FOUR

When Buffy got to the Magic Box, she found Spike sitting on a bench by the back wall of the big training room scribbling in a notebook: so intent that he didn't seem to notice her arrival, all of which was weird and, though not necessarily of the bad in itself, so damn...un-Spike-like. Like he was channeling Willow or something because that was definitely one of Willow's endless string of color-coded spiral notebooks he was working in. Buffy forgot what green meant, but no way was she not gonna know one of Willow's notebooks. Willow went into research trance, blind and deaf for hours at a stretch, biting the top of pen or stylus, either frowning at the page or screen or else in catatonic thousand-yard-stare mode-not Spike, never Spike!

He was just so weird now. Buffy was puzzled, frustrated, and vaguely annoyed at him. Not an unusual way for her to be feeling about Spike at any time, of course, but not for the current batch of reasons. Yesterday he'd not only volunteered to do laundry, on the grounds that since he was down in the basement from midday on, he might as well get that chore seen to, being so handy to it; but he'd actually done it, which was űber -weirdness of the first magnitude. Unthinkable. And he still hadn't noticed her.

She went behind the screen and changed into training sweatpants and strap-shouldered top. Barefoot and carrying her sneakers, she marched over to the bench and plopped down on it heavily. Incredibly he still didn't look up, just said absently, "Right, in a second...." in the pen-top biting phase.

Spike never didn't notice her!

Stuffing her left foot into the sneaker required Buffy to twist and lean against his arm to reach the laces right.

"Yeah," he said, and smiled at her. Suddenly there, back from wherever he'd been, just as if he hadn't been committing űber-weirdness and she was the crazy one for finding him so off that it just didn't compute.

A year ago, something that strange, she would have hurried off to discuss it, poke and wrestle with it-with Spike. Which left her doubly frustrated because that resource had been withdrawn and there was nothing to replace it. Just the fact of him, no more than acknowledgement he existed anywhere within a hundred square miles of the heart of Buffy-dom, was enough to produce frozen-face, eyes that wouldn't meet hers, and unsubtle changes of subject from Willow or Anya, flaming sulks from Dawn, and outright accusations from Xander-no different from a year ago when the unthinkable (secret awful Spike/Buffy sex thing) had been an actual fact, whereas now...it somehow wasn't.

Which was a good thing, Buffy told herself about 2,000 times a day: only whenever the subject happened to pop into her thoughts, not as if she was being all obsesso-girl about it. That was generally Spike's department, except that he'd apparently taken on some new hobby instead of colliding with her at full speed and fucking each other blind and legless four or five times a day, interspersed with a nice savage punch-up as an occasional change of pace.

It had gotten awful before she'd put a stop to it. Good that they weren't doing that anymore. Good that she'd gotten over taking out on him her inarticulate and otherwise unexpressed fury at having to be alive and grown-up, which she'd never asked for and had thrust on her, just like everything else; having to somehow stand under the crushing weight of all her responsibilities, pick them up afresh every day and carry them through to the next collapse into another night's black oblivion and seething with resentment and hopelessness that it would ever be any different. Hitting Spike, punishing him for being the nearest thing to an outlet that she had because the Slayer wasn't allowed outlets, wasn't allowed fun, and certainly wasn't allowed wild destructive liberating sex with a <i>thing</i> like him, hitting him until he hit back, lost what passed for his temper and defended himself-it had been awful and gave her a sick, shamed feeling whenever she thought about it: roughly 2,000 times a day.

But they were both so over that, and it was a good thing to have nothing to hide or apologize for or explain away to her friends about anything she did in regard to Spike now. A civil friendship, they'd tolerate, and even be (mostly) civil to him in return. He'd won that much acceptance from them, during the summer she'd been...gone. Without Buffy in the equation, Spike was regarded as minimally OK. Not worth the effort of tormenting, rejecting. Easier with him than without him, so might as well let him hang around, help battle the nasties since he volunteered to do it anyway, rather than go to the trouble of, say, chaining him up in a tub. It wasn't, anymore, Spike himself that roused instant and unconditional hostility just by showing up in a room. Only any least suggestion or even suspicion of any connection between him and Buffy that was different from or deeper than their own would trigger frozen-faced rejection, criticism, and outright condemnation. They'd made it clear that she could have Spike, or she could have them. Not both. And she couldn't possibly defeat the First Evil and its agents, and protect all the Potential Slayers known to exist in all the world, without them. Without them all.

