Title: The Call
Author: Joy
Email: SleepingBeauty2@ziplip.com
A/N: This chapter is going to hurt to read.
"Hello," Buffy answered the phone at the magic shop.
"I made Spike split blood all over Angel…It was hysterical." Dawn's voice whisked through the phone happy and carefree.
Buffy smiled that her sister was actually excited to talk to her, "How'd you manage that?"
"Angel was having trouble assimilating I'm the age you were when he fell for you. He looked like a guppy opening and closing his mouth… So I kind teased him about it," the teen weaseled.
With a lighthearted tone the slayer asked, "What kind of teasing?"
"Don't get mad…but I told him he wasn't getting a chance to try his happiness clause on me." Dawn took it as a good sign when Buffy gaffed on the other end. "Spike had blood in his mouth…no not mine…and did a spit take, spewing blood all over Angel's shirt and face. He's cleaning up now… I don't remember him and the sarcastic remarks."
"Why? What'd he say?" Buffy inquired.
"He told Spike he still had the muzzle they used on Druscilla when she got out of control," Dawn commented, leaving it there to hang between them.
Buffy growled, "Not cool… Not cool at all. Teasing me fine…not my sister."
"I had just taken a pot shot at him," Dawn sighed.
"Yeah but you're a teenager. He's over two hundred years old." The statement made Dawn smile. This was how it should be. Buffy and her laughing, not fighting.
"So how are things… in the last few hours since I left?" Dawn asked meekly.
'At least she's trying to have a conversation with me,' Buffy thought. "I told them… All of it… Xander is calling the 'no picking on Spike' blackmail. But Tara smoothed things over quickly. He's already agreed to get the room up in working order. He's going to try Dawnie… Everyone is."
"You never told me what happened with Dad and the money," Dawn asked quietly.
"It's different under different circumstances," Buffy tried to dodge.
"Please tell me," the teen said simply.
"Dad's going to pay off the mortgage and the property tax for the house which will be a big help. If you stay with him, I'll get money to supplement what I lost from mom's doctor's bills… basically the things from while I was dead…plus some money to get me on my feet. If you come home, we'll get a monthly stipend. He's got a college fund set up for you and me, so I won't have to worry about you being able to go to college," Buffy explained.
"So financially dad's dealing?" Dawn asked.
"It took some yelling about who did he think was paying for everything and why the hell the child support would stop just cause mom died. I yelled at him some more about all of my saving having to be used to support us and we still weren't out of debt… I then called him a lousy father and a few other choice names for being completely absent from our lives when we needed him most. I went so far as to say that if he wouldn't help us out, I would go to an attorney to fight for what we were due. Lawyers got his attention!"
"Why's dad like this?" the teen asked quietly.
"I don't know."
"Are things going to be bad when I got there?"
Buffy cringed, "I hope not… I don't think he'll hold it against you."
There was silence for a long time while each sister thought. "You want to talk to Spike?" Dawn asked cautiously.
This was huge step for Dawn and it wasn't lost on Buffy. Letting Buffy interact with Spike meant she was allowing her the option of possibly hurting him and hoped she wouldn't. "Yeah…I would… Thank you Dawnie."
A very long pause signaled the lack of reciprocation. Spike didn't want to talk to her. He wasn't convinced she wouldn't drive nails into his heart through the phone. "Hello," his voice sounded gravely.
"Hi… You made it safely," the slayer said.
"Yeah, even stayed under the cops radar."
Buffy bit her lip not knowing what to say. Then it occurred to her…she had told her friends about them. Even in the past tense it was better then nothing. "I…" she stumbled. "I told them Spike…I told all of them. You didn't look like the bad guy. Tara was my witness to make sure I didn't chicken out… Xander freaked which I knew would happen but he's going to help me set up your room and…"
"Pet… Please don't…" he whispered, in pain to hear how proud she was. How she was readying him a place in her home.
"Don't work on the room?" she questioned.
He knit his brow together and leaned on the desk in front of him. "Don't fix me a place in your life. Don't sound excited about doing it. It hurts too much… Fixing the room is about Dawn, not me. Please don't confuse that." Spike was right.
Buffy by now had moved the phone to a side room so she could be alone. She sat down unsteadily. "What are you saying? You don't want to live here?"
Spike clenched his eyes shut. "If things had gone very differently- If you had told your friends about us because you didn't want to be your dirt little secret anymore. If you had said you felt something for me. If you had let me help you with money and Nibblet before Dawn got to thoughts of suicide, then yeah I'd want to move in. Now too many hurts have happened. I'm a solution to a problem…you're talking like I'm moving in with you. I'm not."
She was acting like this was just a progression in their relationship. Buffy sat crying for the first time truly about Spike. "I don't want to lose you," in no more then a whisper came through the phone.
Spike slammed his fist on the desk in front of him crushing the wood beneath. Angel, Gunn, and Dawn's heads shot up at the cracking sound. "Buffy, you can't do that to me!" he screamed. "You can't tell me how much you don't want to lose me after all the crap you've pulled. You can't screw me one minute and toss me the next!"
Angel's brow knit together and began to approach the office. Dawn put a hand in the middle of Angel's chest pushing him backwards. "Come on big boy. Let me explain what my sister's been up to," Dawn said tugging Angel away from the scene. This left Gunn in the lobby to watch the gesturing vampire rave in the office.
