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A Friend in Need by slaymesoftly
 
Fourteen
 
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 
While the women hugged and cried and told each other how wonderful it was that Dawn was now safe, Giles, Xander, and Spike stood off to the side and watched them.  Tara’s mind had cleared almost as soon as Spike snapped Ben’s neck, and she and Willow were clinging together as though Tara had been missing for months rather than less than twenty-four hours.
 
“Nice to see Red’s bird is going to be alright,” Spike said.  “She seems like good people. Nice girl... for a witch.”
 
“Willow’s magic kept us safe until you got here,” Xander said. “She’s a good witch too.”
 
“Didn’t say she wasn’t. It’s just... she’s gives off some vibes that I don’t get from the other one.  Might want to keep an eye on her, Watcher.”
 
“She is becoming quite powerful. However, she has not indulged in any more of the careless magic that caused all of us so much trouble last year – including your surprisingly sudden engagement to Buffy.”  He gave Xander and Spike a moment to remember that night and snort their agreement. “I believe Tara has been a good influence on Willow. She helps to keep her grounded. But your advice is worth considering. I shall try to guide her away from the darker arts as much as I can.”
 
“You two are talking about Willow like she’s... evil... or something. What’s wrong with you?” Xander glared back and forth between the two men who’d had more experience with the downside of magic, then walked away to join Anya in the happy group around Buffy and Dawn.
 
Giles and Spike watched with satisfied camaraderie for a few minutes before walking over to join the small celebration.
 
“I suggest we take this victory party back to Sunnydale. Now that the danger to Dawn is over, we can take Joyce back to her own home where her daughters can care for her properly.”  With general agreement, they split up to return to their vehicles and begin the trip back to town. 
 
Spike stopped beside his DeSoto and cocked his head at Buffy. “Going home with your mum, then?”
 
She frowned at him. “Well... yeah. Why? Aren’t you coming too?” She watched his expression, her brow still wrinkled. “I can ride with everybody else if you don’t want to—”
 
“Don’t be daft,” he said, holding the passenger side door open. “Just wasn’t sure you’d want me around there – in the bosom of your family, so to speak.”
 
Shaking her head and waving to Giles to indicate she would be riding with Spike, Buffy slide into the car and waited for him to get in and start the engine.  “Let’s stay behind them... just in case,” she said. “Those knight guys weren’t after Glory, they were after Dawn. Maybe they gave up, maybe they didn’t.”
 
“Good thought, love. They wanted to destroy the Key. Didn’t really put a deadline on it, did they?”
 
“If all they were worried about was Glory using the Key, then they should just go back to whatever Renaissance Fair they came from.  But if they wanted to destroy it so nobody could ever use it....”
 
“Got it, pet. We’ll keep our eyes open for the next few days. Make sure they’ve crawled back into their fantasy lives.”
 
They were quiet for a while; Spike driving much more sedately then he had on the way out of town, and Buffy trying to keep her eyes on their surroundings as best she could with no light but the headlights of the two vehicles. She finally gave it up as useless and decided to assume the knights wouldn’t be able to find them without using lights themselves, which they would notice.  She rested her head on the seat and closed her eyes.
 
“What was all that about?” she asked without opening her eyes or turning her head.
 
“All what?”
 
“That ‘bosom of my family’ stuff. Do you think I don’t know that you and my mother were.... friends?  She slipped up and told me she knew where you were.  How can you think you wouldn’t be welcome in her house?”
 
“She didn’t know I was going to be shagging her daughter back then, did she?”
 
“Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not something you need to bring up.” Buffy reached across the seat and punched him hard on the thigh.
 
“Ow! You are going to kiss that better later.”
 
“I’ll think about,” she said, wincing as she moved back toward the window.
 
“What’s wrong?”
 
“It’s no biggie. That bitch planted one of her skanky shoes in my back.  I think there might be a little hole there; it kinda hurts to move.”
 
Spike immediately swung the car off to the side of the road and parked.
 
“Let me see,” he demanded, turning on the overhead light. Buffy obediently turned her back to him, shivering when he put his cool hands on her skin and lifted her shirt. She gave a pained whimper when he pulled the shirt away from where it had been stuck to the bloody hole left by Glory’s heel. “Sorry, love, but I can’t fix it with that in the way.”
 
“How are you going to fix it? We can’t do anything with it till we get to Mom’s.”
 
“Do you trust me?”
 
She turned her head. “Of course I do. What’s that got to do with it?”
 
