I wish more people would write plotty adventure stories where the focus is on the adventure as much as the ship?  Bonus if it’s an established relationship.  There can never be too many of those!

Things I thought might turn me into a mermaid when I was a child:

staying in the pool a really long time

learning to hold my breath infinitely

collecting the right kind of seashells at the beach

bringing said seashells home and setting them by the bath

touching fish and then visualizing myself becoming half of one (like in Animorphs)

meeting and communing with a water spirit

spells from a “witchcraft” book from the library (which was really more a book of fun activities for kids way too into that kind of thing)

just really, really wanting to be a mermaid

I got two requests for my boy Spike, so I’m actually gonna do two separate posts in which I insult the Spike of two very different periods in canon. Cause why not, I guess?

Season 2 Spike: Spike, Spike, Spike. You roll into town like the biggest badass in the word, but it takes–what? Two minutes?–for you to be running off cause Ma Summers came at you with an axe. But then, you always did have Mommy issues.

You talk a big game about killing the kill Slayer and dancing on her grave, but what does it amount to? Having your minions video her so you can study her moves from the safety of your lair and only actually going out to fight when you know she’s at a disadvantage? You’re more than happy to go after Buffy when you know she’s being set up by a “friend” or she’s got the mind of a poor, helpless noblewoman. But the minute Buffy comes up swinging you run for the hills. Then you finally get your big showdown (admittedly not when or where you probably would have preferred). And… you run off again. I can only imagine that getting conked on your head with an incense burner and falling into  an organ has to be a pretty embarrassing way to almost dust for the supposed Big Bad.

Lucky thing Dru was there to save you. But then, that shouldn’t be surprising. There’s one Big Bad in your relationship, sure. But I’m sorry, it ain’t you.

Smoke and Mirrors -- Uh, actually, not really. I loved fairy tales, folk tales, and mythology as a kid and read a lot of collections of them. I loved the sense of gothic horror combined with wonder in “Beauty and the Beast” (I think I was more interested in the enchanted castle than the “romance”). “The Six Swans” featured a female protagonist who’s acts of generous self-sacrifice for the sake of her brothers (sewing nettle shirts and remaining silent in order to break the curse that kept them in swan form) were misinterpreted as witchcraft and almost got her burned at the stake. So there was a certain fascination in that, in the idea that you be doing something good for all the right reasons but have your actions so drastically misinterpreted.

But I also really liked stories where plucky female protagonists managed to outsmart and defeat selfish fairies, evil men, wicked stepmothers, etc. I don’t know, it’s been a while.

Now, I’m also into the original, un cleaned-up versions of fairy tales like Red Riding Hood (where the wolf asks her to get naked before getting into bed with him, making the sexual analogy very explicit) and such. But I really haven’t read that many fairy tales in a long time. Now that I have a nephew who loves stories, I’ve been kind of wanting to get into them (not that I’ll tell him the super fucked up versions... yet.)

M is For Magic --- I guess what my childhood favorite book would be would depend on when you asked me. The first Boxcar Kids book taught me to enjoy reading novels. I was fascinated by the kids’ life in an abandoned boxcar, doing their best to make it in the world without the aid of any parental figures. Once they got adopted by a rich uncle I lost interest.

A bit later I got into Harry Potter, which at first was just another in a long line of magical children books but quickly came to mean a bit more to both me and the world at large. (I’m just barely old enough to have been able to start reading HP before the series had completely taken off, though I think at least the second book was out before I started on the first.)

Then The Enchanted Forest Chronicles captured my heart with their whimsical worldbuilding and clever, no nonsense female protagonist. Oh, and I was also pretty taken with the Alana series for a while. It’s about a girl who pretends to be a boy to be a knight, which I thought was super badass. And oh god, the Abhorsen trilogy! More badass female protagonists! Scary undead! Cool worldbuilding. Yeah, I ate that shit up.

And god, I’m almost forgetting His Dark Materials (super excited they’re doing a new series of that, BTW.)

And all that’s really the tip of the iceberg. I read a lot as a kid. So no, I guess I don’t have a favorite, though if I had to pick just one book, maybe Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? That one totally blew my mind as a kid. :)

My Baby Is A Centerfold DVD Commentary

I wrote this story in 2004, fifteen years ago, so fair warning, I don't recall a lot of the minutiae that went through my head when I was writing it. However, I will do my best!

This was one of the first short stories I wrote set in the same universe as my novel series. I wrote it for the Summer of Spike community over on Livejournal – Summer of Spike was, I believe, the first of the "seasonal" fic communities, and inspired a lot of imitators (including Seasonal Spuffy and Summer of Giles, which are still going to this day) but it only lasted for a couple of rounds. Anyway, someone had recently asked me what happened to the Trio in my 'verse. I already knew that the Trio had started their careers as criminal masterminds while the events of Necessary Evils were going on, and that after NE ends, Warren would try enslaving Katrina in pretty much the same way, Katrina would end up dead, and Warren would try to frame Buffy. Buffy being in a very different frame of mind by this point in my 'verse, while she initially panics at the thought that she accidentally killed someone, Spike and Dawn are able to convince her to investigate first. And of course they discover that Katrina's been dead for several hours, so they call the police and that's when Terminal Line takes place, and Buffy makes first contact with Detective Nguyen, who becomes a recurring NPC and eventually the captain of the Sunnydale PD and is instrumental in Buffy's plan to bring the supernatural out in the open and ANYWAY.

For this story I wanted to do a lighthearted buddy cop sort of thing with Spike and Dawn, and it occurred to me that the Trio would have had to have set up their spy camera system, but since they all got arrested after the Katrina incident, they never had the chance to do anything with the footage. And in my 'verse, some of that footage would have been pretty racy. So what would happen if Buffy and Spike found out about it? The story pretty much wrote itself from there.

I could tell something was wrong the minute I walked in the door. The house had that too-quiet thundercloud feeling about it, and it wasn't just because of the blackout curtains. Buffy was still at the rink, Tara was at her summer job, and Willow was probably asleep (she's not as much of an early riser as Spike is). Normally this means an afternoon of bad TV and junk food with Spike, but the TV wasn't on. Spike always has the TV on.

