Chapter Text
“It’s not sodding right, decorating a palm tree up like a Christmas tree,” Spike grouses as he bangs into their apartment. She glances up from her magazine but he seems to have the groceries in hand so she goes back to her article. Spike would approve; it’s tips for giving better blowjobs. “They’ve all got lights on them, up and down every sodding street.”
“Well, when LA is thrust into an ice age and all the palm trees are dead and replaced with pine trees, we’ll decorate those instead, but until then, we have to work with what we’ve got,” Buffy says, not looking up from her magazine. Spike had insisted on doing the grocery shopping himself, since it’s her day off from her new job. She’s working at a bar decent enough to be safe, but not so decent that they checked too closely if she was legally old enough to serve drinks or not—the diner had been unimpressed when she disappeared, and it’s not like she liked it there, anyway. She’s not sure that Spike didn’t flash some fang at the manager of Al’s (Buffy’s not sure if there is an actual Al, but at least Marco seems nice. Or so scared of Spike that he doesn’t dare say boo to “Anne,” but it comes out to the same thing), but regardless, she’d gotten the job and the money was way better.
Even if he did sulk about her being gone in the evenings.
“Pine trees? For Christmas? Are you out of your mind? You need a fir, or maybe a spruce, for the best tree.” Spike sniffs disdainfully. “Next you’ll be telling me your mum has an artificial tree.”
Buffy’s hands jerk apart as her stomach swoops unpleasantly, and she realizes she just tore the magazine in half. She’d managed to mostly forget she wouldn’t see her mom for Christmas until Spike brought her up. He’d kept her occupied on Thanksgiving—she’s still finding dried whipped cream in random corners of the apartment—so she’d managed to not think about how it was her first holiday without family or friends. But now Christmas was staring them in the face, along with its Momlessness.
“Oh, Christ, pet, I’m sorry,” Spike says, abandoning the groceries on the floor of the kitchen so he can slide behind her on the couch, wrapping his arms around her. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”
He strokes her hair and she leans back into his embrace, squeezing her eyes shut so that the tears don’t come.
“I’ve got you, love,” he whispers, when they fall anyway. “I’ve always got you.”
After her sobs finally stop and she’s blown her nose and apologized for getting his shirt all wet, they eat the entire tub of semi-melted ice cream, and she doesn’t even feel guilty or upset for a second.
Even if rocky road is Mom’s favorite flavor.
~~~
The Slayer still wants to patrol after her shifts. Hell, she even relishes it these days, which is more than he can say about the time before she left. He’s happy enough to join her, seeing as he needs some way to get his jollies in and sate the demon’s need for violence.
They’re outside a seedy little dive bar, picking off a couple of vamps who’d been using the cover of a show to hunt. Spike vamps when the idiot he’s fighting gets a lucky hit in, bloodying his mouth. He licks the blood off his fangs and grins.
He’s so intent on the fight, it’s a bit of a surprise when he catches a heartbeat moments before someone speaks.
“Buffy?!”
She misses her block, taking a punch to the gut before she recovers and staking the vamp she’s facing. Spike stops toying with his own opponent and grabs him by the ears and twists the wanker’s head clean off.
She probably won’t let him do that to the git who just recognized her.
He’s short and slight, about Buffy’s height, with fire engine red hair and a wolfy smell about him, and he’s looking warily between Spike and Buffy.
“Oz? What are you—what are you doing here?” she stammers. Spike can hear her heart pounding and stands beside her, putting a hand on the small of her back to steady her.
“Uh, not to be rude, but isn’t that a vampire? Like, one of the things you’re supposed to slay?” Oz says nervously.
“Oh, Spike and I…” Buffy says, blushing.
“Slayer and I have a truce, like,” Spike says, moving his arm up to drape over her shoulders and pulling her close. No harm in letting the wolf know the full situation, if he hasn’t sniffed it out already, that is. Buffy’d probably frown on Spike killing someone who knows her, and he’d want to if the boy tried to hit on her, so the less ambiguity the better, he figures.
“Lose the bumpies,” she hisses and elbows him in the ribs.
“The vamp you put in a wheelchair?” Oz says warily. His eyes never leave Spike, which is gratifying. None of the humans they see are properly afraid of him anymore, not since the Slayer all but put him in a leash and collar.
“I mean, technically that was the organ falling on him?” Buffy says, her voice unnaturally high-pitched, glancing at Spike sheepishly. He just shrugs. “I just hit him with the censer.”
“Water under the bridge,” he says, pulling her closer and kissing her on the temple.
The wolf’s nostrils flare like he’s scenting her, and Spike sees the relief on his face that she’s still human. As if Spike would ever turn her.
“I don’t understand, Buffy,” Oz says. “We’ve been looking everywhere. Giles, Willow, Xander, your mom—”
“No,” Buffy says.
The boy finally takes his eyes off Spike and turns to Buffy. “She’s worried sick about you.”