“I want to suck the dirty blood out. Make sure there’s nothing nasty from the bottom of her shoe in there.  And then I can make it stop bleeding.”  He waited, holding her gaze until she bit her lip and nodded.  “Okay,” she muttered, “but if this is some trick so you can drink Slayer blood, you’re going down...”.
 
“Any time you ask me to, love,” he said, laughing at her indignant “pig”, then turning serious. “Hold still, Slayer.”
 
He bent his head down and put his mouth on her back, fighting back a moan at the taste of her blood.  Buffy gasped, less with pain than in surprise, when he fastened his mouth around the bleeding wound and began to suck gently. When he felt he’d gotten all the dirt and grit out of it, he stopped sucking and licked it until the bleeding stopped. With a final soft kiss, he sat up and pulled her shirt back down.
 
“That should do it till we can get a bandage on it.  Wish you’d told me about it earlier.”
 
“You didn’t smell the blood?”
 
“Did, but thought it was coming from a scratch somewhere. Had no idea you had something like that on you.”
 
“What did you do to it?” She squirmed around, testing her wound and wincing again.
 
“Just what I said I would. Sucked out the dirt and licked it closed,” he said. “With your slayer healing, it’ll probably be almost gone by tomorrow.”
 
“Um... maybe.” She sounded dubious. “How deep is it?”
 
“Deep enough. Good thing she didn’t hit your spine. It’s in the muscle. Probably be stiff and sore for awhile, but at least it’s clean and not bleedin’ anymore.”
 
Buffy nodded. “Yeah, I can feel it getting stiffer now that I’m not moving around as much.”  She flinched as she tried to stretch. “I hope you weren’t expecting tomorrow to be as... exciting... as today was. I don’t think I’m going to feel like... exercising very much. On my back or anywhere else,” she added to be sure he understood her.
 
“Not holding any expectations about tomorrow, love.  Know better than to think one good shag means all our problems have gone away.  Even if it was the best I ever had,” he said, sliding his gaze sideways at her.
 
“It was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Buffy shifted her eyes to the side to see if he was watching her. He grinned when their gazes met.
 
“You know it was. I don’t know why we light each other up like we do – and don’t much care why, long’s we can keep doin’ it until we’re both too old to move without help.”
 
“You’re a vampire, Spike. You’ll never get that old.”  She frowned. “Will you? Do vampires get old?”
 
“Not like humans do, no. But we do age a bit. Some more noticeably than others. Old Batface, for instance. I doubt he was that ugly as a human, but being a vampire didn’t help him get any prettier.  The whore was pushing 300, though, and she could still clean up real good.”
 
“Whore?”
 
“Darla, love.  That’s what she was when the Master found her and gave her eternal life and beauty. Beat the syphilis that was killin’ her.  She stayed what she was when she got turned, while he got uglier and uglier.” He paused to think while Buffy wrinkled her nose in disgust. “ ‘Course, we didn’t necessarily know how old he really was. He could have picked up that name of his hundreds of years ago and just abandoned whatever his mum called him. Might have been Og, or Alley Oop or Fred Flintstone for all we knew.”
 
Buffy waved her hand around. “As fascinating as that is... to anyone who isn’t Giles... the point is, I’m going to get old and feeble someday, and you’ll still be... you.”
 
He touched her chin, turning her face toward his so he could look her in the eye. “If you let me stay in your life that long, there is no way I’m letting you go out of it without me. You go, I go. Simple as that.”
 
Buffy blushed at the intensity of his gaze and the finality of his words. “I’ll be old and ugly,” she said in an attempt to lighten the mood. “You’ll be glad to get rid of me.  I’ll probably have to stake you for cheating on me with some other Slayer.”
 
He smiled and settled back in his seat, turning the engine on and pulling back onto the road.
 
“We can talk about it again in another forty or fifty years.”
 
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
When they reached the Summers home, Joyce had already excused herself and gone upstairs to “take a nice hot shower in my own bathroom, and sleep for a week in my own bed”.  In spite of the relatively early hour, the others were beginning to flag as well. The combination of terror and relief making everyone want to do just what Joyce had said she was going to.
 
Buffy and Spike walked in just in time to say good-bye to Xander and Anya, who were on the way back to their apartment.  Willow and Tara stood up to leave soon after. Buffy’s thanks to Willow for giving her time to get there before things came to a head were heartfelt, if a little tardy, and the two friends hugged tightly until Spike cleared his throat.
 
“Red, should I be worried about this? Given your team switching?”
 
Instead of being embarrassed, Willow smiled and turned to wrap her arms around him in an equally fierce hug.  While Spike looked at Buffy with panicky eyes, Willow whispered, “Thank you for bringing my Tara back. It didn’t happen until you stopped Ben.”
 
