Chapter Text
Buffy wakes up to the eggy-sweet smell of French toast and frying sausages. It draws her out of bed and down the stairs like a cartoon character floating along after a wafting smell.
“Oh, morning, Buffy,” Mom says as she flips a piece of toast in the pan. “I wasn’t sure how much longer you’d be sleeping, but I thought you’d probably be hungry when you did wake up.”
“I am hungry,” Buffy says, sliding onto a stool at the island. “I’m all with the hungry. And the still tired. But mostly the hungry.”
“Well, breakfast will be ready in a just a couple more minutes. Why don’t you set the table?” Mom says. Buffy groans but the smell of a home-cooked breakfast is just too tempting, so she gets out plates and utensils and then all the fixings for the French toast—real maple syrup and powdered sugar and berries and coffee. Especially coffee.
“Whoever invented coffee deserves the Nobel prize,” Buffy says after she takes a sip of properly doctored coffee.
Once Mom is done serving up the food they sit down to dig in. Buffy really is hungry—she’d gone to bed hungry, having worked up an appetite running amok in the Initiative labs and then partying at Willy’s. It’s not until she’s on her third helping of French toast and sausages and second cup of coffee and is starting to show signs of slowing down that Mom strikes, with her evil Mom wiles.
“So, is everything all right?” she asks overly casually, fishing for information. “You had me worried last night. Showing up filthy and in tears…”
Rats. That’s the kind of point Buffy can’t exactly not answer. She stuffs a big bite of French toast in her mouth to delay answering and Mom gives her a Look. But Buffy just keeps chewing, since it’s that or spit it out and that’s bad table manners. The bite was purposely too big to even talk with food in her mouth.
She finally finishes chewing and washes it down with a long swallow of coffee. She eyes her plate but she knows she can’t get away with doing it again. Especially because Mom snatches her plate out of reach. Buffy sighs.
“It’s just…everything,” Buffy says, sweeping her arm out to encompass the whole of Sunnydale and campus and vampires and soldiers and magic spells and best friends and their ex-boyfriends.
“Everything?” Mom questions with a quirk of her eyebrow. It’s very Spike-like, to be honest, which doesn’t help Buffy’s mood any.
“Everything,” she nods. “Oz broke up with Willow and she’s been like, a super mess, and like, c’mon, Wills, it sucks but at a certain point you need to get over it? And there are these soldiers on campus, and on Thanksgiving Spike showed up asking us to help him because he can’t hurt anyone anymore ‘cause of them and stupid Riley is one of the soldiers and also a jerk, and the soldiers are capturing and experimenting on demons and torturing them. And Willow cast this spell and Spike and I were little kids and we were down in the soldiers’ base and we let all the demons free and destroyed their Frankenstein monster and I peed in a sink and Spike was so nice to me and he was so lonely and I don’t know how to look him in the eye anymore and I have to go over to Giles’s and make sure he didn’t make Spike sleep in the bathtub again and they’re gonna make me talk about last night and I threw a temper tantrum at all my friends and I don’t even know what I think about it yet!”
Mom blinks at the onslaught of words, which had sorta turned into a wail by the end. “So. Everything.”
“Yeah,” Buffy says, slumping down in her chair. Mom slides Buffy’s plate back in front of her, but her appetite is kinda shot now so she just uses her fork to poke at a raspberry.
“You know, not talking about things with your friends isn’t going to help anyone,” Mom says sensibly. Stupid Moms with the sense-making.
“It’ll help me,” Buffy mutters sullenly. Mom gives her another Look. Is there a secret Mom School where they teach those looks?
“Buffy,” Mom scolds her. “You know—wait, did you say Spike was sleeping in the bathtub?”
Mom is frowning in clear disapproval and Buffy studies the raspberry intently. When she answers, it’s a mumble. “Well, we didn’t really trust him at first so Giles had him chained up in there but I promised Spike last night that he wouldn’t have to live in the bathtub anymore.”
Mom’s face is tight and she looks torn between yelling at her for making Spike sleep in the tub and approval she promised he wouldn’t have to anymore. Mom seems to like Spike, even though the first time they met he was trying to kill Buffy and Mom brained him with an axe and the second time they met was the night Mom threw her out of the house. But after the last time, when he cried into his hot chocolate over Dru, she sometimes would ask Buffy if she’d heard from “that sweet young man.”
Buffy had always thought Mom was crazy for thinking Spike was sweet, but after last night…Spike had been sweet to her. He held her when she was scared and made it so she was less embarrassed about peeing in the sink in front of him—he’d made that whole awfulness as unawful as it could be, really. And they’d had fun, playing soccer and vandalizing that locker room and the armory. And then blowing up the whole lab and hanging out with the demons at Willy’s.
“I don’t have to tell you what’s wrong about making someone sleep in a tub,” Mom says. “But the only way you’re going to be able to deal with any of your other issues is by talking to your friends.”
Buffy opens her mouth to protest that Spike’s not her friend, a total kneejerk reaction. But…she’s pretty sure that’s not true. How could they not be, after last night? But what if he doesn’t think so? What if he doesn’t want to be friends now that they’re back to being themselves? She has been making him sleep in a tub, after all. …And she suddenly realizes that Mom is talking about Willow and Xander and Giles, not Spike.
Everything was so simple when she was little. Except the chip-thing in Spike’s head and what to do about it. She thought, somehow, that being big would make Spike easier to deal with. Man, was she wrong. If he is her friend, she should tell him about the chip-thing. She should trust him. But as the Slayer…she should never be friends with a vampire. She should never trust a vampire. If he knows it’s a little piece of plastic or metal or whatever in his head, he can go find a surgeon to take it out and go back to snacking on people. Snacking on them to death. And then she’d have to stake him. She groans and pushes her plate away so she can put her head on the counter.
Then again, the Slayer should never hang out with demons at a demon bar, or do demon piggyback races, or a lot of what she’d done last night.
“Everything was so much easier when I was five,” she complains. “Even the stuff that was harder.”
“That’s one of the lessons you learn about growing up, I guess,” Mom says with a hint of a smile.
“Thanks, Mom,” she says. Mom wraps her up in a mom-hug and for a moment, everything feels safe and warm again, just like it had when she was little and Mom hugged her.
“You’ll always be my baby girl,” Mom whispers into her hair. “I’ll always be here for you.”
After their heart-to-heart, toast-to-toast breakfast, Buffy heads back upstairs to shower again (the water in those pipes was seriously disgusting) and change. She has to go face the music sometime.
~~~
Walsh stands in the ruins of room 314. Her life’s work, gone. Her facility in shambles. All the subjects escaped or dead. She’s surprised casualties weren’t higher among her men, but the hostiles seemed far more intent on escape than revenge. No, the few injuries and deaths were caused when her men had tried to stop the mass exodus.
The night had been something out of a horror movie. The alarms blaring, demons roaring, and men screaming. The alarm lights bathed everything in red in the dim emergency lighting, making movements seem faster than normal, unpredictable.
Monsters had stalked the halls of her facility last night.
That’s all bad enough. But the destruction of room 314 was complete. Those tiny terrors seemed intent on destroying Adam, particularly, but they’d been thorough. Nothing but burnt scraps of paper were left of her paper records, and even those were soggy now after the sprinkler systems put out the fires caused by the explosions. The computer hard drives had warped or melted from the heat, and the water damage likely would make the components short if she tried to turn them on anyway. And none of their research was backed up offsite because of the sensitive nature of the project.
She’d been so sure her security protocols would be sufficient.
She hears footsteps approaching. Boots, and a lot of them. She doesn’t turn around. Let them come. There’s nothing left for her here anyway.
The boots stop just outside the door.
“Maggie.” McNamara. The vulture couldn’t wait to come gloat.
She turns, her face calm. A mask. “Colonel.”
“I need you to come with me,” he says, and she sees the men behind him are armed. Men who had reported to her, once. Their faces are blank, on the whole, though some look a bit uncomfortable.
“What is this?” she demands, projecting confidence she doesn’t feel, a little bit of irritation. Acting like yourself is the hardest.
“You’re being court-martialed. Whole operation is being shut down,” McNamara says with grim satisfaction. He’d never approved of the project. Not the parts he’d known about. And if he’d known about Adam…well, it’s just as well he never will.
She doesn’t fight when they lead her away. Why bother? It’s already all over for her.
