Title:  Protection

Pairing:  Buffy and Spike

Rating:  R.  And a strong R for language, violence, and sexual situations. 

Summary:  After the death of her mother, Buffy prevails on Spike to help protect Dawn from Glory.  This is Part One of an on-going series, followed by Fever, Redemption and Benediction.

Disclaimer:  I own 1/3 of a house, a 1991 Saturn, and the oldest stereo known to man (8-Track, anyone?).  Joss owns a house or two, a fleet of nice cars, and claim to all the characters in this story.

Author's Note:  This is a repost of a previously NC-17 rated fic.  I have not changed a thing, though I have had the opportunity to expunge a few spelling errors and fix some syntax here and there.  For the most part, I would almost classify this story as PG-13, but I should warn sensitive readers that chapter five is explicit, but nothing worse than what the UPN would air during the "family hour".

CHAPTER ONE

            It is nighttime and the house is eerily quiet after a day of receiving mourners and friends.  Buffy is making her way slowly through the upstairs rooms.  She checks on Dawn one last time and finds her cozied up with a stuffed animal in her bed, sleeping peacefully.  Flipping off the light switches as she goes, Buffy encounters the open door of her mother's bedroom.  There is a coldness in there that reaches out to her, much like her mother's warmth did when she was alive.  She pauses there for a minute, taking in the lingering scent of her mother's perfume, the sight of the numbers on her mother's alarm clock glowing red in the dark.  It's all very still.  She thinks of the time when Faith came bursting through the window.  She had been able to dispatch that predator.  But this one, the one that took her mother's life, she never even saw.  She could only define its presence in her mother's exhaustion and despair. 

            She walks down the stairs, smoothing her hand along the banister and making slow, measured steps, trying not to disturb the peacefulness of the house.  She is tired, but she won't sleep.  She has tried in the nights before, tried and failed and has given into tears.  The sentiments of the past few days keep echoing through her mind in a spoken word gallery.  She was doing so well…she looked so good the last time I saw her…she was such a good person…she was lucky to have you as a daughter…

            Buffy is now in the living room.  One of the in table lamps is on, but that is the only source of light.  And there is the sofa.  She has looked at that sofa a million times, but she has never quite viewed it as she does now.  She cannot see her friends gathered there for Scooby meetings or movie night.  She only sees the sofa as her mother's catafalque.  Buffy has not sat there since the day she found her.  She could barely stand to see anyone sitting there after the funeral.  How obscene to see people sitting there with their paper plates teetering on their laps.  Many times she had to battle the urge to scream, "Don't you know what happened there?  My mother died there!"

            "Mom?"  she says.  Saying the name startles her, as though she has heard someone else say it.  She says it again, observing how her lips come together, slightly vibrating in the M sound, and how there is a natural, rising lilt of expectation as though she is counting on an answer.  She says it over and over, while slowly approaching the couch.  Her eyes are blurring with tears and the back of her throat aches.  When she finally gets to the sofa, she collapses in heaving sobs, saying the word, "Mom".  She nestles her head on the back of the sofa and lets the tears roll.

            But outside the window, there is something.  Through the blinding veil of tears, she sees something…something black and white and dappled with blots of moisture.  She blinks her eyes a few times.  The image becomes clearer now.  It is a man.  No, not a man.  She instantly recognizes the crown of bleached white hair, the pale, sun forgotten skin.  The mouth that always looks as though its about to curl into a sneer.  This is not a man.  This is Spike.

            There is a surging anger in her now as she gets up from the sofa and heads for the door.  She is angry about being snapped from a moment of indulgent grief to have to attend to the business of getting a vamp off her property.  She throws open the door and he is right there, waiting to be invited in.

            "What do you want?"  she says through her teeth.

            "I just thought you might be lonely,"  he says. 

            There is an apologetic look on his face, but she cannot see it for the look of the growling, perverse vampire which resides directly behind the façade. She can only and always see that.