So this story takes place between Necessary Evils and A Parliament of Monsters, when Spike has moved in with Buffy and Dawn, and Willow and Tara are renting the Summers's basement. It always bugged me that the characters on the show only had to worry about work when the plot required it. When the writers get bored, Buffy can suddenly support a dozen people on a starting school counselor's salary. So while I try not to make a huge deal of it in my 'verse, I do a lot of thinking about how everyone supports themselves. Especially people like Tara, who's sure as hell not getting any money from her family. And with Buffy I wanted to give her a day job that A) she would enjoy, and B) would be flexible with regard to slaying. Which is how she became a skating instructor.

When Spike moved in there was a whole big reshuffling thing, like musical chairs with bedrooms, and Spike ended up getting my old room as an office for Bloody Vengeance Inc., the demon-hunting business he and Anya started. I figured he was probably holed up in there downloading porn or something. Never overlook an opportunity to collect blackmail material is my motto. I dumped my library books on the couch and snuck upstairs with super-Slayer's-sister stealth, which wouldn't do me any good at all if Spike was actually, like, paying attention to his super-keen vampire hearing. Which apparently he wasn't, since I got all the way upstairs without a single physically impossible threat bellowed in my direction.

I had an argument about this with another fic writer once – she felt that Spike threatening Dawn with physical harm was abusive and horrible, and Dawn would be traumatized for life. I pointed out that A) it's canon that Spike does this when he's worried about Dawn's safety, and B) even if you're not a soulless vampire, it's really common for fear in a de facto parental unit to express itself as anger, C) does anyone seriously believe that Spike would ever follow through on any of those over the top threats? Seriously? And D) Dawn canonically blows off said threats and does not appear to actually feel threatened in the slightest. We ended up agreeing to disagree.

Spike was in the office, all right--I could see his hair glowing in the light of the computer monitor. I couldn't see what he was looking at, but whatever it was, it must have been really good, 'cause his eyeballs were practically SuperGlued to the screen. Or maybe really bad, because he looked horrified, not turned on. OK, what horrified William the Bloody? Besides the prospect of squiring Buffy to "Fantasy On Ice?" This I had to see. I rounded Spike's desk and peered over his shoulder. "Hey, mister, you got feelthy pictures?"

If it was Willow? Two clicks of a mouse's tail and whatever was in that window would be closed, password protected, PGP-encrypted, and accessible only through an FTP server in Outer Mongolia. Spike's way better with technology than some vampires I could name, but when he's taken by surprise he still resorts to more primitive methods. He scrambled around in his chair with the panicky flail of a cat falling off a windowsill and slapped a hand across my eyes. "Don't look!" he ordered, about half an octave higher than usual.

This story is full of early 2000s-computer jargon. It's not quite as dated as the show itself, but I give it the ol' college try.

Which meant it was a moral imperative for me to put some of that self-defense training he'd been giving me into practice and kick him in the shins--oh, come on, you'd have done it, too. "Fuck!" Spike yelled. He grabbed for his ankle, overbalanced, and banged his head on the edge of the desk as his chair rolled out from under him. He crashed to the floor, leaving me with a free-and-clear view of the computer.

For someone who's been accused of writing the Everybody Loves Spike Show, I sure have him behave like an idiot a lot.

Now, I want to make it real clear that I'm a sixteen-year-old of the world. I know all about the birds and the bees and the vampires. I've even done a little buzzing myself. And of course I know that my sister and Spike have--well, 'having sex' is way too tame for what they do. Anyway, I know all about The Sex in theory. I also know how sausages are made, in theory. That doesn't mean I'm panting for an up-close at the gooey details of either process. Especially when it involves a grainy RealPlayer file of my very naked sister bouncing up and down on my very naked best-friend-and-platonic-lust-object in Barbie's S&M Playhouse.

I may have written this whole story just to have an excuse to use the term "Barbie's S&M Playhouse."

I may have said something. It may have been 'gleep.' Luckily for my retinas, at that minute Spike lunged up over the edge of the desk and put his fist through the screen. The monitor exploded in a shower of pretty green sparks, and Spike stood there glaring at it all clenchy-jawed and snarly, breathing hard through his teeth. He turned the glare on me. "I swear by all that's unholy, Bit, the next time you sneak up on me like that I'm going to put you in a two-by-three box without benefit of hacksaw!"

Monitors! With! TUBES!!!

I glared right back--no way was he going to make this my fault. "How was I supposed to know you were watching Vampire Pervert Theater 3000?" I snapped. "I thought you were just watching NORMAL porn! Jeez, Spike, if you and Buffy are gonna to videotape your stay in the Satellite of Love, at least--"

I had another discussion with a beta about whether or not Spike would download porn. My argument was "He's a guy." 

Spike vamped out and hurled the monitor clean off the desk and into the wall with a roar (and when I say 'roar,' I don't mean 'loud yell,' I mean 'roar') of "WE DIDN'T BLOODY WELL TAPE IT!"

Wow. I never knew monitors were made up of that many pieces. "You mean you taped it without telling her?" I squeaked.

"NO!" Spike flexed his computer-punching hand (bloody knuckles, shards of glass, v. sexy) and shook off the lumpies. "Someone soon-to-be-departed did! I've never seen the sodding thing before in my life!" He looked really bewildered underneath the homicidal fury.

It's really very interesting to go back and compare Early Barbverse Spike to Late Barbverse Spike in terms of what progress he makes (or doesn't make) in controlling his temper over the course of the series. Hopefully I make the progression believable.

"OK, where did you find it?" I asked. I didn't exactly want to say so, but it occurred to me that maybe Buffy had taped it without telling him. Buffy may play it all Sandra Dee on the outside, but on the inside? Pure Gypsy Rose Lee. She had to keep it all bottled up during The Angel Years, and during The Riley Years she had to be really careful not to break him, and now, well--Exhibit A, currently lying in ten zillion pieces on the floor. "Was the file just sitting on your hard drive, or...?"

Spike looked super-guilty all of a sudden. His head ducked down between his shoulders, vampire ninja turtle style. "Mighthaveclickedonalinksomethin'boutSlayers," he mumbled.

"In other words, you were surfing for Slayer porn?" I folded my arms and settled in for some primo foot-tapping. "Don't you get enough of that at home?"

