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A/N: I realise it has been a very long time since I updated this fic. I have found it very difficult to write lately, but I’m hoping by watching the show again that I can warm up to it again. I look forward to hearing what you think of this chapter.

Part Nine

“What’s this?” Buffy eyed her present in disbelief, holding it away from her body as if it were a snake.

Spike rolled his eyes in exasperation and clenched his jaw. “Are you being intentionally obtuse? It’s a bloody mobile phone, Slayer. A bloke’s going to find it more than a little difficult to save the world if he’s not even in the bleeding loop now, isn’t he?”

In one bold move, Buffy recognised that there were no limits to the weirdness that Spike would stoop to be super-hero vamp. It almost made her smile. Would have, really, if she wasn’t staring down the front door of her house. The one where her mother might be doing normal, homey things behind it.

Not for the first time in the past hour since they’d arrived in Sunnydale and parked in the street did Buffy feel terror ice her veins and some desperate coward inside of her scream at her to leave.

“Can’t we just go somewhere else tonight? I can come here tomorrow and do the peace-making thing.” Her eyes were appealingly wide, and yet Spike showed no sympathy.

“I’m plannin’ to bunk down in a crypt. You’re more than welcome to join me, though I wager it might be cold. Got plenty of warm blood to keep us toasty, then?”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Buffy accused a little loudly, lowering her voice immediately to a low hiss as a shadow passed by the living room window inside. “In LA, it’s all with the swishy hotels and the…the seductive massage oils, and here it’s the cold, dark, way less-than-seductive home of the not-so-recently dead. Way to woo a girl.”

Buffy realised too late that Spike could construe that as total willingness to be wooed, and a blush stole over her cheeks. When she was brave enough to face him again, he was staring straight at her. Then he blinked.

“I brought the oils.” He buckled under Buffy’s look of outrage. “What? It was a hotel. They bloody beg you to pinch stuff by not having it bolted down. Now get your ass out of my car and go make happy with your mum. I’ve got things to do.” His petulant, impatient tone delayed the difficult part of their goodbye, but it fast came back to taunt the responsible side of the Slayer.

A shiver inched its way up Buffy’s spine, settling into the base of her skull with an irritating iciness. “I know we’ve never discussed it, but—”

“Oh, let me guess. I can’t go about saving the world, only to knock off the meals in the quiet time? I’m not daft, Slayer. Wouldn’t put myself at risk by snacking on the locals while joined with you at the hip.”

Not that that was where Buffy had pictured them joined—and her face flamed red again with the unbidden lustiness of her imagination. She didn’t have much to work with—nothing reality based at least. But there was enough there to get her mind ticking with possibilities—and she of course knew the basics.

“Yeah, that was kinda—” She drifted out of the conversation, bordering on stunned that Spike had apparently given up his on-tap menu, and being terrified that her mom wouldn’t really be happy she was back.

“Look, your mum isn’t getting any younger. You want me to come in with you? She seemed to like me the last time.” His cocky grin gave her the confidence to pick up her bag and put her hand on the door handle, twisting it slow and light until the catch released and the door creaked open.

“Do you have a number programmed in here? You know, if I have to call you for some reason?” She couldn’t believe how hard she was shaking, and that it had more to do with the fact that she wouldn’t even have Spike sleeping at her back anymore. It was an oddity she’d fast come to cherish.

Spike didn’t answer with words. He reached out and took the hand that held the candy pink phone, flipped it open and scanned the address book until he came across ‘SPIKE’ and chose it, waiting for the seconds it took for his own newest toy—bad in black—to play the theme to Phantom of the Opera. He grinned as he disconnected the call gently, and held Buffy’s hand.

“Your mum’s going to be happy you’re back. Probably throw you a party and everything.” He bit his lip as he watched her, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “I could crash it anytime. All you need to do is call.” And then he kissed her, a sweet devotion to her lips that had Buffy giving in and craving more. It was so new, so heart-thumpingly innocent and scary, kind of first-datey but it made her courageous enough to leave him behind with a tortured release of his lips as she finally left the car.