Buffy stiffens under Spike’s arm. “You don’t have to lie to me, Oz. I know she doesn’t want me around.”
“What are you talking about—”
“She kicked me out!” Buffy shouts. “She told me not to come back, so I didn’t.”
Oz takes that in.
“Look, the Dingoes are playing in a half hour,” he says. “Can we talk? After?”
Buffy’s already shaking her head. “This is a mistake, I can’t—”
“I have to tell them I saw you,” he says. Spike can feel Buffy’s rising panic and he squeezes her tighter against him. “At least talk to me?”
She relents. “Fine. After the show.”
~~~
There’s no point in leaving, so they find seats inside after Spike intimidates the bouncer into letting them in without tickets. Or IDs. Buffy’s too worried about Oz ratting on her to yell at him.
Spike plops a Diet Coke in front of her and sits next to her, wrapping a possessive arm around her. He’s probably sneering and growling at any guys who come too near, but she doesn’t care about that, either. She just shreds the paper the straw came in, twirling it around her finger, knotting it, until there’s nothing left. Then she starts on the napkin under Spike’s whiskey.
She doesn’t really take in much of the Dingoes show, though she knows Oz clocks them in the audience. He gives a slight nod when the band first comes out on stage, but otherwise ignores them.
She misses her friends and Giles and her mom. Of course she does. And she misses her bed and not having to pay the bills and all the other stuff Mom used to handle without Buffy even knowing about it. (Even if the landlord has stopped accepting rent and won’t look at Spike, there are still utilities and groceries, which she insists Spike pays for now, and he’s been talking about getting cable, which, well, same on the paying front.)
But she can’t go back to Sunnydale, not after Angel. Not after Spike—or rather, not with Spike, because she’s not giving him up, not now. She’s changed too much, and besides, she knows they don’t need her. She knows they’re all safer, better off, without her.
Otherwise, Mom would never have kicked her out.
Right?
She probably would have run if Spike hadn’t been there, by her side. If he hadn’t held her, kept her calm. Because what could Oz possibly say to her?
~~~
Oz says lots, it turns out.
He says there’s a new Slayer living with her mom, and her mom is apparently okay with the slaying thing.
He says that Angel came back from hell.
He says that he and Willow, and Cordelia and Xander, all broke up.
He says that Giles and her mom spend all their time looking for her.
And he stands firm that he’s going to tell everyone he saw her.
When he goes to the bathroom, she buries her face in Spike’s chest.
“When do you want to go, love?” he murmurs.
“What?” She pulls back to look up at him.
“To ole Sunnyhell,” he says. “Figure you’d want to put in an appearance now.”
She shoves her face back into the crook of his neck as her eyes and throat start to burn with tears. She doesn’t want to go back, but she has to. And he knows it, and he accepts it.
Even though Angel’s there, waiting at the other end of the 101.
Sunnydale is where she almost died—hell, where she did die—where she almost lost everyone she ever loved. It’s where she lost her sister Slayer, the first person to ever really understand what Buffy’s life was like, and where she thrust an enchanted sword blade into the heart of the first man she ever loved. She’d been accused of murder, expelled, and thrown out of her house.
So no, she doesn’t want to go back.
But running into Oz like this narrows her choices down—she can go to Sunnydale, or wait until Giles and her mom show up, intent on ruining her life with Spike.
So just like that, she’s going to the one place in the world she swore she’d never return to.
~~~
Oz promises to give them a week to call or make an appearance before he spills the beans about seeing her.
A small part of her thinks that means they have a week’s head start to leave LA, to find a new life somewhere, but Spike never questions that of course they’re heading to Sunnydale. Of course she’s going to see her mom and friends and Watcher.
One week before her life changes forever.
~~~
The Slayer is silent as they drive down the highway in the early evening. They’d left as soon as it was dark enough to be safe for him, and the sunset is still smearing the horizon to the west of them. She’s staring unseeing out the passenger side window, away from the light.
She had the night off from her job, and by rights they should be in bed with her legs over his shoulders and his tongue buried in her cunt, or out looking for a bit of rough and tumble amongst the demons of Los Angeles, instead of this awful, awkward car ride.
(She didn’t pack a bag.)
(Because she wants nothing from her life with Spike when she goes back, or because she’s not going back? He wishes he was sure.)
At the other end is everyone, everything she ever loved, including the sodding poofter.
Before they left, he’d fucked her until she couldn’t walk right, only able to resist the urge to bite her, to show them all that she’s his, because he knows she isn’t, not anymore.
She’s theirs now, and she’s slipping through his fingers.
And he’s such a sodding fool for love, he doesn’t want to make her homecoming any harder than it needs to be, so he’s driving her with a forced smile on his lips.
He grips the wheel tighter, trying not to clench his jaw.
What the hell is he doing? Driving her back to the Hellmouth, just so she can leave him?
He’s gone so damn soft since Dru left him he’s not sure she would even recognize him anymore.