The interesting thing about the Buffyverse is that the supernatural ISN'T really a secret. Tons of people know about it. It's just no one admits to knowing about it. Which makes my Buffy's job a lot easier when she decides to drag it out of the closet. Which is a roundabout way of saying, if you know where to look, of course there would be Slayer fetish websites.

"I was not! I just...happened on it, like, looking for something else!" Spike is the world's second worst liar (Willow is the winner and still champeen) and he could see I wasn't buying it. "And anyway, it's a bloody good thing I did! Christ knows how long that's been out there for any spotty little deviant with their mum's credit card number to--" His eyes went Inuyasha-huge as fresh horror overtook him. "How long has it been out there?"

Barbverse Dawn is a Sesshumaru fangirl for sure.

"I'm more worried about who the cameraman was," I said. Spiders walked up my spine for a second. "I mean, that was your bedroom, right?"

Two seconds later we burst in through the door of Mom's old room, now Buffy and Spike's House of Ill Repute. I dove for the closet and Spike ripped open the door of the big old mahogany wardrobe he'd dragged over from the crypt. (But he didn't go inside, because as everyone knows, it's very foolish to shut yourself inside a wardrobe.) I stared at the crush of cute tops and kicky boots, ooh, I bet Buffy won't miss this one, she hasn't worn it in weeks... "How many shoes does she OWN?" I pulled a box free and the whole Leaning Tower Of Gucci collapsed on me.

My fic is usually a game of Spot the Narnia Reference

"Stop larking about," Spike growled, grabbing my feebly waving hand and yanking me out of the sea of footwear. "By the angle it's got to be around here somewhere..." He did one of those effortless vampire leaps and chinned himself on the top of the wardrobe, peering over the facade of wooden curlicues on the top. "Got the bastard!" He snaked one arm over the rim and jerked something small and black free, and dropped back to the floor with a thump. "What the hell...?"

It was a tiny, palm-sized camera with a little antenna sticking out of the top. Witness the creepiness. "I'm freaking out here," I said, plopping down on the bed. "Someone actually broke into our house and hid that up there!"

Spike snarled and closed his fist, and the camera joined the monitor in Electronics Heaven before I could yell, "Wait, that's evidence!"

"Not any more, it's not."

"It could lead us back to whoever planted it," I said impatiently. "We could have woken Willow up and had her...I don't know, do something technical."

This is why Spike needs Dawn around. She's the criminal mastermind in the family.

"Point." Spike shoved his lower lip out and scowled. "If there's one, there may be more. In fact, there's got to be."

I blinked. "How can you tell?"

He looked guilty and embarrassed again. "Ah, well, you see, the web site said...

For a guy supposedly unable to feel remorse, Spike does guilty and embarrassed very well.

*****

"Oh, as they say, my God." Xander stared at the tiny repeating clip with sick fascination. "'The Hottest Slayer in a Century Meets The Coolest Vampire Ever, and Guess Who Gets Staked! Sizzling Action With Cold, Dead Seed!' And this is just the teaser. You can order a whole DVD, only $49.99. Hours of fun for the whole family."

I am pretty sure that Jonathan got Andrew to write that advertising copy.

"Well, I must say both of you have excellent technique," Anya said with an approving nod. "And Spike has a large and well-formed penis, though personally I prefer circumcised men. But I can certainly understand why you're upset if you're not getting your rightful share of the profits."

"Spike, could you cool it with the growly noises?" Willow asked, her fingers flying over the keyboard. "It's distracting. OK, there's definitely more cameras... six at least. The Magic Box, the skating rink, Spike's crypt...this one's dead... Directory, directory, who's got the root directory...hah! Xander, hand me that Unicode list."

I actually researched what all Willow would have had to do to hack into and take over the camera network. I've forgotten it all now, but for about five minutes there, my skilz were l33t.

"What I still don't get is why someone bothered to break into our house and plant cameras," I said from the opposite end of the dining room table. I was staying as far away from follow-the-bouncing-Buffy as possible. "Especially considering Spike would have ripped their heads off if he'd caught them, and Buffy would have gotten REALLY mean. If you want to make a sex film, why not just go over to one of the frat houses on campus and hire a couple of college students?"

"I hate to say it, Dawnie, but I don't think they were making a porn film." Xander tore himself away from Willow's laptop. "This is surveillance camera footage. Someone's been spying on Buffy, and the porn film is just a happy byproduct."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Willow muttered. She picked up one of the larger camera fragments with a pair of tweezers. "Look, it's all dusty, and the battery pack was dead. This hasn't worked for weeks, maybe months. Do we have any toner cartridges we could break open? I think we could use the toner as fingerprint powder, and if whoever installed these left any prints, and if Spike didn't smudge them all up with his macho camera-crushing..."

This was back when printer cartridges had loose toner in them.  I had just come off working for a place where we bough giant bags of loose toner and refilled our own cartridges because it was cheaper, and by God, that stuff got EVERYWHERE.

"Oh, right, blame the victim," Spike groused. "Christ, I need a fag." He stomped over to the kitchen door, and I got up and followed him out to the back porch, which was in shadow at this time of day. He lit a cigarette and stood there puffing furiously, all formal and stiff, and it weirded me out. I mean, Spike doesn't just walk or stand or sit. Spike struts and lounges and sprawls and tucks his thumbs in his belt all "Hi, I'm Spike, and this is my crotch!"

On the other hand, somewhere underneath Spike, Vampire Sex God, is still a guy who grew up when ankles were an erogenous zone. "Spike...are you OK?"

"Didn't want you to see that," he said at last. "Not right. Not proper."

He looked absolutely miserable. Any other time I'd have patted his shoulder, but I figured I'd better roll my eyes instead. I leaned against the side of the house, ultra-cool and sophisticated and untroubled by the certain knowledge of Naked Spike a mere two layers of cloth away. "It's OK. Honest. It's not like I've never seen a naked guy before--"

So in my verse, as in canon, Dawn had a crush on Spike. And she knows perfectly well that Spike's in love with her sister, and doesn't see her that way. And she loves her sister, and wants her to be happy, and she doesn't want to be (as she puts it in another story) "pathetic" about it. So she's tried very hard to squash her crush down and pretend it doesn't exist. But sometimes...