Buffy dawdles getting her butt (her heinie, whispers her five-year-old self) to the Scooby meeting. Despite Mom’s pep talk, she still dreads facing everyone. On top of everything she’d unloaded to Mom this morning, she knows she’d been a total brat after her friends had found her and Spike at Willy’s.
Eventually, though, Mom’s pointed glares get her moving. She can only put it off for so long, which is how she finds herself staring at the door to Giles’s apartment late that afternoon. The smell of freshly baked cookies is noticeable even out in the courtyard, which means Willow is in full abject apology mode. And she can still feel Spike’s tinglies, which means he’s inside—
Someone tears the door open. Spike, without his duster or button down shirt, scowling at her, one arm braced against the door jamb and the other holding the door open. “You coming in or what, Slayer?”
“Uh, yeah,” she says but she just stands there for a moment looking into his eyes. Not like she could come in, with him blocking the doorway. His eyes are steady on hers as they stand there, and his face softens. His lips part like he’s going to say something…
“Buffy! That is Buffy, right? Come in, I made cookies!”
It’s not Spike who winds up speaking next, though, but Willow with a plate of cookies. Spike reluctantly moves out of the door, his arm dropping. The whole door jamb holding, t-shirt-wearing thing seems designed to show off his biceps.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on Buffy’s part. The rush of hormones from last night has faded back to normal-Buffy levels, but she can’t help but notice that Spike’s a grade-A hottie as she takes a cookie from Willow with a blank smile. The aforementioned biceps actually put Riley’s to shame, now that she seems him without that giant coat. And she maybe hasn’t seen the no-doubt-rippling muscles on his chest and abs, but she sure felt them last night. Add that to the very-blue eyes, the model-worthy cheekbones, the soft full lips that were clearly designed for kissing, the bleached hair that shouldn’t work at all but somehow does, and the sexy scar in his expressive eyebrows? It’s quite the package.
The question, though, is what’s inside that package? Yesterday morning, she’d thought she had known. Last night had changed all that, showing her a different side of Spike. And now? Ugh.
Also, she suspects maybe the rush of hormones hasn’t completely faded given the way she is straight up ogling Spike while she eats her cookie.
Willow puts the plate of cookies down on the coffee table as the oven timer goes off and Buffy takes advantage to stuff her face with more cookies as she sinks onto the couch. The Scoobies are way less likely to call her on using food to avoid talking than her Mom is. And Willow does make a mean chocolate chip cookie.
“Geez, Buff, gonna have to start calling you Cookie Monster,” Xander says, and she jumps. She’d been so focused on Spike and avoiding talking via cookies that she hadn’t even realized he and Anya were already there. Or Giles, which is kind of ridiculous since it’s his apartment. But nope, there they are, Xander and Anya sharing a chair and Giles hovering by the kitchen as if he’s afraid Willow might accidentally burn the place down.
She swallows her current bite. “You know me, C is for Cookies. And report cards. And that’s good enough for me!”
Okay so maybe they won’t call her on using food to avoid talking, but apparently they will call her on binging on cookies. Good to know?
Spike throws himself into an armchair, legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. His elbows are propped on the arms of the chair, one hand hanging loose in his lap and the other against his face as he watches her with heavy-lidded eyes. It’s not disconcerting at all. How many cookies has she had? Probably too many if Xander of all people is giving her shit about it. Dammit. They’re such a good avoidance method.
She flits her eyes toward Spike and then away. She leans back and holds her hand up to study her nails and says with exaggerated casualness, “So, where’d you wind up sleeping last night, Spike?”
“Thinking about me in bed, were you, Slayer?” he purrs, and does he know about the whole hormone thing? Oh God Oh God Oh God.
“No,” she snaps, flustered and trying to cover it. She meets his gaze full on. “I’m just trying to make sure that Giles didn’t break my promise literally the same night I made it and that you didn’t sleep in the tub again.”
She sees a flicker of surprise and something else—shame? Vampires don’t feel shame, do they?—in his eyes and he looks away for a moment. “Slept on the couch, pet, no need to worry ‘bout ole Spike.”
“And hence Anya and I are staying very far away from the couch,” Xander pipes up. Anya gives a sort of half-shrug. Buffy is pretty sure it means “Eh, I don’t care but Xander’s over here so I am, too.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Giles mutters.
“For Chrissakes, I just slept on the damn thing,” Spike says as he rolls his eyes. Buffy hides a smile. It is kind of ridiculous.
“Who wants more cookies?” Willow chirps as she comes back into the living room with a fresh tray of cookies in her oven-mitted hands.
“Please, for the love of God, I am begging you, Will,” Xander says. “No more cookies.”
“O-oh, okay,” she says, and it’s like she sort of deflates as she goes back to leave the tray in the kitchen. Xander winces but Buffy has to stop herself from rolling her eyes.
“Now that we’re all finally here,” Giles says with a pointed glare at Buffy as he moves away from the kitchen to stand near the bookcases, “shall we discuss the events of last night?”
Willow slinks in from the kitchen and sits at the other end of the couch from Buffy. “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean for all that to happen. I just…I wanted to feel better, with Oz gone and all.”
“Willow, you can’t just magic away your problems. These things just take time.” Giles takes off his glasses to polish them. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but we’ve all of us been in your situation before. The only way past this is through this. You’re very lucky no one was majorly hurt last night.”
Willow hangs her head so that her hair hides her face and she speaks in a small voice. “I know.”
Buffy glances at Spike, who is back to expressionless. “Um, that might not be true. About no one being hurt. Actually, it’s definitely not true.”
Willow looks horrified, shrinking in on herself, but Giles is merely concerned. “Buffy? You were hurt last night? You didn’t say anything…”
“No, not…We—Spike and I—after we were little, we ran into some of the commandos, who realized that Spike was a demon,” Buffy says, nervously twisting a ring on her finger. “They tried to grab both of us so I broke Riley’s shin. And I think his ribs, too.”
“Riley? Like TA Riley?” Willow says, looking up in surprise.
“Uh, yeah, turns out he’s one of the commandos. And Professor Walsh runs the whole facility,” Buffy says. “And when we blew up their labs, some people might’ve gotten hurt.”
Giles rubs his forehead. He has that pained look on his face he gets sometimes from dealing with her and the Scoobies. “Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”
It takes a while, even skipping parts. Like he hand-holding and the hugging. And definitely the sink-peeing. Spike chimes in every now and then, but Buffy does most of the talking, her throat getting hoarse by the end. Willow gets up to get her some water which she sucks down thirstily.
“So…yeah. We let all the demons go free and blew up the freaky monster corpse and their records,” Buffy says as she wraps up. “That’s what we were celebrating at Willy’s. That the demons weren’t being tortured anymore.”
Giles had clearly restrained himself a few times from reacting verbally to her words, but there had still been plenty of nose-pinching, forehead rubbing, and glasses polishing throughout. He’s polishing his glasses again, now, trying to work out what to say, she guesses.
“You just let all those demons out?” Xander says sharply, staring at her in shock. “But isn’t what the soldiers are doing good? Keeping demons from hurting people?”
Buffy is already shaking her head before he finishes speaking, and she can hear a low growl coming from Spike. Every line in his body is tense. “If you had seen what they’d done, Xan, what they were doing…you wouldn’t be saying that. It’s wrong. Evil. Some of the demons they had locked up were peaceful species, but even for the dangerous ones, it wasn’t right. Kill them or leave them alone, but don’t torment them.”
Spike relaxes, the growling subsiding, and she realizes he wasn’t about to pounce on Xander, chip be damned. He was waiting to hear her answer. To hear if she regretted what they did. Well, she doesn’t. And no one can convince her otherwise.
Xander doesn’t look all that convinced. “They’re demons, Buff.”
“So, what? It’s okay to torture them? No. That’s not who we are,” Buffy snaps. Anya nods along with Buffy, looking about ready to climb off Xander’s lap. “We got some files, too, but not that many. Hard to carry them when you’re small, you know?” Buffy says, and she pulls out the papers on Project 314 and hands it to Giles. Willow, Xander, and Anya flock around him to look over the pages as he moves to spread them out on the table. She hesitates, holding onto the other papers she took, before crossing over to Spike and thrusting them in his face.
“What’s this, then, Slayer?” Spike says, and he maybe is less tense than he was, but he’s still guarded around her, his jaw so tight a muscle is ticking in his cheek. He doesn’t take the papers. But then, she’s guarded and tense around him, too. Last night…it was like someone stripped them of all of their armor, but it’s all back in place now. She just has a better idea what’s underneath.
