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By the time Ash counts to a hundred without hearing a sound, she knows all the food joints in town must be long closed. In a place like Sunnydale, twenty-four-hour establishments that encourage you to be out and about at night aren’t exactly haute mode.
Not that it stops her.
Even if she isn’t going to get to eat tonight, she can’t stand any longer sitting in this bed, holding her breath and daydreaming about the walls exploding so she can get out. Unfortunately, she can’t go out with anywhere near so much of a bang. But she can get out, and, fairly confident that her parents are asleep, she digs in her bedside drawer for her best bent paperclip and sets to work on the window.
She had got through her hidden stash of energy bars two days ago, and there isn’t a chance to get any more now. When dad came to get her out of her room earlier, she had spied a matching padlock on the kitchen cupboards.
Of course, they had made sure to clear their own plates. Biting her cheeks, she had washed them quietly. Best behave now, wait it out. That was the only way it ever ended.
Finally, her window lock clicks. Is she getting faster?
At the same moment, her stomach gurgles. Looking restlessly over her shoulder, she slowly lowers the paperclip back into its corner at the back of the drawer, careful not to send any more sound through the silent house.
She’s well practised at sliding the window up soundlessly, slowing at the point it sometimes squeaks, and not pushing it higher than she needs to. Arching her back as she shimmies outside, she bites back a whine as her weight rests on her uncomfortably empty stomach, the window ledge digging in.
But then she’s outside, breathing freely at last, and hops down the last distance onto the grass below
~
“It’s one of those nights, huh? Lucky me.”
Pausing her aimless steps, Ash waits for the inevitable apparition of Spike at her shoulder. She gives him a sarcastic smile.
“Aw, Spike! Miss me that much already?”
“Miss having a bloody babysittin’ gig wandering into my cemetery? Sure thing, pet.”
Ash whirls around.
“I am not a–”
“Holdin’ the threat of the Slayer over my head, now that’s just my idea of fun.”
“No one is forcing you to hang around me, Spike! You’re the one who comes lurking out of the bushes like some kind of creep.”
“I am some kind of creep, pet. Can’t go out in daylight, explicitly evil…”
“So don’t play the ‘goodness of your non-existent heart’ card on me. You’re just here to antagonise me, not to protect me.”
“Bollocks, you got me.” He puts his hands up, but falls into step with her as she keeps strolling. “An’ here I tried so hard to hide it.”
“Plus do you really think Buffy is gonna blame you if anyone winds up dead, at night, in Sunnydale? She’d have staked you months ago.”
“In Restfield, yeah. That’s kinda part of the deal.”
“Huh. Guess I should go to another graveyard, then.”
“Maybe next time, though, hey? You’re already here, now.”
“Aw, did you already cancel your big plans of drinking alone?”
“You know it, pet. So I don’t wanna hear any of you lot sayin’ I ain’t selfless again, got it?”
“Got it,” she smiles. “So… anything world-endingly bad doing the rounds lately?”
“Oh, there’s always some prophecy or other loomin’ on the horizon. Your lass’ Watcher’s probably got it covered, mind, but I was gonna pop in…”
With their traditional combative openers out of the way, conversation gives way to the regular bickering and whatever horrors have been trying to kill them all this week.
“So, what, you ran in there with the amulet just in time?”
“Well, actually, Xander did that, but it was right at the last minute.”
“You do the spell, then?”
“No, that was Willow. I’m still on Witchcraft-for-Dummies, while she doesn’t even need a book for it these days.”
“Bet you found the thing, though?”
Ash sighs.
“Giles.”
“Wow. Throw the Slayer a stake during the fight?”
“Well… not exactly.”
She’d been hiding in the corner, trying not to run around too much. TV static had started invading her vision whenever she got too out of breath. She doesn’t tell him that.
Spike raises his eyebrows.
“Not such a hot week for you in the demon-hunting game, then, huh?”
In her defence, she’s had other things to contend with. Like her meal pass declining, and the locks on the kitchen doors at home, and getting rid of the energy bar wrappers without her parents seeing. Vampires come along every week; her biggest challenge has been trying to look casual enough about picking food off Willow’s plate at lunch, like she was still listening to Giles and sharing with a friend, not dreaming about cramming the whole thing down her throat.
Sighing through her nose, she stays silent at Spike’s side. Just grits her teeth together.
“Can’t be useful all the time.”
“You could always try your hand at playin’ bait?” Spike suggests innocently.