That was a mistake. Spike went yellow-eyed, achieving zero to over-protective in six seconds. "And just who the hell--"

"You and Xander, dope, when we all went skinny dipping after that clambake. Get your mind out of the gutter." Of course vague glimpses of guy-parts decently veiled by darkness and ice-cold seawater and didn't quite, uh, measure up to, well, let's just say I'm going to be comparing my future boyfriends to Spike in more ways than one, but you know, I wasn't going to let this be weird. Spike is a total hottie, and maybe, just maybe there have been a few daydreams. Detailed daydreams. With a sound track and special effects. But there are hotties all over the planet, and not all that many guys you can talk to about important stuff like whether or not you really existed before two years ago, and whether the monks that created you remembered to add a standard-issue soul to the mix, and how incredibly annoying older sisters can be. "On second thought, I'm deeply traumatized. I think I might get over it if you talked Buffy into letting me get my navel pierced."

Spike stared at me, various bits of him twitching. "Dawn--"

I patted his shoulder, because I could. "You're gonna be inhaling filter in a minute. Let's go inside."

When we got back inside, Willow had bit and pieces of camera wired up to the laptop. "Curiouser and curiouser," she said. "The server this camera was supposed to send information to doesn't exist any longer, or at least, it's not turned on. The web site's on a regular commercial server, and the domain name's registered to Horatio Hellpop--pseudonym much? Good news, it looks like the site's only been up for a couple of days--" She broke into a triumphant grin. "We're in!"

"What're you waiting for, then?" Spike doesn't usually use his sire-to-minion voice on Willow, but he was using it now. "Take it down!"

It's not relevant to the tale at hand, so I don't belabor it here, but this Willow is a vampire with a soul. It's a long story.

"Patience, Grasshopper." Willow typed a few more cryptic strings of symbols into the laptop. "Bad news, it's going to take me a few hours to find out who the owner really is. I'll have to hack into Paypal to get his bank account info and track IP addresses and stuff."

I did not research what it would take to hack into Paypal. I have my limits.

Spike began pacing back and forth, tense and borderline vampy, looking like he really, really wanted to kill something. Or someone. "And in that time this berk could run off a hundred more copies and pass 'em out to friends as door prizes."

"Or keep them and sell fifty-seven of them to the list of people I'm downloading now," Willow said. "OK. I've disabled the site and changed the passwords, so no one will be able to order any more." She cracked her knuckles. "Give me six hours and I can clean out Larry Flynt Junior's bank account, ruin his credit history, and send anonymous tips to Donald Rumsfeld that he's a terrorist child pornographer." Willow's a little less scary without her magic, but really? Not by that much. She looked around. "Not that I would ever do anything like that."

I mean really. "Hacker" may be a 90s cliche, but I still wouldn't want one mad at me.

Spike snatched the list of names and credit card numbers off the printer and squinted at it. "Bloody hell. There's addresses all the way from Juneau to Key West." He looked at the list again, and smiled. Need I say it wasn't a very nice smile? "I think it's time to pay a visit to the locals. Could be some of them have an idea who they're ordering from. Harris, you want to take out the rest of those cameras, and--" He turned to Willow. "Will, when Buffy gets home, for God's sake don't let her suss out anything's wrong. If she finds out about this..."

My Spike still needs glasses, but is too vain to wear them. I have a number of canonical justifications for this headcanon.

All of us shuddered in unison. If Buffy found out there would be an explosion of thermonuclear proportions. Spike grabbed his motorcycle jacket and blanket and headed for the front door, and I leaped to my feet and ran after him. "Wait up! I'm going with you!"

He scowled at me. "I think not. You're going to stay here, and distract your sister like a good little minor."

"Uh-uh." I used all of my hey-Dawnie's-tall-now height to advantage. "Look, Spike, all this stuff getting out does to you is make you mad. If Buffy finds out, she's going to be..." I floundered for a minute. " Humiliated, and nobody humiliates my sister except me. I'm gonna go with you, and we're gonna find out who did it and...and... kick their butts with pointy-toed shoes."

Spike glared, but it was the old I-disapprove-on-principle-but-you're-all-right,-Niblet glare, and I knew he'd be caving in ten, nine, eight... "Move yer girly arse, then," he said with an unconvincing growl. "We've got villains to apprehend."

I scooted for the DeSoto before he could change his mind. Maybe he thought that it would be a good idea to have someone soul-having around when he was this mad, just in case. Or maybe, and I really prefer this version, he just wanted a partner in crime because it's more fun that way. Spike flung the blanket over his head and copied my dash for the car, and we flung ourselves into the DeSoto's dark interior just as Spike was beginning to sizzle. "You come along, you mind what I tell you, yeah? I say stay in the car, you stay in the car. I say you run, you run. I say you take that fucking pathetic excuse for music out of the CD player and toss it out the window--"

"--and I ignore you like always," I said cheerfully, turning up the Jennifer Lopez.

"Fine. If anyone dies tonight, it's on your head. Some things are beyond any self-respecting vampire's endurance." Spike slammed into reverse and backed out of the driveway with a screech of tires. I grabbed the door handle. Driving with Spike is always a character-building experience, and today was no exception. "First on the hit parade?"

I scanned the list. "Vernon Blakely, 1583 East Beechwood. What are we gonna say to Mr. Blakely when we get there?"

Spike gazed out through the little clean space in the windshield, obviously pondering which limb he should rip off first, and peeled out like there was a mob with torches after us. "Improvisation is a virtue, Bit."

I had absolutely no idea how they would get the DVDs back. The next several scenes are just me letting the characters take the reins and do whatever the hell they wanted to.

**********

Spike was smoking gently beneath his blanket when the shade-deficient door of 1583 East Beechwood opened to our urgent hammering, and a middle-aged guy with thinning red hair and freckles and a pot belly opened it and blinked at us. He looked like Mr. Weasley gone to seed. "Mr. Blakely?" I said with my brightest, shiniest smile.

The Blakely looked from me to Spike, and the contrast seemed to produce some kind of cognitive dissonance on his part. "Can I... have we met?"