He drove off as soon as she stood at the door and Buffy had to smile at his refusal to be her crutch, or allow her somewhere to run to if she chickened out. She frowned. At least, she hoped that’s why he’d gone, though she really should make more of an effort to remember that he was still evil and probably had left through nothing more sinister than thoughtlessness.

And before she knew it, her mom was opening the door and hugging her, and months of misery just washed away.

~~~~~

It was awkward.

This settling-into-being-a-dependent-thing after being on her own for so long? Not as easy as it would seem. Unpacking the few things in her bag, Buffy felt like each of her possessions no longer belonged where it had lived only mere months earlier. That she no longer belonged where she had lived only months earlier. She’d found new places for her things, had even made room in her apartment the few days that Spike had been with her for his duffle bag of grunge. Though he had hair care products. Expensive ones.

The point was, in her mind she’d grown up in between the sleazy slaps on the ass at her place of work, and that massage that blew her fuses back at Spike’s hotel room. She felt like she’d outgrown so much—possibly even her friends—and the thought of facing it simply terrified her. She was seventeen, almost eighteen, and had supported herself after the most devastating experience of her life. And while she’d made some really suspect decisions regarding allowing Spike so much potential power in their sort-of relationship, they’d been her decisions to make. The realisation that all of her decisions from now on would return to the initial passage through the friend-filter was suffocating.

What were they all going to think of Spike being back and not so much with the killing them? How would they deal with her reappearance like she’d only been away at her dad’s for the summer? Would they even want her back after what she’d put them all through with her Angel heartache and misjudgement?

Would Giles?

Buffy felt chilled thinking about it and reached for a cardigan. Funny, she hadn’t even missed this outfit when she’d rarely had the chance to change out of her uniform. And this shade of blue? So did not match Spike’s uniform of black if they were going to be the slaying superhero duo of the Hellmouth. She needed something sleeker, clingier and sexier. And now she just needed a quick trip to the nearest psychiatrist to explain to her why she was thinking of dressing appropriately to fight alongside the evil undead.

Creeping down the hallway, Buffy felt almost scared to ask permission to go out and find her friends. Finding her mom beating a hole into her bedroom wall really should have clued her in to the repressed anger simmering under the surface, but she had to wait for the subtle barbs pointed straight at her in conversation.

Tiptoeing over the eggshells in the hall, combined with the racket of the hammer, meant that Buffy had surpassed the unnecessary test for stealth and she felt a flush of guilt as she made her mother jump and twirl in surprise.

“I-I guess I just got used to all the quiet while you were gone.” And even if it wasn’t meant to, it made Buffy feel small and wrong. Joyce’s smile went nowhere near to clearing up the discomfort. “But, it’s no problem.”

Buffy nodded, her gaze following the hideous decoration her mother was covering the hole with and wondered if she’d be needed to slay it at some point. The teeth alone gave her the heebie-jeebies and she just knew it was the kind of thing to give Xander nightmares.

“Uh, look!” The mask dangled on the hook and began an inventory of the room. “It's, uh, Nigerian. We got a very exciting shipment in at the Gallery.” Joyce looked around at the few other bare spots on her walls and implied they’d be the perfect places to hang some of the scarier pieces of the collection. “I, um, thought I'd hang a few pieces in here. It cheers up the room.”

Well that explained why Buffy never allowed her mom to take over decorating her space. “It's angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room to suffer.” Although, it was more than possible it was just tapping in to Buffy’s natural gloomy energy that she hadn’t been able to repress since walking through that door earlier in the evening.

The uneasy smiles segued seamlessly into the uneasy inquiries about her current destination. She almost wished she’d left the cardigan in her closet and decided to not brave finding her friends. She badly wanted to postpone this feeling that everything she’d done since sleeping with Angel was wrong on a scale of one to ‘end-of-the-world’ disastrous for just that little bit longer. Or for years—whichever she could get away with. She reneged on the slaying, offering some witty quip to try and end the awkwardness and refusing more food in an effort to just get out of there.

