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Stumbling into Spike’s kitchen in the middle of the night, Buffy was surprised to find him awake and at the table, typing away on his laptop.

“What are you doing up?” she asked bleary-eyed, her voice thick with sleep still.

“I couldn’t sleep. I figured if I got up and wrote a little, I’d be able to get some rest.”

Taking a glass out of the cabinet and filling it with water, she watched him tap away. She smiled at how adorable he looked. Hair tousled and unruly from sleep, loose black sweats and a white undershirt, no socks.

“Spike, you don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

He shook his head, not taking his eyes from the screen. “No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Otherwise I never would have been able to stay here with you.”

“How do you figure that?” he asked, looking at her briefly.

“No girlfriend would let you get away with having another woman stay at your house.”

“Well that other woman would have to understand that we’re a package deal,” Spike drawled. “Have one, have the other.”

Buffy smiled. “I don’t think that’d fly. If it were someone else, it wouldn’t fly with me.”

“I’m a rare breed, what can I say?” Spike joked. “And it’d take a rare breed to take up with the likes of me.”

Buffy smiled. “You want some hot chocolate or something? Do you have any? I could make it the way my Mom used to make it for us when we’d have sleepovers.”

Spike grinned at her. “I’d like that. I have some in the cabinet next to the cups. And mini-marshmallows too.”

Buffy laughed breezily. “Of course! You know Spike; I’ve been meaning to tell you that I love this house.”

“Buffy, you spent nearly every day in this house when we were growing up. You make it sound as though you’re seeing it for the first time.”

“Well, I am in a way,” she replied softly, shrugging.

“What do you mean?” he asked, finally stopping typing and focusing on her. Well, sort of, his hands were still poised on the keyboard, but his attention was directed on her.

“Well, when we were growing up I took it for granted. I took my house for granted for that matter. I liked it well enough, but I always envisioned more. Then I got more and now I see I’d like less. I hate my house now that I think of it. I hate how vast it is, how there are rooms I never visit because I never have the time. That’s the thing about making it big, you can have all that you want and more, but then you don’t know what to do with it and never have the time to figure that out.”

Spike stared at her, pulling his hands from the keyboard and studied her. When they were younger, Buffy would always talk of the things she wanted to have – a big house, gorgeous husband, a nanny for her child so she could feel free to travel and hobnob with big time actors and actresses, and all the other various important people she planned to know. She’d always planned to have her hand in a little bit of everything. He’d always seen it for her because she’d drilled it in his head that it was what she wanted and was going to have. Now though, now looking at her in her white pajama bottoms with pink and blue stripes, pink tank top and her hair pulled back in possibly the smallest ponytail known to man, Spike could still see the girl that had envisioned all those things and he could see why she hated it now.

It wasn’t that she was just going through a bad breakup and a slight crisis of self, but Buffy quite simply did not fit that lifestyle. Her being part of that glitz and glamour, and wholly fake lifestyle did not match her. It was if she were trying to jam herself into something the way a person might try to jam their foot in a shoe that doesn’t fit them quite right. It looked well from the outside, but after a while, it got too restricting, too tight, and too uncomfortable to comfortably keep walking in. She wasn’t a glitzy, glamorous city girl at heart. She was a small town girl with old fashioned values. Trying to be someone else for so long, trying to shoe horn your way in had to be exhausting. No wonder she was having a crisis of self. It must be hard to reconcile what you wanted to have with what really makes you happy. The two didn’t always coincide as Buffy was learning.

It made Spike wonder if being a Rock God would necessarily make him happy, or if he would be shoe horning his way into that life if he tried it. Buffy had tried it though, right? If he hated it, he could always leave later the way she had…couldn’t he?

He watched her looking around, drinking in the room as the hot water started to whistle in the pot. Some thing he too preferred to do the old-fashioned way.

“It was really nice of your parents to leave you the house,” Buffy noted, taking the pot off the stove and pouring the water in the mugs she’d selected for them.

“I reckon they felt guilty for taking off back to London,” Spike muttered and got out the milk for the hot chocolate concoction.

“Yeah, my parents are just happy to have new digs in Beverly Hills. Especially my mother.” She shook her head, sounding wistful, regretful. “Your parents were always so kind and supportive. I always wanted to trade your mom for mine.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Buffy said nodding. “Your mom was the only one that told me to do the things that made me happy and to bugger everyone else. I always got the impression she meant my parents. You know, we should go visit them.”

“What?”

“We should visit your parents. Take a trip. We’ve both got the time.”

Spike shook his head. “Buffy, you’re beginning to worry me.”

She blinked up at him as she stirred her hot chocolate. “Why?”

“I’m starting to get the sense that you’re running, pet. You’re not so much trying to heal as you’re looking for a quick fix.”

She bristled, shaking her head. “No, I’m not.”

“Buffy--”

“Just thinking about all the nice leisurely things I never got to do and would like to do, that’s all.”

“Pet, it’s more like you feel you have to punch a time clock. You’re not even thirty yet, you have plenty of time to do all these things, and you don’t have to do them within the span of a few months.”

“But I want to! What if I get hit by a bus tomorrow or what if I find out that I can’t do anything else than what I’ve done and I end up taking a shit job just trying to get by, and never get to do all the things that I’ve wanted to do? I just can’t stand the fact that there are people like Angel out there that can shit on others and get to do whatever the hell they want and I don’t get to! It’s not fair.”

“Life--”

“So help me, if you say life isn’t fair. I know it isn’t and that’s such a cop out thing to say. It’s a crap chute on what’s fair and not fair –can’t you make the unfair things swing in your favor? Isn’t that possible? Aren’t we in charge of our destiny?”

Spike sighed heavily and took a sip of his hot chocolate. “Buffy, look, all I’m asking is that you take your time a bit here. Try not running around with your head cut off, that’s all I’m asking. You want to make some changes in your life and do some different things, then I’m all for it. Just don’t run. When you’re tired, you’re gonna crash, and I’m worried about the crash is all.”

“Well don’t. I’m fine.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you trust me?”

Gazing into her impossibly mossy green eyes, Spike had a distinct sinking sensation wash over him. “I--” he coughed slightly. “I trust you.” Starting to not trust me, though.





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