"Only in spirit." Spike leaned heavily against the doorframe, with a smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring, but which made him look like he was sporting fangs even when he wasn't. Spike isn't a big guy--in fact, he's on the smallish side, but he's got, you know, muscles. And this air of being able to rip your liver out. Also did I mention the muscles? "I'm given to understand you made a purchase recently from...ah..." He glanced surreptitiously at the paper in his hand. "...Mad Genius Productions?"

Mr. Blakely looked at me, dubious, and at Spike, nervous. "What of it? If I'd done anything like that, which I didn't."

"We're from the, uh, department of quality control," I chirped. "The DVDs are..."

"Radioactive," Spike put in. "Rot your goolies off just like that. " I gave him an elbow-jab.

"Defective," I said firmly. "Glitches. Pixelization. It's criminal the kind of shoddy merchandise we put out. We're recalling them and giving you a replacement at absolutely no charge!"

Spike held up a jewel case and flashed it under Blakely's nose. "Director's cut. Added scenes. 40% more filth for the price."

Suspicion was gathering in Mr. Blakely's watery blue eyes. "Hey, you're that guy from the video," he said.

Spike heaved a melodramatic sigh. "All right, all right, as you've twisted my arm, I'll autograph it for you."

I honestly did not expect him to say that, but somehow there I was, typing it.

The watery eyes brightened. "Really?"

Five minutes later we were dashing for the car again, with the confused Mr. Blakely waving us goodbye. "So what's he going to do when he discovers he's been suckered for a bootleg copy of J-Lo's latest?" I asked, as we tore away from the curb.

"Long as it's got some bint with her tits hanging out on the cover, I doubt he'll notice the difference." Spike grinned. "There'd just better be some hitting involved in the next one."

**********

"I don't believe there's any such thing as a Department of Quality Control," Mr. Angusson said, looking us up and down. "What the hell kind of scam are you pulling?"

"All we want to do is to replace--" I started.

"Look, missy, I bought that DVD nice and legal, and I don't give a crap if whatever goombah and his girlfriend put on plastic fangs to do it is having second thoughts now. So you and your boyfriend just toddle off and--"

"HEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPP!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "HE'S SHOWING ME HIS THING! IT'S ALL GROSS AND PURPLE AND--"

I didn't expect Dawn to do that, either. And yet!

Angusson disappeared and reappeared in two seconds flat, chucking the DVD at our heads.

"Better," Spike said as we tore out yet again. "But I'm still feeling a lack in the hitting things area."

Mr. Fishbein retreated a step from the threshold. "I'm not giving you anything, and I'm not letting you in," he quavered. "What do you think I am, stupid? You're a vampire!"

Honestly, it's Sunnydale. SOMEONE has to get it.

Spike rolled his eyes. He's learned from the masters. "Oh, bollocks, you don't really believe--"

"Oh, yeah?" Fishbein challenged. "Step through that door!"

I stepped through the door, grabbed Fishbein's hand and gave him a good hard yank, right across the threshold and into Spike's waiting fist.

"What was that?," Spike caroled, drawing back for another punch. "Come on in and have a cuppa, Spike? Better repeat it, I'm a touch deaf in that ear."

"That was unnecessarily bloody," I said as we hopped into the car and stepped on the gas, one DVD richer.

"He'll live," Spike said dismissively. "Probably. Next?"

**********

I figured I had to give Spike SOME violence, or he'd get mopey.

"Can you see--?" I hissed, trying to get a better view through the front window. It was getting dark, and I was out of practice at sneaking around not-really-abandoned buildings. Spike shushed me and crept around to the door. I peered through the sad straggly thevetia hedge, cupping my hands against the dirty glass. The place was just crawling with innnnnnteresting monsters, all huddled around a crappy old black and white TV. There's some law against demons watching flatscreen color, apparently.

"Oh, my God, are they really...you know....doing it?" The Gorthesch demon bumped a couple of Fyarls further down on the couch and plunged a scaly paw into the bowl of popcorn as they all stared at the flickering screen. "With a Slayer? I mean, I heard about it, but I didn't think even a vampire could sink that low."

"Real vampires don't," the lone vampire in the crowd protested, voice dripping disgust. "Maybe great big Slayer-whipped pussies do, but--"

"Shut up!" came a chorus of squeaky, growly, and croaky voices. Despite the complaints, everyone seemed to like the show. There were tongues hanging out. At least, I hope they were tongues.

"Yeah, it's just gettin' to the good part," a Syvithis demon whispered.

"Oooh! The one with the pommel horse?"

"No, where the Slayer goes down on him in the graveyard and he--"

I actually wrote a PWP detailing all the scenes in The Spuffy Sex Tape. An edited-down version eventually got incorporated into A Parliament of Monsters, when Angelus gets a hold of one of the copies that Spike and Dawn aren't able to track down in this story.

The front door imploded with a crash, splinters flying everywhere, and Spike strode into the room over the wreckage, a gleam in his eye and a really, really big axe slung over one shoulder. He surveyed the assortment of demons with a grin almost as big as the axe and about twice as vicious, ran his tongue over his teeth and and tucked his free thumb in his belt loop, fingers splayed over the merchandise. Just like old times. "Looks like you're right, mate," he said. "We are just getting to the good part."

**********

"OK, I take it back," I said as we headed for home. "THAT was unnecessarily bloody." It was after midnight, and we'd collected twenty-two DVDs, broken and entered fifteen houses and/or lairs, killed or maimed eight demons, broken five human fingers accidentally-on-purpose, and signed two autographs. Spike had definitely achieved his hitting things quota, and it was a safe bet that no one in Sunnydale would be mentioning Spike and Buffy's brief but eventful movie career in public any time soon.

"All right, p'raps the railroad spike was a bit much, but a bloke gets nostalgic." Spike stretched, all luxurious and satisfied, and lit up a fresh cig, trailing smoke out the window. He had a black eye and a split lip and a scrape right across the place where his cheekbone goes all knife-edgy, and the stretching made things creak inside that probably weren't supposed to creak, but he was in a much, much better mood. "He'll grow a new head."

Where did Spike get a railroad spike on short notice? I have no idea. He's just resourceful that way.

"If you say so," I said, a bit dubious. "Doesn't that only happen when you cut the old one off?"