But the second the cold air hit her face, she felt like crying tears of defeat. This felt so wrong—like everything had lived on without her and it wasn’t just Angel she’d discarded from the Hellmouth, but herself as well. She couldn’t even think why she was out looking for Willow. The ease of a ‘best friend’ relationship was gone and Buffy didn’t know the first thing about approaching a group of people she’d skipped out on without even a goodbye. She couldn’t explain her actions to herself—only knowing that she’d needed to get away rather than be forced to tear herself apart between the looks of censure for not killing Angelus sooner, or the ones of sympathy for losing her boyfriend along with her innocence.

Just as she was calculating the distance between where she stood and the still open bag on her bed, Buffy felt the weight of a heavy, leather-clad arm drape across her shoulders.

“Thought you’d be off schmoozing with your mates, not dragging your bottom lip along the footpath.”

He was here, out in the night and near to where the card-carrying heart beating humans all hung out. Dread shimmied the length of her nerves and Buffy stiffened under his loose embrace, knowing his dietary habits was a thing she should be diligently questioning him on, but she was too desperate to hold onto the one thing she’d known so solidly in recent days.

“Hey,” she began, hardly daring to look up in case she spied a speck of blood at his mouth, robbing her of the comfort of having him at her side when she was too scared to face anything else. Spike had been largely responsible for directing her home, had encouraged it and given her the strength to return to her mom, but did she have to go further than that and renew her old life completely? “I thought you were out looking for somewhere to stay?”

“Was. All set up in a very comfy crypt with a view. Just out and about for a little nourishment before bedtime.” His arm didn’t tense, remaining relaxed. He was oblivious to her turmoil.

The decisions he was forcing on her were making her crazy. On some wild urge, she was back home—her desperation to get away from him backfiring when said vampire bundled her up in his car and acted as her chauffer. How could she focus on how evil he was when he kept doing sweet things to disarm her? Like buying snack food because her belly rumbled, or providing a scruffy blanket that smelled far too much of scorched flesh for her peace of mind, but which kept her warm while he had the windows down to air out his smoke?

But she couldn’t let him kill and then discount it because he was saving more lives than he was taking. She couldn’t take the responsibility of bringing him to her family and friends, only to have him eating them behind her back.

With tears in her throat, and dread making her feel light-headed and body-heavy, Buffy stopped their strolling pace and turned to stare straight into eyes flickering with a jovial spirit.

“Use me.” Her tone was loaded with sacrifice, but if she’d known just how much of herself she’d seemingly offered, she wouldn’t have remained the light, easy colour of health.

Spike did his recognisable head tilt and Buffy’s breathing became a little more laboured. “Rather not, pet. Not really into meaningless sex. If I was, I’d go for some bimbo vamp I could stake before she annoyed me to death.”

The mention of sex brought the mistaken meaning of her words right out into the open and Buffy’s eyes opened comically wide. “Bite me, moron. I meant you could use me to feed from if it will keep you from snacking on the citizens of Sunnydale.”

She didn’t realise how much she had actually thought the possibility had merit—and for reasons other than saving the lives of people she didn’t know—until he declined.

“No.”

There was dumbfounded silence, and then Buffy took a step back and let Spike’s arm fall from her body. She felt humiliated and rejected—and cold—and as far as it was from the first time, the experience wasn’t any easier to accept. It was totally obscene, but Buffy felt like she was going to cry and Spike was the last person she wanted seeing her tears.

“I think you should go.” Her voice was crackly with the strain of trying to hide her disappointment, and Buffy took another protective step backward.

“Just hold on a bleeding minute, you presumptuous bint. I’m not gonna use you like some cow. The ONLY way I’ll bite you is if I’m draining you dry or fucking you raw. No middle ground—nothing to prove. Besides,” he taunted, taking a step closer to her very accurate statue impersonation. “I got me some take-out.” And he held up some blood bags that could have come from nowhere but the hospital—complete with blood type stickers on them.

She was stunned into stupidity. “You aren’t eating people?”

Spike stalked closer, resting his hand on her shoulder and bending down to her eye level. “Let me say this slowly, just so you can understand. I know you can’t let me live if I’m hanging around, knocking off the produce while I’m trying to save the herd. Give me some bloody credit, woman!”

Buffy blinked, and all she could see was a blood bag with no neck hanging from it, and his lips, and she’d never been so hungry or relieved in her life. “Oh,” she gasped and collapsed in his arms.

He hugged her tight, an absurdly happy grin on his lips.

And then Xander burst around the corner.





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