Breathing an indignant laugh, she whacks him on the arm. They turn naturally to face each other, and she takes the opportunity to lean against the headstone behind her. This see-through kind of feeling has become familiar this week, so she ignores the slight tremble in her legs after a night of walking.
“What, ‘cause I’m just that tantalising?” She grins.
Spike gives her a playful glare, then tilts his head.
“Come to think of it, dunno if the beasties ‘d go for something so meagre.”
She tries not to let the sting of it show on her face.
“Oh, sure, like they can afford to be picky when Buffy’s wiping the floor with their kind every night.”
Waiting for him to bite right back, her smile falters when he graces her with nothing but silence. A line forms between her brows as his eyes wander somewhere else, over her shoulder.
Just as she opens her mouth to tell him that he must think she’s right, in that case – or perhaps that he can’t appreciate a good joke unless it bites him on the neck – everything moves at once.
Spike opens his mouth, eyes widening. She sees no more, because a weight crashes into her back, the blow knocking her clean to the ground. Spike’s shouting, and there’s a body crushing her, a strong hand on her neck – and then it’s gone.
Sitting with a gasp, she spins to find Spike’s back to her, black coat flying out as he tackles a vampire to the ground. A swarm of sparks rush across her sight, but she wills them away between blinks, desperately trying to suck in air after the winding fall.
The grey haze finally clears. It’s when she sees the second one.
“Spike!” She yells, already fumbling for the stake inside her jacket.
She springs to her feet, only for the ground to apparently dissolve under them. She’s light, floating too far away from her body for the dizzying moment it takes her to stand.
The new vamp brings her crashing, hard, back to earth.
Splotches pulse across her vision as she flails, uncoordinated but desperate. Her palm finds his face before he can plunge down to bite her neck, and she pushes against his superior strength. Only now does her mind catch up enough to realise that her other hand is empty. She gropes around desperately, finding nothing but bare grass, her one defence far out of reach.
The groans and thuds of exchanged blows still sound from somewhere behind the vampire blocking all view of help. He claws at her arm, making her cry out.
“Ash!” Comes Spike’s shout.
Twisting her neck away from the fangs now dangerously close to it, she brings up a knee with what strength she has left. The vampire falters with an ‘oof,’ and then he’s being grabbed by the shoulders and thrown off her.
Gasping at the sudden release, she watches Spike dive for something on the ground – her forgotten stake – and plunge it right into the other vamp’s chest.
She pushes herself shakily onto her elbows, trembling against the cold earth, in time to see the second guy dispatched as he runs for Spike once again. This time his heart meets the sharp end of the stake, and with a roar, he’s nothing but dust.
Panting the slightest bit, Spike drops his fighting stance and turns to face Ash.
“Lucky you have one of these.”
“You don’t?” She asks, but it doesn’t come out with the snark she’s trying for. She’s much more breathless than she’d like to be. Much more than Spike, and he’s the one who actually offed the vampires. She’s the one who got trampled by both of them.
“Don’t like to keep ‘em so close to vulnerable areas,” Spike says, eyeing the tip of the stake warily.
He tosses it back to her. Startled and still not fully connected to her body, she barely lifts her hands in time. She fumbles with the stake, drops it uselessly to the ground.
Falling back heavily on one of her arms, she grabs it again with the other and stuffs it back in her jacket.
When she does glance up, she finds Spike frowning at her.
“Really is an off-day, huh?”
“Don’t get used to it,” she tries, but it sounds weak even to her ears.
With a sigh, she sits straighter, dusting the dirt off her palms.
“Your hand,” Spike says.
Turning it over, she finds the vampire’s claw-marks freely leaking red over the back of her hand. Bloody cherry on top of a very troublesome cake.
Before she can start fantasising about cake, Spike sighs and treads closer.
“What was that about not havin’ to babysit you?”
She rolls her eyes. He pushes his coat back and kneels in front of her.
“Lemme take a look.”
“It’s just a scratch, nothing major–”
She pauses when he bends closer to the wound and literally screws up his nose in apparent disgust. Gaping, she raises her eyebrows at him.
“Excuse me! I’m not that gross!”
She tries to tug her hand back, but the grimace is fading from his face to be replaced by an odd sort of frown. Slowly, he looks up at her over the bleeding wound.
“When’s the last time you ate something, pet?”
His words freeze her. Eyes round, she stares back at him for a second too long to look casual, before she shifts, looks down.
“Lunch. Today.”
Dropping her hand, he parks his arm on his knee and fixes her with a look.
“Oh, yeah? And what did you have?”
“Some of Buffy’s fries…”
She opens her mouth again as his knowing look gets… more knowing, but he cuts her off before she can even start protesting.
