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Author's Chapter Notes:
Reviews are pretty and fun, and the people that give them to me will be rewarded with a cookie....didn't I mention that before...well maybe not a REAL cookie....but...you get the picture...please review...that's all I wanted to say....thx
Austin


Summary: Can just one voicemail bring a couple back together?


May, 2006

Buffy sat there frozen in shock. Spike was kneeling before her, his hopeful look heartbreaking as he presented her with the most beautiful ring she had ever seen in her life. Her mind was a jumbled mess, her heart pounding in her ears, her throat dry. The room was spinning and she couldn’t breathe, it was all too much, too soon. Minutes passed and slowly Spike’s expression turned from adoring hope to stunned sadness.

Buffy watched the change through her tears, her heart breaking. She slowly stood from the table, trying not to notice all the other people in the crowded restaurant. She took a deep breath, smoothed out her hair and wiped at her eyes and sniffed. She leaned down and placed a soft kiss on his forehead, her lips trembling and then leaned into him to whisper a heartbroken “I’m so sorry, William.” in his ear. She stood straight, her legs wobbly as she walked away from him, still on his knees, to shocked to move.

~*~*~*~*~

Spike stumbled into his apartment. His apartment, ha, the apartment that up until that evening he had shared with his loving, devoted girlfriend. The woman he had planned to marry, to have a life, a family with. That was such a bloody joke. He crashed into his bedroom, the door smashing in the wall, causing the dresser mirror to rattle, the floor was spinning. He looked around the room with blurry eyes and wasn’t surprised to find the closet door open, all the dresses and skirts gone. The dresser was in the same condition half the drawers were open and empty. Almost all signs of her had vanished. She was gone, she had left him. If he wasn’t so far gone maybe he would have cried, but he was past that. So he made his way over to the unmade bed, the bed that was far to large for one person and collapsed, his head landing on her pillow. Her scent was still fresh, fresh enough that he could pretend, at least for a few hours that she was still there.

~*~*~*~*~
Spike woke the next morning, his world crashing down around him. His body was waging a war against him, bombs going off in his head, little demons clawing their was out of his stomach and his eyes to stubborn to open. He spent the better part of the morning laying face down on the cool tile in the master bath, the lights off and just breathed. When he finally managed to get up his new reality hit him with the force of a Mack truck. He ghosted through the apartment, the photos on the walls mocking him. He checked the phone for messages, searched everywhere for some sign that she wanted to be found.

She didn’t.

She didn’t even leave a number. The only thing she had bothered to leave was a post it note he found on the fridge, the hot pink color a sharp contrast on the white. It simply said that she needed to clear her head and that she would call when she was ready.

Weeks passed without a word. Slowly he became accustomed to missing her, to being alone. After the first month passed he took the ring out of his pocket and put in the safe under the bed. He figured she went back to Sunnydale, she had talked about it all the time. She kept telling him they need to go there for a weekend, the two hour drive a minor detail. She had missed the small town so much, but they had always been to busy.


~*~*~*~*~*~

Pretty soon weeks turned into months and before he knew it, it had been well over a year since Buffy had skipped out on him and while all his friends kept telling him to move on, he just couldn’t let go. In all that time Spike had worked out a system that suited him just fine. He would get up in the mornings, go to work, come home, eat dinner watch some telly then hit the hay. Then every weekend he would disappear for awhile. Fishing, camping, road trip to the beach, whatever. He would just try to get away, make time to live. He figured that was what had scared Buffy off in the first place, the fact that they never had time to just live. All the while he knew that Buffy could call, or show up so he had to arrange something so she would understand if he wasn’t there. So he bought himself a answering machine for the house and every Friday before he left he set up a new message. The message normally detail his weekend plans, when to call back, the general, and always, always had a little message just for her, just in case. He thought his system worked out pretty well, and he knew, that if he kept it up, that one day it would all pay off.

~*~*~*~*~

Buffy Summers was a mess of nerves. She had been in Sunnydale for over a year now and was still lost. At first she had been so sure that running back home was the only choice. And at first it had seemed to be the perfect thing. A way to just get away from it all, the city, the job, the pressure and just being a grownup. Spike’s proposal had been the wake-up call. She was twenty-three years old for goodness sakes , she wasn't a wife, she was barely old enough to buy her own beer.

So she had did what any immature twenty-something brat would do, she ran like the hounds of hell were after her. At first it was fine, no job, no man, no responsibilities, in a word, heaven. But as the months drug by, seclusion didn't seem like such a hot idea anymore. But by that time she was to damn embarrassed to just go back to LA and beg Spike to take her back, he would laugh in her face. She had been gone far to long, and hurt him far to much to ever think about going back.

Then those dull lagging days turned into fourteen months and Buffy had finally had enough. She reached her breaking point one Friday afternoon after a particularly hard week of waking up in sweats, Spike’s name a gasp on her lips. So she sat down on the front porch swing of her Sunnydale home, the wind blowing her hair into her face, her fingers trembling as she dialed the familiar number. The first ring made her heart jump into her throat. The second ring made her mouth go completely dry and on the third ring she had to force herself to not hang-up. The she heard a click and panicked, until she realized it was a machine.

Her eyes closed in bliss as she heard his voice come through the line for the first time in ages.

“Hey, you’ve reached Spike. I’m not in right now. If it’s Friday I’m at the game downtown. If it’s Saturday I’m on my way to the beach and if it don’t rain I’ll be there ‘till Sunday night, so I’ll call ya when I get a chance. If you’re callin’ ‘bout the car it’s been sold, if you’re selling something don’t waste you’re time, I ain’t buying. Oh and if this is Sunnydale, I still love you, come home.”

A loud gasp tore it’s way out of Buffy’s throat. She dropped the phone to the ground, the pieces flying across the porch, her tear-filled eyes wide. What the hell? It had been a year, more than a year. What kind of man holds on that long? What kind of love is that? And he knew she was in Sunnydale, he had known and he hadn’t come to get her, to force her back.

It took her two seconds to finally decide on where she belonged.

She picked up the shattered pieces of the phone and waited two days before she called again. She called early Sunday afternoon, knowing he would sill be gone. She dialed the number and listened to the message again, and took a deep breath. After the beep she left her number and not another word. She knew he would understand. She waited by the phone all day, a bundle of nervous energy.

Finally he called at 9pm. The phone rang three times and then a click.

“Hey you've reached Buffy, if you're callin' 'bout my heart it's still yours
I should've listened to it a little more
Then it wouldn't have taken me so long to know where I belong and by the way, if you haven’t caught on this isn’t the machine, this is Sunnydale and I still love you. And I want to come home, that is if you’ll still have me.” She waited a few seconds, holding her breath, her heart beating so loud she was sure he would hear it thought the phone.

Then she heard a shaky sigh through the ear piece and closed her eyes as he finally answered. “Get your ass home to me, right now.” Buffy laughed out loud, tears leaking from her eyes. She looked to her luggage filled car and smiled. “Two hours on the freeway and then maybe we can discuss this whole wedding thing, I’m thinking the beach in June…”


~*~*~*~*~*~





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