and Willow gets her first look at Sparklefleck the Rhyming Demon.

It's hard to imagine anything further from a magical cartoon unicorn.

He's big. Not so much tall, though he stands a head taller than John, but huge. He's almost as broad as he is tall, and his shoulders and arms are thickly muscular. His skin is mostly a sulphurous yellow reminiscent of the Hellfire John had conjured, with some greenish patches on his neck and what she was going to have to assume were his ears, although they looked more like fins. He has four short horns, and when he smiles at them his teeth are pointed.

He smells of Brimstone and smoke. Even knowing he’s powerful, she'd still been half expecting him to be funny, but standing there in the flesh, he's intimidating as hell. Literally.

“I hear your call and do obey - from the seventh circle of hell I rise. You lowly creatures who to me did pray, speak quickly least Sparklefleck pluck out your eyes.”

It’s sort of impressive, that he can just come up with rhymes on the fly like that, but being able to make things rhyme isn’t enough to make you a poet, and Sparklefleck is definitely no poet.

Brandor bows, and when he stands up his helmet has fallen forward so that he has to push it back out of his eyes to be able to see. “We have the book, boss, just like you asked. The humans fought hard to protect it, but they were no match for the Pit-Riders!”

“You and your men have served me well; your just reward awaits… in Hell!”

Brandor scratches the vertebrae that would be the back of his neck if he wasn’t a skeleton. “Well yeah boss, I kind of figured that. I mean, Hell is where we all live.”

Sparklefleck gestures impatiently with his free hand, and a rope of green fire wraps itself around Brandor’s jaw, effectively gagging him. It’s probably a very useful spell for when you can’t think of a rhyme for ‘shut the hell up’ quickly enough.

“I smell the blood of the Lion of Cutha, Come Constant One and greet your better.”

“I’m standing right here mate,” John points out. His posture is deliberately casual, only a slight tension around his eyes giving away how worried he is by this unexpected change to the plan. They’d been expecting the Pit-Riders to take the book to Sparklefleck, in time to give John a good head start before he figured out it was a fake. “What do you want with the book? You know it’s gibberish, right? No-one but Abel knows what it says, and you’re going to have a lot more problems than infernal politics if you try and get into the Dreaming without Morpheus’s permission.”

“I will cut out your insolent tongue, human. You dare to speak in this way to a Demon?!”

“I’m the fucking Hellblazer mate. I’m the Laughing Magician. I’ve faced down the First of the Fallen and lived to tell the tale and I’ll talk to you however I damn well please.” He does the Hellfire trick again, holding a ball of white-hot flames in the palm of his hand. “Or did you want me to just burn the book?”

“You think that you can strike a deal with a demon of great and terrible power? I know your reputation is not real, so, tiny trickster, this is your final hour.”

“So kill me then. You really think Lucifer would thank you? Or Beezlebub? Or Azazel?”

“Uh, it’s Belial now actually,” one of the skeletons muttered.

“I thought it was Asteroth?” one of the others said.

“No, Etri… er, Ran Va Daath’s son and Merlin Satanspawn stopped him, it’s still Belial.”

“God I hate politics,” John said. “Look I don’t care who’s on the Triumvirate, the point is the Devil himself ensured I’d live because He didn’t want me down there, and you really think it’s a good idea to go against His wishes?!”

“The Devil’s whims are none of your concern - with this book Sparklefleck shall ensure you burn!” He flicked the pages with a claw as long as Willow’s whole hand, careful not to tear the paper. “Now, tome which I have sought for eon...s, reveal to me how I may fight Apollyon!”

That doesn’t sound like any kind of spell, more like talking for the sake of talking, but John is looking worried. “Look…” he says urgently, but it’s too late.

“Deceit and trickery, basest cowardice!” Sparklefleck yells, throwing the book to the ground. “Give me the true book or you will not leave this place!” It’s suddenly unbearably hot in the warehouse, the concrete beneath Sparklefleck’s feet turning red hot with the force of his rage. “Pit-Riders you have failed in your task, you have not done the one thing of which I ask! If you do not wish to feel my scourge, you will bring me the head of this felonious thaumaturge!”

“Now hold on…” Willow can’t figure out what John’s deal is. He talks like he’s super powerful, and she’s pretty sure he wasn’t bluffing about having gone toe-to-toe with Lucifer, but she’s barely seen him use any magic. How does someone get titles like the Laughing Magician and the Lion of Cutha if they don’t do any magic?!

“How about we strike a deal?” Giles says, making everyone jump. Willow’s pretty sure they’d all forgotten he was there.

He emerges from the shadows at the back of the warehouse and comes to stand between John and Sparklefleck, stooping to pick up the fallen book on the way. Absently, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it, he runs a hand over the cover. “I apologise for the insult to you, Lord Sparklefleck. We are used to dealing with lesser demons. We should have known that so simple a trick would not work on one so great as you.”

Sparklefleck smiles, showing far too many sharp-looking teeth. “This human is no imbecile. Speak scholar, I will hear your deal.”

“We don’t have the true book with us. We have stored it somewhere safe. But we can get it for you. But in exchange, you have to agree to spare our lives. All of our lives, including John’s.”

“The boss should kill you for that, nerd boy,” one of the Pit-Riders sneers.

“Then he’ll never find the book,” Giles says mildly. “We may be only humans, but I pride myself that the hiding place is quite ingenious.”

Sparklefleck gives Giles a hard look, like he’s trying to work out if he’s lying or not. Giles holds his eyes without flinching, nothing in his face to give away that he’s bluffing with no cards. Eventually, Sparklefleck must be satisfied because he relaxes and nods, first to Giles and then to the still gagged Brandor.

Giles takes a breath, and then Anya screams as two of the Pit-Riders grab Xander, dragging him away from her.

“What…” Giles begins, but Sparklefleck cuts him off.

“Both must have surety for a deal to be struck, so this one will remain with Sparklefleck.”

“You bastard!” Anya yells. Buffy catches her around the waist as she lunges forward, to keep her from doing anything stupid, and she struggles so much she nearly topples them both over. “You fucking bastard, you wait till D’Hoffryn hears what you have done!”

“Even in the lowest pits of purgatory, we have heard tales of this strange disorder. Humans who play at demonic potency, but have no place in the divine order. 

“Your fustian threats are unbacked; if you wish to save him you must honour our pact.”

“Oh fuck that,” Buffy says, letting go of Anya. “Sorry Giles, but no one threatens my friends and gets away with it!”

She throws the axe overarm, the blessed edge of the blade glinting redly in the halogen light. For one wild second, Willow thinks it’s actually going to work, and then Sparklefleck plucks the blade out of the air an inch from his face. His hand sizzles as he touches it, filling the air with the sickening scent of burning flesh, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He tightens his grip and the metal of the blade buckles and warps until it’s curled in around his hand and when he tosses it into the corner of the room. Willow can see that the burns on his palm are already starting to heal, green scales regrowing before her eyes.

Sparklefleck returns his attention to Giles, his mouth twisted up in a sneer of disdain. “Listen well scholar to my rhyme; I will meet you here in three days time. When the gibbous moon hangs in the sky, you will give me what I seek or the boy will die!”

Buffy has wrenched the sword out of Anya’s hand and has been edging closer. As he speaks she brings the sword round in the great swipe that connects with nothing at all, as Sparklefleck, the Pit-Riders, and Xander all vanish in a cloud of red smoke.

Chapter Text

The Magic Box, Sunnydale, California - 3rd November 2001

The Slayer and her pals (Buffy had called them the Scooby Gang, and he’s pretty sure she hadn’t even meant it as an insult) aren’t happy about decamping back to Ripper’s shop, but older and wiser heads prevail.

There’d been a kid waiting for them when they got back to the shop, big eyes and a sulky expression. As far as he can tell she’s the Slayer’s sister and there are no parents in the picture. It makes him warm to Buffy a little, no matter how he generally feels about heroes. He and Cheryl aren’t exactly close, but he’ll never let himself forget that she was the one to raise him in all the ways that matter. Dad had been at the bottom of a bottle on his best days, Auntie Dolly they’d only seen when dad was in prison, and Cheryll had done what she could to pick up the slack. At the time it had been normal – they weren’t the only family on their street with a daughter who was more like a mum than a kid, and John remembers enough of the others to know that his dad could have been a lot worse than he was – but looking back on it with modern eyes it had been an impossible situation for her to be in. It’s given him a soft spot for kids who’ve been forced to grow up too fast, and god knows that’s the least of what the Watchers do to their sacrificial lambs.

The Slayer herself is currently wearing a hole in the carpet pacing. She’s found a stake from somewhere and she’s clutching it like a comfort blanket. Her sister is watching her with wide frightened eyes, too young for any of this but too old too hide it from.

Anyanka looks like she’s really really regretting giving up her demonic powers. A vengeance demon in love with a human is a whole mess John is not going to touch with a ten-foot pole, thanks very much, but he’s pretty glad she doesn’t have the power to set things on fire with her mind right about now. She has the look of someone who’d burn the whole world down if it would get her fiancé back.

The two little witches are sitting huddled together on one of the tables. Tara’s got her arm around her girlfriend and is whispering the kind of soothing nonsense people always fall back at times like these.

“We need to start a search,” John points out eventually, when it doesn’t seem like anyone else is going to suggest it. “Shake a few branches, see what falls out. You’re practically professionals, you must have a few contacts.”

“Of course,” Giles says, so quickly John’s sure he was just waiting for someone else to suggest it first. “Buffy?”

She stops pacing, starts chewing on her thumbnail instead. “We could hit up Willy’s I guess.”

“Why?” Anyanka demanded. “Why would they not just go back to Hell, why hang around waiting for us to find them?!”

“Because they’ve got a hostage, and because the Pit-Riders can’t travel through the Between without help,” John explains. She knows most of this, she must do since she was a minor demon herself not that long ago, but she’s panicking too much to think straight. “Most minor demons can’t. Sparklefleck may have popped home, although I doubt he’ll risk it without the book, but he’ll have left the Pit-Riders to guard your pal. Living humans can be taken to Hell, but it’s frowned on, and he’s trying to keep a low profile.”

“He’s a Rhymer. They could be anywhere on earth, that kind of teleportation isn’t even hard for them!”

“He could be. He isn’t though. He’ll want to keep an eye on us.”

“To see if he can spot us collecting the book?”

“Maybe. The terms of the bargain didn’t forbid him attacking us before the agreed meeting, and he will definitely have noticed.” He slants a look at Ripper. “You’re out of practise.”

“Unlike some people, I tried not to spend too much time around demons.”

“You’re missing out. They’re all bastards, but so are most humans, and at least you know where you stand with a demon.”

“This is so not the time,” the Slayer says, rounding on him. “You’re saying that the demons will try and double-cross us.”

“I’m saying that we didn’t tell them they couldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter though, because we definitely don’t have the book. Right?” She’s giving him a suspicious look, but John’s been doubted by the best and she doesn’t have a patch on Zatanna.

“We don’t.”

“Okay, so our only option is to find their hide-out and kill them.”

“If you think you’re up to it.” Slayers might be tough, but he's learning that they’re really not prepared to deal with Hell’s finest. Not that he’d really expected better. This had been a long shot at best.

“I think that since you brought Dr fucking Seuss into my home, I don’t have a damn choice!”

“We can find him,” the red-head, Willow, says suddenly. “Me and Tara, and John if he wants to help. We’ve got enough of Xander’s stuff, we could use Ipsor’s Locator, find him that way.”

“The Locator is very intense magic,” Ripper says, sounding worried. He and John share a glance. “Perhaps if the traditional method doesn’t work…”

“We don’t have time!”

“We have three days,” John corrects her. “You’re talking about one of the most costly spells ever created, that kind of translocation…”

“I have the power!” Willow protests and John suddenly realises what it is about her that’s been putting his back up since he first saw her. There’s not a scar on her, not on her body or her mind, not that he can see.

“You’re either suicidal or an idiot,” he tells her bluntly. “That kind of magic, that’s a last resort. Strictly life and death stuff. We have three days.”

“God, what is your problem! Even since you arrived, you’ve been looking at me like, like…”

“Like I can feel the residue of your power on the people around you?” he says, a warning as much as a slap. He’s not going to get involved, he doesn’t want to get involved, but she needs to know that he can smell what she’d done to that sweet girl of hers. The only reason he’s not telling everyone is that magic like that would only work on someone like Tara if she wanted it too, on at least some level. He’s been in enough fucked up relationships in his life to know outsiders never get the whole picture.

The warning is enough. Willow deflates like a popped balloon, all the fight going out of her. Tara reaches for her, but Willow shrugs her hand off, wrapping her arms around herself and refusing to make eye contact.

“Er, I’ll draw up a list of where to search shall I?” Ripper says, into the silence. Always the practical one.

“I’ll help you,” Tara says quickly, obviously stung by Willow’s rejection.

Anyanka goes with them, and the kid goes to talk to Buffy, leaving John and Willow alone.

Eventually the awkward silence gets too much, and she blurts out, “Do you hate me?”

“Never said that.”

“Are you going to tell everyone?”