Angel just glared. Dawn had been on the receiving end of this glare before…it was scary to be honest. "I'm not going to sugar coat this Angel. Buffy's been screwing Spike." The vampire snarled. "And I meant it in the order I said it. Buffy has been coming to Spike… When things got bad for me, when I said I was thinking of leaving, all Spike could think of was his promise to protect me. He loves Buffy but he would protect me. He cut things off with Buffy, wouldn't see her or talk to her at all." Angel still glared and snarled. "I'm assuming Buffy and he are having their 'break up' talk or at least their 'this is what I hate about you' talk."
"Buffy isn't like that she wouldn't do something…" Angel growled.
Dawn raised an eyebrow at him. "You left an eighteen year old Buffy. A lot has changed. Being pulled out of Heaven will do that to you… Buffy would do that, has done that in the past, and will manipulate in the future as well. I'm not the only one that needs a break from the slayer for sanity sake."
"Buffy, I'm away too because I need to be away. I need to be away from your games and your general manipulation. I can't do it anymore. I love you, but that doesn't matter… I could make a life here. I could work with Angel. I could still fight the bad guys…because I want to Buffy, not for you."
Buffy whimpered into the phone, "You're leaving like all the rest."
Spike screamed at the top of his lungs uncaring for whom else was around him as he put his fist through a wall. The growl became strong, "I will say this one time in the calmest tone I can muster… I'm not your Dad. I'm not Angel. I'm certainly not Captain Cardboard. You've never given me even the littlest crumb that you actually feel something for me. Of all of them, I have the most right to leave. I have no commitment from you to break. I have no words of love from you to trash. All I have are the harsh words you would say to me each time you left… I'm not like the rest because they got something of you. I got nothing of you."
Buffy had taken Spike's words until then, screaming back at him, not caring who heard her in the store where all the Scoobies were still gathered. "You didn't get any of me? Like hell you didn't. You are the one I've run to every time something bad has happened since I woke up. You're the one I went to when I needed to just be. You were the only one I told about heaven. You're the only one I trusted. You gave me something to live for. Bull- I didn't give you anything. I gave you everything I am now that I'm back in this place!"
Xander and Willow stopped their conversation to listen to Buffy yelling at Spike on the phone in the other room. "She loves him, doesn't she?" Willow tentatively asked Tara.
"She doesn't know how she feels about him at all. But she doesn't want to lose him. This is all the more painful for her because she's done everything she would have had to do to make things work with Spike, but she still doesn't have him," Tara said sorrowfully.
"How did we miss this?" Willow asked.
"Buffy kept saying that Spike couldn't love, that it was a sick fascination. So that's how we all saw his behavior yet watching him with Dawn the last couple weeks, I know Buffy would have privately gotten that sort of affection from him if she would have let him," Tara answered.
"Let him?" Xander questioned.
"Buffy would beat on Spike until he would stop being sweet and would get rough," the blond witch explained.
"I don't think I wanted to know that."
Spike pressed his head against the wall and breathed deeply. He laid his palm against the wall touching it lightly. "You gave me everything you had in way of punishment too, pet. You gave me every insult, every bit of disgust. You gave me all the hate you have for yourself, for Angel, for Riley, for Giles, and for your Dad. But you never gave me your heart. I was never allowed to touch that. I was allowed to touch your body but even then I wasn't allowed to touch it softly. It had to be hard… and I gave you what you wanted…" Spike snorted, "You don't want me… I was just convenient. I know that now. If we come back, I'm not convenient any longer."
"You're not convenient. You never were," Buffy whispered.
"Luv, please don't do this to me. Just let me have my week to regroup so when I get back it might be possible for me to sleep in the same house with you," he swallowed.
"By the time you get back you'll have surrounded your heart with fortified walls. There won't be any sweet Spike for me. There will only be loving Spike for Dawn," she whispered.
He hit his hand against the wall. "Damn it Buffy! I tried to be sweet Spike for you. You pummeled him into the ground. I have more Buffy inflicted scars now then I have demon inflicted ones… Dawn gets all my love and all my gentleness because she wants it. She needs some softness in her life…" Buffy began to cry through the phone. "Don't do that!" Spike snapped. "I'm trying to stay above water now that I'm not drowning in you anymore. Don't bring me back under."
"Please Spike… Please don't close yourself off to me. This time I'll take the crumbs of what you can give me," she said unsteadily.
Spike swallowed, "I'm going to hang up now… I can't keep letting you do this to me."
"No… Spike!" Buffy said into the phone just as she heard dial tone.
Tara was just beyond the door to come in as Buffy sank to the floor and wept.
Spike took shaky unneeded breaths as he slid down the wall to the floor. Dawn was next to him in a second. "This time you cry for Buffy and I hold you and pass you tissues," Dawn said drawing Spike's head to her lap. The vampire was ready to let bravado take over but realized that part of the parent thing was letting her in. Spike leaned on her and sobbed. "It's okay. We have a whole week together. We're not going to waste it on Buffy," the teenager said as she kissed his forehead.
Anya, Xander and Willow listened to Buffy cry. They had listened to her shout about all the things she had given of herself to Spike. And they heard her whimper about losing him. "Buffy really has feelings for him," Anya said wide-eyed. Buffy's high school chums just sat shocked listening to Buffy cry over Spike like she had over Riley and Angel, but more closely to Angel.
Angel and Gunn sat in the lobby of the Hyperion hearing Spike's sobs and the soothing words of Dawn comforting him. "So I'm guessing he was talking to your ex," Gunn ventured.
"Something like that," Angel responded.
"And you're not going to tear his head off?" Gunn asked.
"Why? She's caused him more pain then I ever could."