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Baby, You Can Drive My Car by slaymesoftly
 
Six
 
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Chapter Six

Xander was waiting for her in the living room, jumping up with a guilty start as she entered. Buffy looked back and forth between him and Willow, taking in their uncomfortable demeanors and frowning.

“What’s wrong, guys?”

They exchanged looks, then Willow took a deep breath and said, “We were just talking about how much time you’re spending with Spike lately and we were wondering...”

“Wondering?”

“Why?” Xander said bluntly. “Why would someone who had been in hell for months want to spend even more time with a demon? Is there something wrong with you?”

Willow’s angry “Xander!” was too late to prevent a gasp from the slayer and a narrowing of her eyes.

“You think something’s wrong with me?” Buffy asked in a dangerously calm voice.

“Well,” he gulped, then plunged ahead. “You hardly talk to us – your friends. You mope around like you’re sorry to be here. And you spend way too much time with a vampire that’s obsessed with you.”

“Do you want me to do a spell?” Willow asked eagerly. “I could take away whatever’s wrong.”

Buffy met Willow’s gaze coolly. “No, Wills. I don’t want you to do any more spells. And just so you know? You can’t fix what’s wrong with me. But Spike helps me forget about it for a while. That’s why I’m spending time with him. He wasn’t part of---” She stopped and took a calming breath, still not ready to share with her friends that they had yanked her out of Heaven. “You know what? I don’t have to explain myself to you two. Or to anybody. I’m a grown woman, I’ve saved the world a bunch of times, I’ve got a crap job so that I can pay for the house you live in, I’m trying to raise a teenage hormone bomb and my ‘friends’ think they have the right to tell me who I can see in my off time.”

While Willow stared in shocked silence, Xander muttered, “You’re ‘seeing’ Spike?”

Buffy stared back at them; then nodded her head as if coming to a decision.

“I might be. We’re...we’re working on it. I’m sorry if that doesn’t match your plans for me, but I’m not all that interested in what either one of you thinks I should or shouldn’t do. I’ll do what I think is best for me, and if that means spending a lot of my time with Spike...well...I guess you’d better get used to it.”

Ignoring their dumbfounded expressions, she walked to the door and opened it. “Don’t wait up,” she said tersely.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“I have to see a demon about a bra,” she said, slamming the door shut behind her.

“She has to see a who about a what?” Xander wasn’t sure he’d actually heard what Buffy said as she left, but he was pretty sure he knew where she was going.

“A demon about a bra,” Willow said flatly. “We need to do something. This has obviously gone further than we thought.”

“Um, Buffy sounded pretty...slayerly...when she was telling us to butt out.” Xander’s innate distrust of Spike warred with his understandable respect for Buffy’s temper and strength.

“We’re her friends!” Willow protested. “If we’d ‘butted out’ when she was dead, she’d still be...be...wherever she was.”

Awakened by the noise, Dawn had come down the stairs and listened to the loud conversation.

“I wonder where that was exactly?” she said quietly, startling the two young people who were sitting in her house and arguing over what to do about her sister.

“What do you mean, ‘you wonder where she was?’ She was probably in a hell dimension!”

“Probably? Or maybe? Maybe she wasn’t in a hell dimension. Maybe she was somewhere...nicer.”

“What? No! No, don’t be silly Dawn. If she’d been somewhere...else, she wouldn’t want to be...here...back in Sunnydale...with us...the people who brought...Oh. My. God.”

Dawn watched impassively as Willow’s face crumpled and she sank into the couch with a soft moan. Xander frowned, his eyes darting back and forth between Dawn and Willow as he tried to follow their conversation.

“What do you mean ‘somewhere nicer’? What kind of a dimension would be a nicer one? I mean, you’ve got your hell dimensions and then you’ve got your...your not so much with the hell dimension...”