“What makes you think I care about what you do?”

“The way you’ve been looking at me, ever since you arrived. Like I’m going to explode or something!”

It dawns on John, like the world’s most horrifying sunrise, that maybe she really doesn’t know. That Ripper might have cut himself off so far from his magical roots that he hasn’t bothered training her at all. That she doesn’t know what’s coming for her.

Fuck, why does he always have to be the one to give the bad news, even to people he barely knows?

“You use a lot of magic.”

She bristles. “You’re not going to try and tell me I’m addicted are you?”

Well, that explains the memory charm he’s been smelling on Tara since he arrived. “Don’t know you well enough to judge. Probably, if that’s why you’ve been playing around with Tara’s memory. But if you are, you wouldn’t be the first I’ve known. Honestly, that’s not what worries me.”

Willow gives him a look that’s equal parts hopeful and fearful, and he’d wanted to dislike her, he really had, but she’s just a scared stupid kid who never had any real teachers, and fuck it all if he doesn’t know what that’s like.

“You learnt your magic from books, didn’t you? Never had a teacher or a coven?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Not in your form. You’re a little stiff, a little too reliant on Latin, but that’s just age. No, I was talking about paying your dues. See unless you’re tied into magic in a way homo sapiens like us just aren’t, magic isn’t something you have . It’s something you borrow . And there is always a price. Now maybe you’re paying in flesh and blood behind closed doors, but I don’t think so. And Tara is a lovely girl, who seems to like you just fine, so you’re not paying with your heart. The amount of magic you’re doing, either you’re a serial killer on the side, or you’re racking up one hell of a tab.”

“So what, I’m supposed to sacrifice a chicken any time I want to levitate a pencil?”

God, was he ever that young? “No, you’re supposed to pick up the pencil with one of your two working hands, because magic is not a toy, and it is not free . Sooner or later your debt’s going to come due and if you’re very very lucky, it will be you paying.”

Finally he seems to be getting through to her, her voice tremulous as she asks, “And if I’m not?”

“The universe has a nasty way of taking it out on the people we love. Now some people are willing to pay that price in exchange for real power, but you don’t seem the type. So you’d better think long and hard about whether all those levitating pencils are worth it, because the universe is a loan shark, and if you don’t pay up on time, first time, you’ll find the interest is more than the power was ever worth.”

“What about Tara though? She doesn’t make sacrifices either.”

“No. But her power doesn’t come from outside like yours. There’s a little bit of real magic in that girl of yours, the kind of free power the likes of you and me can only dream of. She’s racking up a lot less of a debt than you.” He’d thought there was something about her when they first met, but he hadn’t been sure until she’d told him about her family, about the superstition that there was demon blood in the Maclay women. He hates when bigoted monsters like her father turn out to be right, especially when the call of her blood to his is so quiet that it must be generations back, a great grandmother at least, but he’s known enough cambions in his life to know the feel of them.

“But.. she’s a human, though.”

“Oh yeah, in all the ways that count. I had a good long chat with her yesterday, and she’s human in her heart and her brain, and that’s what matters.”

“And in her DNA?” This one’s not as green as she’s grass coloured. He finds himself wishing he could do something about the debt already accrued. The more he talks to her, the more he thinks there’s no real malice in her, only stupidity and bad luck and an addiction that got its claws in deep before she ever knew such a thing was possible.

“None of your business. She says she’s a real girl, and when people like her say things, they tend to stick. Just don’t try to follow her into the deep magic. She’s got a map for it that you’d need a lifetime to memorise. No more raising the dead without sacrificing someone else first.”

“I'll do my best, but we needed Buffy back. Too many people were dying, and Dawn, and… I had to do something.”

“You really brought her back?”

“With the Rite of Osiris. Will that… I mean, I had to kill a fawn, that’s a blood sacrifice, right? And there were trials I had to do, to prove I was worthy, and they were… not fun. So that’s the price right?”

Oh God, this kid. Naivety like that ought to be illegal. “Let’s hope so. But maybe don’t be so quick to jump right into the deep magic next time, yeah?”

“Well it’s not like she’s going to sacrifice herself again! I mean, not now she knows what’s waiting for her.”

“And what’s that?”

“Well, Hell. You said yourself, hardly anyone gets into Heaven, even good people. So she’s not going to be in a hurry to go back!” 

That explains a lot about Buffy’s eyes, he thinks. He sees Hell in the mirror every day, but what he saw in her eyes when he first walked into the shop had been something worse. The past hurts more than the future, in his experience. There’s no way of changing it, for one.

“No one’s ever in a hurry to die, kid. Take it from someone who’s walked the edge a time or six. Even when it’s all you want, no one’s ever in a hurry. But I wouldn’t be so sure about the Slayer. She’s a hero with a capital H, and that type never has any self-preservation instincts. Good thing the Presence likes that sort of thing.” He’s not going to be the one to tell her, but maybe he can soften the blow a little when that hammer inevitably falls.

“Are you saying… What are you saying?”

“I’m saying don’t fuck up your life just to prove how big and tough you are. Trust me, I’m the world expert on the subject.”

The Magic Box, Sunnyday, California - 3rd November 2001

Riper divides them up into teams for the search. John isn’t exactly thrilled to be paired up with the Slayer, never mind how much she might remind him of his sister. Heroes tend to leave a lot of collateral damage.

On the other hand, he’d prefer to be as far away from Anyanka as possible right now, going with either of the Witches would just be awkward, Riper is avoiding him for some reason (he might be callous but he’s not stupid), and no one in their right mind was ever going to leave him unsupervised with the kid.

The kid has opinions on this of course. Kids always do.

“How is going with Willow safer?! Anything could happen! We could be attacked by vampires, or demons, or, or mountain lions! We could meet a serial killer! I don’t see why you won’t let me come visit Spike!”

“Because I don’t think my little sister should be hanging out with a murderous vampire!”

“He’s not murderous!”

“How many people has he killed in this town?”

“He doesn’t do that anymore! Anyway, he’s my friend. We hung out all the time when you were gone, and he never hurt me! He likes me!”

“That’s the problem! I don’t want vampires liking you - I don’t want vampires even knowing you exist! Especially not creepy sex-criminal vampires!”

“God, you’re such a, a, a bitch!”

The Slayer looks ready to explode, and John is trying not to draw too many parallels between them and his own childhood, but God the way Cheryl had yelled when she found out about Sid…

Thank goodness Willow has the sense to step in before things can get any worse. He definitely remembers Cheryll throwing a few things during that particular row.

“We’ll stop for ice-cream on the way, how about that?”

“I’m not a kid.”

“No, you’re not,” Tara says. “But being a teenager doesn’t mean you suddenly don’t like ice-cream. Anyway, now I want one too.”

“Everywhere will be shut,” the kid says, but John can see she’s relenting.

“Nu-uh, there’s a new 24-hour waffle place that is totally on our route.”

As Tara draws a reluctant Dawn away, Buffy mouths “thank you” to Willow, and gets a thumbs up in response.

“Anya and I will take the north side of town and the Bronze,” Giles says when they’ve gone. “Which leave you and Johnny…”

“Spike,” Buffy says tiredly. “Lucky old me.”

  Restfield Cemetary, Sunnydale, California - 3rd November 2001

They walk to the cemetery – apparently Buffy doesn’t drive – which leaves them lots of lovely awkward silence. John’s never liked an awkward silence.

“Your sister seems like a handful.”

Buffy slants him a look that suggests she’s fully aware that he’s only talking for the sake of making noise, but she answers all the same. “Yeah, she really is.”

“You know there’s worse things she could be doing than making friends with Vampires, right? I mean, I assume she knows how to protect herself.”

“She does, but I worry she wouldn’t use it.” Buffy sticks her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Her posture is still good, but John gets the impression she wants to be hunching in on herself, only years of martial arts training keeping her back straight. “She doesn’t remember what he used to be like, not really. He was never the biggest or the baddest, but he killed a lot of people, and some of the stuff he did was just… amazingly fucked up. But all the time she’s known him he’s been, not harmless exactly but… Not the monster he used to be. And she’s got such a big heart. It doesn’t matter how hard she trained, she’d never be prepared to actually use any of that stuff if he turned on her, and he could. At any moment!”

John lights a fag, stares up at the stars faint behind the light pollution, while he works out how to say the things he's thinking. “When I was a teenager, about 15, I started fucking this guy who lived down the road from us,” he says eventually. “Not dating mind, just fucking. I never heard of him going with any other kids, he didn’t have a reputation or anything, but he was still an adult man, happily fucking a kid half his age.

“When my sister found out, she went crazy. Our mam was dead, so she basically raised me, and she did a shit job but she’s only a couple of years older, and the way things were… No one could have done better, is what I’m trying to get at. And we weren’t close, exactly, but I think she was proud in her own way that I hadn’t turned out as bad as I could have. I fucked about in school and didn’t try, but I didn’t drop out either. I had friends, and even if they were twats I wasn’t in jail, or dead, so I was doing alright by the standards of our street.

“Then one day I wasn’t quick enough getting changed, and she saw the bruises.” He sees Buffy’s look. “Not like that. It was fucked up, and nothing like proper BDSM etiquette, but it was consensual for all that. Sid was a bastard, and a fucking creep for wanting a kid, but he always let me say no. To be honest I think he was mostly too high to even think that pushing it was an option. But the point of this story isn’t my fucked up sexual escapades. The point is that Cheryl went mental. She thought I was just a stupid kid who didn’t know what he was doing and bless her heart she was so fucking scared for me, but the truth is I was a stupid kid who knew exactly what I was doing. I know teenagers are morons, but it’s not like Sid groomed me. He barely spoke to me outside of the fucking. I never thought he loved me, or that I was a special extra mature kid and that made it all okay, or any of that shit. I didn’t know all the reasons it was wrong back then, but I knew enough of them. But I also knew that while we were fucking, I was the centre of Sid’s attention, and that is like a drug to kids like I was, and your sister is.

“It’s not your fault, God knows you’ve got other shit to do, but there’s no way she’s not attention-starved. And from the sound of it, this Spike is a double hit, because he likes her and wants to spend time with her and doing that makes you worried so then you pay attention to her as well.”

“So what, I should just let her put her life at risk and hope she gets bored of him?!”

“Oh, this wasn’t meant to be comforting love, this is a warning. Right now it sounds like this Spike the safe option. But eventually there’ll be someone worse because there’s always someone worse. You think you’re protecting her, keeping all your shit off her, but all you’re doing is making her vulnerable to her own personal Geordie Sid.”

“I don’t want her to have to deal with that stuff. I don’t want her to have to grow up that fast.”

“Trust me when I say that that’s inevitable. There’s nothing you can do to protect her from that. All you can do is try and make sure the woman she grows into is less fucked up than me.”

“And telling her about this stuff is supposed to help with that?! You don’t know what I’ve been through, you don’t know…”

“I know.”

“You have no fucking idea!”

He takes a long drag on his cigarette. “Your little friends might be too ignorant and naïve to work it out, but I’m not. I’m not stupid, and I know a thing or two about the afterlife. I might not know what it feels like, but I know exactly what you’re trying to hide.”

“God do you really…”

“I don’t like heroes, but I know one when I see her, and so does the man upstairs,” he says, as gently as he can.

“Oh God, I… I can’t…” She breaks into great heaving sobs, the kind you only cry when the tears have been building up at the back of your eyes for months or years, and he drops his cigarette to pull her into his arms. He’s still not good at this, but he held Zatanna after Nick… after Nick, and he held Cheryll after Gemma disappeared, and again when he brought her home. He can do this.

They stand there for a long time before she cries herself out, but he doesn’t hurry her. Sparklefleck is a demon of his word, whatever else he might be. They have time.

When she eventually pulls away he turns his back on her while he lights another fag, giving her time to pull herself together. When he turns back, she gives him a weak smile, and he fishes the kohl pencil out of the inside pocket of his coat and offers it to her. He hasn’t worn the stuff himself in years, but carrying one is a habit he never really got out off, especially since Zee’s look is heavy on the eye makeup and she never has any pockets.

That gets him a better smile, and he’s happy to stand and smoke while she does what she can to patch up her make-up.

“Thanks.”

He shrugs. “I know I’m probably making your back itch about as much as you are mine, but I’m not a complete bastard.” Lie, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“We have a bad history when it comes to Giles’ old friends.”

.“Let me guess, Ethan?”

“You knew him?”

“I met him a few times. My mate Richie tried to stab him with a fork once, during an argument about the magical applications of Chaos Theory.”

“He sold all the kids in town cursed Halloween costumes my second year in Sunnydale, and he sold candy that made all the adults think they were teenagers again a couple of years after.”

“Well, that sounds painful. What did you make of young Ripper?”

“Oh god, don’t remind me. He’d literally never once talked about his past, so when he goes from…”

“An upsetting stereotype of a middle-aged middle-class librarian?”

“Yeah, that, into, well…Ripper...”

