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Author's Chapter Notes:
Chapter's title comes from Bjork's song, 'It's oh, so quiet'
OH, MY GOD! More than a hundred reviews! I'm about to faint! **faints** lol Thank you sooooo much!!! You are the BEST!

Chapter VIII: It’s oh, so quiet.

Three weeks passed in the penthouse, and surprisingly, Buffy and Spike hadn’t had any major fights, only minor disagreements on silly things. They had, in fact, fallen into a routine. They woke up, Spike made breakfast, they ate in silence, sometimes they talked, then Buffy went to work, leaving Spike alone all day. She came back at six, he made dinner, they ate again, and then he went to work at The Bronze as an MC and singer at nine. She watched TV or did any work she had brought home from the gallery, and Spike came back at midnight. They said their goodnights and Buffy went to sleep, and so did Spike. Yeah, pretty boring.

It was on a Thursday morning on the third week of the agreement when the routine was broken. The day had passed as uneventfully, as any other. At nine, Spike had gone to The Bronze, and Buffy had stayed on the couch checking over some paperwork for the gallery. There were some new artists that Willow had discovered, and she wanted Buffy to look at some of their stuff. Hours passed, and at just gone midnight, Buffy was ready to go to sleep. The thing was Spike wasn’t home yet. He never got home late, and she was worried. Sometimes he came home early, and the latest he had come home had been at a couple minutes past twelve… and she wondered how was it that she paid enough attention to him to know that.

She got up from the couch deciding she really needed to go to bed.

When she laid down and wrapped herself on the covers, she closed her eyes.

Sleep never came.

Buffy tossed and turned in bed, surprised that Spike not being back from The Bronze was keeping her awake.

She tossed the covers off her, and stared at the ceiling.

Spike had been friendly to her the last few weeks. She didn’t know if it was because he had gotten tired of them fighting all the time. Or if he’d figured that they only had three more weeks in the house before the clause was accomplished, or if he was just starting to like her.

She knew she was starting to like him, but that was in no way a thing she’d discuss with him…

He was a nice guy once you got to know him. Yes, he was arrogant, and cynical sometimes. But Buffy saw that it was just a façade. Some days he just let his sweeter side out, with little gestures that demonstrated that he DID care.

Like earlier today he’d made breakfast, and he had put maple syrup and chocolate chips on her pancakes. Something she had mentioned randomly to him one day while they were talking about what they liked to eat.

He had remembered it, and that had made her smile. He paid attention to what she said, contrary to what she had thought of him up to that day.

She had started seeing him through different eyes. Now, she couldn’t see a reason why he would stop talking to Giles so abruptly. He cared for the people he loved deeply, that she could assume, seeing as he kinda cared for her without knowing her very much.

So why hadn’t he spoken with Giles for so long?

Buffy’s musings were interrupted by a loud crash in the living room. Sitting up quickly in bed, she looked at the clock. It was 1:02… Had she been laying in bed thinking all that time? It had seemed like minutes… Oh, well, that wasn’t important right now… the fact that someone was inside her house… and it didn’t sound like a friendly visit, was.

She grabbed a candlestick from her dresser as a weapon, and padded to the living room as quietly as she could. She could hear groaning from behind the couch, and someone muttering something, and she started to tremble.

What if it was a robber… or a rapist? Or a member of the mob… or a drug dealer that had chosen her house as a hiding place from the police? Or… ok, she was rambling… she was nervous… Why did these things happen when Spike wasn’t home to protect her?

She moved around the couch slowly, and seeing a figure dressed all in black moving on the floor, she immediately released a war cry and slammed the candlestick down on the intruder’s head.

“OWWWW!!!! BLOODY….” Then, the head of the intruder, now quickly identified as Spike, fell to the floor, unconscious.

Buffy’s hands flew to her mouth, and she got on her knees next to Spike. He reeked of alcohol.

“Spike?” She got his head on her knees and moved him so it was looking to the ceiling. “Spike…? Wake up, Spikey…Wakey, Wakey…”

She slapped his cheek lightly, and seeing that he didn’t respond, she slapped it harder.

“Spike, wake up, dammit… Come on, don’t be a baby… I didn’t hit you THAT HARD to be lethal, so wake up…”

Buffy was starting to get desperate. Her eyes tearing up and her hands shaking **Oh, God… I killed him… I killed him… Dammit, Giles is going to hate me… He’ll think I killed him to get the apartment for myself, and he’ll tell God to send me to hell when I die… Oh, God, Oh, God….**

Buffy continued slapping Spike, and calling his name desperately “Spike, Spike… wake up, wake up!!!!!” She let out a sigh of relief when Spike’s eyes fluttered open and he groaned loudly in pain.

“Dammit…. You bloody chit… shut up… my head…”

“I’m so sorry, Spike… I thought you were a robber… I’m so sorry…”

“Shut up… My head… you’re hurting me…” it was then that Buffy realized she had Spike’s injured head lying in her leg, and that she was hurting him with it. She turned him, so his left cheek was on her lap, and the back of his head was facing her eyes. She inspected the wound. There was a little blood in it, but it was mostly a big bump.

“Stand up… Let’s go to your room and get your head bandaged.” She helped him stand and led him to his room slowly. He was a little dizzy, partly because of the alcohol, but largely because of the blow to his head.

When she opened the door to his room, she felt a strange sensation in her heart at seeing that now all of his walls were covered in the paintings the mailman had delivered. Now, the unfocused but beautiful eyes of the black haired woman stared at her from all angles.

It made her shiver.

She tried to ignore it, and put him in the bed, face down, with his cheek on the pillow.

Buffy then went to her room’s bathroom, and found some bandages in her medicine cabinet.

