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Chapter 5: A Big Deal

After that afternoon in the apartment, Buffy and Spike had reached a silent understanding. Buffy would not bring up Giles and Spike would not treat Buffy with his usual gibing and scathing manner, as if he was afraid that doing otherwise would result in her maniacally reaching for the bottle again. The latter part of arrangement caught Buffy by surprise, but she didn’t say anything if it meant a break from his aggressive tirades and rudeness. But after awhile, she grew a little tired of his politeness. It was so . . . un-Spike. She could feel him treating her like glass, and it made her so annoyed that she felt like physically attacking him, smacking him upside the head with a club, just to get the old, horrible Spike out. All this niceness was too suspicious and unnerving.

Take today, for example. The fourth day after Buffy’s outburst, he was still keeping up with the courteous smiles and strained serenity. She could feel the old insults and crude remarks lurking beneath his civil surface, and it kept her on edge. At the breakfast table, they ate in silence, with only the jarring clinking of silverware against dishes audible. Chewing slowly and carefully, Buffy fixed her untrustworthy eyes on Spike. He rarely looked at her, seemingly engrossed in his waffles instead, and when he did glance up, he smiled small and affably. The atmosphere was so tense; she wanted to kill him. Finally, the thickness broke through when they both reached for the last waffle, recoiling back quickly like they had both touched a hot flame.

Nodding diffidently, he gallantly left the waffle untouched for her. "Go ahead."

"Oh, n-no, that’s okay, I’m full and -- "

"So am I. Come now, finish ‘em off."

He obviously wasn’t full. He had only eaten three waffles and Buffy knew for a fact that his minimum capacity for waffles went up to ten. She had to stop herself from rolling her eyes, but she said through forced politeness, "No, really. You have it, I couldn’t eat another bite."

Cocking an eyebrow, he murmured in a soft and perfectly gentlemanly tone, "Buffy, I insist. I want you to have it." He made it sound like he was charitable philanthropist, giving her a million dollars. She couldn’t take it anymore.

"Oh for God’s sake, just take the goddamn waffle!" she yelled, throwing the waffle wrathfully in his face. He caught it in confusion and stared up at her as she threw back the chair in disgust.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded, and she rejoiced; she heard some of that old crabby Spike in his voice yet.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she launched back, glaring at him. "All this ‘oh Buffy, do take the last waffle, I insist." She said it in an affected, Buckingham palace accent that was obviously a bad attempt to mimic his voice. He frowned with repugnance.

"Who the fuck are you talking like?"

"Like you, Sir Walter Raleigh. Like you with all your stupid politeness and stupid gentlemanly smiles and stupid non-evil fakeness."

He sat back in his chair with an amazed sneer. "Well this is a new one. You hate me for trying to be nice."

"Emphasis on ‘trying’. We both know that you are far from nice, Spike, so there’s no use pretending."

"I’m not nice?" he asked evenly with his mystified expression maintained. His confusion was driving her crazy.

"No!" she wailed, throwing her hands up in the air. "You are not nice. You are evil, you are a pig, you are a masochist, and you’re rude. You are a world of adjectives used by feminists when describing men, but you have never been and never will be NICE!"

He didn’t say a word. He just sat quietly with his arms folded, looking at her in a strange, still way. Chuckling under his breath, he said, "It’s true."

If his niceness didn’t shock her enough, this admission did. Eyes-wide, off-guard, she said, "What?"

"You’re right. I’m not nice. And I do a crap job at trying to be nice. But the point is, I tried."

"But why?" she asked imploringly. She knew the answer of course. He knew she was hurting, and so it made sense to tone down his behavior that he knew for a fact could hurt her. She got this logically. But there was something in her that didn’t like the idea of this. She didn’t like Spike going out of his way for her, she never did. It implied that he cared for her somehow, in his own twisted way. Of course that made him simply compassionate, but she was worried that beneath it all, it was something more, and that was most unsettling of all. Why and where she got this idea was unknown to her. But it tugged her anxiously nonetheless. "Why try and be nice if it comes so hard?"

He shrugged. "Well I tried and did it . . . for you, I guess."

It was a simple and complex and answer at the same time. While it clearly referred her pain and his fear that being himself would only exacerbate that pain (which he was right, it would), it also meant that he actually cared. Why did he have to do anything "for her"? And who was he to care about doing anything for her? She asked him.

"Why do you care about doing anything for me?"

He slumped in his chair as if her questions were boring and ridiculous and tiring. "I get it Buffy. Nice doesn’t suit me. I’ll try again. It’s back to being masochist evil pig Spike for me, I promise. Let’s just not make a big deal of it -- "

"But it is a big deal," she interrupted brusquely, and then wished she hadn’t. Because she suddenly realized it probably wasn’t a big deal to him, after all. There were probably no hidden subtexts in what he did and said; she was just paranoid and imagining things. She didn’t even know what she was imagining, but she knew she had imagined them since that semi-embrace they had that day. Even though she wouldn’t admit it to herself. Now that she had said it, he probably thought it was a big deal, which was thing she didn’t want in the first place.