John grins at the image. “Wish I’d seen that. He was a right laugh back in the day. He was always sort of tweedy underneath, and he knew it, so he’d try extra hard to make up for it. You could get him to do just about anything by just dropping a hint or two you thought he was boring. I remember one time me and Gaz fed him eight pints of snakebite and convinced him to pick a fight with the scariest drag queen in Soho.” He laughs at the memories of old Ripper’s face when she was done with him. “You’ve never seen a straight boy emasculated until you’ve seen him kicked in the nuts with six-inch heels by a queen with a mean streak. That was the night I killed any chance of getting him to sleep with me, but it was worth it.”

“So you and he never…”

“Nah. There was a moment or two when I thought… but no. He’s not as straight as he claims he is, but he’s still too straight for me.”

“You fancied him though.”

“Oh, I fancied everyone back then. And there’s nothing like a buttoned-up private-school boy dabbling his toes in the dark side to make perverts like me want to show them all the really freaky stuff people do for kicks.” He’d had a couple of well-worn fantasies about that, seeing just how far he could push Ripper with a few well-timed insults, but they were only ever fantasies, the kind that comforting precisely because of how unrealistic they are. “It would have been a fucking disaster if he’d ever let me make a move though. The date would have been okay, you couldn’t go wrong with a Bernie Inn steak dinner and a bottle of Blue Nun back then, but the sex… I was fucked up about all kinds of things before I got married, and he’d have freaked me out by being gentle and respectful stuff as much as I would have him with the whips and chains.”

“You’re really into all that stuff?”

“Of everything you’ve learnt about me today, is me being kinky really the one you find hard to believe?”

She laughs. “I mean, the demon stuff is pretty much my everyday so… I just never really met anyone who was, you know, into that stuff. Not openly anyway. And I guess I always kinda felt like I ought to be?” She ducks her head, half hiding behind her hair. “I know, it’s stupid. People like what they like and all that stuff. But my first serious boyfriend was a 400-year-old vampire, and that was a whole weird mess and then he went evil and said some really fucked up shit to me just to screw with my head about how I was boring and naïve... anyway. And since then I’ve had, I’m going to be generous and just call it laughably abysmal luck with men. And you know the whole super strength, fighting monsters thing…” She makes a vague gesture with her stake, obviously intending it to encompass her general Slayer-y heroism. “I guess I always felt like maybe part of the problem was that men expected me to be exciting in bed and I’m just kind of… not.”

Bloody hell, how are Ripper’s kids all such fucking messes? Man really dropped the ball there. “I think at this point I might actually have more scars from sex than from all the other fucked up shit in my life, that’s the kind of stuff I’m into. But I’m married, did I mention that? To two people, because magic means you can do that kind of thing. Anyway, the point is, Nick was into, not the exact same stuff as me, but there was a lot of crossover. But Zee, she’s not into anything like that. She’s adventurous, but all the fucked up dangerous painful stuff that does it for me, she’s not into any of it. Not her scene. But sex with her, it’s still better than with anyone else on earth. Even when Nick was alive, sex with him wasn’t better than sex with her just because we shared more kinks. If it was two strangers, then sure the sex with the guy who wants to tie me up and burn me would be better. But when it’s with people you love, it’s not really about that. Getting to be close to someone you care about, to make them feel good, that’s the best fucking thing.”

She looks heartbreakingly surprised and hopeful, and he’s always been a sucker preaching the good-sex gospel, especially to messed up kids to really need it, so he keeps going. “Look, straight people have really fucked up ideas about what sex is, you need to understand that. They think the only sex that counts is penis in vagina, and because of that they think you both have to get off on the same stuff at the same time, but it doesn’t work like that. It never worked like that. There’s nothing wrong with PIV, but the only requirement for good sex is that everyone involved has fun. You can take it in turns, you can be into different stuff, you can try things to see what works and stop in the middle if you need too and it’s still good sex. Hell, you can both just have a wank together if that’s what you’re into. It’s still all sex . 

“So maybe your asshole vampire boyfriend was into some weird kinky shit. Maybe if it had been his fantasy and you’d been in his head instead of a real woman you’d have got up to some more extreme stuff. That doesn’t mean the sex you had wasn’t amazing. If you were together, if you made one another feel good, then it was good sex. Simple as that. And obviously there are people out there who don’t get that, but they’re wankers and you shouldn’t be fucking them in the first place.”

Buffy stares at him for a moment, then bursts out laughing, bright and real and light like he knows she hasn’t felt in a long time. “I can’t believe I just got the sex talk from someone who used to fancy Giles. Scrap that, I can’t believe I got the sex talk from someone who used to fancy Giles and it was actually good .”

John shrugs, trying not to show how pleased he is. “When you’re into the weird shit you have to spend a lot more time thinking about that stuff than most people ever bother with.”

She grins at him and it’s not all real but enough of it is. “So I split up with my second serious boyfriend because I found out he was going to this… I don’t even know if it was a sex thing, but this club where humans let vampires drink their blood for kicks? And when I confronted him he said it was because having a girlfriend with super strength was emasculating. What’s your take on that, oh wise sex guru?”

God the poor kid. No wonder she’s messed up about this stuff. “Easy. He was a knob who secretly hated women. And you really weren’t joking about the bad luck with men. Have you considered switching teams? Maybe you’d have better luck with women.”

“I don’t know, I think I’d miss dick too much,” she says, grinning despite her blush.

“You know what, I take that back, you are way too straight, we can’t have you fluttering your lashes at some poor lesbian, you’ll break her heart. For the record though, gender also doesn’t work the way straight people think it does. So do you have anyone at the moment? Some terrible man who finds new and inventive ways to be a horrible boyfriend?”

“Not really.”

“That is not a no.”

“Ugh, I don’t know. Sort of. It’s not really… I don’t know what it’s not. I don’t know what it is . I don’t even like him. But he never makes me do anything I don’t like. And he likes me, and even though I don’t like him back it’s nice to be wanted, you know? I think I’ve needed that. And even though he wants me, he’s never pushy, so we can do things on my time. I mean he’ll try and initiate, but if I say yes he just kind of… sits and waits for instructions? I don’t know, that makes it sound weird.”

John laughs. “No, that makes it sound kinky .”

“What? Oh. Ohhhh. Really?!”

“Tell him he’s a good boy some time, see how he reacts. Maybe push him around a bit.”

“I… I guess I already sort of do that. I hadn’t thought of it like… I mean I guess I do sort of like that about the sex, I’d just never really realised… God, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation while Xander’s been kidnapped .”

“Not having it wouldn’t make him any less kidnapped. And to be honest, you sound like you’ve needed it.”

“God, I really have. I can’t really talk about this stuff with… well with anyone really. Not the afterlife stuff, or the sex stuff, and I’m always worried if I talk about the Dawn stuff she’ll hear me, or I’ll jinx us or something.”

“Happy to be of assistance.” And he is. He’s not a people person in the slightest, and he’s the last person most people he knows would go to for help or advice and for good reason, but it feels good to have done something as low stakes and uncomplicated as offer sex advice to someone who needs it. He spends so much time just fighting to stay alive that he forgets that he does actually like helping people when he can. Zee would say it’s the aging hippie in him, but she’d say it with a smile. “This looks like a cemetery. Which way?”

Buffy leads them through the graves (too many for a town this small and this young, but that’s what building on a Hellmouth gets you) to a small mausoleum.

He’s never actually been in a vampire’s lair as such, certainly not one so traditional, but this is the whole nine yards. Moonlight shining through the wrought iron window grills, big wooden door, hidden staircase beneath a stone sarcophagus... He feels like he’s in a Hammer horror.

The actual lair itself is less impressive. A couple of small rooms, a fridge that looks like it was nicked out of a skip and a tiny tv with crap signal.

And an oddly familiar vampire jumping up angrily as they enter, whatever he was about to say disappearing as a flicker of recognition flashes across his features.

“John, Spike. Spike, John.”

Spike stares at him. “Johnny? Johnny Con-Job? From Mucous Membrane?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re not a fan are you?” It’s been known to happen, although admittedly only twice.

“Was anyone? I used to drink in Inferno now and then, back in the day.”

It’s coming back to him now. “I remember you. Always had a bird with you, long dark hair, saw the future. D-something.”

“Drusilla,” Buffy says.

“That’s the one.”

“Nice to know we made an impression.”

“A lot’s happened since then. There’s not a lot of space up here for people I met a couple of times 20 years ago, especially when we never actually had that threesome she kept angling for.”

“Wait.” Buffy stares at Spike like she’s never seen him before. “You fucked him?!”

“Nah, he just hit on me like it was going out of fashion,” John says, enjoying her horrified expression and Spike’s obvious embarrassment. They’d bought him drinks a few times, and Drusilla might have been mad as a box of frogs but she’d been hot, and John’s just enough of a switch that Spike had looked pretty tempting as well, but before he could decide whether he was stupid enough to take them up on what they were clearly offering they’d skipped town. He’d mostly been relieved. Following his dick had got him into a few bad spots but probably nothing as bad as Slayer-killing vampires.

Oh God, he’s just realised who Buffy must be fucking. Christ, no wonder she’s not sure how she feels about him. That’s fucked up even by John’s standards.

“From what I remember it was mostly you doing the flirting,” Spike says. He’s got his initial reaction under control and has apparently decided he’s going to just bluff it out. “In fact, I distinctly remember the phrase ‘what big teeth you have’ coming up more than once.”

This time it’s his turn to be subjected to Buffy’s horrified stare. “Do you have some kind of vampire fetish? First Giles was asking you about that Mitchell guy, now Spike and Drusilla…”

“To be fair, I never actually fucked Mitchell and groping doesn’t count if you’re too high to remember it afterwards.” Although he definitely remembers it, and vampires can’t really get high, so maybe it does count.

“John Mitchell? Miserable Irish bastard, in with that Vampire Uber Alles lot?” Spike asks.

“You know him?”

“We ran into one another now and then, though I never cared much about politics. How’d you meet him?”

“He saw me getting my teeth kicked in. Decided to intervene. This was during one of his attempts at reforming himself.”

Spike rolls his eyes, and John isn’t sure whether he should be offended on Mitchell’s behalf. He was a prick, and they were never actually an item, but he genuinely had tried to reform, however badly it turned out in the end. “Oh God, one of those . It never works, and it always makes a big fucking mess they finally snap. Not that I mind that sort of thing, but Dru hated it. She never did like hypocrites.”

“There are vampires who try and reform?” And this is why he doesn’t like heroes, no matter how emotionally vulnerable they are. She’s spent half her life fighting vampires and she somehow knows less about vampire society than John does.

“‘Course there are,” Spike says in an offended tone. “We’re not animals . Works for years too sometimes, but they always snap in the end. The blood calls to us, Dru used to say.”

“Yeah well she was a few bats short of a belfry, and I didn’t come here so you two could reminisce about the good old days. We’re here for information. There are new demons in town and we need to know where they’re hiding out.”

Spike leans against the wall in a casual pose that to John’s experienced eye just screams ‘hold me down and make me, I’m begging you’. “I might know something about that. What’s in it for me?”

“Me not beating your head in?”

“Hey now, there’s no need for that. Just because I’m temporarily unarmed…”

Okay, now that’s just stupid. “You’re a vampire. You’re never unarmed.”

“Oh, he’s practically defanged,” Buffy says, obviously enjoying the way it makes Spike squirm with embarrassment. If she gets over some of her issues John’s pretty sure her and Spike could be having spectacular sex. “He can’t hurt humans anymore.”

John raises his eyebrows. “Interesting. Magic or tech?”

“Tech. They put a bloody computer chip in my brain.”

“Who did it? Anyone who can fuck up a vampire like that sounds like bad news.”

“They’re called the Initiative,” Buffy explains. “Think Men in Black.*

“Think the CIA found out the Supernatural exists and panicked,” Spike says. “They want everything that isn’t safely human dead or in a box.”

“You don’t look any deader than your average vampire.”

“I escaped. But not before they Clockworked my Orange but good.”

John laughs for the butchered reference. “Missing the old Ludwig Van?”

“Missing the krovvy. But I’m not to oobivat the lewdies or it starts up a bloshie venailing in my gulliver.” It’s been a while since he last read Clockwork Orange, but John recognises enough to understand what Spike’s saying, and Buffy obviously doesn’t, which is probably for the best. An idea is forming in John’s head and he just knows she’s going to hate it.

“Nasty.”

“I’m itty bezoomny, to tell it plain.”

“God, can you two stop flirting for five minutes! This is important and the two of you are standing around making eyes at each other!”

Spike rolls his eyes. “Christ, keep your hair on, Slayer. You know, this is why Dawn thinks you’re boring.”

John sees what’s coming before she moves a muscle, but he isn’t stupid enough to get in the way of a pissed-off Slayer so he stands his ground, wincing in sympathy as Spike’s back hits the wall hard enough to crack bone.

“You stay the fuck away from my sister.”

John weighs up the risk and then lays a gentle hand on Buffy’s shoulder. Her muscles are locked up tight, and she's trembling very slightly. “Love…”

“I am not your love .”

“Alright, alright, no disrespect meant. But maybe you should take a breath, yeah? Because you’re about to kill a defenseless man because he called you boring , and frankly that doesn’t seem like your style.”