"So it'll take a bit longer." Spike bounced a little in his seat, all hepped up on the old ultra-violence. "Still haven't found the bastard who's selling the things, though. Must be a bleeding criminal mastermind if--" I Wanna Be Sedated beebled from the cell phone in his pocket. (Like I said, a lot better with technology than some vampires I can name. He can even program it, though considering the songs he picks, sometimes we wish he couldn't.) He grabbed the phone one-handed and didn't slow down even a bit as he zipped through freeway traffic. (Well, he is evil.) "Yeh? You must be joking. You must be--fuck. That little--I'll tear his soddin' head off! Yeh, I know. I'll just bruise him a little." He clicked the phone off and stuffed it back in his pocket, spun the wheel and zigged across four lanes of traffic towards the off-ramp, leaving a chorus of screeching brakes behind us. "After I tear his soddin' head off."

"Where are we going?" I yelled.

Spike hunched over the wheel, eyes grim. "Off to see the wizard."

We pulled up in front of one of the cruddy lease-by-the-month apartment buildings over by the UC Sunnydale campus. Maybe it was the same one Dad and I stayed at when he came down from L.A. to take care of Buffy's estate that time she was dead--the second time, I mean, not the first time. Some of the grease spots in the parking lot looked familiar.

It just struck me as I was describing the building that it was almost identical to the one I'd described in Necessary Evils, so I thought I'd better lampshade it.

"Apartment 42B, Will says." Spike sucked in his cheeks and narrowed his eyes, scoping out the disintegrating stucco overhead. "There at the end." He slapped his hands together and bounded towards the stairs like he was scaling Everest. I followed like I was scaling a rickety stepladder. (Hey, lack of supernatural stamina here. I was getting pretty darned tired.) The lights were on in 42B, and we paused outside the door, which was painted in barf-making 80s turquoise. Spike pounded on it with one fist. "Open up! Land shark!"

I heard some rustling and thumping noises inside, and a crash like a bookcase falling over. "Go away!" a strangely familiar voice yelled. "You can't get in here anyway!"

"Yeh? Maybe not, but I can stand out here till you starve to death. Or set the building on fire, or...uh..." Spike paced the catwalk for a second, smoking like a fiend, which I guess is appropriate. I was pretty sure the fire thing was a bluff, since Spike's not usually one for indirect mayhem. He's got the whole hitting things fetish, after all. Then his eyes lit up and he grinned. "Maybe I can't walk through your door, but there's nothing says I can't kick it down and send in my terrible mute minion, Paco." He whirled around and unleashed one of his shitkicker boots at the door. BANG! The whole building shuddered (which sounds impressive, but considering it was probably made out of pressboard and Kleenex, isn't so much). WHAM! A hinge sprung and the doorframe cracked. I buffed my nails and waited--obviously Spike was holding back.

I don't know why more vampires don't do things like this.

"I'm gonna lose my deposit!" the voice inside wailed.

"My heart bleeds. Oh, wait, no it doesn't. Open up, or--"

The door flew open, or tried to (Spike had knocked it kind of cattywompus, and it stuck halfway.) A face peered out, pale and pear-shaped and nervous under slept-in dark hair. Behind it was a barren little studio apartment littered with pizza boxes, comic books, and boxes of DVDs and padded mailers. There was practically no furniture except a mattress and a desk with a pretty sweet computer and home studio setup.

My hand shot out and I grabbed Pasty-face by the ear and pulled, hard. "Jonathan?!" I yipped. Jonathan squirmed and batted at me, but I dug my nails in. "YOU'RE the criminal mastermind?"

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" he yelled. "Let me go, don't let him kill me, I didn't mean to, it's not my fault!"

"Oh, for God's sake, quit whining," I snapped, letting go. "Spike hasn't even touched you."

Spike took a drag on his cigarette, peeled himself off the railing and sort of glided over, all slouchy and menacing, with the angle of the floodlights leaving black caverns where his eyes should be. Jonathan squinched in on himself. "You just don't learn, do you?" Spike asked, soft and pee-your-pants scary. "How long've you had those cameras on us?"

Jonathan backed away with a panicky shuffle. "They're not mine! They were Warren's, and they haven't worked since the police confiscated all his computer stuff! Honest! I just happened to have some files I'd saved for, for--"

"Wanking material?" Spike asked, excessively sarcastic.

"Research!" Jonathan reached the wall and sat down very abruptly. "I didn't mean anything by it! All I wanted was to raise some money so Warren and Andrew could get a better lawyer! Someone who knows about demon-related cases, like Goldberg & Osbourne, or Wolfram & Hart. I didn't think you'd ever find out, and I'm really, really, really sorry, please don't kill me, please, please, PLEASE don't kill me--"

Goldberg & Osbourne is a real law firm in Phoenix, AZ, known for being sleazy ambulance-chasers. A joke that only I ever got.

"Didn't mean anything by dragging a lady's reputation in the dirt?" Spike roared (and again, by roared, I mean, well, roared). He grabbed Jonathan by his Robotech jammies and hauled him up nose-to-nose--Jonathan's one of the few guys Spike can look down on. "Well, maybe I won't mean anything when I rip your balls off and stuff them in your eye sockets, how's that?"

"Why?" I asked, grabbing Spike's arm. I realized I'd been wanting to ask that question for a long time. "Why, Jonathan? I mean, I get Warren and whatsisface--they had grudges against Buffy, but you used to be--" Well, not her friend, not really. "She saved your life! You gave her the Class Protector award! She let you off the hook when she turned Warren over to the cops--you were an accessory to murder, Jonathan, and she let you go! I don't get it. Why are you helping them?"

Jonathan yanked his pajama top out of Spike's grip and pulled himself up like he'd taken a dose of Insta-Spine. "Because they're my friends," he said, very simply, meeting Spike's yellowing eyes head-on. "And I know they're not much, but they're all I've got. Whatever else happens, you've got to stand by your friends, right? Or what's the point?" He sighed, squared his shoulders, and looked up at Spike with a little smile. "It's a fair cop. I guess you'd better do whatever it is you're going to do."

I wanted Jonathan to redeem himself a little bit, kinda?

Spike stood there looking at Jonathan, head cocked in the His Master's Voice pose he gets when he's trying really, really hard to figure out the motivations of the souled. And I knew what was going through his head. Spike was looking for a reason not to kill him.

