"Sorry, Joyce," Spike offered apologetically. "I'd go on my own if the watcher wasn't being a git."

Joyce continued to stare at her eldest daughter who was currently dressed in a halter top, the miniest of leather mini-skirts and, as far as her mother could tell, precious little else.

"Surely you don't need to look quite so...?" Joyce asked her daughter.

Buffy raised an eyebrow and turned to Spike. "Blondie Bear said 'The sluttier the better'. I took him at his word."

"She'll blend, Joyce. And I daresay if anyone gets out of line she'll put them right back in their place. Your little girl can look after herself. An' don't call me Blondie Bear!"

Buffy gave him a saccharine smile. "Just getting into character. I thought I was meant to be the dumb skanky bimbo girlfriend?"

"Are you sure it's really necessary?" Joyce asked again.

"We need information, mom," Buffy argued. "The Nerds had cleared out of their last place by the time we got there and Willow's still working on the disks and stuff that they left but the rest is a dead end. If there's a hope some of these lowlifes might have heard something..."

"Honestly..." Spike admitted, "it's a long shot and it'd probably be easier on my own. I'm not exactly a regular in any of these dives but I'm not a stranger either, but that's not going to happen. We need the watcher's cash to grease a few palms, it's not as if I'm going to get a written receipt off anyone and, even if I did, Rupert would probably assume it was a forgery and without Buffy's word to back me up, he probably wouldn't believe any information I did manage to dig up, which is fine if what I pick up turns out to be kosher, but it pretty much leaves me right in it if I get a bum steer."

"She doesn't dress like that when you go to the demon bars looking for information," Joyce argued.

"No, but when she goes to the demon bars she doesn't bother to pay anyone, either. She just beats them till they squeal, but since we're talking about humans who aren't Willy here, that tactic, while tempting, is pretty much frowned upon." Spike began to make his way toward the front door as he spoke and Buffy followed in his wake.

The slayer let Spike leave, but she paused with one hand on the door handle to give her mom a last reassuring smile. "I'll be fine, mom. It's not like we're going to run into anyone we know..."

Buffy waited until Spike had the bike's engine running before she slid a slender leg over the leather seat and settled herself as far back as she could, reaching behind her to hold onto the handle at the back of the bike rather than leaning forward to put her arms around Spike's waist. For tonight she was playing the girlfriend, but it started and ended at the bar doors. The rest of the time they were still working on the friends thing, and the friends thing meant not giving in to the urge to press her braless breasts against the leather of his coat, or rub her bare thigh against his denim-painted leg, or put her hands anywhere near the danger area that was his lower torso. The friends thing had a lot of drawbacks.

The last four bars had been a bust. No one had admitted to having heard anything about The Trio or their latest scheme... Not only that, but Xander's father had apparently now come to the conclusion that she was paying her way through college on her back, a position in which he would most likely have found himself if she hadn't almost literally dragged Spike out of there.

"Where now?" she asked.

Spike shrugged. "There's one more guy... Runs a pawn shop down by the docks, but around about this time of night he's probably made it to The Fish Tank."

"Joy!" the slayer replied, remembering what Willow had long ago told her about the place.

Spike turned the motorcycle into the alley beside the bar, its headlight briefly illuminating a couple down at the alley's litter strewn end. Spike turned it and began walking it backward into the parking bay nearest the bar's side door.

Before he had even stopped, Buffy had dismounted and was running down the alley toward the couple.

"Bollocks!" the vampire swore, as he caught the scent of blood in the air. He gunned the bike's engine back into life and made the tight turn he needed to follow the slayer.

Buffy glanced back as she heard him behind her. Instinctively, as Spike clamped an arm around her waist, she leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck and brought her knees up, lifting her feet off the tarmac. Two seconds later the bike slewed to a halt just feet from the couple they had noticed earlier and an instant after that Buffy was ripping a slightly shell-shocked vampire from his victim. She heard a rustle of leather and the tiniest whisper of moving air. Without turning her head she reached to one side and just slightly behind her, catching the stake that Spike had thrown to her in her offhand and planting its sharpened tip between the vampire's ribs.

The dust settled, leaving the tousled woman alone. Spike's voice when it came from behind Buffy's shoulder sounded tight, as if something about the scene before him was somehow distasteful. "You?"