She doesn’t look away from Spike, but he can hear her sneer in her voice. “What the fuck do you know about my style, huh? He’s a threat to my sister, and if you think there’s anything I won’t do to protect her…”

“What the fuck, Slayer?” Spike demands. He sensibly isn’t trying to get away, but he looks nearly as angry as her. “I wouldn’t hurt her, she’s a fucking kid!”

“She’s a year younger than I was the first time you tried to kill me. A year . I’m supposed to believe that suddenly that makes a difference to you?”

“No she isn’t. No ,” he says louder as Buffy starts to argue, “she’s a kid. You’re the Slayer. You were the Slayer.”

“You murdered children.”

“Alright, fine I murdered kids. I’m a fucking Vampire what do you expect. But not Dawn, alright, not the Little Bit. She’s… fuck, she’s my friend, okay?! Happy now? Yeah, I’m pathetic, I get it, I can’t hurt anyone and I live in this dump and I hang out with a fifteen-year-old because she’s the only one who doesn’t treat me like I’m a fucking joke.” He wrenches away from Buffy, shoulders hunched defensively. “Fuck, give me a fag would you?”

Wordlessly John fishes the packet out of his coat and passes one over. He lights one for himself and pretends he doesn’t see Spike’s hands shaking as he gets out a lighter.

Buffy stares at the wall opposite them, jaw clenched, while they smoke and John lets her. No sense in riling up someone who could kick both their arses.

He gives it until Spike’s fag has burned down to less than half before he speaks. “We still need that information.”

“You can sing for it,” Spike says spitefully. “Or you can pay me like anyone else. You’ll get no favours from me.”

Buffy’s shoulders tense, and John speaks quickly before she can start another fight. “We can pay. What do you want.”

“Money.”

“I haven’t got any and nor’s she.” He doesn’t know that for sure, but she’s an orphaned twenty-year-old with a full-time job that mostly pays in medical bills so unless she inherited some serious money it seems like a safe bet.

“Well you can sod off then, and come back when you’re prepared to pay.”

“Hold on, mate, give me a second. Money’s not the only thing you need.”

“Really? You going to fix my cable? Or maybe you can wave your fingers and magic this chip out of my head, huh?”

John winces at the thought of how difficult, and how costly, a trick like that would be. Not that he’d do it if he could, Spike admits he’s a child-killer and just because he’s got a soft spot for the Slayer’s sister there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t kill everyone else who got in his way. Especially since the poor bastard must be half starving. Mitchell always said the bagged stuff was like vegetable soup when you want roast beef - enough of it would fill you up in the end, but it would never satisfy you.

Oh. Well, that’s always an option… Could backfire horribly mind, but it’s his fault Sparklefleck’s even here, and he’d promised nothing about returning Xander unharmed, only alive. He owes the boy. “I might be able to help you, in exchange for the information.”

“No, no way, don’t even think about…” Buffy begins, but Spike talks right over her as though he hadn’t heard her, his eyes bright with hope.

“You can get rid of the chip?!”

“Not that. But your… Hank Marvin problem.”

“Hank… oh . What are you thinking? Because if it’s just supply...”

“Better than that,” John promises. “I’m a little bit d'shiadoa these days. Not all omi, if you catch my drift.” He’s not sure Spike’s educated enough to translate the Aramaic or queer enough to understand the Polari, but hopefully the context will be enough. “Herself can viddy it.”

“And you think…?” Spike looks like he’s just found an oasis in the desert, and he’s not sure if it’s a mirage.

“Worth a try, and I’m willing.”

“How much? If it works.” 

Well, at least he’s willing to negotiate. Whether he’ll actually stop… but the Slayer is right there, hopping mad and spoiling for a fight. She won’t let him die, if only because she’s desperate for a reason to punch Spike. “One.”

“Four.”

“One and a half.”

“Three.”

“Two, and you can peet it from me shiyah.”

Buffy has finally deigned to turn actually look at them, though she still looks mutinous. She grimaces with distaste when Spike spits into his palm and holds it out for John to shake.

John shakes, and Spike grins at him. There’s an almost crazed light in his eyes, the anger of a moment ago not yet gone but drowned out by a manic excitement. “You’re a horrorshow bratchny.”

“You’ve got information we need and I can spare blood easier than money right now.”

That finally gets Buffy’s attention. “What did you do?”

“Agreed to pay me for the information,” Spike says. He’s grinning like he knows exactly how much that’s going to piss her off and he either doesn’t care or wants to see her explode.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” she demands of John. “He’s a fucking vampire. If this is because of what I told you…”

Ah, John probably should have seen that coming. “Nothing like that love. We needed something to trade, and if I had anything left I would have used it to get some help instead of begging for favours from friends I haven’t seen for two decades.”

“But it won’t even work! He can’t bite anyone, I told you that!”

“I’ve been making you uncomfortable ever since I arrived. Making that special Slayer something in the back of your head itch. You haven’t let me get behind you once. Maybe you should have a think about why that is. And hold my coat would you, there’s a love? I try not to get bloodstains on it.”

“I’m not that messy an eater,” Spike objects. 

John shrugs out of his coat and holds it out to Buffy, but she just glares at him and makes no move to take it, so he passes it to Spike to lay over a chair.

“If this doesn't work…” Spike says as John pulls his tie loose and undoes a couple of shirt buttons.

“Of course it won't fucking work, are you both stupid ?” Buffy sounds like she’s one wrong word away from snapping for real, and John almost feels bad for her. She’s just a kid, it’s not her fault some higher power decided to make her into a Hero.

“You haven't figured it out yet?” That gets him another glare, and he probably deserved that one, but Spike has got his game face on and John’s too distracted by what he’s about to do to care very much about her feelings. God if this is how he dies Nicky will never let him hear the end of it when he gets to Hell. “How do you want me?”

Spike arranges him against the wall, and John allows himself to be moved like a doll. Spike’s hands are gentle, the kind of too gentle that makes John antsy, makes him want to push just to see what will happen. But despite the delicacy, he can feel the strength in the hand guiding his head back and to the side, and a broken jaw is never a fun time, so he does his best to push down the bit of his brain that wants to fight, and the bit that wants to hurt, and goes where he’s told.

“This is so fucked up,” Buffy says, but she makes no move to intervene so John ignores her. Spike is boxing him in, one hand on the wall between John and Buffy, like he’s trying to hide him from her, the other cupping the side of John’s face. It's intimate, the kind of intimate there just hasn't been enough of in his life, not since Nick got himself a one-way ticket downstairs, since Giovani Zatara burned alive, since Kit chose Brendan, and Marj chose Zed, since Roni faded away like smoke. He and Zee aren't exclusive, but it's not like he's got them lining up ‘round the block, even if he could bring himself to make the effort most of the time. It feels good just to be touched, even if it’s by someone who only wants to eat him.

“This is so fucked up,” Buffy says again, but her words are lost to the rush of blood in John's ears as Spike bites down.

It’s not the worst thing John’s ever done for information, although it’s not as enjoyable as he’d been half hoping for. The bite feels more like getting pierced than any of the things he does for kicks (20 years and some pretty intense healing magics since he last wore an earring and the hole in his right ear still hasn’t closed up) but it's a familiar kind of pain and he learnt how to breathe himself down when he was only Dawn’s age. Already he can feel a little bit of that familiar endorphin buzz, not quite the masochists high that would make this all worthwhile but not unpleasant.

Then Spike shifts his grip, tearing the wound a little wider and sucking hard, and suddenly it's hurting just right, the sting lighting up his blood like fire, and he doesn't know whether to be pissed or relieved when Spike pulls away.

“Buggering hell,” Spike gasps, staggering back to lean on the armchair. “You weren't kidding about being not all human. What is that? It's got a kick like fucking absinthe. The real stuff that makes you hallucinate and sends you blind.”

John fishes out a clean(ish) hankie and holds it to the wound on his neck. “You've heard of Nergal?”

“Mesopotamian death god of some kind, yeah?”

“Turned Christian demon with an interest in me and mine. I carry his taint in my blood. It's what's been pinging your radar all day, Slayer. It's why I don't look my age.”

“You're part demon?!” She looks horrified, and wary, and he feels a little tinge of regret for the fact that she’ll likely never trust him again. It’s stupid - if this plays out the way he thinks it’s going to, she’d never have trusted him again anyway - but he’d enjoyed his brief sojourn into hero territory. It was an exciting novelty to be trusted by someone he wasn’t actively trying to con.

“Not the parts that matter. Not enough that it'd show up on a DNA test, enough that you can feel it and so will my descendants.”

“Bloody hell.” Spike sounds like he can’t decide whether to be impressed or pissed off. “You could have warned me you bastard. I'm not going to have Death Gods knocking down my door for daring to lay a fang on their precious chosen one am I?”

“I said interested, not fond. He hates me about as much as I hate him. He'll just be pissed you didn't take all of it.”

“Don't tempt me. That's the first fresh blood I've had in over a year.”

“Now now, play nice or you'll never get the Slayer to fuck you up the way you want.” John grins at Spike and Buffy’s identical expressions of horror. He probably shouldn’t have made that joke when Buffy’s still pissed at him and Spike both, but he doesn’t care. There’s an inch under his skin telling him to push, telling him to get a reaction any way he can, and just because he knows it will fade in a minute or two doesn’t make him any less loopy now. “You two really need to have a chat about kinks. Preferably with your clothes still on, but I'm not going to judge. For now though, I believe we made a deal?”

Spike shoots a resentful look at Buffy, but he’s not going to break his deal so soon after insisting that he’s not a monster. “You want to know about new demons in town, yeah?”

“A Rhymer, and a load of Skeletal bikers.”

“I don't know anything about the Rhymer - truth to tell, I thought they were a myth - but the Skeletons aren't exactly keeping a low profile. One of them held up a liquor store a couple of days ago.”

Buffy shoots John a worried look. “They arrived before you did.”

John ignores her, too busy digging his phone out of his pocket. Only one person had known he was going to the States, and it was the poor bastard who had given him a lift to Gatwick. He’d been so sure he’d kept this away from everyone who matters, had made a point of getting to the States as quickly as he could just to avoid this, but what if all he’s done is leave his friends defenceless when they needed him most…?

His hand trembles slightly as he dials the number, the second wave of adrenaline hitting his system so soon after the first sending his heart hammering, making his palms sweat and his mouth dry.

He nearly bloody cries when Chaz picks up on the second ring, but it’s not like he’s going to let Chaz know that. “Did you tell a skeleton on a motorbike where to find me?”

“Hi Chaz, how are you mate? Thanks for the lift to the airport that I didn’t bloody pay for. No problem John, I’ll just add it to your tab that’s not getting paid until I find bailiffs who’ll handle cursed bloody statues!”

“Don’t mess about Chaz, this is serious. Did you tell skeletons on motorbikes that I was going to the States?”

“Course I bloody did,” Chaz says, loud enough that Spike and Buffy probably hear it. “You think I'm going to get my head kicked in to protect the tosser who still owes me three grand?”

“Well you're not going to get your money if I'm dead are you, genius?”

“And three grand wouldn't buy me a new head!” Chaz stops, takes a breath. “You're alright though, yeah?”

God the sentimental idiot actually sounds worried. One of these days that’s going to get him killed, and John doesn’t know how he’ll live with himself when it comes. “I'm John bloody Constantine, mate, I'm always okay.”

“You don't half talk some bollocks. Look after yourself though, yeah? That ten grand isn’t going to pay itself.”

“We’ll go down to Cheltenham when I get back, there’s bound to be some bookies there who won’t see us coming. You know I always pay up in the end.” Giovani Zatarra, and the smell of burning flesh. Nick, with hellfire in his eyes instead of love. Gary, and the way he’d looked at John when he finally realised what was coming. Astra. Sometimes it seems like the more John pays, the bigger the debt gets. “I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Not if I see you first. And don’t expect a lift back from the bloody airport. You can take a bus like everyone else.”

“He's okay?” Buffy asks when John’s hung up.

“He's a bell-end, but that's nothing new.” He needs to get his head back in the game, and out of that squalid little house in Tower Hamlets, out of Chas’s childhood bedroom, with its broken Airfix Spitfire still hanging from the ceiling and the ever-present stink of monkey shit and cheap shag tobacco. Now there’s another kid masquerading as a man in need of rescue, and he’s not helping anyone by dwelling on the past. “Alright Spike, I paid my half of the bargain, time to pay yours. Where are those bastards hiding out?”

John and Buffy both turn to look at Spike, who sighs. “They're somewhere up on route 17. Wayne the Frost Demon who lives in the basement at the ice rink saw them yesterday, and the store they held up is around there as well.”

“And…?” Buffy asks, raising her stake, her tone cold.

“And that's all I know!”

John peels the handkerchief away from his neck, wincing as it pulls at the wound. There’s blood on the cloth, but not as much as there could have been, considering. “Not sure that was worth two pints.”

“I could have told you that,” Buffy mutters.

John shrugs. “I've done worse for less. You want to come meet a Rhymer, Spike?”