“I thought you’d want to know what they had to say about you,” she says quietly, and thrusts them forward again. He doesn’t move to take the papers, but he softens again, relaxing his jaw and staring at her with an odd look in his eyes.
“You didn’t think that last night,” he says. Because of course he saw her reading it. He’d practically had to hit her over the head to get her attention when he wanted to tell her about the Frankenstein thing.
She shifts uncomfortably. “I was five, Spike. I didn’t know what to do. What the right thing was.”
“And you do now?” he asks her. She nods. “You seemed pretty sure about everything else, last night. Seemed to have no trouble telling right from wrong from where I’m sitting.”
She huffs out a breath in exasperation. “Look, I’m giving it to you now. I’m sorry, okay? You don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”
She throws the papers at him and stalks off to join the others. Giles looks up and gives her and Spike both a shrewd look. She doesn’t know what Spike is doing now, because she deliberately and determinedly keeps her back to him. Stupid vampire.
Giles apparently decides not to say anything about the papers she’d just flung at Spike, instead gesturing to the ones he and the Scoobies have been pouring over.
“This facility…this creature they were building,” he says. “You were right that it needed to be destroyed. Though I do wish you hadn’t acted so rashly.”
Buffy’s back stiffens. “Maybe I wasn’t so much with the forward planning last night. But I wasn’t being rash.”
“You were a small child, you surely needed some guidance—” Giles begins, but she doesn’t let him finish.
“And what’s your excuse now? You don’t trust me, Giles,” Buffy says tightly. “I’m the Slayer, and you don’t trust me. You hide things from me and you second guess everything. I know I was being a brat last night and I’m sorry for that. But I’m not sorry about what I said.”
“Hey, Buff, relax,” Xander tries to cajole her. “Giles is just trying to help—”
“Yeah, you’re all always trying to help,” Buffy says, and it takes a lot of effort to not have the words sound bitter. She hopes she succeeds. Part of her is screaming at her to shut up, that they’ll all go away, she has to be nice and quiet so they’ll stay. But the Bitty Buffy voice hasn’t shut up about how unfair her friends can be since Willow’s spell started, and the words just pour out of her. She couldn’t stop them if she wanted. “But there’s helping and there’s trying to dictate my life. We don’t talk about it, but we all know I have an expiration date. Don’t I deserve to be happy before it’s up?”
“We just want to make sure, you know, that your expiration date is as far into the future as it can be,” Willow adds.
“Well, I think Buffy’s right. You act like you don’t trust her or her decisions,” Anya says matter-of-factly. Buffy gives her a grateful smile. Anya’s been warmer to her today. Maybe they’d managed to bond while she was little. “Especially about guys.”
Giles clears his throat. “Buffy’s dating life aside, what’s done is done. I was thinking we might want to call the Council.”
“Oh, hell no—” Buffy says, but it’s her turn to get cut off.
“I know how you feel about them, but they have the sort of bureaucratic power that can get this Initiative shut down and off the Hellmouth for good.”
She scowls at him. “You just make sure none of them set foot in my town.”
Buffy decides she’s had enough and heads toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Giles asks her.
“Out,” she says, and she lets the door slam behind her. Damn, she should have grabbed some more cookies on the way out.
~~~
Spike gathers up the papers the Slayer—Buffy—had thrown in his face and puts them back in order. They’re crinkled up from being stuffed in her pocket, but still legible, and he works through the report quickly.
A computer chip. Some sort of sci-fi implant to control his behavior, deliver an electric shock to his brain. When he’d read about the vampires who caught fire, he’d shuddered. Barely tested technology, in his brain, a shock collar for a bad dog.
He supposes he can understand why she hesitated to tell him. Already a part of his brain is thinking about how he can find one of the doctors that did this to him, make them undo it. But they’d know he can’t hurt them, so how could he properly motivate them? Maybe a demon surgeon, if he could find one he trusted enough.
It seems a bit hopeless, to be honest, and any road, that’s not what’s really got him wound up and ready to burst. No, it’s the stupid sodding Slayer and her big green eyes and her fear of the dark and her surprise love of punk music and the way she held his hand and her promises and bloody buggering fuck!
He’d still been himself last night, still Spike. Just…young. He wasn’t Spike when he was five, he was poncy little William the Weakling. But with Buffy last night, he’d felt free to just be himself. He hadn’t felt like he needed to hide anything from her. Now, he wants to lash out at her before she can hurt him, but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to see those big eyes fill up with pain and fear again.
He looks up when the door slams behind her.
“I still say she’s right,” Demon Girl is saying to the others. “Having a support team has definitely helped her live this long, but if she tries to keep slaying by committee, it’s going to get her killed. I don’t see why you don’t trust her, anyway.”
“Ahn, it’s not that we don’t trust her,” the boy protests. “It’s just, sometimes she…and her decisions, sometimes…”
“So it’s not that you don’t trust her, but you don’t trust her,” Anya says. “You had better start trusting her quick before you get her killed.”
The other three look troubled. Spike feels something tear in his chest at the thought of Buffy dying. Not because it’ll be some other stupid sod what kills her, instead of him. But because he’s just realized he doesn’t want her dead at all.
Christ, he’s buggered.
~~~
Crutches are a huge pain in the ass, Riley finds out. And the UC Sunnydale campus is still not all that ADA-compliant, which doesn’t help. But right now his problem is some chafing in his armpits and, even worse, the ache in his bones as he hobbles his way along what might be the world’s longest pathway. Unfortunately, it’s also the shortest way to get from Lowell House to Stevenson Hall. And it’s way too soon to pop another painkiller.
He spies an unoccupied bench just ahead and makes his way toward it, easing himself down. He manages not to do anything embarrassing like sigh or moan with relief, at least, as he stretches out his leg. It’s blocking the path a bit but he doesn’t really give a damn.
His new marching orders are in his back pocket. Desk duty at Fort Bragg until he’s fit for active duty again, then shipping out somewhere else, TBD, to kill hostiles. No more capturing. Turns out some real weird shit had been happening in the labs after his team would bring the HSTs in. And apparently he and all his men were hopped up on some weird ass chemicals Walsh had concocted and needed to detox, too. At least he could do that while on desk duty, unlike the rest of the men under his command. They’d have to deal with any withdrawal while still on active duty.
Miller had been one of the men McNamara took with him to arrest Maggie. Riley’s still reeling from hearing she was going to be court-martialed. They’d found her standing in the ruins of some secret lab that wasn’t on any of the maps of the facility, and had been the target of the worst of the explosions. She hadn’t even resisted arrest when they came for her.
He checks his watch again. Still too soon for another dose of Oxy. He looks toward Stevenson, which isn’t that far but still feels miles away. He can do this. He can get to Buffy’s dorm room. He can.
Then someone stumbles into his stretched out leg and everything is agony.
“God, watch it! You’re blocking the whole path!” the someone snaps, and he realizes through the haze of pain it’s Buffy. “Riley?”
“Hey, Buffy,” he says through gritted teeth. “I was actually on my way to see you, but…”
“But you decided to become a road hazard instead?” she snarks. Wow, she’s really in a mood. This conversation might not go so well, no matter how gently he tries to let her down. She sighs then. “Sorry, bad day. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
Riley smiles and adjusts his leg so it’s not blocking the path so much. “You mind if we talk here instead of your room? Turns out broken legs and UC Sunnydale are not so much friends.”
Buffy looks at him blankly for a minute, then nods and sits. As far away as she can get and still be on the same bench, but she does sit. She’s acting oddly. Maybe she’s got her period? It would explain the snapping at him.
“So—”
“I—”
“Go ahead,” he says.
She gets a glint in her eyes and if he didn’t know her better, he’d say it was evil. “What happened to your leg? I hope it wasn’t a picnic-related accident.”
Shit. He hadn’t come up with a cover story yet. “It’s uh, I, there was this—”
He cuts off when she starts laughing. “Man, this must be an embarrassing story. Never mind. You said you wanted to talk?”
“Uh, yeah,” he says. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. He has to let her down gently. “See…I really like you.”
“Okay…” she says slowly. She seems wary.
“A whole lot. But I have to go,” he says.
“You…have to go?” Buffy frowns. “What, like to the bathroom? Because I do not recommend doing that on this bench.”
