"Yes, it is. You didn't cheat. It's that simple. Once she knows it, everything will be fine."
"She doesn't know it and she's not going to know it from you now, Bit. No!" He yelled over her attempt to speak. "She didn't trust me." He paced furiously. "She didn’t listen. She didn’t let me explain. God, I know it looked bad. I know it did, but she didn’t even pause, just cut me out…like I meant nothing."
"You know how she is, Spike. She cuts herself off because she's hurting. She just shuts down. You know that-" Dawn reasoned.
"I do. I know it. But do you know how she ended it that Monday morning at work, Bit? You know what she said? She said, and I quote, 'it's over and we'll never talk about this again' and she wouldn't. I tried." He raked his fingers through his hair. "She wouldn't listen. She walked away every time I tried, usually with a nasty parting shot as she left." He slumped down on the couch next to her. "What does that tell me?"
"She never said anything else? Not all the times you tried to talk to her?" Dawn asked.
"Oh, 'course she said other things. Your sister may say she never wants to talk again, but that's not what she wants, is it? What she meant was, she never wanted to listen to me talk about it again. She's told me over and over since then that our relationship is now strictly professional and that I have no place in her personal life and I know if she could she'd boot me from the gallery as well."
Dawn looked at him sympathetically and didn't know what to say.
"Do you know in all the time we were dating she never said she loved me?" Spike turned his head away from her. "She never once said it. I said it, she knew it, but she never once returned it. That's your sister. Just have to face the fact that she never loved me and now she never will. "
He paused to get himself back under control, and then pawed through the bag she'd brought and looked at her in disbelief. "You brought greasy chicken wings to a sick man?"
Dawn snorted. "Please. No one thought you were sick, Spike. This called for Spike-ish comfort food, not chicken soup."
He sighed again and grabbed one, mumbling his thanks around it.
"What…what about that girl, Spike?" Dawn asked hesitantly.
He carefully set the wing down again. "Really don't want to talk to you about this, Dawn. Any chance of you respecting that?" He met her eyes, seriously.
"You really didn't want to talk about the breakup either, but you did." Dawn paused. "Spike-"
"Dawn," he bowed his head. "What is it exactly that you want to know?"
"Fine. I want to know if you slept with her," she stated matter-of-factly.
"Yes." One unadorned word, concise and spoken with a calmness he didn't feel.
Her eyes filled with tears. "Oh," she said softly and lost it completely.
She'd known he had. But it was different to hear it and she'd hoped it wasn't true. Dawn thought she could feel all of her insecurities from the divorce rise up and form a lump in her throat. "Don't you love Buffy anymore?" She choked out.
Spike drew her into his arms. "Oh, Bit. People screw up. I screwed up."
"No, you screwed her, "she bit out snidely, "that's the problem. You're going to leave us too. Everybody leaves us, we're-" she was sobbing now.
His arms tightened around her. "'I'm not leaving you. I won't ever leave you. No matter what happens between Buffy and me, I'll never leave you, Dawn. You're my family too. You know that. I love you. No matter what happens or where we are, you call me and I'm there. Promised your mother I'd take care of you, didn't I?" He finished gruffly.
She calmed. "You just don't love Buffy."
He realized again how very young she was. It was easy to forget her age. She was so composed and often wise beyond her years. She was only eighteen and she'd seen several people she cared about leave her in various ways. Bloody hell, her own father had left her emotionally years before he did physically and hadn't exactly been the doting Dad since. She was well-versed in bereavement, his Bit. But she still saw things solely in black and white - a trait of the young. To her, there were no shades of grey, only good or bad. An intense weariness swept over him as he realized he might be pivotal in changing those views.
He looked into the big, teary, blue eyes of his surrogate younger sister and said, "I love Buffy. But sometimes that's not enough. You can't make someone love you back. You can't force someone to trust you or listen to you. Not like I could chain her to a wall until she listened, yeah? And it hurts, it hurts badly when someone you love doesn't believe in you. As I said, people do dumb things when they're lonely and hurt. I was at my lowest point, your sister had said some particularly nasty things just that afternoon after work and I was planning to get pissed that night. I'd halfway succeeded by the time I met Melanie." He paused, "I'm not making excuses here, just trying to explain why I did what I did. You always hurt the ones you love most, Bit, because they're the ones your actions affect most. I'm sorry I hurt you. I guess...I guess it was just so nice to feel wanted for once..." He winced.
Dawn put her arms around him and hugged him back fiercely. "I want you." Then she blushed, bright red, and stammered, "Well, not that way! In the 'I'm your baby sister' purely platonic always want you around kind of way!"
He laughed and tickled her, making her explode into giggles. "Knew what you meant, Dawn, and thank you."
Dawn prodded the wings, "They're cold. Let's heat them back up and eat. Then you're coming back to work, slacker."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "I am, am I? Who says?"
"Spike, you can't hide forever and delaying this isn't going to make anything any better. You're coming back with me. "Dawn grabbed the wings and headed towards the kitchen, back to her bossy little self in an instant through the resilience of youth.
Dawn had finally persuaded Spike to come in for the rest of the afternoon and early evening, but when she'd told Buffy, Buffy had decided to take the afternoon off. Whether that was good or bad, Dawn couldn't really decide. On the one hand, there would be more time for them to cool off and the gallery would still be standing, on the other hand, she needed to figure out how to get them to talk at some point and while a blow-up wasn't ideal, it was talking. Well, it might be talking. Or yelling. Or maybe throwing things. Ok, the gallery definitely wasn't a good place after all. She had been hoping the semi-public place status would help rein them in, but she wasn't too sure at this point. Better safe than sorry.
For all that she wanted them to confront each other, her stomach still quivered at the thought of the massive fight to come. She worried that her sister would retreat further into the ice queen act and that Spike wouldn't be able to get over his hurt over Buffy's distrust long enough to explain things properly. She worried that the ripples caused by the events of last night would build into tidal waves in the time they weren't speaking and that those waves would crash into them, destroying everything. She straightened. She would provide a lifeboat and lifejackets and make sure they bobbed to the top eventually. Hmmm, Buffy was so tiny that a pair of floaties or waterwings would probably work for her. She giggled at her horrible analogy and the mental image of her sister in bright yellow waterwings. It would be ok. She would make it ok.