Spike shoots a worried glance as Buffy, and then visibly remembers he’s pretending not to care what she thinks. “Why the fuck not, sure. What do you want him for anyway?”

“He's got Xander. We're supposed to do a hostage exchange, Xander for some book we don't even have.”

“Oh, well that doesn't seem like much of a loss to me. Are you sure you want him back? I'd take to book - anything interesting enough to attract a Rhymer has got to be worth having.”

“Interesting enough to start a civil war in Hell, if it was readable. Nothing from There makes much sense in the Here, and stuff from the Dreaming less than most.”

“I understood about half of that.”

“Doesn't matter. It was too dangerous to be floating around the mortal or immortal plains, so I burned it.”

“I can see how that would put a crimp in the hostage exchange. If he's hurt I might be able to smell him when we're close. For the right price.”

“Two pints,” John reminds him. “You owe me.”

Spike opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, thinks about it a bit, and then says, “Yeah alright. But only because I've got a pretty good buzz going on and I either want to fuck something or fight something, and the Slayer doesn't look like she's up for either right now.”

John laughs at Buffy’s expression, which is caught somewhere between mortified and homicidal. “You two really need to have that talk.”

Chapter Text

The Magic Box, Sunnydale, California - 4th November 2001

Spike is really really hoping he gets to kill something when they finally find Xander. He hasn’t felt this on edge in years, and he has no idea why feeding has got him buzzing like Dru’s just got out the holy water, whether it’s just getting a real meal after so long without or whether it’s something about the demonic taint in John’s blood, but whatever it is, he’s liking it. Maybe once the boy loser is safe he and Buffy can go somewhere private. Maybe he’ll suggest she get out the holy water. (He doesn’t trust her enough for that, will never trust her enough for that no matter how much he loves her, but hell, a man can dream.)

Maybe he’ll see if he can persuade John to stick around for a few days. He’d been happy enough to trade blood for Xander, and there’s got to be something Spike can offer that’s better than that. God, if there isn’t he might as well just let the Slayer dust him. He’s had rashes that were worth more than Xander Harris.

If Rhymers really are as dangerous as John thinks, having a plan of action rather than just going in guns blazing is only sensible, but sitting around while Buffy and Giles argue strategy (and Anya just argues) is driving him up the wall. His blood is fizzing - he wants to be doing something, running, fighting, fucking, hell even dancing if there were any clubs in this nothing of a town that played music worth listening to, he doesn’t care. Just anything that isn’t pacing a hole in a carpet while John and the Slayer argue round and round in circles about Holy weapons.

“I told you, I can do this!”

“And I told you I'm not in the habit of killing kids!”

“I'm not a kid!”

“Having trauma is not the same as growing up!” John stops, takes a deep breath, visibly calms himself. The wound on his neck is still bleeding, a sluggish trickle, too small for a human to notice. The smell is making Spike’s teeth ache. “You can't solve this by punching, though I appreciate that you're willing to try. We need to be smart about this if we don't want a bloodbath.”

“Well maybe suggest an idea then instead of just telling me all of mine are crap!”

John pulls a face. “I’ve only got one idea.”

“We’ll do it,” Anya says immediately.

“What are you thinking?” Giles asks quietly. He sounds like he doesn't want to know the answer.

“I'm thinking that there are some people downstairs who'd be very interested to know what Sparklefleck is plotting.”

Giles goes white, and then red. “Oh my God , John, you can't be serious?! After everything you've seen, you want to summon another demon?!”

Spike doesn't know what “after everything” means, or “another demon”, but it looks like Buffy does. She hasn't actually gone pale, but her expression as she glances between them is tight with worry.

“I'm not going to lose control,” John snaps. “You really think I'm stupid enough to let something like that happen twice?”

“I think I can't take the risk. Not with…” Giles glances at Buffy and trails off, and Spike wonders what he'd been going to say. Xander’s life? Buffy’s life? He can be cavelier with the safety of the Slayer and her pals, it’s his Watcher training showing through, but even he has limits.

“Rupes…” John reaches out, but stops himself before he actually touches Giles. “Please. I need you to trust me.”

There's history between them, and Spike thinks he can see a lot of it in Giles’s face as he stares at John. Guilt and heartbreak and weary fondness and beneath it all the desperate desire to trust. There’s blood between them, old and bitter, and it’s driving Giles to ignore all his cautious instincts.

Eventually Giles nods, and John finally allows himself to touch, clasping Giles’s shoulder. Giles doesn’t flinch the way he normally does for unexpected physical contact, and Spike adds that to the mental picture he’s building of their history. “Thank you.”

“So what's the plan?” Buffy asks. Her tone is eager but Spike can see from her expression that she'd caught something in that interaction that he missed. 

“That depends on you,” John says, turning to Willow. “I want to summon Sparklefleck’s boss, but to do that without losing control, we need a host. They need to be powerfully magical, to keep any kind of control, and they need to be human. You need me to steer the magic, which leaves you to host the Devil, but I won't do it without your permission, and nor will He. He was an angel once, and they have rules about that sort of thing.”

“I'll d-do it,” Tara says at once. She’s been spending way too much time around heroes, volunteering for something like that without knowing all the details, but you’ve got to admire the balls on her all the same.

John and Red exchange significant looks Spike can't guess at the meaning of, and then John says, “I'll need you with me. I need back up who's magic is compatible with mine.”

“And you think mine is?”

“More than Willow’s. I got a feel for you both when we fought the Pit-Riders, and I think we’ll be able to work together.”

“Summoning Satan isn’t exactly first resort stuff,” Buffy says. “You’re the one who keeps reminding me we’ve got time. What are the other options?”

“I leave, and hope Sparklefleck follows. Doesn’t solve my problem but it gets him away from you. If it works. With a Hellmouth so handy though, there’s no guarantee it will. This is prime demonic real-estate, so it could be he decides to cut his losses and stuck around. Or we could go in half-cocked with no plan except to punch everything that isn’t Xander and hope you’re tougher than you look.” Buffy gives him a look that could curdle milk but he ignores her. “We could try calling Blood to ask for Etrigan’s help, but he’s an unhelpful bastard as a rule and there’s no guarantee he’ll be in the right frame of mind or even dimension to be any use before your boy's time runs out, and that’s assuming he doesn’t decide two of his enemies fighting it out suits him just fine and leave them to it.”

“I know Blood by reputation,” Giles says. “I wouldn’t want to be dependant on him.”

“And if I do this?” Willow asks, her voice brittle. “What's the worst that could happen?”

John nods approvingly. “You're learning. Worst case scenario, me and your girl can't contain the Devil and He opens the Hellmouth and drops us all straight in before He begins destroying the town. Second from worst is the same except He leaves some of us alive so we can watch him destroy the town. But that won’t happen, because if we lose control of Him, Spike here will rip your throat out.”

Well finally, a chance to kill something. Although, much as it pains him to admit it, he'd really prefer not to kill Red if he doesn't have to. She's been nicer to him than most, and it would break Dawn’s heart. “Why me?”

“Because if she's not possessed you won't be able to lay a finger on her. You're our failsafe.”

Spike mutters “Always nice to feel wanted,” but no one is paying him any attention, all focussed on Willow.

“There's really no other options?” Tara asks.

“Probably,” John says with a shrug, like they’re discussing where to go for dinner instead of summoning Satan Himself, “but I can't think of any. If you can, I'm all ears.”

“How do we keep him contained? We won’t have time to draw a magic circle before we summon him,” Spike asks, when it seems like no one else will. “What’s to stop him jumping ship the minute he knows we’re banishing him? For that matter, do you even know how to banish him?”

“Angels can travel freely to the Here any time they want, even fallen ones. It’s not about containing him, it’s about making him sit still long enough that we can explain that we’re doing him a favour. We don’t need a circle for that, not if we prepare the host properly.”

“You’re not going to make me go skyclad, or tattoo me with magical symbols are you?” Willow asks. “Because I’m not a public nudity kind of girl, and really don’t want any tattoos.”

“Magical symbols yes, but we’ll paint them on, and I promise Tara can do all the ones on your naughty bits. As for banishing him, we might not even need to. But if we do, I know a really nasty bit of enochian that should do the trick.”

“You don't have to do this,” Giles says to Willow. “It’s your choice.” He looks like he wants to say more, but a glance at John shuts him up. There's something between them, some obligation or debt, that's making him go along with this against his better judgement. Something old, that goes deep . 

“It kind of sounds like I do,” Willow says, unhappily.

“You don’t ,” Tara says quickly. “You don’t.” She rounds on John, eyes bright with anger. “Why did you have to b-b-bring that thing here, huh?! If B-Buffy can’t help you, what good did you think Giles was going to be?! Or maybe you just want some strangers to be collateral damage instead of someone you care about!”

“I didn’t know she couldn’t help,” John says, sounding resigned. “I’ve never met a Slayer before, I didn’t know their limits. It seemed worth a shot. Yes of course I wanted it away from people I care about, but I didn’t know there’d be all of you lot here. I thought it would just be Ripper and his destined hero. Slayers aren’t usually big on friends.”

“They’re not usually big on surviving past 18 either, but this one’s full of surprises,” Spike mutters. Not that he’s not - sometimes - happy that she did. Sometimes.

Willow closes her eyes for a beat, and when she opens them Spike knows at once what she’s decided. Not that there was ever any doubt, not with Xander’s life on the line. “I’ll do it. That is, if you guys are all okay with it?”

“I hate this p-plan,” Tara says, with uncharacteristic, if understandable, venom. “But it’s Xander, and if this is our only chance then we have to t-ake it.”

“Of course we have to take it,” Anya says at once. “It’s Xander, he’s much more important that all of you.”

“Thanks,” Willow says, but there’s no venom in her tone. They can all see how frightened Anya is.

“Giles.” Buffy’s voice is low and very serious, that cold hard tone she’s only had since Red pulled her out of the afterlife, like maybe not all of her made it back in one piece. “I trust you. Even when I shouldn’t. If you say this is okay, then I’m on board. But I need to hear you say it. Do you trust John Constantine?”

John turns to look at Giles, not desperate or pleading but with an intensity that almost makes Spike take a step back. Giles stares back, not looking away, barely blinking, for a long time before he finally says, “With my life. With your life.”

Buffy nods. “Okay then. We’re doing this thing. What do we need to do?”

Pit-Rider’s Hideout, Sunnydale, California - November 4th 2001

Xander isn't panicking. He is experiencing a level of fear that is entirely reasonable given that he's been kidnapped by demons, but he's definitely not panicking.

Buffy will be looking for him, and Willow, and Giles, and Anya, and probably even Giles’s weirdo friend with all the magical titles. Literally the people best qualified in the entire world to rescue him from demons will be looking for him, so there’s no reason to panic.

None at all.

Okay, admittedly the Scoobies don’t have the book they’re supposed to exchange him for, and Buffy hasn’t been anything like herself since she came back from the dead, and Giles’s old friends are invariably assholes or evil or both, and the Demon who’s holding him captive is scary powerful and nothing at all like a magical cartoon unicorn, and he’s now fully aware that if he dies he’s probably going to real actual Hell which was something he was blissfully ignorant of during all his previous kidnappings…

Maybe there’s a few reasons to panic.

Although despite all the monumentally bad, this has so far been one of his better abductions. No one seems interested in torturing him or using him to impregnate mantis eggs or turning him into a vampire or a hyena or any of the weird shit that has historically happened during kidnappings. There’s also no one else here so he doesn’t have to worry about protecting anyone except himself, which makes a pleasant change. No panicking civilians, no panicking Willow (although that happens a lot less since she started getting into magic)… And honestly, the Pit-Riders are treating him pretty okay, at least by demon standards. He gets the impression, based on symbols and slogans displayed on their gear, that this would very much not be the case if he were a woman, or black, or gay, or Jewish, or basically anything other than the straight white American male he is, so he tries to comfort himself by thinking what a good thing it is that they kidnapped him and not one of the others. It doesn’t really work.

He has no idea how long he’s been here, but he’s only been fed one meal (a stale gas-station corndog and a bag of Cheetos) so he figures it can’t have been that long.

They’re holding him in the half-finished shell of a house, windows and radiators in but no paint on the walls and the floors are bare boards upstairs and concrete below. They teleported straight in, so he has no idea where in town they are, and the one window is too high and too close for him to see anything but sky. When Sparklefleck poofed them all in, two of the Skeletons had cuffed his left hand to the radiator, warned him that they’d kill him if he tried anything stupid, and left him alone. Eventually one of them appeared with the food and an extra-large blue-raspberry slushie, but apart from that, he hasn't seen them.

He can hear them bickering downstairs, and it feels disturbingly like summer vacation when he was 13, his parents feeding him junk food because neither of them cared enough to cook, too caught up in the passive-aggressive point-scoring argument they’d been having for the last 12 solid years to bother paying him any attention.

It’s occurred to him more than once that that’s one of the things he likes about Anya. She’s so completely upfront and honest about everything that even her attempts at passive-aggression feels like shouting. He always knows exactly where he stands with her, even if he’s not entirely sure he likes it.

