“So, let me get this straight,” Lorne began after Buffy had relayed the events of the past week to him, “Spike beat Angel up and now he’s shacking up with you for the time being?”
Buffy nodded, staring at her kind and helpful therapist, thinking she was about to hear something that wasn’t so kind, but might be helpful eventually. Instant Gratification Girl wanted helpful now, not helpful later.
“Buffy, I gotta tell you, while I understand why you took him in like that, I don’t think it’s a good idea to continue with.”
Buffy felt crestfallen, even though she knew he was going to say it. “But, Lorne, he was a mess.”
“I get that, I understand it, but him living with you is defeating the whole process here. The goal is to stand on your own two feet, it was what you wanted to do when you came in here, right?”
“Right,” she answered softly and slowly.
“And we’d discussed how Spike was too dependent on you and quite possessive, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, Buffy, I hate to say it, but him essentially living with you now is not helping the matter. It’s just prolonging it.”
“Lorne, the man was wrecked. He beat Angel to a bloody fucking pulp. He didn’t even realize how bad he’d done it until after the fact – what was I supposed to do? Say ‘Well, that blows, but suck it up and I’ll catch you later’? You forget that I love this man.”
“No, Buffy, I didn’t expect you to say that to him, in fact I think you handled it well, but now the time has clearly past for him to be there. In his mind, he thinks you’re living together now.”
“It’s only been a week,” Buffy mumbled. “Okay, so he asked me to pick up milk for us this morning, and he hasn’t been home to listen to the messages, but…why did I just share that?”
“Maybe because it’s bothering you and you don’t want to admit it.”
“I hate you,” she pouted.
Lorne smiled gently, his kind, warm brown eyes crinkling in the corner. “I know you do, cupcake. Just like you hated Giles, right?”
“Yes,” she said petulantly. “All right, so it’s going on two weeks and it is like we’re living together and sometimes I feel …smothered, but you know what? I’m just as guilty of it.”
“I know, which is why I’m encouraging you to have him go home now. He’s hiding and so are you. Both of you hide in one another.”
“Sometimes I don’t know where he ends and I begin,” Buffy admitted.
“Did you have a better sense of that when you were living alone?”
“Sometimes. I spent most of my time worrying about how he was doing and if he was upset with me.”
“You said he’s agreed to see someone. Has he made the call?”
“No.”
“How about I set up the appointment?” Lorne offered. “I have a fabulous doctor he could see right in this very building, though I will have to insist on separate times for the both of you.”
“Lorne…”
“Buffy, he needs to do this not only for himself, but for you as well.”
“I know, I just don’t like to push him so much, he gets all testy.”
“Of course he gets testy, he doesn’t want to go.”
“We had sex,” Buffy blurted out, wanting to change the subject to anything else at that point. Instantly, she turned flaming red.
“Oh,” Lorne said smoothly, not missing a bit, “How do you feel about that?”
“I cried. I thought about my mom and compared myself to her the entire time. Kept having visuals of them doing it and…” she shuddered. “He’s trying to make it better, he is. And when he assures me only a half million times, I don’t think about it. Until later of course. So, when am I going to be over that?”
“Buffy, there’s no timetable on this sort of thing. It’s normal for you to think of your mother during sexual activity with Spike. He was her husband, and even though you weren’t around to see them, you know they didn’t like a nun and a monk.”
Buffy wrinkled her nose. “Are you trying to help here?”
“I am, believe it or not, by putting to rest your fears that you are somehow abnormal for feeling and thinking as you do. The silver lining is that when you feel more secure with Spike and your relationship with him, you will be able to move past it. Right now, things are still haywire and all over the place, and when things become precarious between you two, both of you lean on one another that much more thereby making things more unstable and precarious.”
“So, what you’re saying is, I need to get him to go back to the house and he needs to talk to someone?”
“In a roundabout way, yes. Buffy, I’m not telling you this to be a hard ass here. I’m telling you this because I see the co-dependency you have for one another and relationships like that are not healthy. I want to help you and Spike to have a strong relationship and last. From what Giles told me about the two of you, he thought you were great for one another, and I have no doubt of that, but right now you’re both holding one another back, not thriving.”
“I want to thrive, but I don’t want to hurt him,” Buffy nearly whimpered.
“Just as you need reassurance from him that he loves you, he’s going to need reassurance as well, but it is not your job to put him back together. You can help, but you can’t do it for him.”
“Why do I have to be the heavy?”
“Because right now, you’re the only one he listens to.”
If that, Buffy thought dryly.