“Your blood sugar’s way down, luv. Can smell it. No use lyin’ to a vamp about blood.”
“Fine. I’ll eat more tomorrow.”
Taking a deep breath, she pushes herself to stand. With less life-and-death adrenaline hammering through her veins, she can take it slow and wait for the clouds to clear.
“And I’m meant to take your word for it? You’re gonna get snaffled on your way home in this state!”
“I’m not a state!” She huffs as the last of the stars blink from her vision.
“You look like a light breeze could knock you over!”
“Or, I dunno, a vampire? Give me a little credit here!”
“Fine! You look like a light breeze could knock you over, and a vampire would have you dead in seconds.”
Even though Ash seethes, she doesn’t even bother arguing that she had just survived several seconds against a vampire, considering she had spent those seconds struggling ineffectually under him and losing her only stake.
“Alright,” she mumbles grumpily, turning away to cross her arms. “Don’t rub it in. Not like I can do anything about it right now.”
“What d’you mean? You don’t have a kitchen at your place?”
Ash quickly bites her tongue. An unexpected rush of bitter tears threatens her eyes. Right. Her kitchen. She’s so damn hungry and all her kitchen has to offer her are locks and bolts.
She has to swallow, her throat too tight to reply for a second.
“My parents are… out. They forgot to leave me money for dinner.”
Spike narrows his eyes. One missed dinner isn’t enough to alter a person’s blood so noticeably, but digging secrets out of one of Buffy’s pals isn’t exactly his top priority. Him and Ash aren’t like that, either. They jab and jibe and dance around – evil demons are daily fare, but anything deeper?
He forces his tense shoulders down, trying for a casual tone which comes out a little too light.
“What are we still doing here then? We’ve busted a couple beasties for the night, I’d say we’ve earned a good, solid meal.”
Ash doesn’t seem so eager. She just stays standing there, raising her brows at him like he may be stupid.
“Spike… it’s the middle of the night. Everywhere’s closed.”
“That’s what we want you humans to think,” Spike grins.
Ash stiffens, but to her credit, it’s nowhere near as much as Spike had expected.
“We’re… we’re going to a demon restaurant? They have those?” She asks in a slightly small voice.
A smirk pushes at Spike’s mouth. He strides towards her, clapping a hand on her shoulder and steering her towards the nearest cemetery gate.
She hopes he doesn’t notice the first, stumbling step she takes, before managing to follow along. Perhaps his ‘light breeze’ comment was a bit more accurate than she hoped.
“I’m sure we can find something suitable to your tastes, pet. Half of the menu doesn’t even use human parts!”
“Oh, now I feel relieved.”
“Joking, pet. I know a real quiet joint, bunch of humans go there too. They don’t even clock it’s demon-owned.”
“Unless the fyarls are dining in, I guess.”
Spike snorts at that, and they continue out of Restfield across town. As they go, taking their bickering with them, he strolls half a step behind. She hides it well, but having wandered around for too many nights at her side now, her gait, the line of her shoulders give away an uncertainty she doesn’t usually carry.
There’s a lull in conversation and he chews at his cheek.
“Almost there, pet.”
Her worn posture lifts a little, eyes searching up ahead for any sign of the place. A grumble sounds from her stomach.
He forces his eyes away from her, still having to bite his lip. He hardly knows the chit, but she’s not eating, and got cagey fast when he got close to asking why. It doesn’t exactly add up nicely. Only, what’s he meant to say to her? Even if she did need a shoulder to cry on, it wouldn’t be his.
“Y’know, pet…” The words are out of his mouth before he can think better of it, so he has to take it somewhere. “You’re… fine as you are, you know?”
Eager as she is to get to the promised food, Ash slows to look at him in bewilderment.
Gulping, Spike rubs at the back of his neck. If he was human he’s be red in the face right now, feeling like the biggest tosser in the world.
“Just… In a place like this, all that matters is that you’re fighting fit, I mean. You know that.”
She narrows her eyes slightly, but quits staring soon enough with a confused nod.
“Yeah. Right. Uh… thanks?”
“Don’t thank me,” he grumbles. He seriously means it. It doesn’t warrant it, and besides, he doesn’t exactly pride himself on helping out a scooby – even if she’s not as insufferable as the rest of them. “Just don’t order the Bloody Mary, you’ll regret it. We’re here.”
Both happy to leave the conversation behind, Spike pushes into the diner and holds the door for Ash. There’s a sudden waft of hot food and her mouth is watering right away. She sighs – exhausted, elated – and walks inside.