God, he’s such a loser. He’s been kidnapped by literal demons, and instead of staging a daring escape like the others would be doing, he’s sitting here drinking a melted slushie and moping about his relationship with his fiance.

He loves Anya. He does. He’s certain he does. He’s just not sure he’s very good at love.

Willow and Tara are, effortlessly so. Even when they’re fighting, it’s clear to everyone who meets them that they adore one another. They fit together, in a way Xander never has with anyone. He had wanted, desperately, to feel that way about Buffy, but he never really had. He’d fancied her, and been intimidated by her, and been desperately protectively fond of her in a way he still is, but nothing like romantic love. Cordelia had been… God, fun, so much fun. They’d both known, even as they grew closer and closer together, that there was no future in it, but that had been freeing in a way. He thinks Cordy might actually have been the closest to a truly equitable relationship he’s ever had.

Willow hadn’t ever really been anything, attraction bred more of familiarity and a desperate desire to be wanted than anything real, for either of them. And then no one, for a long time, until Anya hit him like a 200lb sack of wet cats to the face.

There’s no one like her. It’s one of the things that’s fascinating about her, endlessly appealing. She’s totally and unquestionably unique. Her ideas about human behaviour were formed hundreds of years and thousands of miles away, and she’s had 900 years  to forget most of them anyway. The world is new and strange to her, in ways he can’t begin to imagine, and instead of giving up or blending in she insists on being herself as loudly as possible and it’s impossible for him not to admire that as someone who spent so long trying to make himself fit in.

The other thing about her is that every time he’s started to get close to anyone in the past there’s been this little voice at the back of his head telling him that they deserve better. It’s part of what made Cordy so appealing, because she was unquestionably a worse person than him and that was relaxing. And with Anya, well, she reacted to her husband cheating on her by becoming a demon and killing him, which is nothing approaching a sane or reasonable reaction. Especially since he looked it up, and she could have just got a divorce. Vikings were big on no-fault divorce. She could have kept her dowry, gone home to her parents, and apart from a broken heart, the only thing damaged would have been her ego. It makes her frightening (not that that’s ever been much of a turn off for him) but it also makes her relaxing, because maybe they really don’t deserve any better than one another.

Which is all just an elaborate way of saying that he’s a shit fiancé, but so’s she, and maybe they cancel one another out, and even if they don’t he still misses her. She wouldn’t know what to do because she never does, but she’d not know with so much confidence that he’d feel better despite himself.

Maybe that’s what love means, in the end. The person you want with you when you’re facing uncertain death. The person you want to stand back to back against the world with.

If he somehow survives this he is never getting kidnapped ever again. It makes him maudlin and it's definitely bad for his mental health. Maybe Dawn can take over for a bit since she’s the youngest.

Actually, even joking about that makes him feel like a dickhead, because Dawn is sweet and good and normal, and he would fight Sparklefleck with his bare fucking hands to protect her. Maybe Giles can take over being kidnapped instead. It would serve him right for having the worst friends and not telling them about Hell being real.

God of all the things he'd expected to learn this week… He's not even all that pissed with Giles for lying to them, because if there really wasn't anything they could do about it, not knowing was definitely they kinder option.

He gets the impression Constantine isn't really a kinder option sort of guy.

One day, he thinks optimistically, they'll hit a point where they already know all the weird disturbing things there are to know about Giles’s past. Maybe they already have. Once you've crossed off ‘used to be a punk’, ‘used to be into dark magic’, and ‘probably used to date guys’ (John's flirting isn't subtle, but then Ethan’s never was either, so maybe Giles just has a type) there isn't much left Giles could reveal that could possibly shock him. Maybe if he turns out to have a secret kid, or be a werewolf. Some sort of book-collecting dragon maybe.

God, it's still so weird that Giles used to be young. That he wasn't just created already middle-aged and dressed in tweed. He must have been hot once too, in a posh British kind of way, or all these weird exes wouldn't keep turning up to fuck the Scoobies’ lives up.

Xander’s never been attracted to guys, but he's not blind and he knows Giles is handsome, if you like that sort of thing. He can see how other nerds of Giles’s age would be attracted. But there's a big difference between seeing why Ms Calendar wanted to tap that, and imagining Giles as some kind of teenage heartthrob in leather trousers.

Well he's officially not panicking anymore, but if he doesn't stop thinking about Giles in leather trousers he's going to have to throw himself out of the window. Possibly straight onto the spikes of Brandor’s helmet.

The trouble is, when he stops focussing on how much danger he’s in, he can’t avoid thinking about that fact that he’s been here for hours with nothing to do.

No one ever tells you, before you sign up to fight demons, how mind-numbingly boring being kidnapped is. Boring is better than exciting, exciting generally means there’s nothing but Buffy’s quick thinking between him and death, but knowing that doesn't make the waiting around any less tedious.

Could they not have left him a book? Radio? TV? Something to pass the time. Hell, he’d take having a guard in here with him, because the skeletons hadn’t seemed like they’d be great conversationalists but at least it would be more interesting than sitting here doing nothing for however long they’ve had him!

Not the worst kidnapping. He just needs to focus on how this is objectively not his worst ever kidnapping. No one trying to eat him, or kill him, or rape him… God his life really is fucked up. Should he get therapy? He should probably get therapy. Or some really selective brain damage.

If Buffy doesn’t rescue him soon, he’s going to have to miss work, and he can’t lose this job, not when they’ve just paid the deposit on the venue for the Wedding. God, why couldn’t Buffy have been one of those fantasy chosen ones, the ones who have to do one quest and defeat one bad guy and then get to retire? The Master could so have been a single destiny all by himself. Or Glory. Or Angelus, even. Sacrificing the one you love to save the world seems pretty ‘destiny achieved, case closed’ to him. Why did those weird old cave-men dudes have to make a line of Chosen Ones? Could they not have made just one really good Chosen One who solved the whole vampire problem once and for all?

He always feels really gross when he thinks things like that. And like, one the one hand Vampires are definitely bad, evil even, monstrous, but on the other hand… they’re kind of just people. Evil murderous people, admittedly, people who should definitely be in prison, but still people. Spike hasn’t got a soul, but he’s still basically just a weird violent human and he really had loved Drusilla. Or Harmony, she’d barely changed at all when she died except for the taste for human blood. She would definitely have been on board the murder-train as a human if she’d been capable of that level of independant thought, being dead just forced her hand. Wiping out all the vampires sounds like a good way to save so many lives, but it would also mean killing a lot of what are basically just asshole people who didn’t get a choice about their all liquid diet.

He wonders if Buffy ever thinks about that. If the fact that the vamps she dusts didn’t just used to be human but still are in a lot of fundamental ways freaks her out as much as it does Xander. It seems stupid, how could she do what she does every night if she did think like that, but then at the same time… A Slayer who doesn’t think like that? That’s Faith at her worst. That’s Wesley with his drills and his statistics and his utter lack of understanding. That’s killing humans just the same as vamps when they get in your way. And Buffy would never do that, so maybe it does bother her.

It fucks Xander up sometimes that he can know Buffy and Willow so well, and yet still have no idea what it’s like to be them. He can’t imagine living with a destiny, even though he’s watched Buffy do it for years. He can’t imagine having magic at his finger-tips the way Willow does. He can’t imagine knowing you have the power to hurt people and holding it back, through all the petty annoyances and agonising pain people throw at you in life.

The three of them share everything, and half the time he doesn’t even know what they’re thinking anymore.

...Now would be a really good moment for a heroic rescue, before he depresses himself any more than he already has.

“You alright, kid?”

Xander is not ashamed to admit that he jumps out of his skin. If he’d had anything to drink other than half a slurpy, he’d probably have peed a little. “How the hell did you get in here?!”

There’s the sound of shattering glass and a roar that must be from Sparklefleck downstairs and Xander jumps again at the sudden noise. Constantine grins. “I’m good at turning up where I’m not wanted. One of my few useful skills.” He produces a couple of pieces of bent wire from his coat pocket. “That and lock picking.”

Xander does his best to sit still while Constantine works, not wanting to distract him, but he can’t help flinching at every crash and yell from downstairs. There’s nothing he could do to help - there’s never been anything he can do to help, you’d think he’d be used to that by now - but he still hates that he’s sitting here being rescued while Buffy is fighting for her life right below him.

The radiator he’s cuffed too is in the corner, and Constantine has to lean over him to reach the cuffs. It’s not the most awkward position Xander’s ever been in, but he still finds himself desperately looking anywhere except at Constantine’s face, which means he’s mostly staring at Constantine’s neck.

There are two little puncture wounds, right above his collar.

“Please tell me you’re not going to turn into a vampire.”

“Not as far as I know. I’ve learned to hedge my bets when it comes to the supernatural, but I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed that.”

“So what, you didn’t notice a vampire drinking your blood?”

“No, I definitely noticed that. But don’t worry, Spike was very gentle.”

“Ewwwwwww. What… no, actually I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to know how , that is so gross on so many levels. What’s wrong with you?!”

“Do you want the full list or just the highlights? Magic users are all fucked up, kid, never forget that. Some of us are just better at blending in. And… there. Come on.”

He stands and heads for the door, and Xander finds that the cuff attaching him to the radiator is open.

He lets Constantine go first out of the door since he’s all magic and stuff, but once he’s sure they’re alone Xander pushes past him to take the stairs two at a time down to where Buffy is… getting her ass handed to her apparently.

The stairs have a bend in them halfway down, and as he turns the corner, Buffy hits the wall next to him hard enough to crack the plaster.

She staggers to her feet, looking dazed, glancing around her as she tries to get her baring but apparently completely missing Xander and Constantine standing a few feet away. Before Xander can get her attention, she has to leap aside to avoid a punch from Sparklefleck the not-unicorn that makes the whole house shake, her Slayer instincts protecting her despite her confusion.

There’s a yell from somewhere out of sight of the stairs and Spike leaps into view, landing on the demon’s back, embedding his sword into Sparklefleck’s shoulder. To Xander’s horror, the demon shakes Spike off like he weighs nothing and pulls the sword out of himself without even wincing, the wound closing up behind it like he was never hurt.

“Yeah Sparklefleck!” one of the skeletons yells, and three of them pile in to try and separate Buffy from their boss.

“They’re never going to beat him!” Xander hisses to John.

“We know, they’re just buying us time. Come on, we need to get back to Willow.”

Xander has been rescued enough times in his life to know how this goes. “We have to go through the room with the demons in it, don’t we.”

“I can tell you’ve done this before. Yes of course we have to go through the room with the bloody demons in it, why do you think Spike and the Slayer are being a distraction?”

“God I hate my life sometimes. Okay, on my three…”

“Don’t be a prick. On my three.” Spike bounces off the wall by the bottom of the stairs and a moment later Brandor’s chain smacks into the plaster an inch from Constantine’s head. “Three!”

“Oh fuck you,” Xander says, hurrying to catch up. “Why did you…”

Constantine shushes him, and Xander’s about to be pissed off about that because it’s Constantine’s fault Xander was kidnapped in the first place, the least he could do is listen to him whine about it, when Sparklefleck turns and looks right at them.

Xander freezes, sure that he’s about to be turned into a gruesome smear on the unfinished concrete floor, but a second later Sparklefleck looks away without reacting.

“Did you...?”

“Yes, but it’s only a notice-me-not and it won’t hold up if he starts really looking for us so hurry the fuck up!”

Xander does as he’s told. Constantine might be a dick, but right now he’s the dick keeping Xander’s insides from becoming his outsides, so he’s not going to argue.

They make it to the door without being seen, and Xander feels like the worst kind of heel leaving Buffy fighting for her life but he can see Anya outside and he’s pretty sure if he doesn’t hug her in the next five minutes she’s going to set something on fire.

She flings herself at him with a yell the minute John drops the spell, and he wraps his arms around her tight and just holds on and wishes he never had to let go.

He does eventually, and then it’s Willow’s turn to hug the shit out of him, and she smells like incense and the strawberry shampoo she’s used since they were kids and home.

When she pulls away though, her expression is very serious. There’s a mark painted on her forehead in what looks horribly like blood, and more on her hands and neck. They look magical, but unlike any magic Xander’s ever seen her do before.

“Are you okay?”

Willow smiles, and it’s only a little bit strained. “I think I’m supposed to be asking you that, since you were the one who got kidnapped.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who looks like she’s going to her execution, or the one covered in weird face-paint. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to let John do something very stupid to me, and I might die, and I’ve only Giles’s word that we can even trust him,” she says. “But we haven’t got any other ideas, and Buffy and Spike aren’t going to last much longer, so I don’t have a choice.”

“How stupid?” When she doesn’t answer, he turns to Constantine. “How stupid?!”

Constantine grins, and it’s not happy and it’s not comforting. “We’re going to summon the Devil.”

The Pit-Riders’ Hide-out, Sunnydale, California - November 4th 2001

“How’re you doing?” Buffy yells, as she ducks under one of the Rhymer’s huge fists.

Turns out Rhymers are horrible bastards, huge and scaled and terrifyingly strong. The Skeletons are pretty fun though. The noise they make when you shatter them is viscerally satisfying.