Coming home from her session that night, Buffy felt charged. She felt ready to tell Spike that perhaps he should consider going home and at least checking his messages, hoping that would be all she needed to say to have him get the hint. If not, then she’d resort to telling him that if her landlord found out she had someone with her 24/7, he’d start charging her more rent.
So, okay, maybe she wasn’t as charged as she should be.
Entering her apartment, the scent of food hit her and her mouth watered. She’d sure miss having him cook, that was for sure.
“Honey, I’m home!” she called out as she entered, dropping her purse by the door.
Spike came bounding out of the bedroom, grinning. He’d apparently just showered since his hair was wet and he was in his sweats. He looked so adorable and happy to see her that for a minute she considered not saying a thing and just lying to Lorne.
That won’t solve a thing.
“Hey, kitten, how was your session?”
“Good, it was good,” she nodded and met him halfway, wrapping her arms around him. “He offered to set up an appointment with you.”
“Oh?” he said, noncommittal.
“Yup, with someone in his office. I said you’d call…”
“Did you now?’
“Yup…cause you will…right?”
Pulling out of her arms, Spike nodded toward the kitchen. “I made dinner. Put a chicken in with some vegetables.”
“Spike,” she sighed, “You promised.”
“Buffy, I know I did, I’m just going at my own pace here.”
“That’s a load of crap and you know it. You just keep putting it off hoping that I won’t keep reminding you and ‘forget’ about it. Well, guess what? I’m about to turn into a nag.”
Sighing heavily, he waved his hand at her. “All right, all right.”
“I mean it, Spike. If you don’t, I’m calling Lorne and having him make the appointment. And then I will drag you in if I have to. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass--”
“It’s your bloody calling isn’t it?” he snapped.
Buffy rounded on him, glaring. “Oh, hell no. Do I need to remind you how I have been there for you every time you’ve fallen apart in the past few weeks?”
“Buffy, you don’t need to make it sound like that. I’m not ‘falling apart’.”
“Yeah, because you’re technically living with me. We’ve been over this.”
He stared at her.
“I think it’s time you went home, Spike. You’re avoiding, and for that matter, so am I.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“You actually don’t live here, I do. I let you stay here because you needed someone there--”
“You, Buffy, I needed you there.”
“And I’ve been here. But now it’s like you’re moving in. That was not the intent behind asking you to come here. I--” She never got to finish because Spike stormed off, heading toward the bedroom.
From the sound of it, he was packing. Coming into her bedroom, Buffy watched him hastily pack his things, dutifully ignoring her.
“Spike, its not that I don’t like having you here, but you can’t hide here from your problems. They’re still there,” she said calmly, trying to reason with him. It seemed every time a serious conversation happened, tempers flared much too easily. It was tiresome.
“Well me and my problems will be out of your hair in a minute,” he snapped and tied up his shoes.
“Spike, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, but this isn’t healthy for us--”
“Tell me why I want to see a shrink when they obviously fill your head with all this crap, huh?” he demanded, jumping up from the bed.
“It’s not crap and you know it, and if you’re going to stand there and make me feel like a piece of shit because I happen to need to see someone and actually do benefit from it, then you can see yourself out.”
Without a word, he grabbed his things and stormed out of the bedroom, and then out of her apartment.
Buffy stood there, contemplating going after him to work it out. She made a step toward the door and then stopped herself. She shook her head. “No. It’s not going to help. It’s not going to do anything; we’ll just end up where we we’ve been again. He wants to be mad, then fine. Maybe he just needs to be mad instead of me running after him all the time.”
With her legs shaking, Buffy sat down on the bed and listed once more the reasons why she should not go after him until she was pretty sure that he was long gone by then anyway.
Chapter Fifty-two
Spike was fuming by the time he got home. He slammed into the house, throwing his keys at least in the direction of the dining room table, and let out a roar to end all roars. The house shook from it practically.
Storming up the stairs, he threw his duffel bag in his room, taking out his alarm clock, journal and pen, sending them skittering across the room.
“She tells me I run from my fucking problems, but she kicked me out!” he hollered at his bedroom. “Bloody stubborn bint. I’m tired of the push and pull, the constant fucking push and pull. ‘Come here, Spike’ ‘Go away Spike’. I can’t ever win. She wants me, she doesn’t want me – I can’t do anything right! She wants to be independent; she wants to do all these things on her own. For fucks sake she lived alone for five years and now she wants to go back to that?”
And you lived with someone for five years, you were a husband for all that time – don’t you want some time to get your shit together? his mind warred with him.
Spike let out another roar of frustration and ran down the stairs, heading for the liquor cabinet. There was one way to shut his brain off. Good ol’ Jack never got him riled up, good ol’ Jack always wanted him – in fact, Jack beckoned him. So, Spike paid Jack a visit.