Almost predictably, he sat on the edge of the chair and widened his eyes. "I don’t understand. What’s a big deal?"

Shrinking, she suddenly shook her head. "Nothing. Nothing’s a big deal."

"But you just said -- "

"Look just forget about it, will you, Spike?" she demanded sharply. Taken aback, he shrugged dumbly.

"You’re crazy," he finally said. "You know that? You’re a real loony bird. First you get on me for being a pig. Then when I’m not, you scream and throw tantrums just the same. And then you go around contradicting yourself all in the same breath. You're a bloody nutter."

"Fine. I’m a nutter."

"That’s what you are. Bloody fucking psycho."

She was too tired to argue. "Psycho," she echoed, dragging her waitress apron out of the closet. She was glad to leave for the comfort of the diner, where she did have to think and analyze people’s actions and words. Living with Spike had become a tricky game of war. It took careful thought and planning, and she was never sure of what to make of her enemy. Even with fake politeness and agreements and understanding, it was like walking in a land mine field. Everything would be okay and then out of nowhere, BAM, back to warfare and battle. The diner was her hospice from home.

"Where are you going?" he asked gruffly as she began to drift out the door without a word.

"Where do you think I’m going? To the diner. Where else would I be going at 10 am?"

"I thought you worked the night shifts. That and you like to say one thing and do another. Or more like, say one thing and then say another. Like something’s a big deal and then it suddenly isn’t."

"Oh shut up, Spike."

"‘You’re a pig, Spike’," he chanted in a falsetto accent, this time mimicking her, though doing a much better job than she did with him. "‘Stupid non-evil fakeness!’"

She punctuated his imitation of her by slamming the door.

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She worked well into the evening, despite Gina’s clucks of concern and when she finished her double shift it was a purplish dark hood of night outside. Oblivious to the night, she carelessly walked through the shifty-looking back alleyways. She was never really scared of the back ways, not when she had grown up spending nights in musty graveyards. And she had yet to encounter a shifty-looking character in the shifty-looking back alleyways, so she wasn’t worried.

Which is why the vampire that jumped out at her suddenly caught her more off-guard than they usually did. She recovered quickly, though, but not quickly enough to stop it from smashing her to the concrete wall.

"Little girls shouldn’t walk alone at night," the vampire snarled, jutting his fangs in her face. Grimacing with pain, she pushed the vamp off her quickly. Jumping up, she punched him powerfully so that he lost his footing.

"I’m not a little girl," she growled back before pushing him back towards the wall. "I’m a sla --"

She suddenly paused. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. All this time, she had been running away from it. She had been a slayer. She had been. She had to adjust that world, the Sunnydale world, to the past tense.

So who was she, standing here in a back alleyway, fending herself from a vampire?

She grew still as she pondered this and it gave the vampire time to kick her feet out from under her. Slamming to the ground, the breath flew from her and she found herself trapped under the vampire, who was quickly lowering his voracious mouth to her neck.

"What were you saying? You’re a Slavic? A slave? Well, honey, you ain’t gonna be that no more, not where I’m sending you."

She could have easily stopped him. She could have grabbed the nearby piece of wood she saw lying next to the dumpster or simply kicked him off and dusted him without even breaking into a sweat. But again, she felt an overwhelming sense of fatigue overcome her. She was tired and broken. She didn’t dust vampires anymore because she wasn’t the slayer anymore. She was just a little girl, alone in a big city with no friends, no family and certainly no love. No love at all. She had made sure of that. She made sure that was good and dead and sent to hell.

Lying pinned underneath a random vampire, she wanted to give up. The small seed of carelessness bloomed into a total forfeit of the desire to fight back. It wasn’t that she was too depressed and moody to go on. She was simply too exhausted. So her eyes fluttered closed until she could nearly feel a sliver of a fang pierce her thin skin. An enormous fear was replaced by intense relief and then -----

She felt the vampire’s weight lifted off her torso and her eyes flew open. Flying up onto her elbows, she veered her head to view a furious Spike, pummeling the vampire until it was sagging on the wall.

"And you’ll just be hearty contents for a dust pan with where I’m sending you," Spike growled, whipping a stake out of his jacket quickly before the vampire could whisk away. Easily, he buried it in the vampire’s chest and it exploded into a million fluttering pieces of chalky gray. Silent, Spike wiped his hands free of the dust and stared at the ground, before glancing back at Buffy, who lay in amazement on the pavement. Narrowing his eyes at her, he snapped, "You nutter."

She was still shaking, unable to speak. The realization that she had nearly just given her life to a vampire only moments ago took hold of her and rendered her shocked and speechless. "T-thank y-you for saving my life," she began murmuring as she stumbled clumsily to her feet.

"Don’t give me this ‘thank you’ shit! What the hell were you doing?!"

"I-I was just walking home -- "

"And decided to get let a vamp take a good chunk out of you on the way home?! Jesus, Buffy! What do I have to do, watch over you 24 hours a day?!"

