Hey guys, thanks for the reviews! I'm glad you're liking it so far, and I hope you will continue to. Knowing that someone is reading and enjoying it has kept my updates a lot more frequent than they probably would be otherwise, so thanks for that, too. Longer chapter this time; let me know what you think of this one too, and thanks in advance for taking the time to review.
xXxXx
Buffy's door was still standing open, so Dawn walked in. Not that she wouldn't have anyway, pissed as she was. She found her sister lying on her back on the bed, her hands covering her face. She would have assumed she was crying if she didn't know better. Not Buffy. Not this Buffy, as Dawn had come to think of the girl Willow and the others had raised from the grave, this Buffy who couldn't seem to feel any emotion acutely enough to cause actual tears.
"What did you do to make Spike storm out of here?" Dawn had intended to open with something a little less accusatory, but so much for that. At least one of them could be honest about what they were feeling.
Slowly, Buffy removed her hands from her face and looked over at her sister seriously. Dawn had been right. No tears. "He stormed?" she said, sounding bewildered. "Spike doesn't storm."
"He stormed. He wouldn't tell me anything, either, and Spike always tells me things. So I want to hear it from you. What happened?"
"Overlooking the fact that it's none of your business? I don't really know."
"What does that mean? What was the fight about?"
"It wasn't a fight. We were just talking. About—us? I don't know. We spend so much of the time speaking in riddles that it can be hard to figure out what either one of us is actually saying. I think I compared him to Angel, or …"
"God, Buffy! Why the hell would you do something that idiotic?"
"Dawn, please. I—That's not what I meant to do. I just … I was pointing out the difference between what I had with Angel and what I have with Spike."
"Still. I've never been in a serious relationship in my life and even I know that comparing your current boyfriend to an ex—especially one he's spent about a century hating—does not make for warm fuzzies."
Buffy finally sat up and shot Dawn a look. "I don't need a lecture from you, all right? I didn't say it was the smartest move. But there was more to it than that. We … I … Spike and I are a complicated matter. And I think maybe we do need some distance right now. So, I'm not sorry he left."
"What?"
"Dawn, this isn't something I feel like discussing with you. Will you please leave me alone? It's been a long day."
"Spike just left here, maybe for good, and you don't care? You're actually glad? What is the matter with you?"
Buffy sighed heavily. "Dawnie, I know this is upsetting for you. I get that. But please try to understand that it's—
"I don't understand, Buffy! I don't understand anything you say these days!" Buffy cringed as Dawn's tone approached screeching range. "Spike is the best thing that ever happened to you. He loves you more than you probably deserve to be loved considering the way you've treated him, and the fact that you can just let him walk out of here thinking you don't want him because he's not Angel? It just proves that you're as self-destructive as the others think you are. But for opposite reasons. They think you're with Spike to punish yourself. They're wrong. You love him and you hate yourself for it because he makes you want to be here, when you'd rather go on blaming everyone for ripping you out of heaven instead of accepting it and letting yourself be happy. You are damaged, but not from what they did to you. You're doing it to yourself."
Buffy stared at Dawn, stunned into speechlessness by the accusation (insight?) and the force behind it. Dawn stared right back, her gaze tearful but steady, challenging Buffy to react, to defend herself or break down or simply tell Dawn to mind her own damn business. After what seemed an eternity, Buffy turned her back on her sister and lay back down on the bed, effectively ending the confrontation. Avoidance, she had recently discovered, was a valuable coping mechanism. It kept things from hurting too much.
xXxXx
The bartender didn't seem to understand that when Spike said "Keep 'em coming," he meant it—in the most literal sense possible. The third time he had to slam his shot glass down on the bar and point meaningfully to indicate its emptiness, he grabbed the hapless barkeep's wrist as he poured the tequila. With his other hand, Spike pried the bottle from his grasp and took possession of it, releasing the man and taking a long swig.
"Just so we avoid any further miscommunication, mate," he said, and the bartender nodded vigorously, rubbing his wrist. His tenure working behind the bar in a primarily demon establishment had taught him the painful lesson that the customer was always right—especially when said customer was one pissed-off and already half-drunk vampire.
Spike blamed Buffy for the fact that his initial impulse had been to go to the bloody Bronze, and what did that say about him except that she had him by the balls and he was slowly losing every bit of what made him Spike, a vampire to be reckoned with if ever there was one.
And what a joke that was. Not since the government boys had shoved this bleeding chip in his head had he truly been anything of the sort. And then what? Then he had fallen for Buffy, fallen harder than anyone in the history of love, and anything evil that remained in him was buried in that, for her sake, so that she might come to believe he could be good even if it went against everything in his nature. If she thought he could be her nice, well-heeled vamp-lover then all would be roses. Except she had proven time and again that she didn't believe that, never would no matter how many different ways he showed her. Even though he hadn't tasted human blood in ages, even though he had played babysitter to her kid sister for months just because he promised her. She still couldn't say the word love while looking him in the eye.
He gulped from the bottle and savored the fire that singed its way down his throat and into his stomach, a feeling that stirred sour, aching memories of a night in a graveyard with a broken child at his elbow, but he wouldn't think of that. Not now, not when he was trying to lose her, lose them both, in the depths of this bottle.
The bitch had tamed him. And now she was trying to dissolve everything they had built since her return, all because those sanctimonious assholes she called friends refused to understand. His hand tightened unconsciously on the neck of the bottle, itching to throw it at the wall in a momentarily satisfying smash of glass, liquor, startled screams. Instead he threw a wad of cash on the bar without looking at it and made his unsteady way for the door.
