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The doors opened and closed with a swooshing nose. Not the cool Star Trek noise, but a scary grating noise that made her think the doors were angry at her for making them work. Someone brushed against her shoulder and she instinctively cringed away. Her heart was racing and her breathing was fast. With supreme effort, she closed her eyes and started calming herself down. This should be easy. Simple. One step at a time, just like her therapist said.

Calling on everything she had within her, Buffy walked through those angry automatic doors.

“Hi, welcome to Wal-Mart!” a cheery, slightly demonic face told her. Buffy whimpered and tightened her hold on the cart. This was not going to be fun.

***

Spike’s fingers beat out a fast tattoo against the steering wheel. He glanced over at the entrance, to the dashboard clock, and back to the entrance. His fingers continued their incessant drumming until a notebook slammed down, flattening them against the leather steering wheel.

“Oi!” Spike yelled, glaring at his brother who was busy editing a manuscript and pretending he hadn’t just smacked the hell out of Spike’s poor abused fingers. Will serenely crossed out a sentence and wrote a couple of comment in the margin, studiously ignoring the annoyance that was his brother. “You git!” Spike swiped at the manuscript, knocking it out of Will’s hands.

With calm, dangerous precision, Will took his glasses off and picked up the fallen papers. Schooling his features into an indifferent mask, but his hard blue eyes unable to hide his roiling emotions, he turned his icy gaze to his brother. Spike’s eyes were fiery and confrontational, daring Will to say something—anything—that would let him loose. Will was just as worked up, but his anger was colder.

These stalemates rarely ever ended well.

***

Buffy fought down the panic rising in her. Will and Spike were waiting for her outside. They would be there when she got out, and no one was going to kidnap her. She took deep, calming breaths and tried to ignore the people who brushed up against her. Homework sucked.

They’d celebrated her return with a small welcome home day for Buffy. Everyone had taken turns coming to see Buffy, taking care not to overwhelm her by showing up all at once. Buffy was pretty sure Lorne had been the driving factor in that decision, and she was eternally grateful. Willow and Tara had brought her a fun-fetti cake with “Welcome Home” scrawled drunkenly in blue frosting. Lorne had come by next, regaling them with stories about his current flavors of the week, a married couple with a penchant for single men and some scarves. On his way out, he’d slipped a name and phone number into Buffy’s hands with a loving smile and a tight hug.

Faith and Robin broke protocol and showed up with Anya and Giles. Buffy had been thunderstruck when Will and Spike filled her in about Anya and Giles’ not-so-new relationship, but she’d recovered quickly and spent an hour alternately gushing about how happy they’d be and reassuring Anya her kidnapping hadn’t been the other woman’s fault. Anya had promised to buy her something called the ‘Eroscillator’ to make up for everything; Buffy didn’t ask Anya what that was.

So she’d taken a couple of days to settle back into ‘normal’ life before calling the therapist Lorne had suggested. Olivia and Buffy had hit it off; there was something extremely comforting about the woman’s presence. Things had been going really well until she’d given Buffy homework.

“You want me to WHAT?” Buffy asked with horror. Olivia gave her an amused smile.

“It’s not the end of the world, Buffy.”

“You…you’re giving me HOMEWORK. I graduated!” Olivia laughed, and Buffy fought down an answering smile despite the apprehension that flooded through her.

“Look, this is important. You can’t live in your apartment and rely on Spike and Will. You have to start getting out in the world and trusting it again. So, you’re going to go into a store and buy something by yourself; Will and Spike can wait for you outside, but you need to do this alone.” Buffy crossed her arms and sulked, but she couldn't deny the reality of Olivia’s words. She hadn’t been away from her twinlets since she’d been back. One of them had always been with her, and the few time they weren’t she’d been locked in her apartment. Buffy fixed Olivia with a distrustful look.

“What’s your grading policy?” she asked grumpily. Olivia’s clear laugh rang out, and Buffy let the smile she’d been trying to repress blossom across her face. Olivia felt a sense of accomplishment in her chest; they had some rocky road ahead, but times like these made her absolutely certain Buffy was going to be just fine.

***

Buffy couldn't do anything but stare. Why? That one thought kept bouncing around in her head, and she couldn't quite figure out the answer. This was so completely unfair, the world really was conspiring against her. She shouldn’t have to do this. She whimpered, her head starting to hurt. Why, in the name of all things holy, were there over 150 different toothpastes? Really, all you needed was three. You needed the blue gel-like one, the white whitening one, and the one that combined the first two. Done. Easy. But nnnnoooo, there were a million of them. The whitening ones, the minty ones, the sketchy looking orange ones, the Scooby Doo one that looked like it did more harm than good. Then there was Crest, Colgate, the store brand, the other non-name brands, and cavity prevention. How was she supposed to choose?

She was in over her head and she knew it.

***

Spike’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and he felt his hackles rising. The tension was palpable, if misplaced. They were both wound up because this was the first time Buffy had been away from them since she’d been back. Spike opened his mouth to say something extremely stupid when a sharp rap on the window startled them both half to death.

“Buggerin’ hell!” Spike yelled, his heart pounding against his rib cage. He turned around and was astounded to see Buffy peering into the car. He rolled the window down in something of a daze.

“Buffy you—what’s wrong? Did something happen?” Will leaned over and Spike could feel the heat of his body. They were both tense, wondering what had gone wrong, if Buffy needed them, if this had all been a huge mistake. They were totally unprepared for her response.

“I’ve been living with you guys for forever and I have no idea what kind of toothpaste you like!”

A/N: I know it's been a while in coming, but I have had a HELLacious week and a half. You can read part of my sob story on my personal site if you're really interested. But I'm hoping to have some time to breath and get a few chapters written within the next week so I can keep feeding all of you. Thanks for sticking with me!

But in other news, I'm officially doing a sequle to Check Point. it will be called Check Mate, and I really hope you enjoy it; I've devised a scenario that should prove very amusing (I hope). I'm going to try and write the whole thing before I post it, but it's coming along. So far, I'm story arching it for 5 chapters, just like the last one.





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