"But...."

"Move!" Willow and Tara pushed past the vampire carrying a wicker trunk of magical thingamabobs between them. Behind them came the Watcher, his arms full of bagged cotton candy and his guitar case slung over his shoulder.

"You really don't want to do this!" Spike called after the Scoobies. It was Riley who spun on him, one finger pressed against the vampire's sternum.

"Yes, we do," he said. "We do not care who it is or who it may have dated. We are not going to question it. We are going to kill it before it completes the ritual that will sacrifice some beach baby to its... abominable lust!" Riley jabbed the finger hard at Spike, who fell backward on his tush.

No doubt about it. The Slayer had really crap taste in Irishmen, and this one didn't listen any better than the last one. Spike was about to climb to his feet when Anya and Xander stepped over him. The young man was carrying an assortment of spears.

"You'll not need those!" Spike called. Xander only grinned at him. Berk.

"Spike?" A hand floated in the air above him, a hand bearing the Watcher's ring.

"You lot are in over your head," said Spike, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

"No more so than usual," Giles smiled.

"You might be...."

Spike's warning was lost in a demonic roar as the thing rushed upon them, a forest of antlers coated with dripping blue slime.

"Don't get it on you!" he shouted as he retreated, or tried to. Somehow his legs and the Watcher's got tangled up, and they both wound up prone in the sand with the demon looming over them.

"I've got it!" Xander shouted, and speared the thing as if it were a mad boar. Slime exploded, totally soaking Giles and Spike and liberally coating the others. The demon vanished in a foul puff of sooty dust.

"Way to go, Xander!" came Willow's delighted squeal.

"Eejit!" Spike snarled as he pulled Giles to his feet and shoved him past Xander toward the surf.

"Hey! I just saved your scrawny vampiric butt!"

Spike ignored the boy.

"Get it off you!" he ordered, shedding his clothing as he ran across the wide beach laid bare by low tide.

"It doesn't hurt," Giles said. Spike spun and began to tug at the Watcher's clothing.

"It doesn't have to," Spike said. "Agh, too late!" Behind them Anya was on her always uninhibited knees nuzzling Xander's crotch, and Riley and Buffy were squirming on the beach, sand already caked on their bare flanks. Willow and Tara... Spike closed his eyes. That was just too much beautiful bare bosom to be in one relationship unless he himself were involved.

"It's an aphrodisiac?" said Giles with more than a touch of a giggle.

"Come on," Spike said, and led him into the water. The Watcher waded out a ways and then began to swim with brisk strokes that hardly stirred the silvery water.

"Aren't you coming?" he called.

"Vampires can't swim," Spike reminded him. "We can't even floa....oat!" Something had moved under his foot. Crab, or some such, probably, but it threw him off balance, and he fell sputtering to the bottom.

Words echoed from the depths of Spike's memory, Drusilla's warnings of vampires fallen overboard who starved to death in the cold dark depths, and Darla's laughter when Angelus tossed Spike off a ferry into the middle of a lake. He'd been two days walking out, sun barely filtering through the water above to show him odd human bones half buried in the muck. He hadn't been back in deep water since, but now he was going to die....

Something grabbed him under the arms, something warm, and he found himself lifted in a strong grasp until his head broke water and he took a reflexive, unneeded breath.

"Stand up, you fool!" Giles growled. Spike did, but he had slid further out when he fell, and the water lapped at his chin. He clutched at the Watcher's arm.

"I hate water," he whispered.

"I can see that." Giles's tone had gentled. "Come on, let's get closer to shore." An arm slid around Spike's waist, and they waded together to the edge and sat down with the surf swirling around them.

"Do you want to go further up?" Giles asked. Spike arched his eyebrows as the sound of the Slayer's screaming orgasm uncoiled across the sand. Giles pursed his lips. "Perhaps not," he said. "How long does it take the slime to wear off?"

"Couple of days, if you just get splashed like they did. Once they get it off, that is. The slime. Once they get the slime off."

"Well, I'm not dragging them down here and bathing them. Even a Watcher has to have some limits. What are you laughing at?"

"I had this vision of you dragging naked Xander into the water with Anya after you...."