All week, since recovering Spike, Buffy had felt them watching her. Judging her. Timing her visits to the basement to change his goddam bandages or oversee the 2 a.m. feeding. Waiting for their unholiest suspicions to be confirmed. And it was good that there'd been nothing at all to see. And it was just perverse of her to find herself sidling up to him, nudging to see what sort of response she'd get, pushing closer the more he backed away: stupid and perverse and self-destructive and mean, even to him, and she was determined never ever to be mean to him again, he'd never deserved it, nobody deserved that kind of vindictive punishment in the one way they were completely helpless and undefended: as ugly as beating a child or a parent or a spouse just because you could, because they'd let you or couldn't face doing what could force you to stop. Because they loved you. Because you hurt in ways that really had nothing at all to do with them but you took it out on them anyway. Because their love trapped them and as long as you and they were in reach of one another, caught in that circle of pain and intimate flailing combat, it was only gonna get worse.

She'd broken out first, because, really, no commitment there. It had been easier for her.

He'd had to be overtaken by the blind instinct to connect somehow, anyhow-always more powerful in him than in her because for him, it actually had been love-unable to realize that this once, out of the last 2,000 times, no had actually meant NO, be pushed by it into craziness and intimate attack beyond what even he could tolerate.

So he'd spun off like a spark from a wheel and insanely battled himself a soul, that she'd mercilessly lambasted him for lacking: a soul that made him more whacking insane than ever.

Buffy was coming to the unwelcome conclusion that souls sucked.

Since the soul, he hadn't made one single attempt to come on to her. Didn't get in her face, challenge her, make her life hell. Disengaged from the cycle of abuse as though it'd never been. Was helplessly crazy, or captured, or as helplessly rescued, accepting her half-grudged concern just as though it meant something, so she found herself ratcheting it up into declarations of faith in him, doubting herself instead of him, giving him trust and freedom within her life far beyond what was safe or even vaguely reasonable, giving him finally a freaking blank check to anything he wanted from her...which he placidly didn't even seem to see and certainly showed no inclination to use.

And it was good& that all that was behind them, that they could simply be friends. Her record, in converting ex-lovers to friends, was 0 for three, not counting Spike. He was useful, made himself useful any way she asked and any way he could, even without her asking. Was a hell of a good fighter, the best next to her or, if he was healthy and motivated, possibly the best including her-they'd fought innumerable times to a draw but never to a decision, a death, and he'd left two dead Slayers in his wake before he'd ever collided with her, so somebody betting on the outcome might well consider Spike had the edge, if it ever came to that, which Buffy was determined it never would again. She was gonna abso-freaking-lutely need a fighter like that, and desperately felt the lack of him, battling the Űber-vamp Turok-Han, who'd whipped her ass soundly and painfully every time she'd gone up against him, giving ground, counting just escaping as an achievement, until she'd at last come up with the right weapon and dusted him at last, an object lesson to the SITs. Aware every sick, terrified second that she and Spike together could have taken that monster out, no problem, on the very first go-round. Hating her responsibility that required she make protecting the young Slayers In Training her absolute priority and set aside, each second, the desperate need to simply push the Turok-Han aside, duck and dash past him to the prisoner he guarded.

She'd managed to set aside the screeching personal imperative Get Spike the hell out of there, now for six unspeakably miserable weeks he'd somehow survived more or less intact-at least no physical injury, however gruesome, horribly upsetting, and disabling, that vampire healing wouldn't eventually take care of-no thanks to her.

They'd both been basket cases, the night she'd brought him back.

She'd expected him to say something like, What kept you. Instead, he'd said, You came, like that was all that mattered, and enough, and everything.

She did need him and she didn't love him any more than she loved herself. He was a necessary part of her and she no longer denied it to herself, or him, or anybody. It would be some kind of huge insanity to want the madness back. Overturn the first peace they'd ever had between them for nothing she even wanted, nothing he wasn't content to have over, stupid and destructive of everything that actually mattered to her.

But she didn't seem to be able to help herself. She didn't understand why she did it, or why he did freaking anything anymore, and none of it made any sense at all.

Except this wasn't right. He wasn't right. She worried about him and tried to reach him and was calmly rebuffed for reasons she even agreed with, which only made her reach harder, more insistently, and this was not gonna end well either, which awareness made her more and more frantic.

