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Author's Chapter Notes:
This is all caught up now. The next chapter will be new.
Part Eight

She didn’t want to be touched.

When they got back to her apartment—back to where Lilly waited for them—Buffy didn’t want Spike to be anywhere near her. Didn’t want his touch that had begun to feel so good, and yet now he wanted to be all territorial and macho with an arm around her shoulders to show them as a united front, celebrating victory against the bad guys. It made her sick to her stomach. Made her resent his presence—resent his influence that had her accepting what she’d had to do to Angel and dealing with the need to be home again.

As soon as Buffy saw Lilly waiting in her apartment, barely having moved in the hours they must have been gone, it all finally came crashing together in her head. While the reasons she’d left Sunnydale hadn’t been resolved, she still felt it was time to return and face the music. And she had to get away from Spike. She needed to get away from him so she could make things have sense again.

A world of meaning was exchanged in the look between the girls when Buffy returned, offered her uniform and apartment to a girl that was shedding one life and assuming the next. It was funny in a way. Buffy had donned the waitress hat in a city where it was easy to get lost, clinging to the one part of herself that others might not think of when searching for her, and here she was giving it away to a girl who couldn’t even admit her true identity. It was sad—but Buffy understood. She shed the Anne persona and created another sad, aimless girl in the process.

“Um…I’ll call and check up on you.” Even as she said the words, Buffy wondered how long it would take for her to move on and forget the newly christened Anne’s plight.

“I'm not... great…at taking care of myself.” The vulnerability in Lilly’s eyes was stark and Buffy couldn’t help but feel sorry for her—this girl that continuously found herself the victim.

“Gets easier. Takes practice.” And yet, before Spike came along, it had seemed so much harder—more of a struggle to not go insane with the fear that what Ken had trained his human slaves to believe was true. She was nothing here—she fed patrons who didn’t give her big tips, and barely existed in her apartment. It was no place for a slayer—a Chosen one with a destiny to protect the world and those humans that walked blindly within it—to blithely ignore reality. She was who she was, and it was time she started remembering it. Proving it.

She didn’t know what it was he’d done that reminded her of his presence. It had been so quiet that Buffy had nearly forgotten he was there. Or had hoped he’d seen fit to disappear and leave her to deal with things on her own.

“Was a nice thing you did for her, Slayer. Shouldn’t knock yourself out with guilt on that one. She’ll be fine.”

Because all the homeless needed was the kind word and a little hand stepping up from their local community slayer.

Buffy barked out a derisive laugh. “Gee, you think? I didn’t know you were the authority on how everyone was going to make it. So glad you can be the confident one. Makes my pessimistic little job so much easier to do.”

She turned her back, disgusted that she still had an evil presence with a twisted will standing in her doorway. She couldn’t kick him out, and didn’t have time for that anyway. She’d sent Lilly home to pack her things, and by Buffy’s calculations, that would mean a quick stroll around the block to make the trip look good.

“What’s wrong?”

She knew without turning around that he’d be leaning on the door frame, studying her with apparent concern and his head tipped to the side, studying her. And it choked her—because two days ago, hell, a day ago, she’d fallen for it. Had wanted to. She’d allowed fences to fall and sensual hands to soothe her neglected flesh.

“Can we just…not do this? You did your thing—fought the bad guys and you won. Can’t you just…leave now? You’ve had your fun. Go back to doing what evil, bloodsucking vampires do and leave me the hell alone.”

He was in front of her in a second flat, his motion nothing but a blur that Buffy was unable to keep up with. It infuriated her—how dare he force her to show her tears and betray just how much he’d hurt her by being himself?

He looked shocked at the glistening tears on her cheeks. “We did good things here today, Slayer. Why are you crying?”

Because you don’t care.

There, she’d admitted it—at least in her own head. He didn’t care—about people, about the good he wanted to do or the lives he was saving. And he didn’t care about her. He’d brought her back to a place where she could see the sun shining and the stars twinkling when, for the past months, she’d seen nothing but clouds of smog, and he didn’t even care at all. It hurt so much more than she’d ever thought possible. His indifference tore at her heart and her body until she was gripped in an attack of uncontrollable shivers, and all she wanted was to beat him out of her room.