“AKA – Heaven,” Dawn said flatly. “Gee, do you think being yanked out of Heaven and back to slaying, and back to being poor and having to take care of your little sister, and not having a mom anymore, and not having a man in your life and—”

Willow held up a pleading hand. “I get it, Dawnie. We get it.”

“You think those things might make a person seem a tad ungrateful?” Dawn was relentless. “That she might rather spend her time with one of the two people in her life who didn’t participate in her resurrection?”

“Dawn, stop it!” Xander had sat down next to Willow and was doing his best to comfort the now-sobbing witch.

“I’m just saying – what if that’s where she was?”

Without another word, Dawn went back up to her room and slammed the door behind her. She stood on the other side, trembling all over. It hadn’t really occurred to her until she started speaking that what was wrong with Buffy could be as simple as the fact that she had been yanked out of Heaven. Now that it had, she was convinced that it was the real reason for Buffy’s unusual behavior. As she climbed back into her bed and snuggled down to sleep, she determined to confront her sister at the first opportunity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spike was lying on his bed, a bottle of JD on the floor within easy reach. However, rather than the deliberate attempt to drink himself into oblivion in which he would normally have indulged, he was sipping at it occasionally while holding Buffy’s bra to his face and inhaling her scent. Not sure what to make of her tentative gestures of closeness in front of what was probably the least understanding of the Scoobies, he tried not to read too much into her actions.

Got a kind heart, my slayer does. Doesn’t let me see it all that often, but I know it’s there. She wouldn’t hurt a friend – not on purpose, anyway.

His musings were interrupted by the sound of soft rapping on the door of his crypt, and he sat up, extending his vampire senses. When he recognized Buffy’s pounding heartbeat and her soft footsteps, he smiled and sank back onto the bed, his game face fading into the achingly beautiful human one that he preferred to show her.

“Spike? Are you here?”

“Down here, pet. What’s wrong? Wasn’t expectin’ to see you again tonight. Take it the lessons didn’t go well?” He rose to his feet and was waiting for her at the bottom of the steep steps when she stepped on the last one.

“We didn’t get that far,” she said with a tight-lipped terseness that told him not to pursue it.

“Ah. Alright then.” He waited patiently for her to explain why she’d come back to him. With her standing on the bottom step, they were the same height, and only his uncertainty about her reasons for being there kept him from kissing the angry face that was only inches away.

He was too surprised to react at first when she threw her arms around his neck and fastened her mouth on his, kissing him frantically and taking out her anger on his willing lips and tongue. Recovering quickly, he stepped closer and pulled her body against his, growling softly at the violence of her kiss.

He met her fierce kisses with an equal intensity; his demon was quivering with suppressed passion in the face of the controlled violence of Buffy’s attack upon his mouth. When she bit his tongue, drawing blood and another growl, he reluctantly pulled away from her, holding her by the arms and trying to catch her darting eyes.

“Buffy? Not that I’m complainin’, love, but...”

“Shut up, Spike,” she growled, reaching for his mouth again.

“No.” He couldn’t have said which of them was more surprised by his refusal to continue what would have undoubtedly led to more. He moved back another step and was about to release her arms when her face crumpled and angry tears took the place of her single-minded determination to throw herself at him.

Immediately, he was holding her again while she sobbed out her despair, grief and immense sense of loss. In between gulping sobs, he could catch a phrase here and there.

“What gives them the right...? Haven’t they ruined my life enough? You make me happy...can’t they see that? I don’t want to be here! It’s their fault, and now they want me to give up the only thing that makes me forget for...”

Without releasing her, he walked to the bed and settled himself against the headboard, Buffy across his lap, her head buried in his shoulder while she ranted and cried until she was exhausted. Forgoing the temptation to mumble meaningless reassurances, he held her tightly and let her cry out the anger and grief that she’d been trying to suppress since she crawled out of her grave and realized where she was.

When her sobs had trailed off to hiccups and sniffles, he relaxed his arms just enough that she could distance herself if she wanted to. Instead of moving away, she snuggled closer, putting her own arms awkwardly around his torso and squirming until she was stretched out beside him. With a contented sigh, she closed her eyes and let exhaustion take her.

