Author's Chapter Notes:
finally I can update again! (and I still am trying to finish a new fic for you...I seem perfectly able to start them but not so able to continue/finish them)
Chapter 23

“So you think you can get it? He might not need it, but…?”

“Yes, the fact that he already has a driver’s license—which is a very good one may I say—will make it easier to get the rest. I will get him at least two more things, whichever two are the easiest. It’s actually very good that he has your address on that license because I can send him a piece of mail there and that will help as well.” Yeah, Buffy was going to have to find out at some point why, on a driver’s license he’d ‘gotten’ a year ago, he gave her home address as his.

“I’ll try to have it in the next three days, a week at the most.”

“Thank you,” Buffy said sincerely. “Oh and will you be one of the witnesses for this thing? I think it has to be people over eighteen.”

“Of course.”

Joyce called one of the nurses to ask for the form. Just a few minutes later the nurse was in the room and Buffy was sure if it weren’t for the fact that he had agreed to do this for her mother, Spike would have left already. He was that angry with her. And rightfully so, she figured.

The nurse was about to take the form away to file when Buffy thought of something, “Can you only—are these things permanent?”

”What? Don’t want me responsible for your mum for too long?”

Buffy ignored him and looked to the nurse, “I mean can you only do these when you’re already in the hospital and know you’ll need one or can you like do one….preemptively?”

“Oooh, big words for the Slayer,’ Spike muttered. Again, Buffy ignored him.

“No you can do them whenever as long as they have the two witnesses and your signature as well as that of your proxy. Are you going to need another form?”

Looking at Spike and then Anya she wondered, “I’m not sure; can I come ask you if I do?”

“I’ll just be at the nurses’ station.”

“Listen,” Spike said after the nurse had left, “I’d really love to stay Joyce, but—“

“You know,” Buffy interrupted, “I think maybe I should do one of those things. ”Everyone other than Anya started at her, some rather strangely, waiting for an explanation. “Well it’s just we haven’t figured out this thing I’ve got yet and well…if I do ever pass out or end up in the hospital and stuff, wouldn’t it be better to already have the thing done?”

“You’re not going to need to be in the hospital,” Spike said gruffly

“Good, so you won’t object to signing it.”

“Right, so who’s it gonna be, Anyanka there or your mum?”

“You,” Buffy answered simply.

“Funny, Slayer. Joyce I’m afraid I’m gonna have to leave—least for a bit and—“

“I’m not kidding, Spike.”

“Well,” he said, his tone much harsher than it had been with her mother, “still don’t care. I’m not doing it. See you later Niblet.” He waved as he strode out the door.

“Buffy,” her mother started.

“Yeah, I know. You guys just stay here and—we’ll be right back.”

“Spike!” So yelling down the hallway of a hospital sure got you some nasty looks from the nurses.

“Save it Slayer,” she heard before he started for the stairs, undoubtedly headed for the basement.

“Spike,” she said her tone clear but not loud, “You know I can’t chase you down those stairs. Now would you let me talk to you?”

Spike looked for a second like he was considering it, but then just opened the door and went into the stairwell.

Rushing back to the room as best she could, Buffy knew what she had to do, “So which one of you two,” she asked Anya and Dawn, “wants to go make him come back up here or at least stop him until I can manage to get down there somehow?”

Dawn was off like a shot; barely taking time to listen to Buffy telling her Spike was going down the stairs at the end of the hall.

Buffy was left with Anya and her mother looking at her expectantly. “Really take that Slayer speed thing for granted,” she said lamely.

“Buffy?” there were times, like this one, when Buffy thought if someone gave her mother a ‘Choose Your Favorite Child’ questionnaire and included Spike as one of the choices, that he’d beat her.

“Why does everyone always think I’ve done something wrong?”

“Well you did make him think—“ Anya started.

“Hey! He ties me up and almost lets his ex kill me and it’s all ‘Buffy give him a chance’ I just don’t get the chance to explain one stupid thing and I’m the bad guy?”

“Buffy you know he wouldn’t have let Drusilla—“

“But he made me think he would!”

“And you made him think you regret kissing him,” Anya pointed out and for a second Buffy regretted inviting her in the room.

“You what?” her mother asked.

“God why does everyone—he said I was doing all this stuff that made him want to kiss me and if I didn’t tell him not to…and I was just so surprised that…that he’d still find me attractive when I look like this,” Buffy waved a hand at herself, “that I asked him that and…and didn’t exactly stop him….or you know anything else that would have indicated I didn’t want him to kiss me.”

“So why does he think you wish it hadn’t happened?”

“Because I started to try to tell him…”

“Tell him what, Buffy?”

“That’s just it! I don’t know what I was saying. I…I didn’t know how to say it then and so he got all gun jumpy and decided I meant it could ever happen again and that it was a mistake and blah blah blah.”

“And what were you really trying to tell him?”

“That I shouldn’t have kissed him then because…because he loves me and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing right now…I’m scared to death about you; I can’t walk down the stairs without feeling like I’m going to pass out; the three people I thought would always have my best interests at heart are out there planning how to get Angel here to ‘straighten me out’; then there’s going to be Angel to deal with whenever he comes and….”

“It’s too much to add something to?” her mother guessed while at the same time, someone else in the doorway, someone she hadn’t noticed, asked something else.

“And you don’t want to deal with telling me to get lost when the Poof shows up; just better all around if I’m not there at all, right?”

Well at least he came back? Trying to remind herself that his coming back was a good thing, Buffy answered both of them.

“Yeah,” she glared, positively glared at Spike when he looked satisfied before looking like she’d kicked him, “Mom’s right,” she finished. “I don’t know what’s going on with anything right now, I’m dealing with all of this stuff that I’ve never dealt with before and this time I don’t have my friends behind me. And I just thought that if I had—“

“Captain Forehead with you, you could manage, right?”

