By the time Buffy got home, she couldn't quite understand what she had been thinking when she was with Anya and Xander. Spike and Angel? Together? Who was she kidding? She was barely able to handle Spike by himself, the last time they were together. Sure it had been fun when she was with him, but then had come the guilt and the shame and the staggering depression. She was not a woman cut out for the kinky, no matter what Spike implied. Besides, she had Angel now. That should be enough, he should be enough; he had been enough for the last year and a half. Why was she even thinking about anything else than what she had? Angel, her love for Angel, was one of the strongest forces in her life. What was she thinking, wanting anything more than what had always made her happy? With effort, she carefully ignored the quiet little voice in her head that whispered that there were quite a few times when being Angel had made her anything but happy.

As she started walking up the stairs to the front door, she heard a familiar voice call out and turned to see Dawn dashing the last few yards to the house. "Buff! You're home late. Thought you'd be all cozy with Angel, seeing as both me and Conner went out."

"Conner and I," corrected Buffy automatically. She had spent the last six months or so playing grammar police; SATs were coming up and she wanted Dawn to have her pick of colleges, preferably off the Hellmouth. Corny, yeah, she knew it, but there had to be some advantages to not actually being the Slayer, and she wanted Dawn to get every single one of them. Not to mention, correcting Dawn was only about a thousand and one times easier than explaining why she hadn't stayed home with her vamp. "Angel had work and so did I," she answered shortly, making sure nothing in her voice invited questions she didn't want to answer.

Dawn shrugged, not hugely interested one way or another. She joined Buffy in the walk up the stairs. Buffy looked around quickly as she unlocked the door, searching for Spike, but he seemed to be gone. Or Angel had killed him. To cover her actions, she looked back at Dawn. "Speaking of, where is Conner?"

"Met a girl," said Dawn. That might have been jealousy in Dawn's voice, but Buffy was suppressing any knowledge of it. Deep in her heart, she knew that it was impossible for her to convince Dawn and Conner they were brother and sister when they were the farthest thing from it. But not under her roof, damn it. They could wait for college for that. They could wait. Dawn was still a baby at seventeen, and Conner, well, Conner wasn't. Before she could stop herself from thinking it, some part of Buffy whispered that Dawn and Conner were truly not so different than she and Angel had been when they met. Not a thought that she wanted floating free in her head. She had too much else to worry about right now. It was a relief to notice that Dawn herself seemed to be ruthlessly suppressing anything like jealousy that she was feeling.

"Well," Buffy said, "I hope he remembers his curfew." She hoped her voice sounded normal, like she hadn't been thinking any icky thoughts about her baby sister and her sort of stepson.

Dawn snorted and Buffy resigned herself to another round of grounding Conner, while she and Angel both pretended that Conner was someone that had any real hope of controlling. Sometimes it seemed cute that Conner and Angel were trying the whole father/son thing again, but most times it was just useless.

Once inside the house, Dawn kissed Buffy quick on the cheek and headed up to her bedroom, no doubt looking forward to calling Kit and telling her about the evening. Buffy sighed as she watched Dawn bound up the stairs with careless energy, wishing she could even pretend to be that young again. She should go after her, do mothery/big sister stuff, ask how the play was. Instead, Buffy sat down on the couch heavily, wishing she could just rest forever.

Then she heard the kitchen door creak open and realized that wasn't going to happen.

"Buffy, said Angel coming into the room, looking surprised. "I thought you were sleeping over at Xander's and Anya's tonight."

"Well," Buffy said, trying to laugh off the question. "You know those two, way too much sex." Just not the kind you think, she added silently, suddenly lost again in visions of Angel and Spike together. They wouldn't have been gentle with each other, she realized. No part of their relationship could have ever been gentle, they didn't have it in them when they were together. With an effort, she dragged her mind away from those thoughts. Not now, so not now.

Angel looked slightly shocked, "But she's so far along... never mind, I don't want to know. Please don't tell me anything else. I'm sure that Anya will tell me everything whether or not I want to hear it."