See, Spike doesn't have a soul. He doesn't do good stuff because it's right. He can't. He's not wired that way, as he puts it. But he can do good stuff if there's a reason--like if it helps him somehow, or makes someone he loves happy. Or if it makes him feel, for a minute, like he's a man and not a monster, which is a feeling he really likes. And that's the cool thing about Spike, the thing I really love about him, and I think probably the thing Buffy loves too: not the cheekbones or the attitude or the mad combat skilz or what's under those jeans, but that he does like that feeling, and so Spike looks for those reasons. Looks real hard. Harder, I think sometimes, than some people with souls.

I'm just sayin'.

"Right," he said at last. And he hauled off and punched Jonathan right in the nose.

"YEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOW!" Jonathan fell over, clutching his face, and gore splattered everywhere. "By dose! You broge by dose!"

But still, well, evil.

"Just be glad that's all I've broke," Spike said. He wiped his knuckles on his t-shirt instead of licking the blood off, which was a pretty big compliment, really. Congratulations, Jonathan, you've graduated to Not-Food! "Christ, where's the fun in beating the shit out of a pathetic little wibbling sod like you?" He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket (that's another moderately cool thing about Spike: he carries pocket handkerchiefs) and tossed it to Jonathan. "Grab the goods, Bit. It's time to call it a night."

Jonathan sat there snorfling blood into the hanky while I ferried the DVDs and Jonathan's hard drive out to Spike--I figured Willow could check it out for contraband and return it, so we weren't stealing it exactly. As we started down the stairs with the last armload, Spike turned back to Jonathan, almost amiable. "Word to the wise. I don't forget what your friends put Buffy through. If you want to do your pals a real favor, maybe you ought to remember that while I'm out here, and they're safe in stir, no one's likely to get eaten accidental-like, eh?"

Now this! At the time that I wrote this, I had NO IDEA that Warren would come back and cause trouble later, and that Spike would, in fact, end up eating him. Indeed, by the time I wrote "The Lesser of Two Evils," I had completely forgotten that I'd written this line, and when I stumbled upon it when re-reading a couple of years later, it was this totally serendipitous piece of foreshadowing. Sometimes writing is so cool!

Jonathan stared at him, and nodded a little. And we left.

**********

It was past two o'clock when we got home. We locked the DVDs in the trunk of the DeSoto, which had been the closet for a lot of other skeletons in its day, and after a short consultation on how to best avoid Ordeal By Buffy, we strolled into the house as if we were coming in from a late patrol and nothing in the universe was wrong.

Willow was still tapping away at her laptop in the dining room. "I'm just tracking down the copies on eBay," she whispered, "and sending out fake cease and desist orders from Mad Genius Productions. Buffy's in bed. She doesn't suspect a thing." She noted our alarmed glances and added, a bit huffily, "Don't worry, Xander took care of the the subterfuge part. Did you get him?"

"Yeh, he's got." Spike rolled his head and rubbed back of his neck. "Battle of the ages. Christ, I'm glad that's done with." He eyed our crumpled list of victims thoughtfully. "Wonder if I could fake a business trip to Juneau."

"Don't press your luck," Willow said drily.

"Someday I'm going to sire someone with a minimum of respect for their elders," Spike growled.

Willow grinned, smug. "And they'll bore you so much you'll stake them inside forty-eight hours. Shoo. Buffy's waiting for you."

So we headed for the stairs, and as I put my foot on the first step, I heard Spike heave a big sigh behind me. "Thanks, Bit. Couldn't have managed without you." When I looked back, he was staring at the toes of his boots, all awkward and embarrassed. "I just hope this hasn't... hasn't..."

"Spike, I'll always think of you as my brother." I waited two beats, and added with a perfectly straight face, "My brother with the enormous schlong."

I got three whole steps before Spike came after me and chased me all the way upstairs.

For reference: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478957

Ok, this one is too long to do a blow-by-blow in a Tumblr post, so I'm gonna talk about it more generally.

For those of you who haven't read the series this story is a part of, it's a long-running AU which branches off of canon after "The Gift."  I started writing the first story in it immediately after "The Gift" aired, so Spuffy wasn't even a canon thing yet.  At the time, I was pretty certain that Spuffy would never be a canon thing; at most, I thought, there would be a lot of pining and UST, and maybe, in the very last season, Spike would get the crumb he was hoping for.

But I didn't care about that; something doesn't have to be canon for me to ship the hell out of it.  And I was fascinated by the concept of an evil demon trying to be good.  What would it look like, I wondered, if Spike and Buffy did get together in a working, functional relationship?  What changes and compromises would both of them have to make?  How would it meet both their needs?  What would the pain points be?  Of course, the easiest way to do it would be to slap a soul into Spike, but I felt that the show had already thoroughly explored that avenue with Angel, and I wanted to do something different.  Plus I have never been one to do things the easy way, and one of the recurring themes in my writing in general is free will and choices.  So I set myself the challenge of writing a story about how Buffy and Spike forge a relationship that works for both of them, and doesn't cheat on characterization – that is, Spike, having no human soul, is still "evil" in Buffyverse terms, and his motivations and behavior reflect that; even when he is doing good things, he is not doing them in the same way, or for the same reasons, as a human would. *

ANYWAY.  In this AU, Warren Mears and Co. still killed Katrina, but Warren went to jail for it.  However, when his inventions came to the attention of Wolfram & Hart, they got him released on a technicality, and brought him into their R&D department.  Warren took the opportunity to get his revenge on Buffy and Spike by zapping Buffy into a W&H pocket dimension, where W&H was collecting Buffys from many dimensions for nefarious purposes.  Unbeknownst to Warren, Buffy has just discovered that she's pregnant.  

This scenario generated four stories: "The Lesser of Two Evils," which details what happens when Willow and Spike confront Warren and try to force him to bring Buffy back; "In A Yellow Wood," which is about Buffy's adventures in the pocket dimension, "If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed," which deals with the fallout of the first two stories, and "To Grandmother's House," which wraps up the arc with Buffy's final decision about the fate of her baby.