When she got to Spike’s room she sat down on his bed and made him sit up, wrapping his head in the white fabric.

When she was finished, she caressed the top of his head lightly, and murmured an apology, before laying him down again, he closed his eyes instantly, falling asleep, and she stood up to leave.

She stopped dead in her tracks when she heard Spike muttering “Stay…”

Her eyes widened. He wanted her to stay?

“Don’t leave me… Dru, don’t leave me…”

Dru? Who the hell was Dru?

“Dru… please… I need you… Drusilla…” Buffy had heard enough. She ran to her room, closing Spike’s door on her way out, needing to block the woman’s stare and Spike’s voice out of her head.

As soon as she got to her room, she started to cry, and this time, it was not because of Giles, or her mom.

It was because she was jealous. Jealous of someone she didn’t even know. She assumed that ‘Dru’, as Spike called her, was the woman in all of his paintings. The woman that got his attention, even in his dreams. The woman he had adorning all of the walls in his room. The woman that most definitely had his heart in her hands.

Why wasn’t she with him now? By his desperate pleading, she presumed she had abandoned him.

Why would a girl abandon someone as wonderful as Spike?

**Ok, maybe I’m starting to put Spike in a pedestal… we don’t even talk that much… he could be acting, for all I know.**

The thing was, she knew he wasn’t acting. His eyes were a window to his soul. She could see the feelings he was experiencing just by looking in his eyes. And when he said good things to her, she only saw sincerity.

She just didn’t want to admit it. Nor did she want to admit that she was falling for him.

It was all too much and with her mind churning everything over, she laid down in bed again. This time she fell asleep, into dreams plagued with visions of Spike, not giving her the love she so desperately wanted, but giving it to his beloved ‘Drusilla’ instead…

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When Spike woke up the next morning, he felt like a Mack truck was running repeatedly over his head. He was laying face down on his pillow, and when he turned over, he jumped up from the white hot pain in the back of his head.

It was then he remembered that Buffy had hit him, thinking he was a robber. She had led him to his room, and that was all he could remember.

He touched his head tentatively, seeing as how he was bandaged. He assumed that was Buffy’s doing too, since he sure as hell hadn’t been in any sort of condition to wrap a bandage around his own head.

He stood up, glancing at the clock. It was 9 am. He was surprised he had woken up that early, especially after a night of getting completely pissed at The Bronze.

Since he’d been living with Buffy, he had found a strange comfort in knowing they had a routine for every day. She’d wait for him at night just to say goodnight. Or at least he thought so, since most of the time, when he got home after work, she was watching TV, barely keeping her eyes open. When he ambled into the living room, she’d pop her head up from her place in the couch and say ‘good night’ to him, before going to bed.

Such a ‘domestic bliss’ kinda feeling made him think of earlier years of his life, when he’d had Dru at his side.

He wished she had been as giving as Buffy was, even when she didn’t realize it. He had never had a homey kind of life with Drusilla, she had a very wild lifestyle that just didn’t fit in such a description.

A lifestyle that had ended up killing her.

Shaking that line of thought out of his mind. It had been those very thoughts that had made him want to get so drunk last night, he opened his door, and looked at the hallway. Buffy was probably at work now.

He sighed. His days passed so slowly when she wasn’t there…

During the first days of their ‘contract’, he’d wished for her not to be home all day.

When a week had passed, he’d been unable to resist her company, and now, he felt empty at the mere lack of her presence in the house.

He went to the kitchen, and grabbed some orange juice and some Tylenol. He swallowed them, wishing the headache would go away soon.

He started making some toast, all the while wondering if Buffy had eaten a proper breakfast that morning.

When his bread was ready, he went to the table, and sat down to eat.

He stopped mid-bite, seeing Buffy appear in the doorway, looking positively drained.

“Morning, luv…” He watched her closely. He could see the usual light in her eyes wasn’t there this morning. Her eyes were a dull green, and her steps were short and slow.

“Good morning”, she murmured, without looking at him.

“You didn’t go to work today?”

“I called in sick” She answered. She grabbed a glass of milk from the refrigerator and made to head back to her room.

“Buffy, luv, are you alright? Don’t you want breakfast? I could make some toast for you too” Buffy stopped mid-stride and closed her eyes, keeping the tears at bay.

That was the kind of thing he did that made her feel so loved, and wanted. He said that, but she knew he didn’t really care.

“No… I’m fine” she croaked, her voice rough because of her tears.

Spike looked at her, concerned. She was going to cry, he knew it. Her voice gave her away.

“Pet, is this because of Giles?” he asked softly, walking towards her and putting a hand in her shoulder.

Buffy let out a choked sob, **Giles is the last thing on my mind right now, you stupid dork…**

Spike took her sob as a sign that his assumptions were correct, so he turned her around, and looked directly into her beautiful hazel eyes, that were now puffy from so much crying.

“It’s going to be okay, pet. I know it’s hard. I know it feels like your world is going to end, but… really, it goes away…”

**Oh, yeah? Then if it goes away, why do you call for Drusilla in your sleep? She went away and you haven’t got over it…**

He then took both her hands and hugged her to his chest, caressing her back in soothing, circular motions.

“Everything is going to be fine, luv. I promise. You have me here”

Even though Buffy had thought she had no tears left to cry, she soon knew she was wrong, she started to weep, burying her head in Spike’s chest.

They both thought that each other’s smell was intoxicating. And even though the two of them were feeling a little awkward, neither pulled away for a long time, wishing that the strong need that was pushing them to hold onto the other was real enough for them

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Well, hope you liked it! It's a bit longer than last chapter =) Hope it pleased your wishes, my beautiful reviewers! Now, let me know if you liekd it! Love y'all! See you on the next update!





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