            "How can I be lonely?  You're always around!  I've forgotten what being alone is.  You know, sometimes it's like my life is this big 'Where's Waldo?' book.  Only it's called, 'Where's Spike?'.  I know you're in every picture of every page of my life."

            "I didn't come here to start something with you,"  he says.

            "Well you know that's how it always ends up.  At least you should know after one hundred and fifty times.  Really, Spike.  I don't know if I should congratulate you for being such a trooper or stake you for it.  But I've just about had it.  No!  I have had it.  I'm tired of you seeking me out when you know I don't want to see you---ever!  Anywhere!  Except maybe in a pile of dust at my feet.  I want this to stop, right now, right at this moment.  OK?"

            He waits to speak, letting her cool down, giving her time to load up for another barrage of insults and accusations.

            "Are you finished?"  he asks.

            "Are you?"  she says indignantly.

            "Look, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your mother."

            Her mouth flies open.  "How did you know?"

            "The funeral today.  I was there."  There is something akin to emotion in his eyes and then deep embarrassment.  He looks down at his shoes.  "It was sort of on my turf, you know."

            Buffy flinches at the fact that her mother and Spike are new neighbors by proxy and instantly thinks she should have chosen another cemetery across town.  But this one was closer to her home. 

            "I wanted to go to you today,"  he continues.  "I saw how sad you where.  I couldn't bear to see you like that and not put my arms around you, hold you----

            "Stop!  Stop it right now!  I don't want to hear anymore,"  she says, trying hard not to let his words sway her from her "Spike is evil" stance.

            "It was all I could do to keep from rushing over to you."

            "Stop it!"

            "Buffy, I can't stand to see you in pain.  Ever since I first realized I loved you, seeing you hurt makes me hurt worse than this bloody chip when I hit someone.  That night, on the back porch, when I saw you crying over your mother…I came to you with every intention of killing you, but I couldn't.  I couldn't make myself."

            She remembers that night.  The shotgun in his hands.  The sizzling hatred in his eyes.   The sound the gun made when he cocked it and aimed it steadily at her.  But the gun didn't go off.  She is remembering the look on his face when he saw her tears.  She had never seen it before.  She could have almost said he looked sorry, or terrified that he was seeing her in a new light and didn't know quite what to do.  But he knew exactly what to do.  He was there for her.  She remembers the awkward pat on the back and how strange it made her feel to have him that close and know he wasn't trying to kill her for once.

            "You were the first person I told,"  she says.  "About my mother."

            "I know,"  he says.

            "I don't know why I told you."

            "Because I asked."

            She folds her arms and leans heavily against the doorframe, too exhausted to say anything.

            "I just want you to know that I'm a decent fellow.  No matter what you think.  Buffy, I've changed.  You know that.  And I'm sorry if I've been coming on too strong.  Chaining you up under my crypt wasn't the best idea in retrospect.  Vamps usually go for that sort of thing, and I should have known you wouldn't like it.  Because you're you.  You're this thing I can't get out of my head.  And I'm caught between wanting it out almost as much as I want this chip out and loving having it with me."

            Again, she cannot say anything.  Her mind assembles some retort, but her mouth can't form the words.  Vaguely, she is saying in her looks, "Go away.  Get out of here.  I don't want you.  You are here and I don't want you here.  You were there…you were there that night when I needed someone…you were there…you are here…I need someone…"

            "Well,"  he says.  "Like I said, I didn't come here to start anything with you.  And I've probably said too much.  I'll be on my way now.  And again, I'm very sorry about your mother."

            He turns and walks away.  She watches him go down the steps without looking back.  She has always hated the way he walks.  His gait is somewhere between that of a pimp and a NFL linebacker.  But there is something different about how he's walking now.  His shoulders are hunched in defeat.  He has been beaten back again.  She has been really harsh with him lately.  Her words lately have been worse than her throws and punches when he was chip free.  But he has deserved everything.  He needs to be treated badly.  He's a killer.  If he didn't have that chip, there wouldn't be a person left with a jugular in all of Sunnydale, she says to herself.  But he didn't come here tonight to kill her.  He didn't come here to insult her or belittle her about her life, her poor choice of boyfriends.  He just came to say he was sorry.