I wrote these stories all out of order: "To Grandmother's House" first, "The Lesser of Two Evils" second, "In A Yellow Wood" third, and "If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed" last.  I knew the general course of the arc all along, but writing it inside out and backwards, over ten years or more, posed some interesting challenges.  "If the Grave Be Now Thy Bed" was not part of the original arc plan – in fact, it grew out of feedback I got for "The Lesser of Two Evils."

TLOTE/IAYW are deliberately morally ambiguous stories.  Spike, Willow, and Buffy all do questionable things – perhaps flat out wrong things – under severe emotional stress, and the consequences of those actions echo for a long time through the years to come.  While I hope that readers find their motives understandable, and even sympathetic, I didn't necessarily expect that every reader would agree with or approve of their actions.  Most people who've sent me feedback seem to enjoy the ambiguity, or at least find it intriguing.  Not all of them, however.  

One particular reader had...issues.  Over the course of several conversations, I found out that while they were a Spuffy shipper, they had very particular requirements for the kind of Spuffy stories they liked.  They had to be either A) totally canon-compliant, angst-ridden stories where Buffy hated herself for giving in to Spike's sinister attraction, or B) stories where Spike was a Romance Novel Bad Boy With a Heart of Gold, and there was a tacit agreement between writer and reader that hey, we both know this is totally OOC for both characters, but we're just here for the porn, amirite nudge-nudge wink-wink.

Reader In Question had started in on my work with the assumption that it fell into the latter category, but the more they read, the less comfortable they got, because, as I mentioned above, I was in this for serious.  I sweat blood over characterization.  And I was starting to convince them that maybe a relationship between Buffy and soulless Spike COULD work.  And they didn't WANT to believe that.  So they absolutely had to interpret my work as a dystopian take on Buffy's slide into total moral decay, with this particular arc as the nadir of her fall.**  They left me some despondent feedback on TLOTE, wondering what Warren's dear mother would think of this turn of events.  I'm not sure if they intended to shame me (or Buffy) for our evil ways, but I thought it was an interesting point.  And it planted the seed of an idea.

Over the next several years, as I worked on IAYW (and let me say right here, the less-than-enthusiastic feedback Reader In Question sent me on TLOTE made me work my ass off on IAYW.  Though I obviously don't agree with their overall interpretation, I thought they had some good points, and I wanted to be sure that IAYW addressed those points) I mulled over the thought: What WOULD happen if Warren's dear old mother confronted Buffy and Spike?  

A lot would depend upon what Warren's dear old mother was like.  There were two obvious ways I could go with that: she could be an innocent victim, or she could be as much of a monster as Warren was.  But I didn't want to do anything obvious with this story.   Fic-wise, I always like to take the road less traveled if I can, but in this case, I have to admit that I got a perverse pleasure out of taking Reader In Question's finger-wagging admonition and using it as inspiration for a story that's, well, not exactly what I imagine they were hoping to inspire.  I decided that I was going to make Mrs. Mears a little of both.

The next question was, what did I want to have happen when she shows up?Again, the obvious thing would be to have Buffy feel guilty.  But I had already dealt extensively with Buffy's feelings, and her reasons for making the decisions she made, in IAYW and TGH.  Yes, she feels guilty; she's not sure she did the right thing.  She's not even sure there was a right thing to do.  But that particular subplot plays out over the long term in this AU, culminating many years later in a completely different story arc, and I couldn't bring it to a premature resolution here.  Besides, I knew that Barbverse Buffy would never return to the uncompromising system of morality that Reader In Question wanted her to,*** so there was no point in writing a story where she Learns Her Lesson, Dusts Spike, and Is Very Sorry. ****

So I decided that this story would focus on Spike, and his reaction to Warren's mother and her loss of a son.  And that opened up a lot of possibilities.  I was to some extent constrained by the fact that I'd already written quite a lot of stories taking place after this one in the timeline, so there were certain things I couldn't do.  But I've always found that if you ask yourself, "What would X logically do in this situation?" and follow that through, you can avoid Idiot Plot Syndrome.   Let your characters be smart.   What would Spike do, confronted with the mother of the man he'd killed?  What would Mrs. Mears demand of him in recompense?  

What I wanted to do in this story was to answer those questions in a way that people wouldn't expect.  I was able to bring Spike's ambivalent feelings about his own mother into play, and provide a way for him to get some character development around coming to terms with her death and his part in it that I might not otherwise have been able to do.  And I was able to draw parallels between Warren and his mother, and Spike and Anne Pratt, and come up with some really intriguing takes on how and why Spike can do the right(ish) thing even when his reasons are kinda-sorta wrong(ish).  It gives some background, hopefully, on  how Buffy can make the ultimate decision she does in "To Grandmother's House," and not feel that she's tobogganing head-first down the slippery slope of Utter Moral Decay.  And I got to write Zombie Warren, who was gruesomely, deliciously horrible.  And I got to give Mrs. Mears the last word.

By the time I finished the story, Reader In Question had long since left fandom, and they probably wouldn't have read it even if they were still around.  But I feel I have to thank them for it anyway.  And that's why I always say that even though I don't necessarily like getting critical feedback, it can be the most useful feedback you can get if you look at it in the right way.

__________

* I could write a whole nother essay about the challenges of writing an evil-trying-to-be-good vampire, but that is beyond the scope of the current post.

** Eventually, they practically begged me to tell them that I was deliberately writing Buffy and Spike out of character, and that I didn't really think a relationship between them could work.  Alas, I could not oblige them, and they stopped reading my stuff.

*** I don't even believe canon Buffy stuck to that kind of rigid moral code – she tried to, but one of the things that makes her a complex, fully realized character is that canon Buffy is perfectly capable of double standards and hypocrisy where her friends are concerned, not to mention just plain changing her mind about things over the course of the show.  For every decision I have Barbverse Buffy [or Spike, for that matter] make, I can point to something in canon and say "This is why I think she could do that."

****Although... I do have an alternate ending to "To Grandmother's House" plotted out in my head, where Buffy [either accidentally or on purpose – just as in the main story, it's ambiguous] doesn't stop Giles in time.  I consider the Barbverse to be a low-probability AU, and I watch out for times and ways in which things could go spectacularly wrong, just so I can be sure to avoid them in a believable manner.  Or write stories about them going wrong, and the characters dealing with them.