When Buffy hadn’t move for another two hours, Spike was very grateful that his blood didn’t circulate and that he didn’t need to move around. As wonderful as it felt to have the woman he loved sleeping trustfully in his arms, even his body was beginning to cramp up from remaining in the same position for so long. Moving as carefully as possible, he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so that her head was resting on his chest. He couldn’t hold back his smile when she threw a possessive leg over his thigh and wrapped her free arm around his stomach.

In spite of his vow to remain awake and enjoy every second of the unaccustomed closeness between them, his own eyes finally drifted shut and he dozed off feeling more at ease than at any time since he’d been chipped.

He awoke gradually, becoming aware first of the warmth all along his right side and the soft, contented sounds coming from the face nuzzling his neck. The events of the previous evening came back to him, and while he waited to see if Buffy was awake or just dreaming, he extended his senses.

Which told him immediately that there were human intruders in his crypt. Three heartbeats were going like snare drums, while a whispered argument was taking place upstairs.

“No, you can’t go down there! You could be scarred for life!”

“I have a right! She’s my sister, and if she’s boinking my friend, I have a right to know.”

Dawn’s stubbornness was so apparent in her voice that Spike could picture her narrowed eyes and pouting lower lip. He lowered his head and whispered in Buffy’s ear.

“Time to wakey, love. I think we’ve got company.”

“Donwanna...” she muttered, squirming closer and tightening the leg now wrapped around his thigh. When he tried to extricate himself, she gave a credible growl and pulled him down.

“Buffy, love of my life, sweetness...you know I would never ask you to move from this position if there wasn’t a really good reason for it, but...”

He hadn’t finished his argument before Dawn tumbled down the steep staircase, landing in a sheepish heap at the bottom. Buffy raised her head and opened one eye.

“It’s just Dawn,” she murmured. “‘s okay.”

“It’s not just Dawn, Slayer,” he growled, giving the teenager a glare for good measure. He raised his eyes to include Xander and Willow in the glare as they came down and stood beside Dawn.

“I tried to stop them,” she said. “I really did. I told them it was none of their business what you guys were doing, but they wouldn’t listen.”

“So, you were planning to stop them by being the first one to break into my crypt without knocking? And to fall into my bedroom?”

A now awake Buffy raised her head and added her glare to the vampire’s.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, the evidence of her crying jag still visible on her face.

The three humans took in the scene – the fully-clothed and obviously just-awakened people glaring at them, the complete lack of embarrassment on Buffy’s still tear-stained face, the protective growls coming from the vampire with his arms around her.

“I...we thought...we were afraid...”

“We were afraid that the evil undead here might be using your...your emotional state right now, to take advantage of you,” Xander admitted, not meeting her eyes.

“Do I look like I”m being taken advantage of?”

“Well, no, not in the way I...but you’re all with the horizontalness and the arms around each other...”

“In what way is holding my fully-clothed body while I’m having a breakdown and getting snot all over his shirt taking advantage of me?” Buffy gave Spike a comforting squeeze and sat up, crossing her arms in front of her chest and fixing all three of them with her best “pissed off slayer” look. The vampire sat up also, leaning back against the headboard with his arms crossed behind his head and grinning at the discomfited faces in front of him. His grin faded as Xander continued to press the issue.

“Look at yourself, Buffy,” he pleaded. “You’re letting your...whatever is making you unhappy...affect your judgment. Going to a vampire for comfort? How wrong is that?”

“This vampire loves me,” she stated quietly. “And he had nothing to do with bringing me back into this world.”

There was a loud silence as she came very close to admitting that she wasn’t happy about being back. Dawn studied her sister’s face and then nodded to herself.

“I was right,” she whispered. “I was, wasn’t I? You weren’t in a hell dimension.”