            How could he be sorry?  He has no soul…

            "Spike,"  she says.  She can hear herself say it and it makes her shiver, like someone has drawn a cold snowball down her back.

            He turns around instantly.

            She moistens her lips and leans further into the doorframe.  She can't even think lucidly anymore and it surprises her when she hears what she's saying.  "Do you want to come in?"

            She expects to see a certain victory in his face, but instead there is shock.  "Are you inviting me?"

            "Yeah,"  she says.  "I'm inviting you."

            They are seated now in the kitchen, at the table.  There is silence.  The refrigerator has just cycled off.  When it does that Buffy is reminded of how loud it really is.  And how quiet the night can be.  She is still bewildered that she would have invited Spike in and looks at him, sitting there across from her, and binds her thoughts together in a neat bundle.  She knows where all her stakes are.  She knows her crossbow is under her bed.  She has an axe in her closet.  She's twenty years old and she has an axe in her closet and she uses it sometimes.  That seems strange even to her because she's lived this life for so long she should be accustomed to seeing the gleaming blade of the axe next to her Eddie Bauer pants.

            "I think about that night all the time,"  she says.

            Her shoulders are sagging and she is tracing an invisible line on the table with her finger.  Spike watches her do this, watching the finger.  Her fingers are small, puny.  She has such power but she is so slight it seems he could pin her down with just a glance.  But she could trounce him like he was nothing at all in a minute and he's aware of that every time they meet. 

            She's always beaten me, he says to himself.  But I think tonight I could win if I wanted to.

            "I think about what you told me outside the Bronze,"  she continues.

            She is weak like a kitten.  She couldn't swat a fly now.  She has been beaten down by all that has happened.  She couldn't possibly be thinking about her weapons now.

            "About how my ties to the people around me have made me stronger, made me different from the other slayers.  The Scoobies, my sister…my Mom."

            She is so delicate and light like a buttercup.  I could clip her between my two fingers, hold her up to my chin…

            She rubs her face with those little fingers and her eyes widen for a second, only to narrow and fall to that invisible line she has been tracing continuously.

            "I feel like I'm losing,"  she says.  "All those ties are disappearing."

            I could hold her up to my mouth and kiss her.  She is too weak to protest.  She is too despondent to care.

            "I can't lose.  I can never lose.  I've always thought that's what drives me, but you were right.  It's the people in my world that keep me alive, keep me fighting."

            But I want her to care.  I want her to care very badly.  I want her to know me, to see what I'm really like.  This man, this…vampire.  Have I stopped thinking of myself as being a vampire?  She hasn't…

            "She was so pretty right before she died."  She is onto a different thought now, going about the way people do when their thoughts are too numerous to sort out.   "Dawn and I were watching her get dressed for her date, making jokes.  God, I love what Kevin Spacey says in American Beauty, about how he wishes that people knew when they were going to die.  What day it would be and all.  And how."

            But maybe she has.  She's just talking to me like we're old friends.  She's never talked to me like this before.  Except on that night, when she told me about her mother.  She wants me to understand her.  She's…letting me in a little?

            "I never thought it would end like this.  I always thought I could protect her from anything.  Maybe I have started to see myself as being untouchable.  I remember when I went into the Initiative, and how they all marveled at the number of vamps I had slain, all by myself.  I never even thought about the numbers of vamps I dusted until I told them about it.  It's just what I do."

            You could slay me.  You with your little hands and your little fingers wrapped around a wooden stake, twisting mercilessly into my chest.  Your little finger, tracing an invisible line.  Where is that line going?  It's not a barrier.  She's not drawing the line between us.  She's drawing it towards me.

            Finally she looks at him.  She has no malice in her stare.  There is helplessness and fear.  She has the look of someone who has just been told that there is nothing left to live for, that there is no hope, no salvation, only torture, pain, and death.