He blinks at her. “What? No, I mean. I’m leaving Sunnydale. Tomorrow.”
The wariness leaves her body and her frown smooths out. “Oh, okay.”
“Okay?” Riley asks. He had thought…she seems so dismissive now.
“I mean, what do you want me to say?” Buffy says slowly, and she frowns again. “We only had one date.”
It’s Riley’s turn to frown. “I thought…I thought you liked me, too.”
“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but…I don’t think we’d ever work,” she says and she stands up. “I’m sure there’s a girl out there who is perfect for you, Riley, and you’ll meet her someday. It’s just not me.”
His mouth hangs open in shock. Buffy is acting so…callous. Like he’s not worth her time. She starts to walk away from him.
“Wait! That’s just—that’s it?” he calls.
She stops and turns back to him. “What did you want? I mean, you were breaking up with me, weren’t you?”
He nods dumbly.
“Well, I made it easy for you,” she shrugs. “I was gonna break up with you, too. I realized you’re a stranger to me, and well, I don’t talk to strangers.”
There’s something about the way she says that…he frowns, remembering the little HST from last night. She was blond, with big green eyes. And he’d thought the little girl seemed familiar…
“And Riley? You’re lousy with kids.”
He tries to scramble to his feet but drops one of his crutches. There’s no way. That’s impossible. And Buffy wouldn’t have broken his leg. She might not be interested in him, but she’s not cruel. She’s so small, seems so fragile. That HST kicked harder than a mule. Just a coincidence.
“Buffy?!” Riley calls out after her. This time she doesn’t turn back.
He sits there for a long time after she’s gone, trying to work out what had just happened.
His watch alarm goes off. Finally. He can take another painkiller.
~~~
Willow had thought that Buffy might have gone back to the dorm, but when she gets there after the Scooby meeting, it’s empty. Buffy had been there, though. There’s clothes newly strewn across her bed and it looks like she dumped her backpack out, too.
Willow sighs. Buffy had been all about the cookies, but was still cool and distant toward Willow. She’d been hoping for some girl time, so they could, you know, talk, and Willow could show Buffy how really, really sorry she was. It must have been so awful for her, stuck with Spike all night last night. Neither of them had said anything about that part when they described the Initiative labs, but it must have been right? Buffy and he had fought not long before she left the Scooby meeting, and Willow couldn’t hear what about no matter how much she tried to lean toward them with being seen. But they’d been fighting yesterday, too. So nothing new, except the whole putting her foot down about Spike not sleeping in the bathtub anymore, which was kinda weird for Buffy to make a promise about.
And then Buffy had doubled down on what she’d said last night about them not trusting her and everything. Which is totally bogus! Willow trusts Buffy! Just, like Xander said, there were a few things…Anya and Buffy couldn’t possibly be right about none of them trusting her.
After Buffy left, Spike was all weird and cagey, too. And he’d helped himself to her cookies, as if she’d made them for him! Like, okay, so technically he’d been affected by her spell, too, but he was just a kidnapping jerk of a vampire. He’d been weird the whole time Buffy was at Giles’s, and then after she left, he was still weird plus he was all moody and sulky and snapped at anyone who came near him.
She sighs and flops face down on her bed. Nothing is going her way, lately. Watch, she’s gonna get her psychology paper back and get a bad grade on it. Professor Walsh is probably going to figure out somehow that Buffy knows about her evil experiments, and if Buffy knows, obviously Willow would know. What if she tries to punish them both with bad grades? That’s so not fair! Wait. No, she shouldn’t get upset about bad grades that might not even happen.
But she is upset about other stuff. Like her spell blew up in her face and now everyone is mad at her and she almost became a demon. And it’s like no one even cares! Her, a demon!
She rolls onto her side and finds herself looking at a picture of Oz on her nightstand. The source of all her current woes. They were so happy. How could it have all gone so wrong?
She sits up and pulls the photo into her lap, touching her finger to the glass. He said he was afraid of the wolf. Afraid he’d hurt her because of the wolf. But he had hurt her. First by being with Veruca and then even more by leaving. And it wasn’t the wolf in him that did the hurting. He—the wolf—had killed Veruca to protect her. But then he’d been about to turn on her. If Buffy hadn’t been there…
They could have gone back to locking him up during the full moon. It had been working. But would he have held himself back? Would he have been afraid to touch her? Afraid he’d attack her again? Afraid he had no control?
Yesterday, she’d almost done that. Hurt the people she cared about. Giles and Xander and Buffy all could have died because of her spell. What if her spell had really hurt them? What if—
And even still, even though she almost hurt the people who she loved like family, more than her family, even still, a part of her had been tempted by D’Hoffryn’s offer. To have that kind of power…
For the first time, she can kinda understand why Oz left. She’s still not happy about it. But…she gets it.
“Goodbye, Oz,” she whispers. She opens the drawer of her nightstand and puts the frame inside, facedown. She still loves Oz. She’ll always love Oz. But right now…looking at him is too much. She needs to move on. Stop wallowing.
Moving on is exhausting, though, so even though she has a paper she should start and notes she needs to go back over with different colored pens, she flops back onto her bed. Maybe she’ll take a nap. Buffy clearly needed a nap last night when she was throwing a tantrum at Giles about showering. She snickers as she snuggles into her pillow, remembering the sight of her filthy best friend yelling at a distraught Giles.
Her plans to nap are interrupted before she can drift off, though. Someone is knocking at her door, sharply and authoritatively. She hopes it’s not the RA…she’s definitely not supposed to have candles, which are scattered all over her side of the room, and some of Buffy’s weapons are out in plain sight and she’s not sure she can pull off a convincing lie.
She gets up and goes to the door cautiously—she learned her lesson about yelling “Come in” that time Spike had tried to eat her—and cracks it open.
“Mom? What are you doing here?” Willow frowns. Her mom pushes against the door so that Willow is forced to back up and into the room.
“Well, you seem to have forgotten how the phone works, so I thought I’d stop by to discuss which colleges you’ll be applying to for next semester,” her mom says as she sweeps into the room. She eyes the weapons on Buffy’s side warily but doesn’t comment before she makes herself at home on Willow’s desk chair. “Or the fall. I suppose, it may be a bit late to transfer for spring semester this year.”
“Mom, I’m not transferring,” Willow says. She sits on the end of her bed, facing her mom.
“Now, New England has the best schools, of course, but if you’d prefer I also have brochures for Rice, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Duke. And you might be able to transfer to UCLA or Berkeley, since you’re already in the UC system and have such a strong transcript,” Mom says as if Willow hadn’t spoken. She thinks about what Buffy had said just after she came in last night. “You never listen to me! You always tell me what to do!” Even today, they’d been doing it. Buffy and Anya had tried to tell them, but they hadn’t been listening.
But Willow should know better. There’s helping, and there’s steamrolling all over the other person “for their own good.” And that’s what her mom always does to her. What she’s doing right now. She’s still nattering on about schools, sitting at Willow’s desk without asking and, “Willow? Are you even listening to me?”
“No, Mom, you’re the one who isn’t listening,” Willow says firmly. “I already told you and Dad that I’m not transferring. I’m staying at Sunnydale. And you need to back off and respect my choices.”
“You’re a bit late, developmentally, for youthful rebellion, but I suppose you never sowed your oats in high school, so you’re testing your limits now,” Mom says, still not listening to her. Still not seeing her as a person instead of an age bracket.
Willow crosses her arms. She makes sure to keep her voice calm and even. Nothing that could be considered whining or immature. “No, Mom. This isn’t youthful rebellion or sowing my oats. This is me, making a choice about what I want for my life. You know, like an adult. Because I am. An adult, I mean. And I’m setting boundaries. I’m not transferring. This topic of conversation is closed. If you keep talking about it, I will change the subject or leave the room.”
Her mother gapes at her. “I don’t know where this is coming from, Willow.”
“It’s coming from me being my own person! I’m not just an extension of you and Dad. I have things I want that have nothing to do with either of you. And some of those things mean staying in Sunnydale, at least a little longer,” Willow says. She starts to pack her bag with the stuff she’ll need for her paper. She has a feeling her mom isn’t going to leave quietly, but a trip to the library will have the same effect. She wishes she could have gotten her nap, though. “And with my scholarships, I’m not sure you really get much of a say, since it’s not like you’re footing the bill like you would at Harvard.”
“Money isn’t the issue—” her mother starts.