"So true," agreed Buffy. "So, Dawn tells me that Conner went off with a girl tonight. She sounded kinda ticked, but I don't think she quite knew why. How long do you think we have before those two realize they're hot for each other? Cause I'm enjoying this calm before the storm phase." As she spoke, she tried to really listen to the sounds of the house. Where was Spike? Had Angel killed him, the vamp he had been with for years?

"Is this your subtle way of telling me you're just going to ignore what was going on before you left tonight? Because that isn't really going to work for me."

"Angel, what else can I tell you? I told you I loved you and that being with Spike tonight was a mistake. What more do you want from me? I'm not going to sit here and repeat what you already know. One fight with you was enough tonight, thanks."

He sat carefully down next to her. She couldn't help but noticed he looked nervous. "I want to understand. I want to know what you see in him. The girl I left all those years ago would never have gone to bed with Spike, would never..." his voice trailed off uncomfortably and it took him a few moments to finish the thought. "Would never have done what Spike is implying you did."

Buffy had just wanted to drop it. She had wanted to just go to bed, alone by choice, wrap some fantasies around her mind and fall asleep to have some really interesting dreams that she would never have the guts to act on. But she was surprised at the anger she felt as Angel implied she was still the high school girl he had loved and left years ago. Why couldn't he see how many ways she had changed? She saw every one of the changes in him, even the ones he hadn't been so up front about. "Is that how you see me, Angel? As that fifteen year old girl you tried to follow to the Bronze? Seriously, you have to stop that. I'm not that person anymore. I thought you loved me for who I am. Isn't that the whole point of us being together now?"

He went on like she hadn't spoken. "He told me about what you liked when you two were together." Angel's voice sounded dead. Great, time two million and twenty when she wound up regretted those few amazingly wrong weeks with Spike.

Okay, she really didn't want to do this, but she also really didn't want things to stay the way they were right this second. Damn it, why did Spike have to show up at all? Why did he have to come and confuse her, make her want things that she could never had? Sure, she and Angel may have been stuck in, well, a huge rut, but that didn't mean she wanted to get out of it. Until Spike so kindly reminded her that maybe she wasn't the happiest she had ever been.

"I was crazed when I was with him, okay? I was desperate, I would have done anything just to feel something. And Spike, he's pretty much push the envelope guy himself. So yeah, maybe we did wind up doing some crazy things. Some of those things, well, a lot of them actually, I'm ashamed to think I ever did. Angel, I like what I have with you."

Really, she did. So the quiet and gentle drove her a little crazy sometimes, so there were nights when she wanted things that Angel could never give her, what was the point of telling him that? He would only get upset.

Angel's face was still and empty when she looked at him, but his eyes seemed to burn with something that she couldn't recognize. He said nothing, just watched her. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and demanded, "Damn it, Angel, what do you want from me?"

He moved with the sudden speed of vampires that even eight years as a slayer couldn't quite prepare her for and pulled her against him hard. Shocked, her breath pushed out of her in something between a laugh and a gasp and he took advantage of that to begin kissing her.

She had been with Angel, on and off, since she was fifteen. She should know him now, his actions, his responses, but this right now, this was new. He was kissing her with a hunger she had never felt from him before and his hands were everywhere, hard and demanding. In her mind, she could imagine him with Spike, imagine the two of them together, and all it did was make her burn hotter for them both.

"I want to make you forget him," Angel said fiercely and scraped his teeth down her throat, like nothing he had ever done before, and she could feel her brain start to cloud over.

"Dawn...?" she managed to breath out when she could break free of his kisses.

"Will get a hell of an education if she comes downstairs," he agreed, but it was enough of a warning to inspire him to stand and, holding her in his arms, take the stairs two at a time to their bedroom. By the time he threw her on the bed, she had lost the ability to think.

When they were finished, Buffy stretched, feeling empty and languorous. "I didn't know you could do things like that," she said, sliding her eyes to Angel, feeling almost embarrassed by her behavior. That had not been the Buffy that Angel had fallen in love with, that was the one that had been with Spike, wherever and whenever they had wanted.