            "I have absolutely no clue what I'm going to do next.  I mean, this is so big.  How am I going to take care of this house?  How am I going to pay the bills?  How am I going to take care of Dawn and go to school?  It's so, so big.  And I haven't had time to think about any of it.  Mom died and it was like, screeching halt!  But now, I'm like, what next?  I can't have her back.  I have to go on.  But I don't know how."

            "Buffy,"  he says.  He reaches for her hand.  That's all he can do.   His fingers clamp around hers.  She doesn't make an effort to withdraw them from his grasp, but fear grips her eyes.  That is enough for him to let go.  "I want to help you."

            Her hand is still on the table.  Without hesitation, he reaches for it again.

            "I want to help you."

            He watches her eyes.  There's a gold band around the green that's reflecting the light.  She doesn't blink for…forever.  She doesn't move.  It looks as though a spell has been cast on her.

            What comes out of her mouth next is too startling to him he's glad that he's sitting when she says it.

            "I need you,"  she says, almost in a whisper.  "I need you to help me take care of Dawn."

            He runs his thumb along the underside of her hand.  "I will, Buffy.  I'll help you anyway I can."

            Buffy swings open the door of the Magic Shop.  It's late afternoon and her classes are over.  Dawn is following her.  She hasn't said a word for several blocks and Buffy has to check and see that she's still behind her.  She is, but many paces down the street.

            "Dawn, are you coming?"

            Her sister nods slowly, staring at the toe of her shoe.

            She waits patiently at the door for her sister to play catch up.  Meanwhile, Giles strides to the door.   He is disheveled today and there is a pencil behind his ear.  When he reaches to embrace her, the pencil slips from its perch and bounces in a happy ping on the floor.  He bends to retrieve it, apologetically, almost.

            "Things are a bit wild around here today.  Anya and I are preparing for tax time.  Anyways…"  He sighs.  "How are you?"

            "Doing all right.  Went back to school today.  Dawn too."

            "How was that?"

            She shrugs.  "I can't remember anything from the time I woke up.  And Dawn's counselor thought she was ready to come back, but…I don't know.  She's not dealing at all."

            Dawn is now in the Magic Shop.  She is standing to herself, arms at her side, like a doll.

            "You all right, Dawn?"  Giles asks.

            She doesn't answer him.  She stares at him like she's trying to figure out what he just said.  But there is nothing else from her except a mesmerizing emptiness in her stare.

            "Giles, I need to talk to you.  Do you have a minute?"

            "Sure, sure.  Let me…let me just…"  he reaches for a clip board on one of the tables by the entrance.

            "Don't touch that!"  Anya calls from somewhere.  "That's where I stopped with the inventory!"

            "Oh, yes, right.  The inventory."  He replaces the clipboard, giving it peevish glance.  "I thought the taggis root was $1.75 an ounce."

            "Nope, $2.00.  Our supplier's prices went up again."

            "If this is a bad time, I could come back,"  Buffy offers.

            "No, no.  I needed to take a break from all this anyway.  Let's go to the training room."

            The sun is bright in the training room and throws beams down on the floor in yellow stripes.  Buffy sits down in one of the beams and throws her head back, letting her hair feather down across her back.  She then draws her legs up and hugs her knees, staring ahead.

            Giles regards her carefully, thinking that he has never seen her look so small and so lost.  It terrifies him.

            "I had a visitor last night,"  she says.

            "Someone I know?"

            "Too well,"  she says. 

            "Someone human?"

            "Not the least bit.  It was Spike."

            "What did he want?  Oh, that was a stupid question.  What does he always want from you?"

            "He said that he wanted to tell me he was sorry about Mom."

            "Oh?"

            "It was really weird.   He really acted like he was sorry.  And we talked.  For a long time.  It was so weird having him there in my kitchen not threatening me or trying to chain me up---

            "In your kitchen?" Giles sputters.

