Author's Note: Sorry, no real NC-17 here, kiddies, but there are still two nude Spikes -- always a good thing. ~_^

Groaning, Buffy awoke from her deep, dark sleep. She’d had a wonderfully dreamless night brought on from pure physical exhaustion, and it was quite a relief.

It meant that she hadn’t had to think about what had happened last night.

She froze as the memories of exactly why she was so tired came back into her mind. Evil Spike was loose. He had been out last night, and who knew what he had done while she was busy feeling confused and guilty. He could have killed innocents…he could have killed his captor!

Buffy sat bolt upright in her bed.

Oh god! That thought hadn’t even occurred to her before. For evil Spike to have escaped, he must have somehow overpowered good Spike. Her outright panic faded when she realized that not even Spike was brashly impulsive enough to kill himself, but that didn’t eliminate lots of other unpleasant possibilities. The Spike from the past didn’t seem too thrilled about the way her Spike acted. And he wasn’t beyond torturing himself…

Buffy felt suddenly sick when she remembered her own comments to Spike from that night in the abandoned building. “You’re in love with pain…” Surely, she hadn’t been right, hadn’t she? He wouldn’t have really hurt his future self, would he?

She got dressed in record time, images of her Spike bleeding in agony flashing through her mind.

“Hey, Buffy, you’re awfully eager for work—” Willow began but was abruptly cut off.

“Have to do something first. Bye, Will! Bye, Dawnie!” Buffy flew through the kitchen, slamming the door shut behind her.

In less than five minutes she was outside the door to Spike’s crypt, hands shaking. Her first thought was that her worries were ridiculous: she would open the door, and he would be all right…and then he would be able to smell what she had done last night…

Buffy’s face paled. She couldn’t face him, not after she’d cheated on him with his past self.

Cheated on him?! Her rational mind scoffed at her inner monologue’s choice of words. He’s nothing to you, remember? You don’t owe him anything…certainly not your loyalty. There’s nothing there to cheat on…

Another part of her feared his fury. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t take this too kindly. He had a rare tendency among vampires towards monogamy, and even if they weren’t technically ‘together’, he would probably go ballistic when he found out. And she hoped to god he had the common sense not to kill his past self…

Of course, all this was moot if he was dead or beaten to a bloody pulp…

Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to the crypt and stepped inside, making sure that the sunlight didn’t peep in as she did so. The first thing she noticed was that the room was empty…including the chains on the wall that had held past-Spike. The room didn’t look torn up, though. Maybe past-Spike had just escaped, and her Spike was OK…

“Spike?” she asked warily.

She heard some rustling and mutters from downstairs and cautiously walked over to the opening.

“Spike, are you down there?” she repeated.

“Er…yeah, jus’ give me a second, luv,” his voice echoed through the cavern below.

“Are you all right?” She didn’t bother with the ladder and leapt down into the hole. When she stood up, she was faced with a very naked Spike sitting up sleepily in bed.

“Fine, pet,” a concerned and confused look crossed over his features. “Is something wrong?” he demanded.

One look in his eyes was all it took for Buffy to realize that this was, indeed, her Spike. “Oh, thank god!” she sobbed and threw herself into his arms.

“Buffy, what happened?” he asked, holding her tightly to him. “’s not the Nibblet, is it? Or one of the others?”

She shook her head and nestled it deeper into his shoulder. “I-I thought you were dead, or hurt, or-or…” She clutched him to her with renewed relief.

Spike couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d suddenly announced the giant bunnies the Demon-Girl kept going on about had finally invaded Sunnydale. “Hush now,” he soothed her, gently stroking her hair while she cried onto his shoulder. “’m all right. No Big Bad’s ‘ve gotten ahold of me, if that’s what you’re worried about…”

“Spike,” she whispered.

“What?”

“No, Spike,” she repeated. “I thought Spike had gotten you. He-he was out last night, and I just realized this morning that he…that you… Oh god, I was so worried!” She gave him a hug that would have crushed the ribs of a weaker being.

“You were…worried?” he still couldn’t believe it. “About me?”

“Yeah, so?” she sniffed slightly and put on her best defensive expression when she looked at him.

“Nothing,” he ran one hand through his hair bashfully and turned his gaze away from hers. “I just… I would’ve told you I was all right, if I’d thought you would worry…”

“It’s OK,” Buffy said, stroking his cheek lightly. “I’m just glad you’re fine. But you should have told me the instant he escaped.”