…And surely he must be much, much drunker than he thought. Surely he must be out-of-his-mind trashed, because that long-haired bint standing in the center of the dark, smoky room flanked by two burly Cyrangi demons looked amazingly like … but no. Stubborn and immature she was, but she surely didn't have a death wish. That was the older one's bag. He kept walking, shoving demons out of his way.
"Spike!"
The terribly familiar squeal over the near-deafening bar noise stopped him in his tracks, and he turned so fast he almost fell over as the room swayed dizzily. His eyes narrowed, trying to focus. The Cyrangi next to the girl turned at the same time, both of them laughing as if sharing in the joke that had become his life, a vampire at the mercy of humans—by choice. Spike glowered back, wanting nothing more than to turn and continue on his way and be able to live with himself as any self-respecting vampire should be able to do. Had it been anyone but her he would have done just that. And then he regained enough sense to notice that one of them was touching her; one of those monsters had its filthy demon hand on Dawn, and in a flash he was there, the tequila bottle smashed over its head, and the fight was on.
They were easy to take out, Cyrangi—big, but more showy than tough, and Spike made quite efficient work of it, considering his shaky hold on sobriety. He was perhaps rougher than the situation called for, putting the rage of the entire evening into each hit and kick and feeling more acutely than usual the satisfaction of a good fight. When it was over and they were bleeding on the ground, he locked eyes with a crying Dawn who was cowering by the door, her thin arms wrapped around herself. He stepped over the great unconscious lumps at his feet and walked out of the bar with her in tow.
"I'm sorry, Spike, are you okay?" Dawn asked urgently as they started away from the dank hole in the wall. The fact that he wasn't speaking, not even to yell at her, filled her with fear. "I was worried, so I came looking for you. I figured you'd be here. You used to come here … you know, over the summer. Those things wouldn't leave me alone; they were all over me. I freaked." He was walking too fast. She trotted a few paces to keep up. "Spike? Are you mad? Why won't you look at me?"
He shook her hand off his arm as if shooing away an exceptionally annoying insect. "Get yourself away from this place," he said shortly.
"You're not coming with me?"
"No. You're always saying you're a big girl now, so prove it. Just don't expect me to bail you out if you have another run-in with an evil beastie tonight. I've had it with the lot of you. I'm done."
"Where are you going?"
"Anywhere you're not. You and the Slayer," he added, keeping his eyes safely away from her face so he didn't have to witness the sting of his words. "Bugger off."
Dawn stopped walking. "Spike, what happened to you? Why are you acting like this?" she demanded, her voice trembling. "Look, I know I shouldn't have come after you, but I was worried, and I wanted to tell you that I'm on your side. I didn't mean it when I said I hate you. I talked to Buffy, and she said—"
"I don't want to know," he snapped, turning around and walking back a few paces to where she stood rooted to the sidewalk. He took her by the shoulders and spat the next words out viciously, shaking her a bit for emphasis. "Don't you get it, I'm through with you both. I'm tired of being your bloody pet monster, and I won't do it anymore. Go home, or go find your little boyfriend and play grown-up, but whatever you do, make sure it's far from me. You get it?"
Dawn watched him sweep away from her and continue down the street, her mouth hanging open in shock.
xXxXx
When had Dawnie become so intuitive? And so hurtful about it? Buffy pondered this as she sat on the bed, fully dressed now, in the throes of an internal debate over whether or not to go out and find Spike. You love him and you hate yourself for it because he makes you want to be here ... You are damaged, but not from what they did to you. You're doing it to yourself.
She wasn't wrong. But Buffy wasn't quite prepared to admit that her sister was right, exactly, either. All she knew was that, right or wrong, she did love him. She knew because she had tried, over and over again in a million different ways, to make herself and everyone around her believe she didn't. Failing that, there was simply nothing left but to come to terms with it: She, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was hopelessly in love with William the Bloody. Still she couldn't envision this becoming acceptable in her vital little circle. She couldn't picture sitting down with Giles over tea and saying, "So, how are things in England? Everything's great here. Will's off the magicks, Xander and Anya are as functional as ever, and oh yeah, Spike moved in with me and Dawn. Because we're in love, not because we're having sex … but that too."
Laughing humorlessly at the look on Imaginary Giles' face, Buffy flopped back on the bed and groaned.
"Buffy!"
She sat up like a shot at the sound of the front door slamming and Dawn's frantic shout. "Dawnie? I'm right here, what is it?" She went out to the landing just as her sister was running up the stairs, breathing hard, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. Buffy caught her by the shoulders before she could run blindly past.
"Whatever you did, you have to fix it!" Dawn gasped. "Please, I know you didn't mean for this to happen, so just go and find him and take care of it, Buffy, I'm begging you."
"What? Honey, slow down and tell me what's wrong."
Dawn swallowed, making a visible effort to calm herself. "It's Spike. He says he's done with both of us. He is so angry. He's never talked to me like that before. He just walked off and left me there. It's like he's stopped caring at all. I don't know what's wrong with him, Buffy! Please, please go make this better. I know you can. I know this is about you, not me. But he's put me in it too for some reason, and I don't want to lose him, even if you don't care."
Buffy frowned. "Where was he?"
"He was at that demon bar downtown."
"You went there? By yourself?"
"Yes, Buffy, but later with that. He dragged me out and we walked a little ways, and then he told me to leave him alone and he just took off. I don't know where he was going. Back toward his old crypt, maybe. He wouldn't let me follow him. He's pretty drunk. Are you gonna go?"
Buffy moved past Dawn and started down the stairs. "I'll find him. You stay put this time, do you hear me?"
She snatched up her jacket and a stake, because this was Sunnydale, and went to track him down and see if there was anything she could do to repair the damage.