            Her eyes widen and her face flushes.  "Yeah."

            "Buffy, you invited him in?"

            "I did.  But it was OK.  He didn't hurt me.  Nothing was broken.  And when he left, he didn't come back."

            "Why would you invite him in after all the trouble he has caused you?  That's not like you."

            "So I slipped.  Willow and Tara can reinstate the spell if he steps out of line again."

            "And he will.   That's his nature.  You should know that by now."

            "Giles, he was being nice for once.  He let me talk.  He let me vent, get everything out.  And he listened.  It was just so good to have someone there."

            "I offered to stay after the funeral."

            "I know.  And I thought I'd be OK.  But I wasn't.  I fell apart, actually.  And I looked outside and there was Spike.  So he got the invite, got to listen to Buffy rant."  She hesitates before saying the rest.  "There's more."

            "You didn't…"  he can't finish, because the idea of something happening between the two of them is making him too nauseous to speak.

            "What?  No!  He touched my hand.  That was all."

            "That's enough."

            "Anyway.  I told him that I might need help protecting Dawn.  And he offered to look after her when I'm on patrol.  Actually, he offered to patrol for me, but he has too much fun killing his own kind.  So on the nights when I'm patrolling, he's going to come over and watch her for me."

            "Buffy, this is madness!  What were you thinking?"

            "I was thinking about Dawn.  She needs someone with my strength to protect her.  Spike's got it."

            "He's also prone to evil and violence at a moment's notice.  Not the sort of creature I'd want looking after my only sibling."

            "OK, Giles, then what would you suggest?  Sending her to Angel?"

            "No."

            "Putting her in a convent?"

            "No.  But surely there must be other ways to deal with this."

            "Well, I couldn't think of any at the moment.  And I can't think of any alternatives now."

            "Yes, but Buffy---

            "I know what you're thinking.  This has disaster written all over it in big, Sesame Street letters.  But I think it might work out.  It might."

            Giles can only shake his head.  "I think you're putting an opening in a wall that should be kept closed."

            "You're probably right.  But this is all I can do for now.  We'll just see."  She sets her chin down between her knees.  "We'll just see."

            "Buffy, I don't like this,"  Dawn says as she watches her sister gather up her stakes for the night's patrol.

            "I know you don't, but there's nothing else I can do,"  Buffy replies, checking a stake for signs of wear.

            "Having that…monster in the house while I'm trying to sleep.  I mean, it's like, the at home Blair Witch Project or something."

            "Spike promises to be good.  If he isn't, he knows what he's in for,"  she says, spinning the stake in her hand.

            "What if that chip in his head de-activates while he's here?  What if he vamps out on me?  What if Harmony comes around?"  Dawn draws in a breath.  "What if Dru comes back?"

            "Look, if any of those things happen, Spike knows his new home will be a Dust Buster.  Don't worry.  I'm in control."

            Dawn follows her sister down the stairs, still yapping about her fears.  Buffy is too tired to respond.  They're the same questions she's been asking herself.  She is scared.  But at the same time, she thinks she knows it will be all right.  She keeps telling herself that anyway.

            There is a knock at the door.  Dawn draws in another quick breath.

            "He's here,"  Buffy says.

            She opens the door and finds him there, looking like a confident suitor.  All he was missing were the flowers and the candy.

            "Hello, sweetbreads."

            Buffy rolls her eyes. 

            He strides across the threshold and makes eye contact with Dawn, who quickly hides behind her sister.

            "Aw, don't be shy.  We're old friends, aren't we?"

            "Don't start with her, Spike.  Or it ends right here,"  she says, producing a stake from her coat pocket.

            "Oh, and then who will look after Little Bit, then?  Xander?  'Oh, let me be helpless in a million ways, but be funny while I'm doing it.'"

            "Spike!"  Her eyes flash a warning.

            "All right, all right.  I'll keep quiet." 

            Buffy turns to her sister.  "Go to bed on time.  No TV past 10:00.  And don't forget you have a quiz in math tomorrow.  I looked at your homework and saw that big fat D you got last week.  Gotta work on that."