He gave her an awkward pat on the back, mumbling, “Any time, pet,” as he waited for her to let him go.  Tara added her thanks to Willow’s, as well as trying to apologize to Buffy for having given Dawn away.
 
“Not your fault, luv,” Spike said, putting his arm around Buffy as soon as Willow freed him in order to comfort Tara.  “The Slayer knows that.”
 
“The Slayer can speak for herself,” Buffy said, elbowing him in the ribs before smiling at Tara. “And of course it’s not your fault. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine for not getting to her in time to stop her.”
 
“I believe the only fault in this situation belongs to the evil creature who caused the problems. And as she has been adequately disposed of, I call it a good night’s work all the way around.”  Giles had walked up behind them as they talked and offered to drive them back to the dorm.  He exchanged a look with Spike that didn’t go unnoticed by anyone in the room, least of all Buffy....
 
“Don’t think you guys got away with anything tonight,” she said, stepping away from Spike and putting her hands on her hips. “I know what he did, and I know you probably gave him the okay—”
 
“Didn’t need anybody’s permission, Slayer. Yours or his.  Did what I had to do, and I’d do again in a bloody heartbeat.”
 
Buffy stamped her foot, startling both Giles and Spike.  “There you go again! It’s like you want me to get mad at you! It’s just like when you left the last time – I try to cut you some slack, and you have to remind me what you are!”  She stood, glaring at Spike who flinched back from her. Giles stared back and forth between them.
 
Spike’s expression was carefully neutral, but his body was already angling toward the door.
 
“Didn’t realize you’d forgotten it, love.” He waited, but she didn’t say anything else, just looked at Giles as if for help.  “So, we’re back to do I stay or do I go?” Spike asked, his shoulders already slumping.
 
Dawn’s “What? Are you crazy?” went unnoticed as Buffy and Spike stared at each other with equally anguished, but stubborn, expressions.
 
“I don’t think that’s what Buffy was saying,” Giles surprised them all by interrupting. “I believe, if I understand her correctly—” he gave her a quick glance “—she is merely asking you not to bring your less... sterling... qualities to her attention.” He waited for Buffy to agree or not, but she just gaped at him. Finally she shrugged.
 
“I think he got that right. Kinda hard to tell when he gets all proper and Englishy on me.”
 
“I speak the Queen’s English too, Slayer,” Spike pointed out. “I understood him. Was he right then? You’re not sending me away again, just tellin’ me to keep my mouth shut?”
 
“Pretty much, I guess,” she sighed. “You do know you’re your own worst enemy, right?”
 
“One of my, as the Watcher might say, ‘less sterling’ qualities.  I’ll work on it.”
 
“See that you do.” Her mouth twitched in an effort not to smile at him.
 
“As long as that’s settled.... “ Giles moved toward the door. “Come along, girls. I’ll drop you off at your dormitory.”
 
With final waves and good-byes, everyone went to their respective homes, leaving Buffy, Spike and Dawn standing in the foyer.
 
“So, you’re not leaving again?” Dawn demanded. She whirled on Buffy. “And you’re not going to send him away?”
 
“Not leavin’ unless she tells me to, Bit. Didn’t want to go the last time.”
 
Buffy shrugged. “I didn’t exactly tell him to leave last year. He just wouldn’t prom—”
 
“That’s enough!  Don’t start fighting about it.” Dawn stamped her own foot. “Just tell me he’s not going to leave, so I can go crash face first on my bed.”
 
Buffy and Spike looked at each other and moved closer together. Mindful of her back, he put his arms around her loosely, waiting for her reaction. When she leaned into him and rested her head on his chest, Dawn sighed in relief. 
 
“Okay then, hugging is good. Night, Spike. Good night Buffy.”
 
Buffy nodded her head as Spike, without looking up, said, “Night, Bit.”
 
Buffy’s wince when she tried to put her own arms around him had him dropping his arms immediately. 
 
“Sorry, love. Thought I was being careful.”
 
“You were. But moving my arms around a lot isn’t much fun. I guess a hot shower and some rest is more in my future than hugs.”
 
“The hugs will be here whenever you’re ready for them, sweetheart. These arms aren’t going any farther away than my crypt.”
 
“I was kinda hoping they weren’t going any farther away than my bed, but I guess that’s out of the question with Mom home again.” 
 
His soft chuckle and the way he nuzzled her neck before moving his lips to kiss the pout off her mouth, made her smile. 
 
“There’s always tomorrow.”
 
“And I know where you live.”
 
“That you do, love. And that’s where I’ll be. Waiting for you.”
 
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