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Author's Chapter Notes:
Anais Nin was an erotic writer and diarist alive between 1903-1977. She famously had an affair with Henry Miller and her best known work is a collection of pornographic stories called "The Delta of Venus." She actually did have an affair with her own father and wrote about it in her diary. After her death the book detailing the incident was published under the title "Incest."
Spike is totally lying about having slept with her. Her unexpurgated journals weren't published until after she died, so he'd have no notion of whether or not he was going to make the cut.
She is a better writer than me in most every way, and if you haven't read her, you should.
The Bronze was crowded but Buffy found her friends quickly.
Willow had never been so relieved to see Buffy, which was saying a lot given how many times Buffy had saved her life.

Anya and Xander were in the throes of another wedding argument. The succession of matrimonial planning debacles had left cute several months ago and had entered into the realm of hellish torture. Willow could only imagine what it would be like to be in the eye of the storm and was almost glad as a lesbian she wasn’t allowed to get married. It was the first time she’d been kinda grateful for the government violating her civil rights.

Anya was elbow deep in a plate of onion rings covered with cheese and possibly bacon while Xander was eating a sleeve of Ritz Crackers he’d apparently brought with him. They’d both been stress eating, which added the element of flying crumbs to the already toxic atmosphere. Willow was sitting with her head propped up on one hand, chewing on the tiny plastic sword that had once pierced the olive in her martini.

“Maybe if we put up bunk beds, or possibly hammocks?” Anya said.

“Ahn, I’m not setting up barracks in my living room to house our guests. Either don’t invite the hive or tell them to get a hotel like normal…they’re not people are they? Whatever the preferred term for what they are is. Besides, they chew through everything,” Xander said.

“That’s what locusts do. I had no idea you were so prejudiced,” Anya said.

“Buffy!” Willow said. Willow’s face lit up and she folded her hands in her lap. “You look so pretty, is that a new dress?”

“This? I just tore down some curtains, whipped it up for tonight,” Buffy said.

Xander looked up from his rapidly diminishing pile of crackers and smiled.

“Those are some lucky curtains,” he said.

“I wish I could strip that dress off of you,” Anya said.

Xander’s eyes got dreamy, while Willow and Buffy just looked at Anya in confusion.

“Strip it off of you to have for my own. It’s an item of clothing I’d like to possess, I didn’t mean it to sound so aggressively sexual,” Anya said.

Xander stood up and grabbed his fiancée around the waist.

“Let’s go dance,” he said. She started blushing, and he practically carried her over to the dance floor.

“I think your dress saved their marriage,” Willow said.

“I’m here to help.”

Buffy pulled up a chair and sat beside her friend. They used to be able to talk about anything, but lately a gulf of experience had opened between them. Buffy had intimate knowledge of one of the biggest mysteries of the universe--death. Even more impressive, Willow had power over life and death.

Buffy was convinced her life was never going to be any more than a string of minimum wage jobs and escalating violence. Her responsibilities as a slayer and caregiver for Dawn outweighed whatever personal goals she might have. She was going to die fighting. Again.

Willow had become addicted to controlling the people around her which had cost her the love of her life. Trying to get a handle on her own power was affecting Willow like a junkie going through withdrawal.

Given all that, why was the fact that Buffy was shagging a vampire the hardest topic for her to breach? In the scheme of things, it wasn’t really a big deal, it’s not like she’d never dated a vampire before, if you could call marathon sex and vehement denial, dating. It sure felt more like dating than chaste cuddling and never-ending emotional grief. If she could just get over her hang ups about kink and evil, everything would be fine. Right.

Buffy had arrived at a few unpleasant revelations about herself through her thing with Spike. She realized that Riley was right about her not opening up to him emotionally, but wrong about the reasons why. Riley had gone down a dangerous path to try to understand her, dabbling sexually with female vampires. These exchanges weren’t sex, sex; more the equivalent of paying a dominatrix.

What he didn’t understand was that Buffy didn’t want Riley to relate to her darkness. Part of the reason she wanted Riley was because she wanted him to protect her from her own impulses.

Riley was all about wholesome, endless missionary lovin’ and he got most of his erotic tips from Maxim. After they'd watched “Henry and June” on Cinemax, Spike claimed to have had sex with Anais Nin. And her father. At the same time.