"I'd never survive the experience," Giles chuckled. "Does that mean you volunteer to take Riley away from Buffy?"

"Here, those two can shag themselves to death if they like."

More chuckles, and then silence. Serious silence.

"Spike? About that demon. I hope it wasn't the one."

"I hope it was."

"Well. So... oh, dear."

"What?"

"I seem to be... feeling the effects of the slime."

"Me, too," said Spike. "You've got to expect. I mean, we got the worst of it. Slimed, I mean."

"So, is there any way...?"

"Do they not tell you about the birds and the bees in Watcher training? For shame."

Giles grinned at him, and the moonlight dancing on the water sparkled in his eyes.

"Where're your glasses?" Spike asked. Oh, God, please do not let them be lost in the water....

"In my jacket pocket," Giles said. His lips had a graceful arc that....

No. This was not on. Bloody Angelus could date a Slayer if it pleased him, but Spike was not so far gone as to lay hands on a Watcher. He had lived in the man's house for weeks, almost bathed in his scent, and never even fantasized anything but sinking his fangs into that long, lovely neck. Of course he'd usually been wanking something fierce when he thought it, but....

Lips touched his, teasing, and then trailed across his cheek.

"You don't want to do this," Spike babbled. "I'm a demon. I've killed people. I've tortured...." He was panicking. He was absolutely wigging at the touch of a human. He was an impotent joke of an Alpha vampire.

Well, maybe impotent wasn't quite the word....

Giles's mouth pressed close to Spike's ear, so close that his warm breath puffed against it.

"I remember once when you were the one who stopped the torture. Do you?"

"That's different. That was just spoiling his fun. Angelus. Spoiling his...."

"Do you not like men, Spike? Have you never...?"

"Just him. Angelus. Him and the other one, his grandsire." Each of whom had been eager to throw the pretty young fledge across any convenient surface and ram themselves into a random orifice. Spike shuddered, and Giles pulled him closer.

"It's all right," the Watcher said.

"Do you really want to do this? I mean, there's no great love lost...."

A hand caught at Spike's chin and tipped it up until he was gazing into the Watcher's eyes.

"You could blame it on the slime." he said. The hair on his chest was sparkling, moonlight on damp shifting as it rose, fell, rose again, great barrel chest, a singer's chest, its heart beating, the blood roaring, rushing up into the carotid, almost visible.

Spike kissed the spot, kissed Giles's neck and felt the warm coursing blood. The Watcher fell back into the shallow water and lifted Spike and set him down on top of him, skin against skin, thigh against thigh, and the tenderest parts of them pressed between.

"Nice," Spike said, circling his hips. "Oh, very nice!"

"Just the slime," Giles whispered again. His hands guided Spike's hips into a rocking rhythm, the friction exciting parts already swollen with need. Fingers trailed over Spike's chest, tweaking his nipples, and the rhythm quickened.

"Kiss me," Spike gasped, and found his face cradled in soft hands, his lips captured and ravished, an electric current spitting down ah, down... think of something else or it'll all be over... think of the throat, his throat... oh, God, Spike needed to bite, to feel the blood rushing in his mouth as it rushed in his cock. He could almost see the pulse in Giles's throat. And then his arm swept across, under the Watcher's chin, and Spike buried his fangs in it as his cock spat gobs of seed that smeared over their skin until the surf rushed between their bodies and washed it away.

"Oh, but that was grand!" he whispered, and then moved and found the hardness still pressing against him. Grinning, he spread one hand flat and held Giles's rod against his own belly, his hips grinding against fervent thrusts until ribbons of come against spattered against Spike's skin.

"Just the slime?" Spike asked when it was over.

"Do they bottle that stuff?"

"I don't think that lot would survive." Spike pointed with his chin toward Xander and Anya, sitting coitally entwined and watching what Tara was doing to Willow. Spike settled his head against the Watcher's chest to enjoy the show.

"So how long does it last if one gets doused in the stuff the way we did?"

Spike tweaked at a nipple with his front teeth, and Giles's body writhed under him.

"Could last the rest of our lives," he said.

"That," replied the Watcher, "would be... very nice. Very nice indeed."