Buffy stared at the calendar. Two days. Two long days since Spike had stormed out her apartment, two days since she’d seen him smile and heard his voice.
“Buffy, just go see him,” Willow said, clipping some rose stems to place in a vase.
“No,” Buffy said stubbornly, shaking her head. “I always run after him and try to make amends with him. I’m not doing it. He wants to be a big baby and give me the cold shoulder; well he can go right on ahead and do that.”
Willow gave her a look that told her perhaps she was making a mistake, but Buffy refused to cave. She had to be strong in this. The same argument over and over was getting tiresome. It was wearing trying to be everything he needed her to be at the sacrifice of herself. She wanted to be there for him, and yet she wanted to have a little breathing room too, but when she gave an inch, he took a mile and then demanded more.
“You know,” Willow said thoughtfully, frowning slightly, “Maybe this break is a good thing.”
Buffy perked up, “You think so?”
“I do. I mean maybe it will give him the impetus to seek some help. He’s at least given you some space, right?”
“Right, but it’s just made me worry how he’s doing.”
“So, call him and find out at least that.”
“No. Cause somehow, I’ll get sucked in again. I’ll go to him and try to ‘fix’ him, and then I won’t push the issue and he’ll depend on me again and I’ll feel suffocated again and then we’ll argue again and--”
“And he’s coming in the store.”
Buffy jumped up from her stool behind the cash wrap just as Spike entered the shop. He stopped just inside, taking off his sunglasses and staring at her.
“Hi,” she said finally, smoothing her shirt.
“Hi.” He sounded hoarse she noted, and he looked bedraggled too.
He stepped forward, “Can I talk to you?”
She nodded and looked at Willow who just nodded. “You can come in back,” Buffy told him. “Follow me.”
He did so and once in the backroom surrounded by a desk, ribbons, vases, clips and foam for the fake flower arrangements, Buffy turned and faced him.
Immediately, he took her in his arms. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing of importance.”
“Drinking? You look like hell?”
He froze in her arms. “How did you know?”
“You forget I know you,” she told him and pulled out of his arms. “Have you been working at all?”
“Not much.”
Sighing, Buffy stepped away from him. “So...what are you going to do?”
“Well, I’ve gone on my bender and now I’m done.”
“Did it help whatever you needed to get out of your system?”
“It did what I needed it to do,” he said stiffly and looked away from her. “I am an adult, Buffy, I am allowed to drink.”
“I don’t care if you drink, Spike, but don’t be irresponsible about it.”
“As usual, I can do nothing right,” he muttered.
“You do plenty right, so don’t give me that crap. Don’t turn this on me, don’t make this my issue.”
“I’m not making anything your issues; you make all your issues mine!”
“I do not! – All right, look, this isn’t helping anything. I’m so tired of having the same fucking argument, Spike.”
“Then we stop having the same argument. It’s quite simple, really.”
She nodded, “You’re right, it is. So, let me put it in a way that might penetrate. You either call someone and get some help, or we’re over.”
She was lying of course, and she knew it. She could no more give him up than he could give her up, but there had to be something that got through his thick skull, there had to be something that made him do it, and she was hoping that maybe it was her really leaving, and not the imaginary leaving he thought she’d do that would make him do it. She just hoped he didn’t call her bluff.
He stared at her. “What?”
Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she said again, “Call and make an appointment and actually follow through, or we’re over.”
He shook his head, “You don’t mean that.”
“Try me,” she answered softly.
Smirking he stepped forward and tugged her into his arms, his blue eyes boring into her. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
Bending his head he nipped at her lips, sliding his tongue along the seam, begging for entrance. “No, you don’t. You love me.” And he slid his hands to her bottom and pulled her roughly against him.
She pushed at him, gathering her senses. “I do love you which is why I want you to get help. So, either do it, or get out.”
They stared at each other for a long time, Spike’s expression blank and devoid of emotion. Buffy stood her ground, refusing to back down.
Finally, he let out a resolute sigh. “Fine,” he said, “Give me the number and I’ll call Lorne’s office and make an appointment.”
She stared at him a bit longer, studying him. “Call him here. Right here with me.”
He nodded, letting out another sigh. “Fine.”
Handing him the cordless that was in the back, Buffy recited the number from memory and listened as Spike talked to the receptionist and set up a meeting with a Tara McClay. Clicking the phone off, he looked up at her. “Happy?”
He wasn’t, she knew that much, but she didn’t care. It was done, and he was going to go – that was for damn sure. Lunging at him, she wrapped herself around him like a second skin and kissed him soundly.
“Very.”