“Better than you, from the look of things,” Spike yells back. He’s still a little loopy from the fresh blood, and even the hardest hits aren’t hurting like they ought to. He’s pretty sure he’ll be paying the price for it tomorrow, but for now he feels better than he has since before Angelus returned. “How much longer?”

“No idea. Axe!”

She tosses the battleaxe she’d been using to him and he catches it out of the air and spins to meet the Skeleton who’d been creeping up behind him. The axe slips between two of its ribs, and with a twist and a hard tug whatever magic holds it together snaps, sending bones cascading down with a noise like a drum kit going through a spin cycle. So fucking satisfying.

Buffy pulls her little one handed crossbow and takes out the last skeleton with a neat head shot, and then it’s just the two of them and the huge angry - and thus far disappointingly taciturn - demon.

It roars at them, and its voice is almost too low to hear but it’s loud enough that Spike can feel it in his rib cage, vibrating like bass in a club.

“All your minions are gone,” Buffy yells. “And now it’s your turn!”

For a moment Spike thinks the demon is going to roar again, but instead it pulls itself up to its full, not inconsiderable, height, and says, “You think that Sparklefleck you can so easily dispatch? Cower, little Slayer, for today you have met your match!”

Okay, Spike can see why he’s not chatty. If there’s one thing William the Bloody knows it’s terrible poetry, and that was seriously terrible poetry.

“That didn’t even scan,” he says, to no one in particular. “Even I could make a couplet that bloody scanned!”

“We’re not here for literary criticism,” Buffy reminds him, like she thinks he might have somehow forgotten about the massive demon trying to kill them both. God, sometimes he really wonders why he likes her. The sex is good, but it’s not that good. Maybe he should branch out, and try falling in love with someone who actually likes him next time. It’s got to be at least worth a try.

“Fuck you, Slayer.” Not his best witty retort, but it’s hard to think of quips when there’s a 9 foot demon reciting bad poetry and trying to smash your head in.

“Wow, with witty retorts like that it’s no wonder your best friend is a fourteen year old!”

“Fuck. You. Bitch. Axe!”

Buffy catches it out of the air without even looking, and it’s so frustrating that she’s such a cow all the time, when they work so well together. Next time, if he survives this time, he’s definitely falling in love with someone who likes him, and who doesn’t know anything at all about killing demons.

She brings the axe up to meet Sparklefleck’s mace with a crash, the metal grinding against metal sending out a shower of sparks.

“This insalubrious place shall be your tomb, for now, girl, you shall meet your doom!”

“I don’t think so,” a quiet voice says from the doorway.

As one, they all turn to see… Willow, but not Willow. It’s Willow’s body, and Willow’s voice, but those aren’t Willow’s eyes. Nothing mortal has eyes like that. Nothing mortal burns from within with the fire of a dying sun. Nothing mortal has ever made Spike want to tear out his own eyes just to keep from looking at it.

It’s Willow’s body and Willow’s voice, but it’s pretty clear that Willow isn’t home right now.

“My lord,” Sparklefleck says, dropping to one knee and bowing his head, and hearing him speak q normal sentence would probably be deeply weird if Spike wasn’t distracted by the feeling that looking at Willow was burning him like sunlight from the inside out.

“Will?” Buffy asks, taking a tentative step forward. “Are you in there?”

“Our host is sleeping,” the Devil says, His voice incongruously soft for something so terrible. At first Spike had thought He sounded like Willow, but the more he listens the more he can hear strange unnatural harmonics in the words, that resonate somewhere deep inside him. He thinks it might be the place where his soul used to be. “We have not harmed her. Such is the bargain between host and Angel.”

“Okay, well good. Look I’m going to make this quick, because you are wigging me out and I want you out of my friend’s head as soon as possible. Your buddy here has been, like, interfering in the mortal realm and all that.”

“As all Demons do, from time to time. Even the elusive Ran Van Daarth has been known to play dice with the fates of men when the whim takes her.”

“Yeah, but all Demons aren’t trying to overthrow you, are they. He’s trying to find out your secret weakness so he can take over your position in hell and be the new head honcho. Big cheese. Whatever you call it down there.”

“The title is Devil.” Spike’s pretty sure Lucifer thinks Buffy’s cute, but in the same way some humans think caterpillars are cute. She is temporarily interesting, but still unimaginably tiny and insignificant compared to him. He doesn’t want to find out what happens when He stops finding her cute.

“Okay, well Sparkles wants to be Devil, and he kidnapped one of my friends to do it, and threw me into a wall, and made us have to summon you to possess Will, which no offense or anything but I am not a fan of, and I heard that you could maybe do something about that.”

“Is this true, Sparklefleck?”

“My king she speaks with fork’ed tongue, for Sparklefleck is loyal and true. You have known me, lord, since Death was young, I would never try to topple you!”

“It is true that I have known you since time immemorial, and you have never before stood against me. Mortals, what say you on your part?”

Spike is sick of this. He’s sick of Red looking like the heat-death of the universe made flesh, he’s sick of Buffy being a bitch to him, he’s sick of being thrown into walls. He’s sick of this whole fucking thing, and now that there aren’t even any Skeletons to smash anymore he just wants to go home to his nice quiet crypt and sulk in peace. “Why would we lie?”

The Devil turns His terrible stare on Spike. “You ask me why you would lie, William Pratt? You whose soul has been in my keeping these hundred years? You who have loved the demon in your blood so very well? I see you, oh killer of heroes, oh small and limited man, I see all of you and you dare to ask for my trust?!” The Devil’s glare is burning like sunlight, burning with sunlight, because what is the morning star except a far away sun, Spike can feel the skin around his eyes start to blister but still he can’t look away, pinned like a butterfly by eyes that ought to be Willow’s but aren’t.

“Not just him,” Constantine says from the doorway. The Devil looks away finally, and Spike screws his eyes shut, uncaring that it makes to burned skin crack and pull. Anything to avoid meeting the Devil’s gaze again. To be known like that, thoroughly and unavoidably and without mercy, is a terrible thing, far worse than the pain of burned flesh. 

“John Constantine. I thought I smelled your magic in this.”

When Spike finally dared to open his eyes, he finds John is leaning against the door jam with Tara, Giles, Anya and Xander behind him. “We’re not asking you to take Spike’s word, we’re asking you to trust the word of every mortal here, because we will all tell you the same thing. Sparklefleck wants to overthrow you and usurp your throne. He wants to join the Triumvirate.”

“You are known to a master of lies, Laughing Magician, as are all of your blood. You yourself have lied to me , a slight that will not be forgotten.”

“Concealing facts isn’t the same as lying. But beyond any story I might tell you, every one of my allies here, including the poor wench you’re wearing like a cheap coat, saw Sparklefleck fight for a book. A book they heard him admit he wanted in order to fight the Lord of Gehenna. Look into their hearts.” He gestures Tara forward. “This one’s one of yours, but with as pure a soul as anyone on earth, and she’ll back up everything I say.”

Tara shoots John a frightened look, but says, clearly and without stammering, “I saw it. Sparklefleck wanted the book.”

“I saw it too,” Giles agrees. “I heard him say he wished to challenge you.”

“Me too,” Buffy says.

“He said I wasn’t a proper Demon,” Anya says angrily. “And also the other thing.”

“He literally kidnapped me in order to get the book,” Xander points out. “I think that’s pretty indisputable.”

“My Lord, will you take the word of this Trickster’s friends? He has deceived them all and bent them to his ends! They say I seek the wisdom of some tome, but there is none such here, you may search the room!”

Jesus a slant rhyme and no scansion, Spike is really starting to hate this guy.

“You mean this book?” John asks, and pulls out from the inside pocket of his coat a thin volume bound in dark blue leather. There isn’t a title that Spike can see, but a falling star is embossed in gold on the front. When the Devil reaches for it, John snatches it back. “My property, purchased in good faith. I know what that sort of thing means to you. Fascinating read too, worth every penny. It’s a biography from the There. The story of the first to rise and the second to fall.”

Not-Willow’s jaw tightens. “You read it.”

“Of course. I’m a Constantine. But no one else ever has.”

“I thought you said you burned it!” Buffy yells. “You lying cheating…”

“And I thought Giles would have taught you better than to trust the word of a wizard in a trenchcoat,” John says irritably. “Word to the wise love, there’s a few of us about and we’re all bastards.”

The Devil takes a step towards Sparklefleck, who starts grovelling immediately. “My Lord, perhaps in haste I have mis-spoke. In truth I did come here to seek that book. But I would never seek to claim your throne, it was to give to you I sought the tome!”

“That’s tome twice in two verses,” Spike points out, when it doesn’t look like anyone else is going to say anything. He did not die just so people could go around acting like poetry doesn’t even matter! This is the Liverpool Poets all over again!

“You have never stood against me, it is true, but you have also never been a loyal supporter. Why this sudden change of heart, Lord Sparklefleck?”

“My Prince, I have been loyal beyond compare! You must see that I am blameless in this affair.”

The Devil stares into Sparklefleck’s face with those terrible eyes, and Spike almost feels sorry for the ugly bastard as he whimpers and grovels beneath the Devil’s gaze.

“Must I?” the Devil asks, very softly. He hasn’t blinked or looked away, and even though the wounds are already starting to heal, watching is making the blisters around Spike’s eyes burn in sympathy. “You were never much of a liar, Sparklefleck. I can see your guilt writ plain in your face.

“I banish you from Here, be gone. I shall address your crimes anon.” The Devil gestures and white hot flames engulf Sparklefleck, the ground buckling and warping beneath his feet until a great crack appears, spilling sickly yellow light into the room. There's a gust of smoke, smelling of sulfur and the sick-sweet stench of burning flesh, and when the air has cleared Sparklefleck is gone and the ground is back to normal except for the scorch marks on the concrete.

They all breathe a sigh of relief, and then not-Willow turns turns to smile at them, glowing with the white hot heat of a nuclear explosion, and suddenly Constantine’s clever plan doesn't seem so clever anymore.

“My Lord,” Constantine says, bowing low. “I’ve done you a service today, and I ask nothing in return.”

“That is good, as I have no intention of giving you anything.”

“ For exposing his treachery , I ask nothing. However, this book is worth far more than the name of a traitor, and it seems to me that we are in a position to help one another, if we feel so inclined.”

“You mean to blackmail me with what you have learned from that accursed book.”

“Blackmail is such an ugly word.” The Devil is looking right at him, but John just smirks like he stares down infinite power in human form every day. It’s got to be a bluff, but if it is it’s one of the best Spike’s ever seen. A man like that’s got to have a dark secret or six, but he’s showing no sign that the unbearable weight of being known is bothering him.

“I can think of worse. What is it you want from me?”

“The return of what I sold the Triumvirate.”

“Your soul?You must have a high opinion of yourself, to consider that black and twisted thing worth a much as that book.

“Regardless, I have no power to return what is not mine. One part of your soul I have to bargain with, but that which was promised elsewhere and that which was freely given from love, I have have no hold over.”

“I didn't ask you to get me a divorce. I just want you to give up the claim you have on me.” 

Spike thinks of Angel, of the pathetic half-man he’s become with the weight of a soul weighing him down after so long without. He talks about the guilt, but Spike’s been dead for long enough to know that it’s more than that. Nothing escapes the pit without taking a little bit of Hell with it, not even a restored soul. He can’t imagine anyone volunteering to go through that.

Maybe it’s different for humans who bartered theirs away, maybe a soul claimed but not taken doesn’t burn like that of a dead man, but he was John he wouldn’t want to take that risk.

“What surety will you give that the book is all you claim?”

“Only a name,” John says. “ Samael .”

The Devil recoils as though He's been struck. “Very well. I agree to your terms. I will renounce my claim on one part of your soul in exchange for the book. I will ask you again when you are dead and in my keeping if it was worth the trouble. I'm sure your answer will be entertaining.”

“Never a dull moment me. How do you want to seal the pact?”

“Let it never be said I do not respect the old ways.”

“Yeah I was afraid you'd say that.” John turns to Tara. “Sorry about this love. Please don't curse me until we've got your girl back.”

And then the bloody Devil grabs John’s chin and plants one on him.

It’s not a long kiss, but there’s definitely some tongue involved, and Spike really doesn’t want to be around when they have to explain to Red what Lucifer was doing with her body while she was out.

“The deal is struck,” Lucifer says, pulling away.

“The deal is struck,” John agrees, holding out the book.

The moment Willow’s hands touch the cover, John takes a sharp step back, raising his hands and beginning to chant in a language Spike doesn’t recognise but which he guesses from context must be the enochian John mentioned when they were planning this, and after a moment Tara joins in.

They hadn’t practised the spell before coming here, and yet somehow after a couple of beats she’s word perfect, matching the lilting sing-song quality of John’s recitation perfectly.

Spike is certain he’s never heard the language before, but at the same time it sounds strangely familiar, the sibilant words tugging at the back of his brain like a half-forgotten memory.

Despite John's warnings earlier about the Hellmouth, Lucifer doesn't look particularly upset at being banished.

