Grievious Bodily Harm
by
Anonymous

"Why are we listening to this crap?" she says for the tenth time tonight. "I want to listen to Ricky Martin."

I roll my eyes and turn the volume up, muttering the lyrics to "Belsen Was a Gas" under my breath. She's never heard of Belsen (which I've actually seen, by the way), and she's never heard of the band that's screeching about it right now (which I've also seen, and partied with, but that's another story). She may be immortal- God help us- but her memories don't extend past 1985. Stupid bint.

The car swerves slightly. Our current accerleration is quickly approaching the speed of sound. But the faster we get to Sunnyhell, the sooner I won't have to be trapped in this fucking car with her.

"Come on, baby," she whines. "Let's listen to something else."

**Ignore, Spike. I-G-N-O-R-E. Jesus Christ, you put up with a clairvoyant lunatic trying your patience for a hundred and forty years. You are not going to let this annoying little bitch get the best of you.**

"Spike, I thought you *loved* me."

**Yeah, well, you were misled.**

"Why do we have to go back to Sunnydale? It's such a one-Starbucks town. I thought we were going to France."

I roll my eyes. She sounds just like that goddamn Slayerette Cordelia. Apparently she was one of her disciples or something back at Sunnydale High. And I wish I'd never mentioned fucking France, I've heard nothing else out of her since.

"I told you already. We're looking for the Gem of Amara."

"Is it gonna be pretty?"

"I don't know, Harm. I don't know what it looks like. I'm not even sure where it is."

"Sounds like a big waste of time to me."

I suppress a growl of annoyance. She's still a fledgling, barely two months old, and she still takes immortality at face value. The stupid wanker that fucked her and then turned her told her that she would live forever, and she believed him. She has no concept of what an uphill battle forever can be, so she doesn't understand why this gem is so goddamn important. Sunlight's one thing- not that tough to stay out of if you're careful, and besides that I grew up in England, so I hardly miss it. Crosses, holy water- religion was never my thing, and they're pretty easily avoided. Stakes, though, are another story altogether, especially with the bleeding Slayer breathing down my neck. There are places that are safer, of course, but they're rather dull. If you want to be where the action is- and I do- then you have to accept that there will always be Slayers and other do-gooders to contend with.

But this gem could change all that, at least for me. Truth is, I want to be the Vampire Master of Sunnydale. I want the kind of power I had before Angelus, before Acathla, before my whole life went to hell. Sure, it's a shitty little town, but a Hellmouth is a Hellmouth, and I want this one to be mine. This gem is just what I need to whip the minions into shape and have the whole town at my mercy.

God, I love power. It's wonderfully distracting.

I could use the distraction these days. I've been pretty damn miserable since I got back in the States, and Harm's company doesn't help much.

"I just don't see why we have to go back. You know that yucky Slayer's out there and she's gonna kick your ass."

I'm going to kill her. Self-control has never been a strong point with me and, in spite of all my half-assed reasons for keeping her around, I am quite sure that I'm going to kill the stupid little bitch before it's over with. I will stake her, and I will watch all her trendy threads and cute hair accessories dissolve into a puff of dust, and I will laugh hysterically. Then I will torch her Ricky Martin albums.

"I mean, what about when they find out we're back?"

"They're not going to find out, ducks."

I've got to keep quiet once we get back to Sunnydale. One, obviously, the Slayerettes don't need to know I'm here. And two, I don't want anyone to know I've hooked up with her. I find it mildly embarrassing. She really isn't my type. I only have one type, and she's in Venezuela fucking something covered in lichen. But still, I never thought I could see myself with a girl like this. I've known Chaos demons with a higher I.Q. and her taste in music is absolutely abhorrent.

"Oh, my God!" she exclaims.

"Problems, pet?" I murmur, not really concerned. Harm's crises are usually not of academic proportions. I remove The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle from the CD player and search for something else from the pile of discs between us on the seat.

"My nail polish is chipped!"

"That's nice, luv," I say absent-mindedly and put in Punk in Drublic, secure in the knowledge that she hates new-school punk rock even more than old-school. Not that I'm trying to deliberately annoy her. Really. I'm not.

"I need to fix it. Pull over and get my luggage out of the trunk."

I look at her as if she's lost her mind. "You must be out of your tree," I say incredulously.

"I'm not out of my whatever. Go get my makeup bag."

"Harm," I say with as much patience as I can muster, "one, we're not stoppin' till we hit Sunnydale, I told you that already. And two, pet, it's three o' clock in the soddin' afternoon. I explained this to you, didn't I? Vampires, sun, bad combination, not a pretty sight?"

"I know that," she retorts hotly. "I'm not an idiot like your last girlfriend."

I feel my game face surface suddenly. I'm going to kill her. I'm going to rip her fucking head off.

"Oooh," she sighs. There's an edge of triumph in her voice. "Someone's upset."

She does this on purpose, she does it to get a rise out of me, and I will be damned if I'm going to give her the satisfaction. So instead I ignore her, again, and turn up the stereo. Way, *way* up.

New vampires aren't used to their enhanced hearing, and loud noises often startle them. And Harm *really* hates NOFX.

"Ow!" she cries, clamping her hands down over her ears as "Linoleum" reverberates through the car. "You big meanie!"