At first Buffy didn't understand. The patrons of these bars weren't exactly limited to the male of the species, and in some of them Spike had made a point of talking to, as he had phrased it, 'ladies of negotiable virtue'. It made a squicky sort of sense. Warren wasn't exactly squeaky clean and he had money to throw around these days but Spike hadn't acted like it made any difference to him how they made their living.

As the woman re-adjusted her clothing, the slayer was surprised at the bitter drawl from the vampire at her back. "I bet I don't look so bloody far beneath you now, princess? Hope he paid up front... Or maybe you were paying him... Miss High and Mighty so scared of growing old that she'll drop her knickers for the first vamp that might be telling the truth when he says he'll turn her? Is that it?"

"Is that an offer, William?" the woman asked, coyly teasing at a brown curl, twirling it around one finger.

Spike's nostrils flared and he looked at her as if he'd sooner roll in dog-dirt. "Bad enough you showing up like a bad penny without keepin' you around for all eternity."

"Spike?" Buffy had given up watching the verbal sparring between the pair. Now she wanted an explanation.

"It's her choice, Buffy," Spike argued, dumping an excessive amount of sugar into the black coffee that sat on the table in front of him and then stirring it so vigorously that the liquid spilled over the sides. "No one's forcing her."

Hallie gave a disbelieving snort, sipping with ill-grace at the latté Buffy had purchased from Giles' bribery budget. "You forced me... you and the witch and her bratty sister. I didn't ask to be human again."

"We can't just leave her on the street," Buffy replied, exasperated by Spike's stubborn refusal to offer help in any form. "She's—"

"Human now? So are any number of kids that end up sleeping in the bus shelter," the vampire countered, "but I don't see you inviting them to come home with you."

"But we know her," the slayer practically whined.

"We know her because she locked us all in a house and left us there to see which came first, slow death from starvation, one of us getting cabin fever an' killing everybody else in their sleep or a nice cannibalistic combination of the two."

Hallie shook her head reproachfully. "Now, William, we've known each other much longer than that."

"Yeah, and you were a treacherous bitch back then, too."

"And to think that you once told me that you loved me... I hope you don't expect any constancy in his affection."

Buffy was beginning to see why Spike refused to countenance even the possibility of Hallie spending a few days on the couch at Revello. She didn't particularly want this slut with her vitriolic tongue anywhere near Dawn or her mother either. "It's not like that," the slayer argued. "I don't have any claim on him. We're just friends. And I'm definitely not going to get jealous of some bitch from so far back in the day that electricity hadn't been invented."

"Friends?" Hallie rolled her eyes. "There's a clear foot of space between you and you're both practically quivering with the need to close it. You sip your coffee when he sips his. You finish each other's sentences. You do realise that you caught the stake he threw to you without looking? Yes," the former vengeance demon added sarcastically. "You two are just friends. Maybe with you both being so friendly and everything I should stay at William's place?"

"No-o-o!" Buffy shocked herself with the vehemence of her refusal. "I mean... it's all cold and damp. You'd get hypothermia and die or something."

"Well," answered Hallie. "I guess that just leaves one option."

Xander's breath smelled of bourbon when he opened the door of his apartment. Several days' stubble coated his jaw and it was hard to tell how much of the discolouration around his eyes was due to lack of sleep and how much was due to the fading bruises that Giles had inflicted.

Buffy almost didn't have the heart to do this to him, but if she didn't do something then the woman wouldn't last very long before she was either dead or undead. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. After all, Halfrek did have a valid point when she said that if her friend hadn't ditched Anya at the altar then she wouldn't be there. He wasn't quite so directly responsible as Spike, or Willow or Dawn, who between them had stolen and destroyed Halfrek's pendant, but he had set in motion the chain of events that led to its destruction. "Xander, you know you have that big walk-in closet?"

Hallie felt an evil satisfaction as she heard the sound of repeated gargling and spitting coming from the bathroom. Maybe now the closest she could get to real vengeance was swapping the toothpaste and the haemorrhoid cream, but she found that these days she had to take pleasure in the little things. Next up, was making breakfast in her skimpiest underwear and watching him squirm in his seat as he tried to pretend that he didn't have a hard-on. Definitely the little things.