“No, it’s not. It’s my autonomy and happiness. And at Harvard, I’m gonna be surrounded by hundreds of kids just like me, or even smarter. At Sunnydale, I can be someone. Someone special,” Willow says. She puts her shoes on then grabs her now-packed bag.
“What are you doing—where are you going?” Mom protests.
“To the library. I have a paper to write, since my grades matter to me,” Willow says. “Bye, Mom.”
Her mom follows her out of her room, which is good, because Willow needs to lock it. She’s sure her mom is just going to keep badgering her. But then she does something surprising instead.
“You’re really serious?” Mom asks uncertainly. Willow turns to face her.
“I’m really serious,” Willow says. “You should know me better, Mom, than to think I just followed a boy here. I thought about this decision and weighed the pros and cons and I decided this is where I’d be happiest. And what makes me happy is my decision to make, not yours.”
“When did you get so grown up, honey?” her mom says with a small smile. Willow wants to sag with relief. She won! But she still can’t show weakness in front of her mother.
Willow thinks of a thousand snarky comebacks but she just shrugs. “I guess it’s been happening for a while now.”
As she walks her mom out of the dorm, Willow sees a flyer on the bulletin board for a Wiccan group. That’s just what she needs. Somewhere to learn how to control her powers, and to distract her from Oz being gone.
~~~
Spike drags the chair around in front of the TV, then drags it back to where it had been, unhappy with both furniture arrangements. He flops into it, throwing his legs across one arm and leaning his head back. It hadn’t even taken him a full twenty-four hours after the night of Red’s spell to suss out that if he could hurt demons again, then he didn’t have to spend his days worrying whether Rupert would decide to break Buffy’s promise—or worse, that Buffy would break it herself—and chain him back up in the tub. He’s not going to cry about sleeping in the tub again like some nancy boy five-year-old, but he’s just as happy to be free of it, ta very much.
It had taken a couple days after that to convince the Watcher and the Slayer that it was a good idea, letting him move out. The Watcher had still wanted him chained up in the tub, but Buffy was adamantly opposed. He’d had to promise he’d tell them where he landed. The Watcher didn’t trust him, but Buffy had seemed more concerned about him being recaptured by the Initiative blokes. There’s been no sign of the commandos since their little jaunt through the facility, though, so he managed to bring her round. And her opinion is the one that matters, even if demon girl is right about the Slayerettes not quite trusting her judgment—stupid, ungrateful sods that they are.
As soon as Buffy and the Watcher had agreed, he was out the door, looking for a new pad. And he wound up finding a crypt with a sweet set up in Restfield Cemetery. One of the nicer of Sunnydale’s many graveyards, and centrally located for easy access to most parts of town, too. The place has a sort of gothic ambience that works for a vampire, without being poncy or over the top like something that wanker Dracula would have gone for. Just the right amount of skeletons and cobwebs. And there’s a trap door that leads down to a large open area with access to the sewers. He’ll need to add a gate or something to block it off and keep intruders from stumbling into his home, but the place has lots of potential, and it’s always a good idea to have a second exit.
He lights up a cigarette and stares at the ceiling while he smokes it.
The other benefit of moving out, of course, is not having to see the Slayer every day. She’s been avoiding talking to him or looking at him since she threw those Initiative papers at him—papers he had tucked away in his duster soon as he could, without letting the Watcher or any of the Slayerettes see. Slayer wants her Watcher to know what they say, let her tell him.
And fuck, would it have killed her to look at him? She’d treated him like he mattered, that night they were kiddies, but ever since, he’s been less than the dirt on her shoe. At least she stops to wipe the dirt off.
He sucks furiously on the ciggy. Bloody bitch, she is.
He hadn’t expected her to keep her promise, once the spell broke. It was a little kid’s promise, to share her sodding stuffed toy and find him somewhere new to sleep, made in the heat of the moment, after all. But she had, at least, kept the part about the bathtub. And not like he wants to share a sodding stuffed pig with a daft name with the Slayer now he’s back to himself, anyway. He’s the Big Bad. He doesn’t need stuffed animals. Be rotten for his image, too.
And she had never actually promised anything about being friends or him not being alone anymore. But…he had kind of thought they were friends, back when they were little. Before the spell, they’d been mortal enemies, nice, clean, and simple. Now? He hasn’t a bloody buggering clue what the hell they are and he can’t even ask her since she won’t bloody well talk to him!
He’d been surprised to have so much fun with the Slayer of all people. She could really cut loose when she wanted. And he’d been useful, too, able to hurt demons and protect Buffy and her lackeys, even convincing that Fyarl not to hurt the soldiers. Being stuck with the good guys hasn’t really been so bad. Maybe she would even let him patrol with her…
But that would require talking, a thing she apparently has no interest in. She’d looked at him, a couple times, right after the spell broke, and he’d thought…but no. He can’t think about her bloody perfect shampoo commercial hair, or the way her arse fills out her jeans. He’s got to protect himself. Got to protect his heart.
Best to stay in his crypt, keep to himself. Best to stay away from her.
~~~
Buffy psychs herself up to go into Giles’s apartment. She’s done this every day since the spell. At least Spike only opened the door the one time. Now they just pretend it doesn’t take her an age and a day to work up the nerve to deal with him.
Or, well, not so much deal with him as “pretend he isn’t there.”
But then she frowns, realizing she doesn’t feel any vampire tinglies nearby, which she should. Hey! What the hell? He’s supposed to be here for her to avoid! It’s the oddity of his absence that finally gets her to open the door to the apartment.
“Hey Giles!” she says cheerfully, avoiding looking around so she won’t have to see Spike. Or worse, so she won’t see where Spike isn’t.
“Ah, Buffy, hello,” Giles says, and yeah, even without the tingles, she’d know from the way Giles is relaxing in one of the chairs with a book and the good scotch that Spike is gone. She shouldn't feel miffed. It’s not like she and Spike are friends, or like she wants to be his friend. Even if they were friends during the spell.
“Where’s your unwelcome houseguest?” she asks as she makes herself comfy on the couch. Spike’s bed, for the last few nights.
“At his own home, I presume,” Giles says. “He left word with me that he’s taken up residence in the old Hawley mausoleum in Restfield.”
“Ew,” she says and wrinkles her nose. “Vampires are gross.”
“Well, it does seem an appropriate home for a dead man,” Giles says. He puts his book aside. “And with the Initiative gone…”
“Well, we think they’re gone. They could still be out there.” Buffy chews her lip. Riley left, and Walsh hasn’t been in class all week. But that doesn’t mean they’re all gone. “And they might start capturing demons again once they’ve had some time to recover. Is it really safe for him? Maybe we shouldn’t have let him leave…”
Not that she’s worried about Spike being safe. It’s just no one deserves to be held down in those cells. And it’s gonna be much harder to get him out if he gets his pasty butt caught again. They must have beefed up security after he broke out and the two of them broke in and then broke everyone else out. And she’s not going to think about Spike’s butt and if it’s as good as it looks in those jeans or if it’s as tight and muscular as his chest feels. Because she and Spike are just…
Well, she doesn’t know what they are, but they’re definitely not butt-ogling buddies.
“That’s actually one of the things I wished to discuss with you,” Giles says, swirling his glass so the ice clinks pleasantly. “I heard back from the Council today.”
Buffy sighs. “Let me guess, they think I un-quit and are sending some new, incompetent Watcher out? Oh, or they’re just going to straight up try to kill me! Again.”
Giles gets a pained look on his face at that last one.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. She’s not sorry. “I just don’t trust them.”
“Yes, quite,” he agrees. “However, that is not their plan. Or if it is, they didn’t share it with me. Instead, they were calling to inform me that their efforts to shut the Initiative down were in vain.”
“Wait, they failed? So we’re going to have to worry about the Initiative coming for us?” Buffy frowns. “We should have the whole gang here for this, they all need to be careful. How much time do you think we have?”
“No, you misunderstand me,” Giles says, taking a sip of his scotch. He’s awful calm considering this terrible news. “The Initiative has already been shut down. The US Government felt it was a ‘failed experiment’ and have written it off. I understand some of the leading officers have been arrested, as well, for unethical research.”