“Why would she be, you gits?” Spike sat up, indignation radiating from him. He stopped Buffy with a curt chop of his hand when she tried to shush him. “Which part of ‘Heaven’s Chosen One’ is too bloody complicated for you to understand?”

“Spike...” Buffy’s voice held a warning that he ignored.

“Keep out of this, deadboy,” Xander snarled. He tried not to see how Buffy leaned into the vampire when he put an apologetic arm around her.

“No, I bloody well will not keep out of it. All you two have done since she got back is complain about how she isn’t fallin’ all over you with gratitude. You expected her to climb out of the grave - that you left her in, let me remind you - and go right back to her life like nothing happened? Even if you hadn’t ripped her out of—“

Buffy’s hand on his mouth interrupted his tirade. “Enough!” she said. “I think they get it.”

“‘bout bloody time,” he muttered, subsiding to low growls and keeping his arm around her protectively.

Willow’s face lit up, even as apologetic tears filled her eyes.

“I can fix it, Buffy!” she said eagerly. “I can do a spell to—”

“No!”

“No!”

Buffy and Spike spoke at the same time. “No more spells, Willow. You can’t fix this. All you can do is get off my back and let me have some time to learn to live again. Is that too much to ask?”

Willow shook her head, promising, “Okay. If you don’t want—but...Spike? Where does he fit in?”

Xander couldn’t control himself.

“You don’t need to do this, Buffy. Now that we know, we can help you. You don’t need to run to the undead for...”

“He loves me,” she said simply. “And he doesn’t ask anything from me in return. Can you say as much?”

“You know what he wants in return.” Xander refused to give up. “He’s got no soul.”

“And yet he loves me anyway,” Buffy replied more calmly than she felt. “Even without a soul, he loves me. Pretty amazing, huh?” She beamed at an astonished Spike, and cupped his face with one hand. “Pretty amazing,” she repeated softly.

Unable to speak, he placed a kiss on her palm, then pressed it back to his cheek.

She smiled at him, and then turned back to the three humans gaping at them.

“Face it, guys. I’m not like you. I’m not like Spike – but I’m not like normal people either. This feels right. And I’m going to enjoy it while I’ve got it. He’s bringing me back into the world and helping me learn to enjoy it again. How can that be bad?”

“It’s bad because he’s evil, unsouled, and only wants...”

“Rhetorical question, Xander.” Buffy’s voice was hard and suddenly much colder. “Look it up.”

Having recovered from hearing Buffy call him amazing in front of her friends, Spike stood up and walked towards the three humans. He gave Dawn a gentle smile, then his face hardened.

“If we’re done here, I’d appreciate it if you closed the door tightly on your way out.”

He stared into Xander’s angry eyes, his own blue flickering with amber sparks.

Willow broke the standoff by taking her oldest friend’s arm and tugging him to the stairs.

“Come on, Xander. We found out what we wanted to know. It’s time to go home.”

She pulled the reluctant boy up the stairs, sending Buffy a final heartbroken and apologetic smile before disappearing into the upper level of the crypt. Dawn glared at her sister, saying, “You could have told me, you know!”

“I’m sorry, Dawn,” Buffy replied quietly. “But you were so happy that I was back...I just couldn’t...I’m sorry,” she repeated.

Dawn transferred her glare to the vampire. “Well, you could have told me! You’re supposed to be my friend...my big brother. You could have told me.”

Spike stepped back to Buffy’s side and put a possessive arm around her.

“Wasn’t my secret to tell,” he said softly. “Love you to pieces, Bit. You know that. And it’s got nothin’ to do with your big sis having asked me to take care of you – would have done it anyway.” He tightened his arm around Buffy. “But don’t ever ask me to choose between you.”

Dawn nodded, not really mollified but knowing when it was time to walk away. Telling herself that she could lay a guilt trip on him later when Buffy wasn’t around, she mumbled her ‘good-night’ and followed the two Scoobies up the stairs and out of the crypt.


 
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