Now, I have been called a lot of things in my time. My fellow Londoners called me William the Bloody, from my days as a highwayman who showed no hesitation about slitting the throats of those who didn't do things my way. The French have called me le Tueur des Tueurs, or Slayer of Slayers, since I bagged my second one in Paris in 1943. In Beijing and Belfast they still call me Vampire Master, although I haven't been back in years. And the current Slayer has called me a pig on several occasions. But Harm is the only person who has ever accused me of being a "big meanie."

She has other names for me as well, of course, much nicer ones. She calls me "blondie-bear" and other similarly disgusting nicknames, but the truth is, I don't mind all that much. I like the attention. Sometimes she reminds me of Dru. Just blonde. Slightly less insane. And more obnoxious. I call her "baby," sometimes, if I'm in a good mood- which is a rare thing these days.

She asked me once if she was my princess. I told her in no uncertain terms that she was not.

She doesn't like hearing about Dru, for whom she has developed her own personal repertory of nicknames, all of them rude. I try to keep my temper. I hit her once for referring to Dru as "Dorkus" and she smiled and told me she liked it rough. The last thing I need is another sodding masochist. I try not to mention Dru too often- it just annoys her and upsets me- but I can't help it. She was my Princess and I miss her so badly it feels like I'm being eaten alive. Harm's just a shoddy substitute and I know it. I think that, on some level, she knows it, too.

"Come on, baby," she says, switching tacks, "please turn it down."

I ignore her.

"Spi-ike... come on... turn it down! Spike, I don't like it, it's loud and nasty and yucky and Ricky Martin's so much better and I feel like I've been stuck in this car since the Civil War!"

I remember the Civil War. It was nearly this boring. But nowhere near this painful.

"And I don't even want to go to Sunnydale anyway, I want to go to France and go shopping and I don't want to listen to this yucky music and I want, I want, I want-"

I'm trying my best to tune her out but, Jesus Christ, I cannot *bear* listening to her whine. I turn the stereo down. "All right," I say, "but I'm not going to get your soddin' nail polish. And I don't want to hear another word about it, or it's Bad Religion on the stereo for you, pet." She knows I mean it.

We met in a seedy vamp bar near Venice Beach. I'd been driving practically nonstop for a couple of weeks, and I was as horny as hell. Dru had become increasingly indifferent to me in our final weeks together, and I felt like I hadn't gotten any since the whole Acathla fiasco. I wanted a girl, any girl- hell, even a human one would do. And, to her credit, she was the one who started flirting first.

**"Hey, baby. What's your name?"**

She was cute, and nubile, and clearly more than a little intoxicated. I, for my part, was hard as a rock and drunk off my ass, a bad combination that got me into a lot of odd situations as a human. I chatted her up for awhile and discovered that we had a lot in common. All right, scratch that. We have nothing in common. She wears little butterfly pins in her hair and listens to the fucking Backstreet Boys, who I intend to personally find and drain dry someday for what they are doing to the modern music scene. But we had some common acquaintances in Sunnydale, at least, and that kept her talking long enough for me to talk her into bed.

"I'm hungry."

"Then you should have fed before we left L.A. I told you to eat."

"That old man was yucky. I wanted something else. I mean, we were right near Hollywood and everything, you could have found me a cute wannabe actor or something."

I sigh. "Harm, blood is blood. The packaging may differ, but I assure you that it tastes pretty much the same across the board. Someday you will realize that." I swear, sometimes I have no idea why I even keep her around.

**Ahem**, my libido says discretely.

Oh, yeah. That.

The sex is fantastic, I can't deny that. It's also nice to have her around, nice to wake up next to her every evening, nice to have someone to talk to on the long car rides (although the sound of her voice is starting to grate on my nerves right about now). Nice to hear her say she loves me, even though I know she doesn't mean it. I don't love her and she doesn't know what love is. She may be a vampire now, but her thoughts and feelings are still very much human, and humans have no idea what love is. They have no concept of forever.

I don't want forever with this girl. I don't even want a while. But right now is still good.

Part of me wonders whether I shouldn't just go ahead and get rid of her, strike out on my own. It's not like it's going to last, and she's pushing the limits of my patience. I don't need her, I don't like her, and she's a fucking liability as it is- if my master plan fucks up, it will probably be because Harm couldn't keep her mouth shut. Maybe I should just forget all this bollocks. Ditch the girl, get the gem, go back to Sunnydale and start over.

Except I know that there is no "starting over" in Sunnydale, not with all the memories lurking in the shadows, ghosts of Drusilla at every turn. No, I'm not going to dump Harm, not yet, anyway. I'm not ready. I was with Dru for over a hundred years and I'm not any good at being alone. I don't love Harmony. I don't even like her. But it's nice to have someone around. Which is why there's another, much smaller part of me that wonders if I should just find someone else, someone I can stand- someone worthy of all the attention that I'm willing to lavish on a girl, if I really love her. But there's only one girl I love, and she's-

**(say it)**

-not coming back. I'm not going to find anyone else like her, either, and trust me when I say that vampire dating is a horrific ritual that makes St. Vigeous and Acathla put together look like a day at Disneyland.

So I stay with Harm, because the conversation may be awful but the sex is great, and she looks into my eyes with a kind of stupid innocence and tells me that she loves me, and it feels good. It makes some of the emptiness go away, just for a moment.

We approach Sunnydale; I light a cigarette and turn the stereo up. No crashing through the sign this time, though. Those days are over.

Time for Spikey to turn over a new leaf.

Finis