Oh. Not terrible news. Buffy wonders for a moment if Riley’s one of the officers who is going to be arrested. Or maybe that’s why he told her he was leaving Sunnydale—new orders, and he’s not being arrested? She wonders if the new orders will be evil, too. A small part of her is sad that things didn’t work out with Riley, but not that they didn’t work out with him, specifically. She’s glad she saw who he was before she got in too deep. But she is sad about it not working out with who she thought he was—a nice, sweet, normal boy. The kind of guy who asks you out for a picnic for a date. A kinda boring picnic, but it was normal.
Angel told her she should find a normal guy when he left. And so she looked. And she found Parker, who was a jerk and a fake-sweet, normal boy. And Riley, who she thought was a nice, sweet, normal boy, but is actually a secret military demon-torturing jerk. Heck, even Angel wasn’t always that nice or sweet. Would any of them have sung punk songs at the top of their lungs while she peed into a sink so she wasn’t embarrassed?
Except no, she shouldn’t be trying to compare the boys she dated to Spike. Spike, who is the epitome of not normal. Spike, with the firm chest. Spike, who was nice and sweet to her that night regardless of how not normal everything was. Who knew how to have fun and make her laugh—at least when they were kids.
But what about now?
Nope, not going there. No more vampires.
Even if Angel hadn’t told her she should find a normal boy, she knew that dating vampires only leads to badness.
“Buffy, have you heard a word I’ve said?” Giles asks her with mild exasperation.
“Uh, sorry, was thinking about patrolling. You know how busy things have been with all those demons who escaped the Initiative because of me,” she says. “I should probably head out there, you know? Protect the innocent and all.”
~~~
Forrest gets off the plane in North Carolina. He’d applied for a transfer and is due to report to Fort Mackall tomorrow morning as a drill instructor. He’s never been so glad to leave a place as Sunnydale, or a unit as the Initiative. From now on, he’ll leave the demon-hunting to Riley and Graham, who didn’t learn a damn thing the night the Initiative came crashing down around their ears—literally.
As he stretches his long legs in the airport lounge, he somehow can’t help but feel like he dodged a bullet with his name on it.
~~~
Buffy’s not avoiding Restfield during her patrol. It’s just with so many cemeteries to patrol, plus areas like the Bronze and the docks and all that, she has to prioritize. And change things up. Not get into a routine.
Though despite what she’d said to Giles, it’s actually been pretty quiet since That Night. Like everyone has been lying low, whether for fear of the commandos or out of gratitude toward her. Except the vampires, of course, didn’t get the memo. Or if they did they ignored it and kept on with the vampiring.
She twirls her stake in the air as she strolls along the docks. It’s kinda smelly over here, which is one reason she tends to stick to the graveyards. Plus it reminds her of That Night with Angel, when they failed to keep the Judge’s arm away from Spike and Angel lost his soul after a night with her. Happy birthday, Buffy.
So yeah, not the best memories. And she’d come to the docks to avoid thinking about Spike, and here she was remembering one of the worst things he’d done since he burst into her life junior year. Though assembling the Judge was mostly just stupid on his part, considering Spike didn’t want to kill all of humanity, what with his whole “Happy Meals on legs” thing. Most of the bad wasn’t really his fault, if she was going to be fair to him.
She doesn’t want to be fair to him.
But there’s a Bitty Buffy in her head, lecturing her about fairness, and that makes her think of the little Spikelet he was, and how sweet he was. If he’d been the only one affected by the spell, she’s not sure she could have resisted just spending the whole night cuddling with his little boy self and watching Disney movies. He’d been almost disgustingly cute as a five-year-old. Not all weird and awkward like her at that age.
She’s saved from thinking about her mortal enemy turned…something…when she sees the shadow of a bulky, horned demon outlined against the brick wall of the alley. She creeps closer, but then…
“Reg?” she says in surprise. “What are you doing out here?”
“Slayer!” he cries, and thrusts a bag behind his back. It’s…meowing? “Uh, what…uh, it’s not what it looks like?”
She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow at him. “It looks like you have a bag full of cats.”
“Kittens, actually,” he mumbles. He won’t quite meet her eye. “With me locked up, the missus was a little short on rent, so I came out to see if I could find the cash to make up the difference so we don’t get evicted…”
“So, you’re what, going to sell the kittens?” Buffy frowns. Reg looks like he’s not sure if she’s going to slay him or if they’re friends, but he’s collecting cats…that doesn’t seem evil?
“Uh, no one told you about kittens?” Reg looks super uncomfortable. “We, uh, we use them for currency, sometimes. Lot of demons like ‘em for snacks. There’s even a kitten poker game in town. Hey, you and Spike should come!”
Buffy blinks at the onslaught of information as Reg suddenly loosens up and starts chatting to her like he had That Night at Willy’s. Part of her balks at the idea of demons eating and trading cute, fluffy kittens with their little pink noses and whiskers. But if they’re not stealing anyone’s pets, then is it actually any more evil than her eating bacon? She loves pigs, used to beg her mom to let her have a pot-bellied pig as a pet, but that has never stopped her from enjoying pork chops. And she’s seen demons doing much worse in this town than playing poker for kittens.
“Um, no kittens die at kitten poker, right? And there’s no, ritualistic bloodletting or any other Slayer-surprises I need to worry about?” Buffy asks tentatively.
Reg beams at her. “Nope, just poker, not even any special rules or nothing, not like Brachen Hold ‘Em. And the kittens are just the ante.”
“Um, maybe? I might have to take a raincheck on that one, but I’ll let you know,” Buffy says. It sounds innocuous enough. And she could probably learn a lot at kitten poker, about actually dangerous demons coming into town…
Loosening up can’t be all bad, can it? She’d had fun loosening up with Faith, but then things had gone Very Bad. But did they have to? Couldn’t she be the Slayer, and have fun, too? And no matter how Giles might try to scold her for behaving “rashly,” she and Spike had done the right thing destroying the Initiative. She’d trusted her gut and her instincts and had fun and the world hadn’t ended.
“Cool, so, uh, you’re not gonna slay me, then, right?” Reg asks nervously, eyeing the stake in her hand. “Only if you’re not, I should get these to my landlord before they turn into cats, you know?”
“I’m not gonna slay you or any demon as long as you’re not killing humans or trying to end the world or open the Hellmouth or anything stupid,” Buffy says.
“Ha! I knew letting you win the piggyback races was the right move!” Reg cries.
She can’t help but laugh. “Well, that didn’t hurt, but that’s not why. I’m done with just killing demons because they’re demons. As long as you all keep your nose clean, I’m not going to slay anybody.”
“Sure, Slayer. I’ll spread the word,” Reg grins back at her. “You know, it’s a shame you got all big again, you were so cute as a kid. All big eyes and sass. Just need a pair of little horns and you’d have been cute as a button.”
“Uh, thanks, Reg,” Buffy says. Not the worst compliment she’s ever gotten, to be honest. And well meant. “I should get back to patrol now. And you’ve got a landlord to pay.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” he says and starts off in the opposite direction. “Oh, I saw some vamps over a few blocks, might want to check them out.”
See? This new plan of playing nice with the locals is already paying off. “Thanks! Good luck!”
Buffy sets off with a spring in her step to go find some demons she can slay.
~~~
“I am ready to shop until I drop!” Willow says as they enter the mall. Buffy gives her a skeptical look and her friend immediately backs down. “Yeah, okay, we do have that midterm tomorrow.”
“I do not understand how professors can look you in the eye and call a test a midterm when it’s like a week until the end of the semester,” Buffy complains. “Or when there’s more than one in a single semester. It’s literally called a midterm! Middle of the term!”
“Sorry, but you do have to study for it, too,” Willow says soothingly as she slips her arm into Buffy’s.
“It’s an abuse on the English language,” Buffy grumbles. Maybe if she says something to Giles he’ll intervene with the school. He’s always complaining about her English, after all. “I wonder what’s gonna happen with Psych, though, with Walsh and Riley gone.”
“I heard the head of the psychology department is going to take over classes and give the final and stuff,” Willow says as Buffy drags her into a shoe store. “He’s got to be better than that TA they have filling in now.”
“Ugh, that is so unfair! You’d think that when your professor turns out to be a mad scientist who is experimenting on humans and demons that everyone would just get an automatic A,” Buffy complains. Ooh, those red patent leather pumps are cute. Like if a punk rocker made fashionable footwear. Totally impractical for slaying, but they’d be super hot. With a little black dress, maybe…Spike would have to drool himself, then, instead of being all Mr. Aloof Avoidy Vampire.