“O.K., liar, then why didn’t you eat them,” Buffy had asked.

“I wanted to see if I’d make the diary,” Spike said.

“Did you?”

“No, I think we did a few things she was embarrassed about,” Spike said.

Riley would take a shower and brush his teeth before they would even start to do the deed; Spike smelled like a drunken ashtray that had been fighting and fucking in equal measure. Although, that wasn’t entirely true anymore. He still tasted like whiskey and cigarettes, but Spike had begun washing himself up in the sink at the gas station bathroom around the corner from his crypt. He called it a whore’s bath.

Riley fucked like a drill bit, which is great if you’re a block of wood. Spike was more like a safe cracker; he’d use his fingers with subtle delicacy but if that didn’t work he’d employ other methods to get inside, and once he left she always felt empty. Riley thought kissing outside was extremely naughty and shuddered when he described Faith’s attempts to initiate role playing.

And Spike was…Spike.

The types of feelings she was exploring with him frightened her. Buffy liked to hurt him, really hurt him. Spike’s body was designed to take an incredible amount of pain, and he gladly offered it up to her. He enjoyed it. His pleasure pushed her to extend the agony, just to see how much he could take. Buffy didn’t like pain much, but she longed for it with a mindless abandon. She couldn’t stand when he was gentle, because it made the guilt for hurting him too much to bear.

Once she woke up to find Spike just holding her, his lips pressed to her forehead. Buffy was disgusted with herself; it was the one type of touch she would’ve denied him had she been awake. He’d craved that connection so much he’d reached out for her in his sleep. Buffy had to remind herself that he wasn’t a person and he didn’t have a soul, so he didn’t really feel things like love, no matter what he said, no matter how he made her feel. It was the only way she could keep getting what she needed from him.

That’s the kind of girl she was.

Riley was supposed to keep her safe from herself, but in the end she couldn’t keep him safe from her. What she desired had ruined him, just like it did to Angel. Angel had been so fascinated with her “purity” as he put it, so in love with the fact that she was a virgin and his alone. Once she threw away that purity to be with him, really be him, it had all gone to hell. Literal hell. Buffy sometimes wondered if she had driven Parker away, maybe he’d sensed it when they were together that one time. Parker had asked her if she was a virgin and seemed disappointed when she admitted she wasn’t. Willow had said it was probably because he had a notebook stashed somewhere with stats and had been hoping to add another hash mark to his devirginization table.

Thinking about her one night stand with scummy Parker meant she’d sunk into the dank marshes of self pity. That was no good, Buffy thought. Instead of focusing on herself, Buffy decided to make a conscious effort to genuinely listen to Willow. Her best friend had been going through just as much as she had, maybe more. Buffy’s mind snapped back to the moment.

“So, how goes with Willow?”

“It goes pretty well. Better than before, actually. Been keeping my nose clean, no magic, and, and my classes are really interesting. I’m learning cuneiform,” Willow said.

“Like with stone tablets?”

“Yeah, we just read the stone tablets though, we don’t have to take notes on them,” she said.

“Saves time,” Buffy said.

Willow cast a sidelong glance at Buffy.

“So, you saw Tara today, when she came to pick up Dawn. How did she seem?”

“Good.”

“Did she ask about me?”

“She said she hopes you’re doing well,” Buffy lied.

“How did she look?”

“Pretty much the same. She had on cute shoes,” Buffy said, lamely. She didn’t know what else to say.

“I still love her. It hurts so much, I mean, it would hurt anyway, but it’s worse to know it was all my fault,”

Willow said.

Buffy took her friend’s hand. Willow smiled.

“You know I never thanked you for what you did when I was gone,” Buffy said.

“What, tearing you out of heaven, ruining everything?” Willow said, moving her quirky mouth around the words as though they tasted bitter.

“You didn’t ruin everything,” Buffy said. She hoped saying it out loud would make her feel it, but if she could make Willow believe that, it would be enough.

“What you did for Dawn. You didn’t even think about it, you just started taking care of her. You and Tara could have gone on with your lives and let her go live with my dad, or you could have finally transferred to an Ivy League school, gotten out of Sunnydale,” Buffy said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Willow said.

“See, that’s why you’re you, that’s why you’re amazing,” Buffy said. She gave Willow a hug.