Angel chuckled low in his throat and curled his cool body next to hers. "Wasn't sure if I could," he confided.

A shiver of nerves crawled down her spine, killing the afterglow pretty damn effectively. "You risked your soul for that?"

He stilled; she didn't doubt that he could feel her anger in her very bones. "I'm that scared to lose you, Buffy," he answered. "I can't give you what Spike could. I can't give you anything I want to, what I've wanted to give you for years. And now here he is again, and he wants you, I can tell he does, and he can give you all the things that I never can, all the things that I never even knew you wanted. And you want him, you can't deny that. I could smell him it on you."

"Gotta love dating vamps," Buffy muttered wryly. Then, in a more serious tone of voice, she added, "Angel, I'm not worth your soul. Nothing is. We've been there and done that and having to listen to my friends tell me to kill you is not something that I want to do again. You can't lose yourself like that again. You have to promise me."

"Do you know what it's like, Buffy? I mean, do you have any idea? I love you, I want you like I've never wanted anything in my life. I want you more than blood. I look at you and I ache and all the things that we can do together just aren't enough. Not for me and not for you. I can't help what I am, what I want. I want..." his voice trailed off and he seemed to catch himself before speaking again, "I want to lose myself in you, I want that one perfect moment of happiness back. I want to forget that it's wrong, I want us both to."

His words chilled her straight through. "Angel, are you listening to yourself? You have to stop talking like this. Why are you acting like this?"

Angel buried his face in the pillow, groaned into it. Strange time to start worrying that Dawn might hear something. "It's seeing Spike again. It's having to listen to him, the things he says about you, about the two of you, about the thr-" his voice suddenly ground to halt.

"About the what?" Buffy asked as she sat up and traced her fingers over the tattoo on his back. As she felt the tense and release of the muscles under his skin, her mind drifted to Spike, the new Spike, goth and decadent in his velvet and leather, and she wondered what his tattoo was. Damn, no wonder Angel was worried; here she was, trying to comfort him and who does her mind wander to but Spike? Maybe Angel had a point. "About what, Angel-love?" she prompted, when his silence went too long.

"Nothing, he muttered into the pillow, but all his muscles had turned to rock under her hands, a sure sign that he was lying.

"Okay," she sighed, and turned away. If that was the way he wanted to play it...

"No, Buffy, I'm sorry. It's that... seeing Spike again, talking with him... it reminds me of the old times, and I don't really want to think about them. It reminds me of being Angelus."

"Is that it?"

"Isn't that enough? Buffy, he told me things tonight I never wanted to think about. He told me things about you that I never wanted to know." He paused, took a deep but unneeded breath, "He reminded me of things about myself that I would rather have forgotten. He made me doubt everything you and I have ever been to each other. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I told you! I was ashamed."

"But you loved him?" he pressed.

"What do you want to hear, exactly? Yes, I loved him. Yes, I slept with him, yes, I did things with him I never thought I would do with anyone. You want details? Is that what this is about? You want to hear about the time in the Bronze, or maybe the time outside the Doublemeat Palace? You want to hear about the handcuffs? It was the past, Angel. I don't ask you what you did with Darla, or Drusilla, or, god forbid, Cordelia." She paused, looked at him as he lay unmoving on his stomach. "I don't even ask you about what you did with Spike."

Like he had been staked, Angel twisted over and sat bolt upright. There was a stunned look on his face. "He told you? He swore he didn't, he wouldn't."

Buffy felt her lips twist. So Anya had been right. "No, he didn't. Anya did. And you, just now."

"I... never wanted you to know that," his voice was embarrassed, but she thought she could feel his body respond to the idea; he was moving a little uneasily now.

"Yeah," she agreed ruefully, "tell me about it. I never wanted you to know either."

Her response startled Angel into a laugh, and he wrapped her arms around her in a hug. "I love you, Buffy."

She rested her cheek against his head, breathed in the scent of him, as familiar to her as her own. "I love you too, Angel."

Now, if only we could work out what to do about the fact that I think we're both still in love with Spike.