Oh. Crap. Now she’s shopping for Spike’s colors! And getting mad that he’s avoiding her. Well, okay, he shouldn’t be avoiding her when she’s avoiding him, she called dibs on avoiding! Obviously, since she’s the one who stormed out of Giles’s apartment the day after Willow’s spell.
The pumps are really cute though…She grabs a pair in her size to try them on. She’s not going to let Spike stop her from buying a really cute pair of shoes just because he’d like them on her, too. That would violate girl code.
“So are you big with the bummed with Riley gone,” Willow asks tentatively. “I know you’d said there was sparkage…”
“Oh, yeah, no, that was a big fat lie,” Buffy says, ducking her head to avoid Willow’s eyes as she puts the red pumps on. “Before I found out he was a secret demon-hunting commando, I thought he was actually kinda boring.”
“I don’t get it,” Willow asks. She’s found a pair of purple suede booties that are very her that she’s trying on next to Buffy. “I mean, not the boring part, the lying about sparkage part.”
Buffy shrugs. “I just…when Angel left, he told me to find someone normal, you know? So I did. And Parker was a jerk. I thought Riley was sweet and normal, and so what if he was a little boring? Like, yeah, I know I complained about the lack of fire, but it just seemed safe. And safe seemed good, after Angelus…”
“So you didn’t think he was not-boring after you found out about the secret agent thing?” Willow prods her. She stands up to look at her booties in the mirror and Buffy joins her to model her own shoes. Pretty comfy.
“I mean, I guess he’s not boring? But also he was a condescending jerk to Spike and I, and he tried to manhandle us into doing what he wanted just because we were kids,” she says as she twists and turns her feet to view the shoes at different angles. Comfy, cute, and affordable? Yeah, these shoes are a definite yes. “And what I saw down there…I couldn’t be with someone who was okay with that, you know?”
Willow nods. “Yeah, I get it. Also, poop! These are so cute but I have never tried on a more uncomfortable shoe in my life.”
“Hmm, once I would have said fashion was worth the pain, but slaying has made me appreciate the beauty of cute yet sensible footwear,” Buffy says. “Better luck at the next store?”
“Says she in the sexy red leather pumps,” Willow teases her as they sit down to change back into their shoes. “Gonna go out on the prowl and find a new normal boy? Or did you already find someone to impress?”
Buffy feels her face heat up and she hopes she’s not as red as the shoes. “Not trying to impress anyone.”
“Oh my God! You are! You so are!” Willow cries as she elbows Buffy in the ribs. “Who is it? Do I know him?”
“I’m not—It can’t ever happen, so it’s not like I’m buying these for him,” Buffy mutters. “But it did occur to me that he would think these were very sexy.”
“You are violating girl code, missy,” Willow says as they get in line to buy Buffy’s shoes. “I demand deets at once. How did you meet him, and do I know him, and does he go to UC Sunnydale?”
“Um, we met in high school, and you were there so yes, and no, he’s so not the college type,” Buffy says. She lowers her head so her hair covers her face and drops to a mutter. “Except that time he tried to kill me. And the one time he tried to kill you.”
“Spike?!” Willow squeaks, and it’s so high-pitched it’s possible only dogs can hear her. Which is good, she doesn’t need it getting out that she’s into Spike. Not that anyone here knows who that is, but still.
“I just…he was really sweet when we were down in those labs, you know? Like, really sweet. I was afraid of the dark and he was just so nice, and when I had to pee and there wasn’t a bathroom anywhere he made it, well, not good, but as not-bad as it could be under the circumstances,” Buffy says, shifting uncomfortably. “And I can’t remember the last time I actually had fun like that. And okay, I was a kid and we were messing around a lot, but I can’t imagine having that much fun with a little Riley, or a baby Angel, you know? And I’m not blind, I know he’s a hottie. But...”
“Oh, wow,” Willow breathes as Buffy pays for her shoes. “I just…Spike was sweet? Really?”
“Really really,” Buffy confirms. Willow seems way less with the wigged than she was expecting. “But I mean, vampires are of the bad, and even if he was human, he still wouldn’t count as normal…”
“So what if he’s not normal?” Willow asks, and then she starts to rant as they leave the shoe store. “I mean the vampire thing is not nothing, but why are you so set on a normal guy? Just because Angel said so? Angel broke up with you! Angel left you. Angel doesn’t get a say in your life anymore!”
Buffy closes her mouth, which had dropped open during the tirade. “Wow, where did that come from, Wills?”
It’s Willow’s turn to blush. “I may’ve been reading some books from the women’s studies syllabus. But I’m serious, you shouldn’t be listening to Angel. If you want normal, that’s one thing. I read somewhere that exes are people you don’t know anymore.”
Buffy considers that. Sometimes she’s not sure she ever knew Angel. He was so secretive all the time. And then he was so weird when she went to see him over Thanksgiving. Maybe she doesn’t know him anymore. She knows she’s been changing since college started…maybe he changed during that time, too.
“And don’t tell Xander I said this or he’ll totally plotz, but you’re right about Spike being a hottie,” Willow mock-whispers to her. Buffy is startled into a giggle. “And…it’s not like he can hurt anyone. After whatever it is that they did to him.”
“It’s a computer chip,” Buffy blurts. Willow pulls her into a clothing store that’s very Willow and not so much Buffy. “I found a file while we were down there and they called it a behavioral modification circuit. It shocks him with electricity whenever he tries to hurt a human.”
“Buffy, I, wow,” Willow says, blinking. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
She bites her lip. “I told Spike. I just thought…he should know. And there was all the other stuff with Project 314 and making sure the Initiative was gone-gone…”
Willow is quiet for a moment that seems to last a long, long time. “I’ve been thinking a lot, about what you said. And what Anya said. About how we don’t trust you.”
“I’m sorry, Will, I—” Buffy starts, though she’s not sure she is sorry. It just seems like she should say it.
“No, don’t say sorry,” Willow interrupts her. “You were right. We have been sorta backseat slaying. And worse, backseat dating. Especially Xander. And…you need to make the decisions…the final, important decisions for slaying. And, well, it’s not really any of our business who you date, is it?”
Buffy chews her lip. It sounds almost too good to be true. After running into Reg on patrol, she’s been thinking more and more about Spike and going to see him. Invite him to kitten poker with her, maybe.
“Do you trust Spike? If he was ‘normal’ or whatever, would you already be all over him like white on rice?” Willow asks point blank when Buffy doesn’t answer.
“Um, I guess…though he’s been all avoidy lately,” Buffy says. “I guess I have been, too. It’s been confusing…”
“Okay, listen up, missy,” Willow says and puts her hands on her hips. “You are going to go to that crypt and tell Spike how you feel, you got me?”
“Wow, Willow all with the assertive,” Buffy tries to deflect. “Telling off your mom, bossing me around…What’s next, the presidency?”
“Don’t try to change the subject on me, Buffy,” Willow says. She’s doing her Resolve Face, which means Buffy might as well cave now. “And you are wearing those shoes for him at some point!”
“You don’t think it’s a problem that he’s a vampire?” Okay, maybe just check one more time before caving.
“It’s not my favorite, no,” Willow concedes. “But will he make you happy? And also try not to eat us?”
Buffy sighs. “That is the question, isn’t it? But okay, okay. You win. I’ll talk to him. Probably. Maybe.”
Willow rolls her eyes but drops it for now.
“Blech,” she says to the clothing rack she’s looking at. “Why did I used to shop here?”
Buffy shrugs. “Beats me. Onward?”
They head back out into the mall and Buffy can’t stop thinking about Spike. She doesn’t even know if he likes her, let alone likes her likes her. Maybe she could start smaller than telling him how she feels?
She glances over to the other side of the mall, and the first thing she sees is the toy store.
“Hey, Wills? I’ve got an errand to run, I’ll catch up with you in a half hour? In front of Cinnabon maybe?”
“Buffy, you are speaking my language,” Willow says. She probably thinks Buffy’s off to find a sexy dress to go with the red pumps, and while she wouldn’t mind shopping for one, she already has the perfect little black dress to go with in her closet, mostly backless except for some straps across it with a short flirty skirt that is perfectly scandalous for dancing in. So she’s not shopping for a dress.
But she does have a promise to keep.
~~~
There’s nothing on the sodding telly. Probably because the old rabbit ears only pick up two and a half stations. Maybe he can figure out how to steal cable or get a satellite dish hooked up. It’s Sunnydale. The cable guys must’ve had weirder requests than putting a dish on a crypt roof.