Except the second his arms went around her and he crushed her to his chest, her limbs became too weak to push him away. In between her submission and his lack of understanding the situation, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. Tears flowed and yet Buffy couldn’t stop the compulsive caressing movement of her lips, desperate for the hungry passion he’d introduced her to and craving the indiscriminate pleasure that helped her forget. She’d invited him inside once, and now there was no turning back.

His lips were soft. Buffy moaned as her fingers found the stiffened strands of his hair and diligently set to loosening a path through the curls, combing it softer as she sought a closeness she was afraid she’d never find again. He sucked on her bottom lip, capturing her in a duel of wills over how right this felt. Tasting his tongue, stroking the inside flesh of his mouth—Buffy was almost on fire from his touch, from his kiss, and she couldn’t let go despite her tears. Couldn’t stop her mouth straining to be closer, struggling to be further inside him—more than he’d allowed.

Desperation to block out all the uncertainty of their situation had Buffy clinging to his shoulders, her hands gripping hard through the leather even as Spike’s hands spanned her waist. And then he tugged her closer and Buffy blurred the barriers between herself and the demon with a silken caress and the devil’s tongue.

When he finally pulled away, Buffy was mortified at how hard she wanted to hold on and forget everything that she knew. Banish the ideals that said everything about Spike was wrong and that she should stake him before he flipped on the head of a pin and took it out on her throat.

But she wanted more of those kisses, wanted to explore fully the rip in the universe that allowed a vampire who was unashamedly evil but with a twist of a hero complex. And wanted the manual that told her how to deal with that conflict of interest so she could better judge which way to deal with the situation.

Spike stared into her eyes, and Buffy almost melted at the look of raw emotion he revealed. He looked torn between wanting to dive in for more pecks at her bruised lips, and talking his way out of the mud they’d slipped in. He compromised, ducking in close and resting with almost irritable closeness against her mouth, his tongue barely caressing her bottom lip before he spoke.

“I like you,” he confided, voice raspy with warring desires to snog and to bite. “Bloody shouldn’t, but I do. Now let’s go home.”

Buffy was speechless as he picked up her bag and tugged her out of the building. His step was light and full of purpose. Fifteen minutes of ducking and weaving the LA nightlife, and Spike dragged her into a very suspect looking underground garage. He nodded at the strange scaly-looking attendant and then held Buffy’s hand as he relocated his black beauty—the car from some hideous design mishap.

That was enough to remind Buffy she wasn’t some Harmony-like bimbo that would blindly follow danger until she ended up in a car wreck and dead. But the harsh objections died on her tongue as Spike looked at her expectantly, eagerly—like a little boy that was taking his girl home to meet his mom. Except if he did that, Buffy thought mommy would likely try to eat her, rather than welcome her living and breathing into the family. Okay, so bad example, but she was trying here, and Spike really looked like he was excited to hit the road with her as his enthusiastic passenger. Even if he did drive an escaped hell beast.

“This thing better at least have seatbelts.” Buffy glared, though there wasn’t much heat in it, and climbed into the car. Her skin was already crawling and she hadn’t even identified half the crud that was scattered on the floor space near her feet.

Spike was sweeping it all out and onto the ground of the parking lot in an instant, and Buffy had to hold in a random giggle that might make him suspect she was feeling better.

“Sorry ‘bout this. Was a bit preoccupied when I first got in, I guess.” He looked around the interior, hiding his sheepish expression with a nervous bark of laughter, and while Buffy thought it was the sweetest, cutest guy thing she’d ever seen him do, it just confused her even more.

For every step of his swagger around the car to the driver’s side, Buffy contemplated making a run for it. She couldn’t justify what she was doing by being beside him at all. Sure, a free ride home when you’d skipped out on your last paycheck was nothing to sneeze at, but taking a vampire home when she’d been the absentee daughter for months didn’t seem to fill her with the warm fuzziness a homecoming likely should have.

She was scared to introduce Spike as a part of her life when she got home. Scared that her friends would judge her as some vampire ho that couldn’t stay away from the pulse-challenged hotties, or that Giles would turn his disappointed eyes on her while he attempted to usher everyone she cared about into safety from her and her new houseguest.

It crushed the joy she should have been feeling about going home and reclaiming her life, and that still didn’t even address the issue of Spike’s ambiguities. She had enough of her own tangled web to straighten out when she crossed back into Hellmouth territory, and the added complications of Spike tagging along was almost too much for Buffy to calculate.