“Am I dying?”

“What?” Buffy gasped, letting her friend go.

“You’re just being so nice. Not that you’re not always nice, but you’re being, you know, extra,” Willow said.

“Is it bad?”

“No, it’s just kind of weird to see you so emotional. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed you,” Willow said.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Buffy said.

The girls started talking about less weighty subjects; school, work, the way Willow’s mom had started a relentless campaign to set her up with someone now that she and Tara had broken up. Buffy mostly just listened to Willow talk. It was therapeutic to step out of the vicious circle her thoughts had become lately and just think about someone else. Buffy wasn’t usually the type to really listen.

Buffy did most things in her life for other people; she patrolled to keep the anonymous populous safe, she quit school and started working to support Dawn, she hid her tears from her friends.

But the truth was, she didn’t think about these things as
sacrifices, she just did them reflexively. Despite all that, there was an inherent, if not selfishness to her personality, than a self-contained quality. Buffy tended not to listen to other people as much.

Though she had a hard time admitting it to herself, she didn’t see them as equals because when it came down to it, she was the one who took responsibility when they died. She was the leader, and if she doubted it for a second, opened herself up to the possibility that somebody else could do a better job, she wouldn’t have the strength to carry on.

The power Buffy had tended to corrupt people—Faith and Willow both buckled under the pressure in their own ways. Faith, another slayer who was currently being incarcerated for her lapses, stopped caring about other people entirely. When Willow became the leader of the group after Buffy’s brief sojourn in the after-life, she totally overstepped right and wrong. Buffy was always a little afraid of her own power, her own strength and its limits.

The only place she ever lost control was with Spike.

Did that count? He was dead, after all. Wasn’t she just engaging in incredibly elaborate masturbation, Buffy thought. Scratch that, what she was actually doing was necrophilia, which was much, much worse.

Oh God, she was making a point to try to listen to Willow and she’d failed miserably, zoning out thinking about Spike’s hands and the way the cracked black nail polish he wore always made them look dirty. She loved watching those dirty fingers sliding inside her. The last time they’d been together he’d dragged it out, made her wait while he gazed between her parted legs.

“God, you’ve got a beautiful cunt. It’s like a soft, little flower dripping with dew. The way you suck my fingers in, like you’re aching for me the way I am for you, like you’ll pull me in and swallow me. I know it’s a cliché and all, but I always was a shite poet, and besides my brain isn’t working so well right now. Blood’s headed in a different direction,” Spike said, stroking her there reverently.

Buffy remembered smiling at him and meeting his eyes; she didn’t even bristle at his crude word. Maybe the English accent made it sound better.

Willow had trailed off and was looking at Buffy with her head cocked, like a dog that was waiting for a treat.

“What?” Buffy asked.

“Nothing, I was talking about Professor Landry’s lecture on ancient Mesopotamia and you turned beet red,” Willow said.

“I just realized I didn’t understand what you were saying, Will, and I got embarrassed. I think I lose about a year’s worth of information every month I’m not in school,” Buffy said. It was mostly true.

“Sorry to get all rambley on you, that topic was sort of esoteric. You still remember what esoteric means, right?” Willow asked, smiling sweetly. She was so cute when she wheedled.

“Yeah, I got it covered,” Buffy said. She paused for a moment and looked down at her hands, then looked back up at Willow.

“I’ve got kind of a weird question to ask you,” Buffy said. She took her hands off the bar and hid them from view in her lap.

“Weird can be good,” Willow said, nodding encouragingly.

“How did you forgive Spike?”

“Well, you sort of forgave him first, and he was strong enough to protect Dawn, so I thought it was a good choice. Did I do wrong?”

“No, not at all. Not then, I mean before. He tried to kill you, and before that he kidnapped you, but when he tried to kill himself, you stopped him. Why?”

Willow had not anticipated this question. She screwed up her brow for a moment.

“Did he hurt you, or something? I mean, not that he could with the biting or anything, but did he hurt you some other way?” Willow asked.

Buffy couldn’t breathe for a second. Of course he hurt her, sometimes she begged him to, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to tell Willow that. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready. Buffy found her breath again, and her voice followed cautiously after.

“It’s nothing like that. I just wanted to know,” Buffy said.