He’s bored, which is dangerous. He’s been trying to keep himself busy fixing up the crypt to stop from thinking about the Slayer. It works some of the time, at least. But right now, he’s out of things he can do besides rearrange the furniture—again—until he can make another run to the dump or thrift store. And with the telly practically useless, he’s got almost nothing to keep his brain occupied.
Except thoughts of how she still hasn’t been by to see him. Thoughts of how if he’d stayed at Rupert’s, he might have wound up back in the tub, but at least then he would’ve gotten to see her.
Thoughts of her kindness and her brilliance and her shining hair and smile and—
And dammit, he’s not supposed to want to see her. Except on the field of battle. But that’s not an option for him, anymore, and she had to go and be so sodding sweet to him and just confuse him further.
And worse…it’s not just that he wants to see her. He just wants her. Anyway he can get her.
Just ain’t right.
He gets up from the armchair where he’s sprawled to try to fix the antenna. That’s how she finds him, wiggling skinny bits of metal around in the air as he mutters to himself.
“Spike,” is all she says as she enters, and is her voice hoarse? Surely not. She’s got a shopping bag with her, like she just came from the mall or something.
“Slayer,” he replies. His voice is definitely not hoarse. He swallows.
“You can…can you call me Buffy again? Like before?” she asks and her face turns a fetching shade of pink as the blood rushes into her cheeks.
He’s not really sure how to take her request. He wants things like they were down there. Only he wants things like they are now, too, with them their right size and shape. She hadn’t smelled quite the same as a tyke, but it had been her. Just missing the marks of a woman. He hadn’t realized at the time that he’d missed her grownup smell. Missed her grownup self.
“All right,” he says, needing to swallow again. “Buffy.”
She smiles at him, and it’s lovely, because she’s lovely, but it’s also a nervous smile. At least neither of them knows how to do this.
“To what do I owe the honor of your visit?” he asks her, and he winces internally at the way it sounds snide. He sweeps his arm around. “Come for a tour of my lovely abode?”
“No, I…I mean, if you want to,” she stumbles and flushes pink again. “But it’s not…I wanted to see you. I mean, I, you…you said you’d teach me. About punk music.”
Her face has deepened from pink to red as the embarrassment floods her cheeks and her eyes drop to the floor. The color extends down her neck and he wonders just how far…
“I would love nothing more than to teach you about punk music, pet,” Spike says, too intensely he knows, and he can feel the stupid smile stretching across his face. She looks up, and for some daft reason smiles back at him. He starts to move toward the box with his records when he realizes a flaw in his plan and feels his face fall. “Er, don’t seem to have a turntable at the mo’, so your miseducation might have to wait a bit.”
“That’s okay, I didn’t mean, like, today,” she says as her smile turns soft. He can’t help but smile back. She must think he’s a loon. “Uh, Reg says hi, by the way. And he invited us to kitten poker.”
Us. That clears the smile from his face. Does she want there to be an “us”? He peers at her, trying to read her while keeping his face and voice carefully neutral. “And did it work? Reg’s plan for a ‘get out of slay free’ card?”
“Um, he didn’t need to throw the race for that,” Buffy says. She shifts the bag she’s holding to her other hand. “I told him that as long as demons aren’t hurting humans, I won’t bother them.”
A big step for a Slayer, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. He finds himself taking a step closer to her without meaning to. “And that goes for vampires?”
“Yeah, though I don’t think any of the others are gonna take me up on that, do you?” she says, her eyes looking big. She licks her lips and his eyes follow the motion.
“Suppose not,” he says roughly. He takes another step, and another, until he’s right in front of her.
“Yeah,” she says. And for a moment, he could have sworn her eyes dropped to his lips, but he must have imagined it. She takes a step back suddenly and thrusts the shopping bag she’s carrying at him. “For you.”
“You get me a housewarming present, Goldilocks?” he asks her as he takes the bag from her. Her fingers brush his and he feels her warmth seep into him. He misses that, the way her hand had felt in his, her warm body against his when he had hugged her, there in the dark.
Her hands stray to her hair and idly start playing with a strand. Her eyes dart away, looking anywhere but at him. “No, I, uh. I’m here to keep my promise.”
Spike frowns at her. “You already kept your promise, Buffy. Do you see any bathtubs ‘round here?”
“Would you just open your present?” she huffs, finally meeting his eyes in her exasperation with him. He doesn’t remember any other promises, except the bathtub one, and she’s not about to do a timeshare with her beloved Mr. Gordo, so he’s at a loss.
“You didn’t even wrap it,” he teases her, but he reaches into the bag and his fingers brush against something soft.
“It didn’t really make sense for us to share Mr. Gordo, since you live so far away and all,” Buffy starts, and he can already tell this is going to be a doozy of a babble. “And, well, I did promise. So I thought I could get you your own Mr. Gordo, or maybe a Señora Porky or something. But then what if a frog was better? Like Kermit and Miss Piggy?” she flushes prettily. Does…she want them to be like Kermit and Miss Piggy? He’s glad his heart doesn’t beat or he’s sure she’d hear it pounding. “But then, you’re not really a frog-person, and while you can be kind of a pig, it’s not like that kind of pig, but you are kinda like a cat? All hissy and scratchy and bitey, but also you want tummy rubs?” He has to resist the urge to growl or hiss at her. Like a cat. Sodding hell. “And then there’s always the classic, teddy bears, and you know, there was the bear at Thanksgiving and you were all ‘undo it, undo it!’ O-or you’re like a shark, like a great white shark, you know all dangerous cold-blooded man-eating predator and sharp teeth? So I couldn’t decide, and um…”
Spike finally pulls the soft something out of the bag and it’s the shark. But he sees more stuffed animals under it. A teddy bear and a black cat. A frog and a pig. He tries to speak but nothing comes out at first so he clears his throat and tries again. “You’re not kidding about not being able to pick.”
“Yeah, I, um, got them all,” she says shyly. He can’t tear his eyes away from the contents of the shopping bag. No one’s ever done anything like this for him. With Dru, he was always the one giving the presents, always the one thinking of her. And the only thing Cecily ever gave him was a broken heart.
Buffy steps closer and reaches up a hand to wipe a tear off his cheek with her thumb. When did he start crying?
“Didn’t think you remembered,” he mumbles in a choked voice, and the Big Bad isn’t supposed to cry over a present, let alone a bunch of stuffed animals. He should shove the bag back at her, tell her to take them away. His fingers tighten on the bag.
“Scout’s honor, right?” she says softly. Her hand slides down his cheek to force his chin up so that their eyes meet. He’s glad vampires can’t blush or he’s sure he would be now. Embarrassed at crying like a baby in front of her, embarrassed at how much he longs for her and misses what they had had that night in the labs.
But for all the emotions rushing through him, he remembers how this one goes, even if his voice is still creaking with pent up emotions. “You never even ate a Scout.”
She licks her lips nervously but she keeps her eyes locked on his, her fingers under his chin. “I promised you wouldn’t have to sleep in a bathtub anymore. And I promised you I’d share Mr. Gordo with you. But you were crying about something else, too. And I didn’t make a promise about it, but Spike, I am your frie—”
He makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob and then crushes her to him. One hand still clutching the shark and the other the handles of the shopping bag, and his lips cut off her words as he pours all his feelings into kissing her. It takes only a heartbeat before she unfreezes, and then she’s melting against him, her lips soft against his, her tongue teasing his lips until he lets her in. She explores his mouth gently, forcing his frenzied kiss to slow to a languid pace. He slides his tongue against her sensuously, pulls her tight against him, her core hot against him as he hardens. The kiss goes on and on until she has to breathe and he reluctantly breaks it off, pressing his forehead against hers. She’s panting for oxygen, but his pants are for the emotions tearing him apart.
“I’m your friend, Spike, and I don’t know what comes next, but I want to find out,” she whispers when she can speak again. “With you.”
“You kiss all your friends like that?” he asks with a smirk. She swats his arm playfully.
“You know I don’t,” she says. She lets her hand linger on his arm, stroking it softly. She drops her eyes. “But Willow’s spell let me see who you really are, underneath all the leather and attitude. And it turns out I like that guy a whole lot.”
It’s his turn to lift her chin up. He stares into her big green eyes and she just smiles at him. If this is a dream, he hopes he never wakes up.
And then she kisses him again. He could get used to this.