The car started with a furious roar and nearly startled her out of her skin. Spike grinning as he stroked the dash and allowed the great chunk of metal to idle away. “Bleeding reliable car, this one. Brace yourself, Slayer,” he warned as tires squealed and the car burst out of its parking space in reverse, slamming to a halt and leaving Buffy’s stomach way back in her abandoned apartment.

She braced herself against the dash and the door, it being the only thing stopping her from smashing her head on something as Spike violently stopped and started for the exit of the demon underground parking.

“Spike!” She couldn’t help the scream that signaled her fear of random people crossing in front of the speeding wreck, and Buffy spent the first ten minutes gasping and shouting terrified insults as Spike gloried in being behind the wheel of his car again.

Luckily for her, he seemed to know a red light when he saw it, and he howled at the enforced stop. The car coasted while Spike waited, his hand starting to tap some silent beat to a song Buffy just knew she’d hate before his foot slammed down on the accelerator the split second the light turned green.

“God, take a pill already,” Buffy groused once he’d steadied in the stream of traffic and allowed her to breathe out without fear of getting whiplash.

He actually had the nerve to cock a brow in question.

“Geez, just chill. We don’t have to get to the Hellmouth in twenty minutes or die. What’s your rush, anyway?” Buffy combed her fingers through her hair, trying to pat it back into some kind of order, even though she suspected the tossed salad look was what Spike had been hoping for with his derby driving efforts.

“Slayer, some bad piece could be trying to open the mouth of Hell right this minute and we could drive up to a city under siege.” He drove on, his lip curled in concentration and she could see his brain actually ticking over.

“Oh God, you’d actually enjoy that, wouldn’t you? Arrive in the nick of time to save the world. Has anyone ever told you you’re sick? Are there vampire doctors? Ooh, or psychiatrists?”

Spike’s disparaging look did nothing to halt her tongue.

“Oh, guess not, huh? What, with Drusilla being a loaf short of a stack of toast.”

He ignored her barb, probably recognising her attempt to anger him—even if he didn’t understand its motivation. Spike kept his lips closed, instead turning to the tape deck and flipping in his favourite.

How to make Buffy barf in under five seconds!

There was no way he called this crap music. Buffy slapped hands over her ears in an inadequate effort not only to save her eardrums from exploding, but also as a defense from this clash of instruments he seemed to find entertaining. That just proved Spike wasn’t in his right mind.

He chanced a glance sideways at her, and then with a low growl of irritation, turned down The Ramones—but just barely.

“So, what was with the waterworks earlier?”

Buffy’s eloquent answer was to stick her tongue out at him before she turned to the blacked out window, and wondered how much she was risking if she forcibly removed the paint so she could see the black of night for real.

As the great city lights began to fade into the distance and the car settled into a steady rhythm back toward Sunnydale, anxiety took up passage on her spine. Just a few more hours and the months of solitude would be over. Her actions would be judged, her cowardice frowned upon—and her return, dragging a not-so-repentant vampire along who claimed to want to help—would more than likely have her friends contemplating how much of her mind she’d actually lost while she’d been away.

It was a reunion that Buffy was dreading—though she couldn’t pinpoint why. She’d missed her friends dearly, had felt a deep, resounding hurt at being misunderstood by her mother, and Giles—well, Giles and his opinion mattered more than she’d ever expected a watcher’s to. So the thought of seeing them all again should have filled her with joy, should have had her dancing with anticipation, yet all it did was flood her with foreboding.

All the way there she felt like she was making a mistake. She could only hope it wasn’t true and that her homecoming would be everything she wasn’t expecting. She was being stupid, anyway. How bad could it be? Even with Spike on a lengthy leash—if he even was. If she risked taking him out and allowing him contact with anyone she knew.

One casual glance at a grinning, almost manic-looking Spike and Buffy knew that that tactic was a pipe dream. There was no way he was going to stay in a box marked ‘secret’ for any length of time, and she just had to deal with all possibilities before he mowed down the ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ sign.

When the hours flew by along with Spike’s loud, obnoxious car, and he didn’t slow as he passed over the line and into civilization, Buffy squealed at the crash of tin on the bodywork.

She so hadn’t meant that literally, Buffy thought as Spike slammed on his brakes, his monster of a car crunching the sign underneath its wheels.

And now her anticipatory period was up.

It was showtime.





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