Breakup
Buffy rolled side to side in the bed, laughing hysterically. “All work and no play, over and over again. God, you should have seen the look on her face...” She chortled, then paused. “You aren’t laughing.”
“Maybe because I don’t find it funny.” Spike crossed his arms and stared at her. “What bothers me, is that you do. Or that you did it to her at all.”
“But Spike,” Buffy tried to pull his arms apart to embrace him, but he didn’t move. “She was going to take Dawn away from me. I had to stop her.”
“Really,” he answered coldly, “By making her think she was going mad. I can’t contain my laughter.”
“What’s go your shorts in a knot, anyway? Moving a little cow mug around isn’t anything like, well, things you’ve done.” She sat up in the bed and tried to get his attention, but he looked away.
“You know what your precious Angelus did to Dru?” He closed his eyes. “She was this poor, devout little thing, and she was a seer. She was frightened; went to confession. He pretended to be the priest, and told her she was evil. He stalked and killed her family. He drove her mad. So excuse me if I don’t find your story too amusin’.”
“She told you that?” Buffy asked.
“No, he did. Boasted, really,” he replied.
“That is so not fair,” Buffy said, sitting up in the bed. “This was nothing like that. I just stopped her from taking Dawn. That was a good thing.”
“And supposin’,” Spike continued, “That the woman had grown up here in Sunnydale, seen things all her life. Supposin’ that invisible girls weren’t quite a stretch for her. What if she’d recognized your voice? You’d never get Dawn back. What you did wasn’t just cruel, it was stupid.”
She was kneeling on the bed now, hands on her hips. “So what the hell was I supposed to do? Let her take Dawn?”
“You could’ve said I was your boyfriend, when she asked. Those government types like a stable family type o’ thing.” He rolled over, away from her.
“But you aren’t my boyfriend,” she said.
“Then what am I, Buffy, ‘cause I’d sure as hell like to know.”
“You know why I come here,” she said, less sure of herself now.
“You come to wallow in the muck with the Big Bad, don’t you?” He got up from the bed, picked her top from the floor, and threw it at her. “Maybe I don’t want to be the Big Bad anymore. Maybe I don’t want to live down to your expectations.” He gathered up the rest of her clothes and dumped them on the bed. “You can go now, Buffy. You don’t need to come back.”
“But I came here, all visible, to be with you.” She was starting to cry.
“No Buffy,” he said, “I’m with you. You’ve never been with me.” He pulled on his jeans and started up the ladder. “Let yourself out. You know the way.”
She watched him disappear to the top floor. “But I did want to be with you,” she whispered. “Always.”