A/N: Ugh! This chapter was hard for me, sorry. I've had so much homework so forgive the delay-- I'll try to get the chapters out as soon as possible, but check in!!! 3 I have a bunch written after this point, so hopefully it won't take too long for me to update. Thanks for the reviews!

Fool Me Once
Chapter 5

"No way."

"What?"

"No way!" Joyce exclaimed, holding out the magazine and displaying its emboldened caption for her youngest daughter to see. "I definitely did not expect those two to get together."

"It's not like they have anything in common," Dawn said in skepticism of the article, taking the copy of Star from her mother and reading it, her eyebrow raised the entire time. "Ugh, do movie stars even look at who they're dating?"

"If they have to work with them," Buffy said disinterestedly, drumming her fingers on the table impatiently while gazing up at the muted television.

Joyce eyed her daughter with concern, then asked softly, "Are you alright, Buffy?"

"What?" Buffy looked over quickly, then shook her head in apology. "Sorry, Mom, just a little wired."

"Why don't you go out and patrol?" Joyce suggested with a smile, holding up the large pile of magazines stacked on her bed and saying, "Dawn and I still have a decent supply of gossip to go through."

Buffy hesitated, then gave her mother an apologetic look. "You wouldn't mind?"

"No, sweetie, you go," Joyce answered.

"Thanks Mom," Buffy said gratefully, kissing her on the cheek and pulling on her jacket. "If you need anything, I'm going to stop by the Magic Box and see whether they've left for patrol yet."

"Bye Buffy," Dawn said as her sister left the room, grabbing another magazine and flipping through its pages apathetically.

The shop was dark and the door locked when Buffy arrived at the Magic Box. "Crap," she said grumpily, peering through the blinds and trying to see whether anyone was inside. There was a light on in the back room; maybe Giles and the others were in research mode or something.

She contemplated knocking but doubted they'd be able to hear her. Walking around to the back, she reached out to open the door, but it swung into her she even touched it.

"Spike!" Buffy said in surprise, looking up at the equally shocked vampire halting his movement through the doorway the second he saw her. "What are you… are you stealing, Spike?" Her tone acquired an exasperated quality, reflected by her response of crossing her arms. He didn't play along, though; there was a look in his eyes that made it clear that this was not a time for banter between the two. Something was wrong.

"Spike?" she asked tentatively; he looked to away in response, clenching his jaw and swallowing thickly, in an action reminiscent of his own the night before upon hearing about her mother's illness. Oh yeah, there was definitely something wrong.

"How could you, Slayer?" His voice was coated with a thick layer of hurt, and a sense of dread began to form in Buffy's chest.

"How could I what? What were you doing in there?" Buffy asked, attempting to look past him but unable to do so with his body in the doorway. "Listen, Spike, I don't know what you're on about—"

"Were you planning on telling me about where the Bit came from, or would I have had to do this," he gestured behind to the obviously vacant shop, implicating his unconventional form of entry, "to find out?" Nonplussed by Buffy's shocked silence, the vampire ranted on. "Or better yet, were you even gonna tell Dawn? Because Slayer, she's smarter than you think—bloody well told me herself that she suspected something of the like, and I come here to find out what's what, and I find out that what she's afraid of is…" The vampire choked, unable to finish his sentence as he swept out of the building, slamming the door behind him.

Buffy stared for a moment at his retreating form, unable to comprehend what had just happened. Spike knew that Dawn was the key. The seriousness of the situation was not lost on her; if he was as angry as he seemed, he could do something to threaten the wellbeing of her or her family. The likelihood of that was slim, but knowing Spike, it was safe to expect a certain degree of irrationality from him until she dealt with him.

There was only one way to fix this problem: she had to go after him.

Approaching Spike's crypt, Buffy tried to tell herself that the only thing motivating her to come to him, to explain and (as crazy as it sounded) apologize, was in order to keep her family out of jeopardy; however, Crazy!Buffy decided to make an unexpected visit and kept her standing before the wooden door for a good three minutes.

Had Spike really expected her to tell him about Dawn being the Key, when he had been more than willing to kill her less than a week before? It seemed crazy, but the vampire never had been abundant in the logic department. Maybe it wasn't so much the fact that she didn't tell him, but that she had been keeping the information from Dawn. Buffy knew that the vampire's soft spot was with her sister—it had been that way ever since he'd laid eyes upon the girl, even before he had started to show himself to be an ally.

What Spike didn't understand was the magnitude of the situation. Glory was a force that was most definitely not meant to be reckoned with, and Buffy hadn't even told her own mother about her supposed daughter's origin. The deception was meant for protection, and it was necessary. It was the same in Spike's case. While initially her intentions had been to conceal the knowledge from the then-untrustworthy Evil Dead, she realized that in the past few days, they had suddenly changed.

Now it was because she knew that he was necessary—for the protection of her sister, the fight against Glory, and, as much as she hated to admit it, the strength that he gave her.

Must be some connection, Buffy thought wryly, then suddenly realizing just how long she'd been standing in front of his door. "Well, no time like the present." Opening the door in a manner unlike that of her usual rude entrance, she found Spike seated in a chair holding a cup of blood and watching the Real World playing on the television.

"Wondering when you were bloody going to come in," he muttered darkly, taking a deep drink from the mug he held. "Come to stake me then, pet?"

It took nearly all of her Slayer strength to resist yelling at him to drop the drama queen act and to listen to her; she opted instead for a response that may actually lead him to want to hear her out, and said, "I'm sorry."