“I…” He seemed at a loss for words.

“Spike…” she said nervously, pulling slightly away from him. “I-I have something to tell you…”

“Oh?” He didn’t like the look in her eyes. It was the look she got before she told him something terrible. Mentally, he braced himself.

“L-Last night… I…ran into him, and we…we…” she gesticulated wildly, unable to say it or look at him.

“What?” Spike cocked his head to one side. “You went a round with ‘im?”

Her face turned bright crimson. “Well…yeah,” she admitted. “I didn’t mean to,” she quickly clarified. “And I’m sooo sorry! It was…it was you I wanted.” This last part was muttered under her breath, but his vampiric hearing allowed him to make out every word.

“There’s no need to be sorry, luv,” he said in surprise. “It was me you were with, after all. An’ it’s not like I really have the right to lay claim to you anyway.”

He had tried to hide the bitterness in his voice at this last statement, but Buffy knew him too well not to hear it.

“You’re the only one in my life right now,” she informed him. “I figure you’ve at least earned the right for me to be honest with you.”

“Really?”

She would have sworn those were tears in his eyes. God, was she actually so horrible to this man that just telling him the truth about whether or not she was cheating on him brought him tears of happiness? An odd feeling of guilt began to settle over her at the way she had been treating him of late.

“Shh…” She brought her fingers to his lips and silenced him. “Of course you have. And don’t worry about anything. We can take care of your evil twin this evening, and everything will be all right again.” She gave him a quick kiss on the lips before getting off the bed.

“You’re leaving then, huh?” he said disappointedly.

“I have to go to work soon,” she explained, giving him a small smile. “But I’ll be back at sundown, OK?”

“OK,” he sighed and let her scent wash over him.

“You take care of yourself, and get some sleep,” she said sternly before climbing up the ladder.

“You too, Slayer…”

A wide grin spread across his face when he heard her leave.

“She was worried about me!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, yeah, heard ‘t all,” his past self crawled out from under the bed. “Y’know you could’ve warned me in advance so I could find a better place to hide…” He flopped down on the mattress naked beside his future self.

“I-I didn’t know she’d come…” 2002-Spike still had the world’s most idiotic grin on his face. “I didn’t think she cared…”

“Yeah, well, she does.” 1997-Spike reached across his twin’s body and fetched the pack of cigarettes from the nightstand. “Wonders never cease, huh?” he asked disinterestedly as he lit up.

2002-Spike lay back and sighed contentedly. “She cares about me…” he smiled dazedly.

“Told you she just needed to see your better qualities brought out,” his past self said smugly. “And by this evening…”

“Mmm…this evening,” present-Spike was already falling back to sleep. “This evening…”

1997-Spike didn’t need to share the same thought patterns as the other vamp to know exactly what he was dreaming about.

“So long as you don’t blow it, mate,” he added, before snuffing out his cigarette and joining his counterpart in pleasant dreams of a naked Slayer…

Buffy absentmindedly flipped the burgers on the grill and hit the timer again. While she sat there waiting, she replayed the events of this morning and the night before over again in her mind.

The night before had been… She had been desperate, she finally decided. She’d needed him so badly that she didn’t even care if she got hold of the wrong Spike. She’d just needed him to touch her.

And he had touched her all right. She couldn’t deny that the sex had been mind-blowing. Hell, she’d even passed out from the intensity of it.

It was the waking up part that was the problem. She’d had just as incredible sessions with her Spike, but then when she woke up, he would be there, holding her close and telling her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her and… Well, to be perfectly honest she usually freaked out at about this point and either found a way to shut him up or ran for it.

So, why hadn’t she been happier to discover that he was just gone the night before?

First, there was the whole creepiness factor about being left alone in a cemetery at night. Anything could have come across her while she was unconscious. And then there was the cold. She wouldn’t have objected to warm arms holding her tight then – even if they had stolen their warmth from her body. And then she had felt so very alone. Unpleasant memories of Angel and Parker flashed through her mind as some of the top ten reasons she did not like to wake up alone. But waking up alone was better than waking up next to Spike, right? Right?

The resounding ‘yes’ that she had come to expect was conspicuously absent. The truth was she had missed him. Sure, their morning afters tended to explode into open hostility, but there was something…comforting about knowing that he would always be beside her. Always.

