"What are you doing here?" Giles demanded. He looked almost irritated enough to get up from the reclined position on his couch.

"Slayer’s gone slaying," Spike replied. "Minion-boy went-with. Minion-girls are researching. I was the only one expendable enough to baby-sit you."

Giles considered saying, I am not an infant. But gathering up that much annoyance would require more energy than he cared to expend.

Spike flopped into a chair opposite Giles, putting the coffee table between them. "Look, it doesn’t matter to me either way if you off yourself because a depression-demon’s taken up residence in your brain— "

"It is not making me depressed," Giles interrupted. "It’s–it’s merely causing a drop in energy as well as seratonin, resulting in, ah, fatalistic, depressive-like symptoms."

"Yeah, all right, whatever," Spike deflected. "I’m here because it’s important to Buffy," he said primly. He paused. "Though if you do go and do it, think you could kill yourself in some runny way, and aim the blood into bottles?"

Giles ignored him.

* * *

"Could I have one of those?"

Spike focused on Giles for the first time in half an hour. "One of these?" He indicated the smoldering cigarette cinched between his fingers.

"Yes," Giles replied shortly, then amended: "Please."

Wordlessly, Spike procured a cigarette and his Zippo from one of his jacket pockets. He handed both to Giles.

As he returned the Zippo, Giles murmured, "Thank you."

Giles puffed, coughed, then puffed again without obvious difficulty. A flash of memories accompanied the surprisingly familiar feel of dry paper between his lips, and the smoke that filled his lungs. His eyes scanned the coffee table, sighed, and lumbered off the couch gracelessly. On unsteady feet, Giles searched the kitchen cupboards for the saucer with the chipped edge. He returned to the living room and placed it between he and Spike for use as an ashtray.

At length, Spike commented, "Didn’t know you smoke."

"I did. When I was young. How is it that vampires can smoke, when you can’t breathe?"

"We can suck."

"I presumed that was an idiom."

"Not exactly."

The men fell into silence again. Giles fidgeted until he found a semi-reclined position that was comfortably within arm’s reach of the table.

"Tobacco?"

"Pardon?" Giles asked.

Spike pronounced each syllable: "Did you smoke tobacco."

"Not always."

"Well. Rupes. I’m impressed." Spike’s tone was taunting, lacking surprise.

"Yes, thank you — get your feet off my furniture."

Spike paused, fixing Giles with a glare. Giles held the gaze. Grumbling, Spike retracted his feet from the table. He unlaced his boots, then chucked each of the heavy, leather objects in the general direction of the entryway. He flipped his stocking-feet (hole in the heel, dark-auburn stain on one toe) back on the table. He looked at Giles, waiting for confrontation. But the other man’s gaze was held on the formerly airborne boots.

Rising from a fog of disinterest, Giles inquired, "Are those Doc Martens?"

"Yup," Spike replied. "Bought those in nineteen-seventy-seven. They’ve seen me through the best times of my life," he affirmed.

"I have an old pair of those as well," Giles said thoughtfully. "I carry them with me whenever I move, even though I haven’t put them on since university."

"They’re good boots." Spike’s words were hollow.

Giles fell into resigned silence and turned his gaze to the ceiling. The ash tip of his cigarette grew; Spike puffed his.

Spike made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl. "So. You wore Docs in university?" he prodded.

Giles’ eyes showed wariness. "Um. Yes. I used to dress like you. A bit. I wore black and leather. Dyed my hair absurd colors."

Spike arched a stylishly scarred eyebrow.

Giles continued. "Girls who looked like Buffy used to watch me from the foot of the stage at my band’s performances." A self-deprecating guffaw escaped the depression-demon’s cage of despair. "Or maybe becoming twice that age has turned those girls into sweet, innocent things. I had that washboard stomach of yours; I used to be that skinny."

"Heroine’ll do that for you," Spike noted.

"I didn’t say I -- "

"Kidding, Rupes," Spike said. "For me, it was laudanum, the stuff doctors gave housewives and children like candy. . . . So, you were interesting as a kid. What happened?"

"I grew up," Giles said, defensively. Accusatory. "I grew up, and stopped living for momentary satisfaction and started looking towards my future." His voice was even, content. "I realized that fulfilling my family legacy meant a great deal more to me than the approval of a passel of hooligans."

"Yeah, so you read Catcher in the Rye and suddenly realized that you were throwing away your youth by acting like a kid."

Giles regarded Spike with new curiosity. "You enjoy reading?"

"I’m literate," was the acerbic reply.

"Hm." Giles stared upwards again. "No. Well, yes, I read it; but that wasn’t what changed my mind. My mates and I did something very stupid . . . someone died because of our carelessness. We were into ‘majik’ -- that’s ‘magic’ with the alternate spelling." Giles was dully amazed at his own honesty. He felt as if his words were leaving his mouth by their own volition. He didn’t care enough to curb them. "Some of us were quite talented, but we lacked discipline and patience and dedication. We only wanted to learn to do a few tricks, something to kill the boredom, rather than hone our abilities into a proper skill. We did a ‘trick,’ a very, very, foolish one. And when it was over, and I had the blood of a boy my own age quite literally on my hands, I suddenly saw my ‘mates’ for who we were: foolish, posturing youths."

"Yeah, great, some kid got killed and you repented."

"No, no . . . We thought we were powerful. ‘Cool.’ Rebels. When that boy died . . . it shook us. We all felt it, some more than others. We recognized that we were group of thugs, looking to magic to fix every problem in our lives. Heh–‘problems.’ ‘My dad doesn’t understand me,’ that was my huge ‘problem,’ that’s what I was running from. My irresponsibility was hurting myself, and my family. And I decided then that that would be the end of it. I never associated with those boys again."

Spike stubbed out his cigarette in the chipped saucer with a bit more aggression than necessary. He noticed the inch of ash dangling from Giles’, and debated watching to see if it would set something on fire. With regret, he took the cigarette from the man’s slack thumb and fore-finger and stubbed it out as well.

"Hope you don’t regret all this honesty in the mornin’, Rupes."

The sound of rapping at the front door filled the room. Spike hesitated. Giles didn’t move. "All right. Don’t get up," Spike sniffed.

Giles became cognizant of an amorphous, disembodied impression of more people in his house. He opened his eyes and came close to starting when his field of vision was filled with Spike.

"It’s the girls," Spike’s mouth said. "They’ve got the spell. ‘appy days are here again, eh, mate?"