"Come again?" Spike asked, feigning deafness and holding his hand behind his ear. "I'm sorry love, but I could've sworn you said you were sorry."

"Well I am," she answered, closing the door behind her and striding into the room to settle herself on the chair opposite his. "Spike… As I'm sure you already know, Dawn is the Key." When she paused, he didn't reply, so she continued. "We're not even really sure yet just what the Key is, but Glory—you know, evil blonde bitch with the snake?—is after it. These monks, they made her… from me. My blood. And she was sent to us—"

"Five months ago." His voice held no anger, but she could tell he was trying his best not to let his emotions overcome him again.

"I don't know whether this will help, but the others don't know a thing. Not even my mom."

Spike looked up in surprise at that, raising an eyebrow at the blonde before him. He looked as if he wanted to say something spiteful, but merely leaned forward to place his now-empty cup on the table in front of him. There was an obvious debate going on in his head, and Buffy couldn't help but smile as she watched his inner-turmoil so apparent on his features.

"Listen, Buffy," he said, the use of her real name not lost on her, "I didn't mean to… jump all over you like that."

"It's okay, Spike."

"It's just that… Well bloody hell, Buffy, you should've seen how upset Dawn was today—"

"Dawn was here today?"

Spike froze, his expression one that personified the word 'oops.' "Well she just, uh, stopped by before school, wasn't planning on staying at all, just happening on by to tell me all about her, uh—"

"Spike. It's alright." Buffy said, a bemused smile on her face. It really was cute how flustered he got when he—Did you just say he was cute???

"Um, I think the deafness is setting in again Slayer. I think you just said—"

"I know you didn't tell her to ditch school to hang out here," Buffy interrupted. "And I assume you were the one who sent her there?" The vampire awkwardly nodded, and she realized that he was doing that thing where he cared for people other than himself. Again. God, what happened to the 'I'd help but I'm paralyzed with not caring' vampire that had been a pain in her ass the past three years? "And don't worry about me condemning my sis to an eternity of misery, because we all do stupid things when we're…"

"Scared?"

"Yeah," she said, leaning back into her own chain and eyeing the vampire cautiously. Everything seemed to be back to normal, as she was no longer on the receiving end of the Spike Death Glare. They sat there in comfortable silence for a few minutes; Buffy was surprised that none of the jumpy tension she felt earlier was pervading her body right now, even though she was doing nothing more than she had done at the hospital.

"How's your mum?"

"Okay, are you, like, reading my mind or something? Because I didn't know vamps could do that," Buffy asked, more than a little wigged at the coincidental question. "Well, Dracula kinda could, but then again—"

"Pet?" Spike interrupted, causing Buffy to stop talking and blush slightly. "If you don't want to talk about it—"

"No, no, it's fine," she said. "I mean, it's way less torturous saying anything to you, when all the other guys are like, 'Oh, well she's going to definitely skip through a field of yellow flowers as soon as she gets over the teensy brain tumor,' and I really can't stand it."

The vampire shook his head ruefully, taking another swallow of blood before speaking. "I've lived it, you know. The ailing mother tale." There was a pause as Buffy absorbed the surprising information she had just received. "She was dying. There was nothing I could do. And I was so scared that I got myself turned into a vampire just to have some control."

The implication of what he had done to 'save' his mother was not lost on the Slayer. It was a moment before Buffy spoke. "Color me stunned, but I had no idea, Spike."

"Yeah, well, I guess you missed when they showed me on Biography." He gave her a wry smile, his best attempt to lighten the mood. "I just thought you might find it interesting to know, pet. Because it can be really easy for situations like these to get… worse." The vampire shrugged nonchalantly, a half-smile playing at his lips. "Just don't want Nibblet to be sad is all, love."

Buffy smiled at him, the moment not requiring anything more from her. A few days ago, this display from the vampire would have seemed foreign and entirely false, but she knew better than that now. How she had come to be so comfortable with him, she didn't know, but to attribute this entire reversal of their relationship to a dream seemed… ridiculous.

"You alright, love?"

His voice broke her from her thoughts and she realized that she had been sitting there silently for quite a long period of time. "I'm fine… just a little pensive is all."

"Thinking about heading back to your mum, yet?"

"Soon," she answered. "About her—she's going into surgery in the next few days, but the doctor hasn't scheduled her in yet. The waiting is worse, you know, than the actual thought of her surgery. And she's getting major cabin fever."

"Why don't you tell the doc to send her home for a spell until they've got her all set up?"

"Do you think they'll let us do that?" The idea seemed like the perfect solution—her mom would get some quality time at home where she could actually rest, and the normality would probably do her sister a lot of good. No kid wants to spend their teen years hanging around in a hospital. "Did I ever tell you that you're an evil genius, Spike?"

"Goes with the territory," he answered imperturbably, but she could see something light up in his eyes when she smiled at him.

"I'm gonna head home then," Buffy said, standing up and walking to the door. She opened it, but before walking through turned back to the vampire. "Thanks for making me realize that I've got to tell them the truth… It's hard to let people in on my world sometimes, you know."

Her words were surprisingly open and honest, and Spike couldn't do anything but nod in response. As she walked through the door, the vampire's thoughts were sent back to their encounters of the past week and the strange level of comfort they experienced with one another.

There was something different about the Slayer, and as much as he wanted to save himself the rejection of reality, he couldn't let himself walk away.

Apparently, Spike was Love's Bitch after all.