The word shook her a bit. She’d been dimly aware up to this point that Spike would never leave her, not like the others. In a way, she’d been testing his resolve in their relationship, and he hadn’t faltered once. She hadn’t gotten a single ‘you’re a Slayer and I’m a vampire, so this’ll never work’ or ‘wasn’t that fun, now let’s be on our merry ways’ or ‘commit your entire life to me right now, or I’m leaving’ speech.

In fact, he really hadn’t demanded anything from her at all. He tried to persuade her not to leave him, of course, but he never held it against her when she didn’t stay. And she’d never even bothered to come up with a reasonable excuse before…until this morning, that is.

Thoughts of that morning sent strange tingles up and down her spine. Something had been different between them that morning. Something had changed… No, it was her. She had changed.

In that instant of fear and relief, she’d completely dropped the disinterested persona she always wore around him. And after the way she’d cried, not even she could deny that she felt something for him. Just how strong those feelings were was another matter.

But for a few minutes, she’d just stopped worrying about it and held him like a lover. And he hadn’t turned it against her in the slightest. She’d always been a bit afraid that if she ever admitted her feelings for him, that insufferably arrogant part of him would kick in and make her miserable about it. But she’d involuntarily faced that fear this morning, and he had been nothing but kind and sweet and loving…

And even the memory of their impromptu embrace had her on the verge of swooning. The way those strong arms had held her… The gentle caresses of his hands… The feel of powerful muscle under smooth skin… The silk of his hair… The musk of his scent… The rough but soothing tone of his voice…

And then the way his lips had felt against hers, cool and soft and sweet and tender…

“Buffy!”

The sound of her name snapped her out of her reverie.

“Jeez, the buzzer’s been going off for, like, ten seconds!” her greasy companion at the grills informed her.

Buffy hastily muttered her apologies and removed the burgers from the grill. She deliberately shook her mind back to less distracting matters when she put on the next batch. After all, nothing was more embarrassing than messing up something as simple as fast food.

But she would get through this day, even if the seconds crawled by like snails.

Because tonight she had something to look forward to…

“Pull up! Pull up!” Jonathan screamed. “We’re on fire!”

“Well, do something!” Warren yelled. “Put it out!”

“Oh shit!” Andrew cried out. “Guys, I think we’re in trouble…”

They all stared ahead in horror as the alien ship rose in front of them.

“Quick, fire at them!” Warren screamed, hitting the buttons on his game controller at lightning speed.

“I’m trying!” Andrew retorted. “We didn’t steal enough missiles from that military base to do a Cruiser any harm, though. And ahhh! Have you ever heard of evasive action?!”

“I’m dodging as fast as I can,” Warren insisted, “but as long as someone doesn’t get the engines back on line, we’re toast.”

“Hey, I have to put the fire out before the power core blows,” Jonathan insisted, clicking at his controller like crazy.

“Forget about power,” Warren said. “We need engines.”

“No, we need weapons,” Andrew insisted.

“No, guys, we really need to stop the fire before—”

A loud explosion filled the TV screen.

“Aw man,” Warren threw down his controller. “What happened?”

“Apparently, three fighters hit us from behind,” Jonathan read the end game message.

“And who was in charge of watching for incoming threats?” Warren cast an evil eye over at Andrew.

“I was too busy trying to fend off the Cruiser!” Andrew insisted.

“We were dead anyway,” Jonathan sulked. “We seriously have to rework our strategy…”

“I’ll check for more tips on-line.” Andrew spun his chair around to face the computer screen and started clicking on the keyboard.

“This sucks!” Jonathan threw his head back.

“Yeah, well, it gives us a break to concentrate on other matters,” Warren shrugged. “How’s the whole killing Buffy project going?”

“There’s still an extra Spike loose around here somewhere,” Jonathan shrugged. “Only we don’t know where, and I don’t know how to send him back home.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how to send him back?” Warren demanded through a mouthful of M&M’s. “Can’t you just reverse the spell?”

“It turns out it’s a lot harder to send someone back in time than it is to bring someone forward,” Jonathan sighed. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think I’m going to find the spell I need on-line.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Warren demanded.

“Well, unfortunately, there’s only one other place in this town that I know of to find a spell like this…” Jonathan began.

Uh-oh, what are those nerds up to now? And just what is going on between Buffy and Spike? And when are we going to get to the threesome action, dammit?! To find out, read on...