            Dawn's eyes are transmitting about a billion distress signals at once.  Buffy lays a hand on her sister's cheek and smiles.  "You'll be all right."  And then she fires her voice over her shoulder.  "Won't she, Spike?"

            "Right as rain,"  he says.   "I'll be a good babysitter.  Won't chat on the phone.  Won't raid the fridge."  He rubs his stomach.  "I ate before I came.  O Neg.  Fresh from the dairy.  Or dairy maid, as it were."

            She makes for the door, but before she leaves, she turns to Spike just one more time.  "If anything goes wrong---

            "Yeah, I know.  Stake to the heart.  Goodbye Sunnydale, hello Satan."

            "Just checking,"  she says.  "Bye, Dawn.  I'll be back soon."

            After Buffy's departure, Dawn and Spike stand awkwardly in each other's presence.  Dawn switches her weight from hip to hip, squirming in the vampire's stare.  He smiles and heads for the sofa.  Before Dawn can protest, he leaps into the air and lands on the cushions like a pole vaulter. 

            "Don't sit there!"  Dawn says.

            Spike is surprised by the anger in her voice.  It sounds so out of place, coming from someone so small and so young.

            He gets to his feet.  "Why?  Did somebody piss on it or something?"

            "That's where…that's where…"  she can't say it.

            Spike tries hard to interpret the hesitation in her voice.  Then tears appear in her eyes and he knows instantly.

            "Oh,"  he says in a hollow voice.

            All of a sudden there is nothing in the room but Dawn's grief.  It is filling the room with its resonance, its power.  It is wrapping around Spike's throat and threatening to cut all of his oxygen off.  It is enveloping him, and everything else, making it more of a force than life itself.

            Finally, he says, in a small, barely audible voice.  "It must be scary being without your mother all on a sudden."

            Dawn swallows hard as a few tears escape her eyes.  "It is."

            Buffy is moving slowly down her street.  She is sore and she thinks she dislocated her shoulder when she threw a vamp over a tombstone.  She is looking for her house.  She is wondering too what went on while she was gone.  She had trouble focusing tonight.  She couldn't fight very well.  She kept thinking of the what ifs.  What if he's going through my underwear drawer?  What if he's wearing my underwear on his head?   What if he's touching my sheets, sniffing my clothes, beating off to pictures of me, getting his spooge all over the place…eww!

            "This was a bad idea,"  she says to herself.  "Bad, bad, bad idea to have the Big Bad in my house while I'm away."

            She keeps saying "bad" as she's walking, until a passerby looks at her funny.  And she continues on for home.

            The house is quiet and dark when she enters.  Spike is on the floor in front of the TV, watching a home shopping channel.

            "Buffy, do you have this Showtime Rotisserie?"  he asks.

            "No,"  she says.

            "You really should get one.  It'll roast a turkey, a chicken…anything.  And you can cook veggies on top too.  It's brilliant."

            She is not so tired that she can't find this amusing.  A vamp going on about the wonders of modern kitchen technology.  She smiles and he returns the look.  For a minute he looks kind of sweet, like a kid watching cartoons on Saturday morning, waiting for his mother to make pancakes.

            Mother

            And the smile disappears from her face.

            "Any trouble while I was gone?"  she asks.

            "None at all."

            "Dawn in bed?"

            "I think.  She hasn't been making much noise lately.  You gotta talk to her about her music, though.  Pitiful stuff.  Maybe I can loan her some Sex Pistols."

            "I think she's a little young for punk, Spike."

            "Oh, no.  She's at the right age."

            She sits down in a chair, letting her purse fall from her arm.  She runs her fingers through her hair, collecting a brittle leaf that must have gotten stuck there while she was fighting.  The two of them are silent and Spike watches her, wondering what she's thinking.  He feels comfortable, at home.  Almost feels like warmth.

            She yawns and lies back in the chair.