“Well, he’s always been more than your regular vamp, I guess, and at that point he couldn’t hurt anyone,” Willow said.

“What do you mean, more?”

“Well, most of them don’t give you nicknames or tell you jokes. They’re either like rampaging monsters or super-evil like Angelus. Even when Spike was scary, he was less scary. He cared about things, so you could kind of reason with him most of the time, even though he was pretty stocked up with the crazy. Then he was all chipped, and he was like that miserable relative you get stuck hanging out with at the family reunion and then you both realize that you like Stanley Kubrick movies so you have a decent conversation about that but then they make a racist comment and you feel embarrassed for liking them for a second. Not that Spike is racist, which is kind of neat for a guy who’s that old, or wait no!” Willow’s face suddenly lit up and she clapped her hands together, which made Buffy start back.

“He’s Cookie-pie!”

“What’s a Cookie-pie, and why are you saying Spike is something so delicious sounding?”

“Cookie-pie isn’t a literal pie, it was my Nana’s dog, this adorable, little, white teacup poodle,” Willow said.

“Wait, what, you think Spike’s adorable now?”

“No, not adorable. He’s got an amazing body, though. I walked in on him by accident when he was in the shower after one of his and Dawn’s beauty nights …” Willow said.

Buffy threw up her hands and interrupted Willow before she could go any further.

“Hold it, first off aren’t you gay now? Second, what is beauty night and why does it involve a naked Spike with my baby sister? And third, Spike, really?”

“I am gay, but I’m sort of 90/10, if you know what I mean. I could never marry a guy, but I can enjoy their aesthetic properties. Second, beauty night is just what Dawn called it when she’d help dye Spike’s hair. She got a big kick out of doing his nails, too, so he’d put up with it. Anyway, he’d shower—alone--no Dawn in sight for that portion of beauty night, in order to wash the dye out. Also, I don’t think his crypt has plumbing. And third, I guess you can see answer one. Sorry to freak you out, I was just trying out the girl talk. Must be rusty,” Willow said, ticking off her fingers.

“Sorry, that was a lot of information to process all at once, so what were you trying to say about Cookie-pie?” Buffy asked.

“Well, Cookie-pie was just the cutest dog in the whole wide world, but he didn’t like anyone but my Nana. The people who owned it before abused the poor little guy horribly. I don’t even want to think about what they did to him. Anyway, my Nana saved the dog from being put down and when I went to her house I’d try to coax the puppy out of his little puppy hideaway. One day I succeeded, and we were playing fetch. Everything seemed like it was fine, but when I went to pet Cookie-pie, he bit me. It hurt, but his mouth was super-tiny, so it didn’t hurt that much. When my Nana asked me why I needed a bandage, I lied. I was afraid she’d put Cookie-pie down. So Spike’s like that. He can hurt you, if you let him, but then that’s really your fault more than his,” Willow said.

“So, you’re saying he’s like an animal?” Buffy asked. She found that idea both comforting and disturbing.

“No, not exactly, unless Cookie-pie started walking on two legs and talking with an English accent. And for some reason I’m picturing him using a monocle, like that pig in ‘Animal Farm.’ I guess I haven’t worked out the moral ramifications of my metaphor,” Willow said.

“So ethically Spike is somewhere between your racist cousin and a cute, little dog?”

“Right, but closer to the cousin, because it would be wrong to kill Spike just because he got expensive to take care of, but it’s still O.K. to kill him if he hurts people. Besides, he can be sensitive, I guess you could say. He was the first person I came out to,” Willow said.

Willow ducked her head, a little embarrassed.

Buffy’s mouth fell open and she felt a pang of guilt and some jealousy, too, that her best friend hadn’t shared the news with her first.

“I’m sorry, Will, I should have been there for you,” Buffy said.

“It’s not like that, I mean, it happened by accident. We were in Xander’s basement, watching ‘The Hunger’ and that scene with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon came on. Spike could do that icky vampire smell thing with the pheromones and he figured it out. He was looking at me after Xander went upstairs to talk to Anya and I blurted it out, ‘hey, kinda gay now.’ I figured Spike would be the last person to judge me. He was sweet about it, he said that he’d hooked up with Angel a few times when they were both evil, to make me feel less alone,” Willow said.

Buffy thought about when Spike had showed her how he and Angel used to have sex.





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