He gives Tara a smile that seems to have far too many teeth in it for a human mouth, and says “I will see you soon, little witch,” and then the spell kicks in.

Spike feels it like a blow when the magic takes hold, knocking the breath out of his lungs and driving him to his knees. Tara and John both cry out in pain, and Buffy does too but Spike’s too busy feeling like the soul he doesn’t even have is being ripped out of him to care.

“That’s enough!” Willow yells, and this time it is Willow, none of the strange unearthly harmonics in her voice, only steely determination and raw power. “I said… Enough!”

There’s a burst of light, hot and bright as staring into the sun, and when it vanishes Spike is left disoriented by the loss of his night vision, blinking stupidly as Buffy leaps to catch Willow before she hits the floor.

That strange inner light is gone from her, and somehow so is the book.

“Spike?” John asks, and Spike raises his hand to slap Willow’s face.

The pain hits before he even makes contact, and he pulls back after only a light tap, rubbing his head. Compared to everything else he’s done tonight it’s a minor thing, but it still stings like a bitch. “She’s human again. Satan isn’t possessing her any more.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Xander says, “Well that was horrifying. Did we win?”

“We didn't loose,” Giles says. “But I'm not sure winning was ever an option.”

“It never is when Hell’s involved,” John agrees. “But Sparklefleck won't won't be bothering you again.”

“He wouldn't have bothered us at all if you hadn't brought him here,” Buffy points out, her tone icey. “Did you really think we wouldn't figure out that you had the book?”

“I thought you wouldn't figure it out until it was too late to back out. And Giles knew from the start.”

Buffy turns to glare at her Watcher who shrugs. “I didn't know for sure, but I suspected. John wouldn't have thrown away an advantage like that if he didn't have too.”

“Why didn't you say anything?!”

Giles looks very tired and it strikes Spike that he suddenly looks old . Spike thinks of him as young, compared to Spike’s own 148 years, but it occurs to him that existing and being alive aren't the same thing, and in that moment Giles looks older than Spike has ever felt. “You know why.”

“Xander could have died !”

“Yeah, Xander could have died!” Xander agrees, like he thinks anyone here cares what he has to say. “We should definitely all be more concerned about that!”

“I'm concerned about that,” Anya puts in. “If you die before we get married, I won't inherit any of your stuff!”

“I don't think anyone else wanted my Transformers VHSs babe, but it's always nice to feel wanted.”

“You need to go,” Buffy says to John. Once upon a time, she would have joined in on Xander’s banter, kept the tone light no matter how dark the circumstances, but it’s been a long time since she was that person. “If I see you again, Giles won't be able to protect you.”

Fuck, there goes Spike’s only chance of a decent meal. “You don't have to go just because the Slayer tells you too.”

“I try not to outstay my welcome. You could come with me though. How long’s it been since you saw London?”

If anyone ever asked, Spike would insist that he’d never felt homesick in his life, and it’s sort of true. The home he sometimes misses was a time and a person more than it was ever a place. He’s never fitted in in London - he’d been far more at home with Dru in countries were he knew no one and didn’t speak a word of the language than he’d ever felt in England.

But even after all these years, America still smells wrong, and the way they speak is wrong, and sometimes when no one’s looking he’ll steal Giles’s tea even though he doesn’t drink it because the smell and the warmth of it feels like home. When it rains, he goes out without a coat and lets it soak him to the skin, but even the rain here is wrong. Like everything in America it’s too big, too extreme. Mizzle. He’d never have thought when he was alive that he’d ever miss mizzle, but he does. And freezing fog rolling in from the Thames, blinding you and making the air so damp it’s hard to draw a full breath. Proper stews, with little round shallots floating in them like eyeballs and more turnip than meat. Real beer. Real whiskey. Making fun of everyone south of the river, until you met someone from north of Teddington Lock and then ganging up on the northern bastards.

He could do it. There’s nothing keeping him here. No one here who would miss him except the Little Bit, and he could write to her. She’s probably better off without him anyway, like Buffy keeps saying. Between the two of them, he and John should be able to get money without too much trouble. They could rent somewhere - a real house, not these flimsy things designed to only last a century that the Americans are so keen on - and Spike could figure out how to bribe or blackmail or threaten John into giving him more blood.

He could be somewhere where no one knows his name, or his reputation, or who he used to be before the Initiative. He could start over. He could have a life.

He could leave Buffy.

He’s never going to do it, and he hates himself a little bit for that. William Pratt, still a fool for love. A century and an ocean away from where he started, and he hasn’t learned a bloody thing.

“Thanks for the offer.”

John shrugs. “Another lifetime, maybe. Man like you’s got a few to spare.”

Maybe once Buffy finally succumbs to the entropy of the Slayer legacy, he’ll go. Find out what kind of trouble a half-neutered vampire and a man with only one third of a soul can get up to. Maybe he’ll finally take the time to figure out whether Dru was right, all the times she suggested he might enjoy in a man in their bed.

Buffy mutters ‘vampire fetish’ under her breath, and loving her doesn’t stop Spike wanting to throttle her when she does things like that. She’s like a child sometimes, and he knows it’s because she was robbed of the chance to really grow up, but it doesn’t make it any less infuriating.

“So I’m guessing I missed something pretty significant,” Xander says, to no one in particular. “Is Spike gay now? Is that a thing?”

“You remember that conversation you and Willow had, about how you don’t have to say everything that comes into your head?” Tara asks, her voice sharper than Spike’s ever heard it before, and maybe there are a few more people than just the Little Bit that he’d miss after all.

“Riiight, I’m getting that this is one of those moments,” Xander says, holding up his hands. “My bad, go back to the lingering looks and the unresolved sexual tension.”

“I’ll drive you to the bus station if you like,” Giles offers to John. He looks like he’s half wishing John would offer him the chance to run away to London, even if he wouldn’t actually accept it. This is what living among American teenagers does to you - suddenly every actual adult who can spell and drive on the right side of the road looks like an appealing romantic prospect even if you’re not bent that way. Not that Spike’s ever been exactly certain about Giles in that respect. “They’re pretty regular to Los Angeles, and you can get a flight there back to London.”

“Thanks. I was thinking I’d head up to San Francisco actually, check in on Zee. It’s been a while since she had the chance to throw anything at me. She’s probably pining.”

“Offer still stands.”

They file out of the house one by one, none of them speaking. The atmosphere is tense and moody. Willow is still out cold, her breathing deep and even. Xander takes her from Buffy without saying a word and carries her out, Tara keeping hold of her hand and Anya trailing along behind, uncharacteristically quiet.

“I feel like I should have some kind of demon-related pun here,” Xander complains as he steps out into the half-light of a false dawn. Spike will need to make a move soon if he doesn’t want to be caught out when the sun rises. “That’s like, my thing. Something bad shows up, Willow figures out its secret weakness, Buffy stomps it, and then I give us a pithy exit line. It’s what I bring to the team.”

“We could all just pretend you said something witty,” Buffy offers, a hint of her usual perkiness showing through. She holds up her hands as though framing a view. “Insert Hell pun here.”

Chapter Text

Sunnydale Bus Station, Sunnydale, California - November 4th 2001

Rupert puts on a cassette for the drive, JJ Burnell’s half sung-half shouted lyrics drowning out all the words they’re not saying to one another.

John stares out of the window, his fingers tapping a rhythm on his thigh. Rupert can’t seem to stop himself from glancing across at him, committing to memory all the ways John’s changed since they were young, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the way the blond of his hair has started to fade, and all the ways he’s stayed the same. Wonders what he’d look like if things had been different. If he’d have lost that feral cornered-animal tension if it hadn’t been for Newcastle. If he’d still be magnetic if he had a whole soul.

If the world would be better or worse or gone entirely if John had settled down and had a family instead of stumbling his way through thwarting angels and demons alike.

It’s not a long drive, and the opening chords of No More Heroes are just making their strangely appropriate entrance as they pull into the bus station. All the same, Rupert is glad to be out of the car.

John’s got papers and baccy in his hand before they’re even fully stopped, and Rupert is surprised and strangely touched that he waited until he was out of the car to light up. When John hands him a second rolly, unevenly rolled and no filter (John’s usually a tailors man but maybe he can’t get a brand he likes out here) he accepts it without a word and lets John light it for him.

They smoke in a silence that feels achingly familiar. Sitting around the wobbly table in Giles’s flat, both too hungover to speak, waiting for Ronni or Gaz or Richie to take pity and make them something greasy to eat. Or on the rare occasions when Rupert was the only hungover one, sitting with his head in his hands trying not to vomit while John fried eggs to rubber and sang Cilla Black songs off-key and too loud but mercifully never tried to speak.

It had been no way to live, and in that moment Rupert misses it so much he feels hollow with it.

John hasn’t got any luggage, or anything at all except the clothes he stands up in and whatever it is he keeps in his coat’s voluminous pockets. Presumably there’s a wallet in one of them, but Rupert doesn’t bother offering, just steps up to the booth to buy the ticket that will take John to San Francisco.

It might have been a lifetime ago, but he remembers how to be John’s friend, the good and the bad of it.

“You remember the night we saw the Adverts in the Roxy?” John asks, accepting the ticket without even looking at it.

“We were drinking lager and black,” Rupert says. “Fuck knows why. I’ve never had a hangover like it.”

John laughs, sudden and unexpected. “That is a bloody lie. Remember Beano’s twenty first? Gaz brought two barrels of rough cider off some bloke he met in the Trinity, and Chaz had that stuff he claimed was genuine morrocan hashish.”

“Fuck, don’t remind me. God, why did we do that to ourselves?”

“Well I was doing it because I was fucked-up beyond any hope of saving even before I discovered magic. I never really knew why you did it.”

“Because when I was twenty, being a disappointment to my father seemed like the best thing I could do with my life. And because I was young and stupid enough that I remembered the good times and forget about the consequences, even when the conseqences were waking up with someone else’s vomit on my boxers.”

“That’ll do it.”

“And because… because you made it look effortless. Exciting. You made being in the scene look like the only worthwhile way to live.”

John snorts. “Sorry about that.”

“I wouldn’t have traded it. God, I thought I was the cleverest bastard on the planet and still… You probably don’t even remember, but there was this one night I ended up sharing someone’s spare bed with you and Mitchell. I think it was the first time I actually met him. I woke up in the middle of the night and the two of you hadn’t been to sleep yet, you were just talking and staring into one another’s eyes and you could have cut the sexual tension with a knife and I thought… I thought what would it be like, if it was me you were staring at? Me you were fucking?”

“It would have been a bloody disaster,” John says bluntly. “You know it would. God, we’d have been terrible together.”

“Yeah, probably. Especially because I didn’t even really fancy you. Might have been worth it anyway just for the scandal it would have caused. Can you imagine the look on my dad’s face the first time I took you home for Christmas?”

“Imagine the look on Cheryl’s face the first time I took you back to Liverpool and she heard your accent,” John counters.

“She met Roni didn’t she? She was way posher than me.”

As soon as he’s said it, he knows it was the wrong thing to say. John looks away, his shoulders stiff and his jaw tensed. Rupert wants to apologise but he doesn’t know what for until John says very quietly, “No. She never did.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought John had any regrets over Roni, but this John is older and sadder and weighed down by so much more guilt than the laughing punk in Giles’s memories. “I didn’t know.”

“She always wanted to. I kept putting it off. She’d never wanted for anything, and she wouldn’t… She wouldn’t have understood.”

Understood poverty, and broken homes, and a complicated relationship with an abusive father he means. Rupert wouldn’t have either, at that age. He’s not entirely sure he would now, but at least he knows enough to recognise his own ignorance.

“Has Zatanna ever…?”

“Once. Nick never did, even though he’s the only one who would have understood. We were talking about it, before… before. We didn’t get a chance.”

And God, there’s the reminder Rupert hadn’t needed of all the ways John’s life has been fucked up and all the ways Rupert is responsible.

Behind them a bus pulls in and someone yells that it’s boarding for San Francisco.

“That’s my queue,” John says, pinching out the end of his cigarette and tucking the dog end behind his ear. “I’d better get going.”

It’s now or never, and John wouldn’t want an apology but Buffy was right. Maybe Rupert needs to give one all the same.

“John, before you go… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

John looks surprised. “For what mate?”

“Newcastle. You called me for help, and I was too cowardly to actually give it, even though you’d always been there for me. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped it, but now I’ll never know and the thought that I could, that I might have been able to help… God, I’m so sorry.”

To Rupert’s dawning horror, John actually laughs. “Don’t worry about it mate. Hand to God, I’d forgotten I’d even asked.” He smiles, and there’s none of the sun-bright manic joy Rupert remembers in it. His teeth are crooked and tobacco stained, and he has old half-faded scars that Rupert doesn’t recognise, and his eyes are very very old. “Water under the bridge.”

He pulls Rupert into a rough hug. “See you around, you great Southern pansy.”

“Not if I see you first,” Rupert says, his mouth acting on auto-pilot, a call and response so familiar his brain’s input isn’t required.

And then he stands there, and watches John walk away, and thinks about the fact that he was right all along.

Some things you don’t get absolution for.