And he'd gone back to his damn notebook, perfectly content to wait another hour if that was how long it took her to tie her other sneaker. OK by him: he was occupied. Self-contained and placid and inert.

He asked nothing of her. Expected nothing. Nothing at all.

What she had, she'd come to suspect, was William...or some bastardized half-assed lukewarm approximation of him; what she wanted was Spike. And if she got him, it would almost certainly destroy them both and the world, for lack of their effective intervention.

She could so not do this!

The hardest thing she'd done lately was not kiss him.

 

"Wha'cha doing?" she asked, trying to shove all the tightness and confusion away, not dump it on him, or at least keep it out of her voice.

"Tryin' to get things straight. All the pieces flyin' around every which way.... Workin' out a timeline, try to make some sense of what happened when, to who. You gonna do your warm-ups, pet?"

"Is Willow helping?"

When he looked around inquiringly, Buffy gestured at the notebook.

"Well, she's the one with the stash of notebooks, isn't she?" He chewed on his lip. "Thought you said she'd gone off magic."

"She has. I think she scared herself. I know she scared me. She's gonna have to face up to it again, though. If she's gonna be any use."

"Ahuh.... Go do your jerks, there's a good girl."

Resisting the impulse to flounce, Buffy put herself through a medium routine of calisthenics and stretches, feeling the muscles loosen and warm, the ligaments extend her range of motion and reach. Ending a leg raise and drop-into-split move, she landed on her butt at catching sight, beginning the drop, of Spike posed in a one-arm handstand, straight up, reading the notebook upside down.

"OK, tiger, you made your point," Buffy commented dryly, collecting herself from the bad landing.

Upside down, he blinked at her with the familiar bland innocence. "Oh, you ready now, are you?" He set the notebook on the bench, then easily leaned out of the handstand in a move like a slow cartwheel.

Buffy couldn't help grinning: happy to see him moving the way he was supposed to again, vivid as a dancer, not above showing off to her. It seemed like forever since she'd seen him move like that, easy, gliding, and predatory, and until she saw it, she hadn't know how intensely she'd missed it.

"Okay," she said, "let's see your moves. Come at me." With hands and arms, she beckoned him in.

Immediately she was in the middle of a blindingly fast exchange of blows, counters, spins, jumps, slides. No time to think or prepare, just react and strike, sweep low, kick high, roll off to the left, lean back, push forward.

She came down hard on both heels, abruptly still. Spike froze with a bladed hand about an inch from her neck.

"What?" he asked, dropping the arm and coming to stable rest, facing her.

"What are you playing at?" she demanded in an even, controlled voice.

"Don't know what you mean, pet."

She set her hands on her hips. "Yeah, you do: five minutes skimming around and you haven't hit me once. What's that supposed to be?"

The floor suddenly became fascinating. He muttered, "Donwanhurtya."

"I didn't hear that."

He squared his balance back into fighting stance, staring her in the eyes, and shouted, "All right, I don't bloody well want to hurt you, all right?"

"You think that's what I'm looking for, Spike? You think pat and duck is gonna get the job done? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He was breathing, which meant he was angry. "Getting. Better."

"Not better enough, if all you can show me is the moves, not the guts to actually hit something. You think I'm gonna take you out on patrol, entrust the troops to you, let you demonstrate how a vampire can come at them, so you can show off your repertoire of neat handstands and cartwheels?"

He breathed some more, centering, making up his mind. "Again."

"You got something to show me? Something more or something else? Because otherwise, we're both wasting our time here."

"Again."

"This time," Buffy said, "I'll come at you." Then she did, like one two three BLAM.

Reflex kept him out of the way of the blur of her punches and kicks in the first lightning exchange. The speed was there, she'd give him that. And he once caught her wrong-footed and jabbed an elbow jam to the side of her head. Without warning she stopped, surprising him, letting the elbow hit her right where it should, in the temple. No more force to it than being lightly whacked with a rolled newspaper.

She said nothing, just folded her arms and gave him steady, grim attention.

He stood furiously breathing, jaw and fists working, then wheeled for the door. Halfway, he remembered the notebook and leaned, snatched it up. Then on and out, slamming the door resoundingly behind him.

What did he think he was damn well playing at?

Having unlaced one sneaker, Buffy flung it into the far wall. The smack did nothing to relieve her ferocious disappointment.

Maybe Dawn'd had the right idea: get him a quart of scotch and then see if she could push him beyond his self-drawn limits.

Because he sure was no damn use to her the way he was.