            "Tired, slayer?"

            "Yeah,"  she says, closing her eyes for just a second.  "This one vamp in the north sector just wouldn't be killed.  Big guy.  About six four.  Like a piano turned on its side."

            "I think I know that bloke.  Did you get him?"

            "Yep."

            "Good.  He was next on my list."

            She smiles at him again.  It is a labor-intensive act at this point.             

"I suppose you want me to leave now,"  he says.

Does she?

"I'm going to bed soon."

He nods.  "I'll be on my merry way, then."  He gathers himself up from the floor and grabs his leather duster from the hearth.

She watches him slip into his coat.  That coat belonged to a slayer.   It's a trophy from one of his kills.  White-hot hate begins to glow in her and she is no longer smiling.

Spike senses something has changed in her and begins fretting.

"What?  Did I do something wrong?"

She frowns.  "No," she says.  And then, "Yes."

"What?"

She doesn't respond.  She stands up and opens the door for him.  "You'd better get back to your crypt now."  She is saying this for his own protection.  She is aware of the stake inside her pocket.  It can still be used.

He studies her for a moment.  What did I do now, he thinks.  Why do I inspire her hatred even when I'm not doing anything at all?

"All right.  I'm going.  I'm going."  He turns to her before he leaves.  "When do you want me back?"

"I don't know.  I'll give you a ring."

"In other words, don't call us, we'll call you sort of thing."

"I guess,"  she says.  She doesn't want to talk to him anymore.  It's an effort now.

When he is out on the porch, he tries to speak to her again.  But she allows him only to say her name.  And she sends him away.

She spends the next few minutes checking everything in the house, making a mental note to herself to buy a padlock for her underwear drawer if she finds anything missing.  But everything appears to be just how it was before she left.  She checks on Dawn one last night, washes her face and crawls into her bed to feign sleep for a few hours before school.

"I hope last night wasn't too totally weird for you, Dawn,"  Buffy says as she slices some banana into her cereal.

"It was kind of weird at first,"  Dawn replies, munching on her cornflakes.  "But then, it was kind of good too."

"What do you mean?"

"We talked a lot.  About…what happened with…you know.  And all that stuff.  He's a good listener.  He really made me feel like he was understanding me, what I was going through and all.  It was kinda like talking to my counselor, but different, because my counselor at school wears these really, really big glasses and always has lipstick on her teeth.  But it was cool to talk to him.  He's just enough on the inside to understand, but just enough on the outside too."

"So that's all you guys did?  Talk?"

"Oh, and then there was the fire."

Buffy's heart begins to race.  "What fire?"

"Just kidding.  Really it was fine.  We talked and watched TV.  And he said this really, really funny thing about cable companies having a bias against the undead, or else they'd wire the graveyard.  He really can be funny sometimes."

Buffy would never admit it to anymore, but sometimes she does find him amusing, even if the things he says are at her expense.  The boy can be witty.  But he can also be dangerous.  And he was in her house last night.

I left my only sibling alone with a vampire…and they watched TV.  It sounded like a story in one of those supermarket tabloids.  But it was true. 

And nothing happened.

"When are you patrolling again?"  Dawn asks.

Buffy hasn't seen her sister this cheerful in days and her happiness is almost blindingly apparent.  She knows what Dawn really wants to know is, when is Spike coming back.  She hadn't left an open invitation for Spike.  But her sister's pleading eyes tell her that she really should get in touch with him again. 

"Soon,"  Buffy says.  "I'll be patrolling again soon."

"Tonight, maybe?"

"No, not tonight,"  Buffy says.  "It's Friday, and we've been cooped up together for a while.  What say us chickens get out and see a movie or something.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is playing at the multiplex.  I've heard it's really good."

"I've heard it's really subtitled, too."

"Reading is good, Dawn."

"Can't we see that new movie about David Arquette and the big, drooling dog?"

"You know, as much as I'm into the whole doofus-paired-with-slobbering-canine, I think I'll pass on that one."