“Would someone please tell Spike to get the fuck over this jealousy thing he has with Angel so that he can let me finish saying that I thought as long as I had him there I could do it but I’m not ready to start anything with him now because I can’t add that…I just need him there for me the way he has been the past couple of weeks—the past couple of hours.” Buffy was far too irritated to care about using such language in front of her mother.

“So you just want me around a little bit?”

“Anya,” Buffy pleased, “can you please try?”

“For someone so old you can be very dense,” she said evenly. “Buffy is trying to tell you that you were very helpful to her tonight and your support was very important as was your friendship over the last few weeks while everyone else forgot about her. She wants that to continue but because she knows you’re in love with her and that would put a great deal of pressure on her when you two start a sexual relationship, she would very much like that to wait until things have settled down. So that she doesn’t have to worry about messing it up. So you don’t cause her even more worry, Spike,” Anya threw in the last statement hoping that maybe that would get him.

“Yeah, whatever,” he started to say but Anya decided to continue.

“And she would have told you this sooner, before you had kissed her but she was very surprised that you found her desirable even though she has been ill for quite some time and that slowed her reaction and she was unable to tell you in time.”

Buffy looked incredibly thankful for Anya at that point.

Spike started to respond again, but this time, picking up on his still negative tone, Dawn interrupted him, “Fine, don’t listen to them. I have to talk to you.” Not waiting for an answer from anyone, Dawn pulled Spike into the hallway.

“Just let me go, Dawn,” he was tired of everyone holding up his departure. He needed to get back to his crypt and get drunk enough to forget that he’d been foolish enough to kiss Buffy.

“No,” she paused a few seconds before asking him seriously, “Are you just stupid?”

“What?”

“You want to go get drunk so you can forget you kissed Buffy.” He didn’t even bother to be surprised that she knew he’d been thinking of doing just that. “You know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like you are the one regretting it And I’m not going to have someone hurting my sister like that. So either go in there and tell her you don’t love her and you’re sorry for taking so much time and effort to make us all think you cared—“

“I never said I don’t love her,” he looked downright angry, his eyes flickering with gold, but Dawn wasn’t phased.

“Fine, then go tell her that you understand that she has a lot of trouble starting relationships when she’s on equal footing with the guy and her life is going smoothly so you understand why it’s too much for her right now when you’re already in love with her and our mother is possibly dying, Buffy’s lost her best friends and the guy who’s been like her father for five years, and you’re sorry for putting her in the position to have to choose between having only me around caring about her or having you with the added pressure of trying to figure out what she needs to do to keep you happy.”

“What are you talking about what she needs to do? She doesn’t need to do anything—well other than what she did a few minutes ago…”

“Angel left her because he said he knew better than her what she needed; Riley left because she didn’t love him the way he loved her….take the part where Angel’s a vampire and the two of you have a lot of connections and add Riley loving her more than she could love him and what’s that get you?”

“A fucked up summary of your sister’s love life?”

“Or what she’s scared will happen with you.”

“What are you talking about? I’d never leave her.”

“You’re telling me all this time and my mom hasn’t told you that you’re going to have to prove that to her?”

Spike remembered Joyce’s earlier words and his eyes lost some of their ire.

“Angel was never her friend—you said so yourself. Riley wasn’t really either because the entire time he was trying to figure out how to date her.”

“And that’s different from me how?”

“Because he had a reasonable belief that everything he was doing was going to work. You didn’t. You watched out for her, you saved those idiots out there, you made sure I was okay, you got her the bear, you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with her….and you’re not doing that because you think she’s suddenly going to wake up and ask you on a dinner date, you’ve been doing it because regardless of how she feels about you, ever, You. Love. Her.”

“But now—“

“Now you need to take…you told her to give you a crumb, right? That that was all you needed?”

Spike was surprised that Buffy had told her that, surprised she’d even been listening to him that much, but he nodded anyway.

“So why can’t you take that kiss as that? As her saying that once everything is normal—or as normal as our life ever is, that then there can be something? Why can’t you see her caring about you enough to try to keep you around as her friend for a long time as opposed to her boyfriend then nothing for a short time….why can’t you see that as a good thing? Are you just that selfish?”

“I didn’t think it’d be this hard,” he admitted.

“To know what it’s like and have to pretend you don’t?”

“Yeah.” The girl really was remarkably insightful for someone her age.

“Then don’t pretend.”

“What?”

“She’s not saying you have to act like this one never happened, that you have to forget about it. She’s just saying it can’t happen again for a while. She tried to do that proxy thing to show you she trusts you and you turned her down…She’s doing everything she can to show you that she’s doing her best to make it worth it in the end…and you just keep shooting her down.

“Spike, Buffy’s good with denial. She’s also way too familiar with guys hurting her. If you do this shit for too long…she’s going to shut down on you. It’s not going to matter—no screw that, it is going to matter, everything you’ve done for her last night and this morning…it’s going to matter by making it hurt that much more and making her close up that much more. You’ve got more of her than they ever did and all that means is you could lose more of her than they ever did.”

“They make you Buddha’s kid or something?”

“No, I have my own theory on whose kid I am, but that’s beside the point. Would you just go talk to my sister already and tell her you’re sorry for having been an ass?”

“Yeah—but you ever talk like that again and I’m going to be telling your mum.”

“Tattle tale!” she stuck her tongue out at him and he couldn’t help but laugh.

“You sure I didn’t bollocks it up too much?”

“Not yet.”

“Gee, thanks,” ignoring her enormous grin, he let her go in the room, asking Buffy—he figured—to join him in the hall.



TBC........





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