“Do you hate me?” Buffy asks in a small voice.
He almost swerves the car into another lane, righting it as horns blare around him.
“Are you off your bloody bird?” he barks at her. “What the hell are you on about?”
“I just… I thought you might hate me,” she says.
He scoffs. As if he could ever hate her now, after he’s tasted her where she lives. Tasted her blood and come, her sweat and tears. The heart and soul of her. “How could I possibly hate you, Slayer?”
“Because… Because he came back. But Drusilla is still gone.”
He jerks the car across three lanes of traffic to park in the shoulder, ignoring the indignant honking from drivers caught off guard by the maneuver.
He reaches over and grabs her by the shoulders, dragging her across the seat to him—fuck safety belts and bucket seats, his Fireflite has always done right by him.
“You listen to me,” he says in her shocked face. She just blinks up at him, her eyes looking suspiciously wet. “I don’t give a bloody buggering fuck about Angel, alive or dead. But he could never make me hate you. I’ll be in love with you until I bloody well dust, even after you’ve walked away from me for the last time, and no Neanderthal of a vampire could ever change that.”
She sniffles. “I don’t want to walk away from you, Spike, not ever. I don’t even want to go to stupid Sunnydale, or see stupid Angel and his stupid soul ever again. I don’t want my friends to tell me how I let them down by letting Ms. Calendar and Kendra die and Giles and Willow and Xander get hurt. And my mom—” she chokes on a sob and breaks down into tears.
He wraps his arms around her, crushing her to his chest as she cries out her fears, while the car gently rocks from the cars whooshing past in the right lane.
“Shhh, there, there, love, I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “Let it all out.” He strokes her hair softly. “It’ll all be right, you’ll see. They’re gonna welcome you with open arms.”
Spike knows he’ll be lucky if they don’t welcome him with a flamethrower, but he doesn’t say that as he drops kisses onto her head until her sobs slow and finally stop.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles.
He lifts her chin with two fingers, tilting her face up to his, and kisses her on each eyelid, then, softly, on her lips. “No need to be sorry, sweetheart. You know I’m here for you, long as you want me.”
“How about forever?” she asks. “Does forever work?”
His lips twitch in what he hopes she takes as a smile. It feels like she staked him; he knows she’ll change her tune soon as she sees her mates, that they still want her around, still love her. But he’s hers, now, doomed to follow her around like an unwanted cat.
“Good thing I’m immortal, hey?” he says hoarsely.
“I wish he was still dead, you know,” she says. “After everything he did, everything that happened… How could I still love him?”
Spike shakes his head. He’d wondered the same thing about Dru more than once, but love Angel she had. He was her precious Daddy, and nothing could change that.
“And I know you still love Dru, and you’re only with me because she’s gone—”
He stops her with a finger to her lips. “Easy there, love. I do still love her, part of me always will, but I love you, too. And I wouldn’t trade a second of what we have, a second of what we could have, to get Dru back. You hear me? I’m yours, Buffy. Now and always.”
She takes his finger from her lips, kissing it, then each of his fingers in turn, and leaves a kiss in the center of his palm. “I love you, too, Spike, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, Slayer, I know,” he says hoarsely.
~~~
Revello Drive doesn’t look any different than she remembered it, but it feels…strange, not like it did before she left. The trees are the same, but they don’t tell her, “almost home” the way they used to.
Her house—her mom’s house—looks the same, too. Somehow, she thought it wouldn’t be. That somehow, her absence would show in the facade, or the new Slayer’s presence would be displayed in the windows, written on the roof, something , to say “Buffy has been replaced.”
Spike keeps telling her no one could replace her, especially not in her mom’s eyes, but Buffy’s not so sure.
He parks in the street, but she sits next to him quietly, not moving. He’s been tensing up beside her the closer they got to Sunnydale, and he’s so “stiff as board” she’s surprised he doesn’t start floating all “light as a feather,” too.
For that matter, so has she, but she thinks for different reasons. Spike doesn’t care what her friends say, as long as she’s beside him. He might get all growly if she gets upset because of them, but they’re not gonna hurt him or drive him off.
Only she could do that to him.
“I’m not gonna change my mind,” she says softly.
He jerks in surprise. “What?”
“You’re screwed up tighter than a wind-up toy,” she says. “But I’m not gonna change my mind. About us. They’re not gonna stop me from loving you. When I said forever, I meant it.”
He lets out a long, slow breath, and she can feel him relaxing beside her. “I love you, Buffy.”
“I know,” she says cheekily. He growls at her, but she leans in and kisses the tip of his nose.
“Suppose we should get this over with then, so we can go home all the sooner, yeah?” he says.
She nods and gets out of the car reluctantly. She half-expects mom to come running out, even though they hadn’t called to say they were coming or anything. Her feet drag until Spike comes up beside her and takes her hand.
And with him beside her, together, she knocks on the door to her former home.