Widening her eyes, she grew hot with contempt. "Watch over me?! What do you mean ‘watch over me’?!"

"Come on, Buffy. Going around, trying to drown yourself in a liquor bottle. Getting into scrapes with vampires without doing very much to fight back."

"How do you know I wasn’t trying to fight back?" she retorted sharply.

"I saw it! You were just lying there like a sack of potatoes, waiting for him to make the big bite! You’re the slayer, for Chrissakes!"

"Was the slayer," she snapped automatically, without even thinking. Immediately when she said it, Spike’s face grew hard and cold with understanding.

"Oh. I get it. Trying to shirk out of old responsibilities, huh? Well here’s a tip. There are other ways besides to do it besides committing suicide!!"

"I wasn’t -- "

"Really?!" Spike raged. "So what was that?! Some passive-aggressive exercise you’ve picked up?! A Gandhi imitation, what?!"

Buffy tried to sweep past him towards the sidewalk. "You don’t understand --"

He grabbed her forcefully by the wrist and whirled her back around so powerfully that she cried out in pain. "No, you don’t understand." He leveled a serious, burning glare at her. "You can’t run away from this."

A little shakily, she shrunk in the intensity of his glance. "Run away from what?"

"From being the slayer. You’ll always be it, no matter what you do."

She tried to wrench away from him. "I don’t have to listen to this -- "

"Yes, you bloody well do! Now listen." He tugged at her arm and advanced on her so quickly that she backed up onto the wall, inches away from him. Staring up into his tumultuous azure eyes, she felt herself grow weak, so she tried to look away, but he merely grabbed her face and turned it back to his. "You can’t go on like this, Buffy. You can’t keep running away."

She shook her head and tried to stare past him. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"That’s what I’m talking about. This, the denial, and the lies . . . it’s sick. You can’t keep doing it to yourself. You’re the slayer. Nothing will ever change that. Accept it."

She glared back at him violently. "Don’t tell me what to do," she said coldly, like an indifferent stranger, and it filled him with even more anger.

Crashing his hands to the brick on either side of her head, he screamed into her face, "Don’t you get it, Buffy?! You’re ruining your life! You’re ruining others! And you want to know why?! Because you’re the slayer! You have a responsibility to the world to save it! We NEED you! Just because some fucking vampire boyfriend screwed you over, it doesn’t make it any different! It doesn’t change it!"

As enraged as he, she pushed him off so that he slammed into the opposite wall. She was immediately upon him, punching him hard in the face repeatedly. "I never wanted to be needed!" she screamed while her fists flailed on his face out of desperate frustration. "You don’t understand! I don’t want to be the slayer! All the ugliness, all the pain, I don’t need it anymore!"

It was the first time she had really hit him and Spike felt the searing pain soar through his whole body. She was trying to communicate exactly what she felt onto his helpless form. But he did nothing to stop it.

"You don’t get it!’ she continued shrieking through uncontrollable sobs while the punches rained down. "You don’t get how much I don’t want to be here! How much I don’t know what to do! You don’t understand how much it kills me to live in this world every single day and not wish I was dead or gone or in the past! You don’t even know!"

Suddenly, he brought his hands up so that they snapped Buffy’s arms away from his face. He at first caught her small wrists in his hands, then threw them down, grabbing her head instead. Without even a thought in his mind, he rammed his lips to hers and something entirely different began.

He had done it mostly to shut her up and stop the blows and smother her screams. He didn’t want to hear her irrational shrieks because they too closely resembled his own feelings. He had also done it to comfort her, to ease her into tranquility, but he had only meant to hug her so she could bury her cries into his chest. But his aim had been a little wrong. He hadn’t meant to kiss her. If he knew how it would feel, he wouldn’t have done it.

It was horrible, even more painful than her vicious punches. But it was the beautiful kind of horrible, the kind that beat down on the chest and made the lungs cry for air and release. It consumed them until they both knew that they had no idea where they were on the planet; they were only here and there were only two of them. Their tongues grappled with each other brutally, almost violently, and they were suddenly clinging to each other so tightly that Buffy could have broken Spike’s rib bones and he wouldn’t have noticed. They couldn’t notice or feel anything past a heady fire blazing through the both of them.

Crashing to the wall again, Buffy melted into Spike’s hold, almost whimpering as his soft lips raked ruthlessly against hers. All this time, she didn’t think they would be this soft.

And suddenly, Spike pulled away. Blankly, he stared at Buffy, who was a mirror reflection of pale white shock. Shaking like a leaf and looking lost, he backed away from her.

"Drusilla," he whispered, and looked again at Buffy with open-mouthed wonder. "Drusilla," he repeated before turning around and running out of the alleyway, leaving Buffy alone and shivering.

She touched her lips in awe, red and swollen as she stared after his fast departing shadow. All this time, she knew. She just knew. She hadn’t been paranoid, after all.

It had been a big deal.

TBC……………….