TITLE: Darkest Before Dawn #3

AUTHOR: Nmissi

PART: 3/?

DISCLAIMER: I own Nothing and No one. Especially not Spike. If I

did,

what makes you think I'd share him with you?

DISTRIBUTION: Anybody, just credit me and let me know where it's

going.

RATING: PG13 for a teensy bit of language

SPOILERS: Crush, IWMTLY, The Body...Pretty much everything.

Feedback: Please. Nmissi@aol.com

SUMMARY: The way the world would work if I wrote the Buffyverse.

Darkest Before Dawn 3

Looking on the bright side, at least he'd bitten her where no

one would see the mark. It was a kindness both Dracula, and Angel,

had not offered her.

She rinsed the foamy bath soap off, noticing the bruising around the nipple and the two small holes. It hurt, faintly. But that was nothing compared to the soreness in the backs of her thighs, and her feminine parts. It was the tired ache of being well used, and some small part of her relished that feeling.

It was as if she could still feel him in her, on her, even now. It was a comfort. She'd felt empty and alone for weeks.

She got out of the shower, and dressed lightly – just jeans and a white top with ¾ length sleeves. It took a few minutes to locate sneakers. Then she brushed her hair, and pulled it up into a ponytail at the back of her neck. But rummaging through the box of hair stuff on the dresser failed to yield anything to hold it in, and she walked across the hall, into her mother's room.

It was so quiet, with Dawn gone. The room smelled like potpourri, from the scented polish she'd used in here yesterday.

Quickly, she moved into the private bathroom. There should be a pony-holder in here; she'd seen it in the medicine cabinet a few days ago.

"Here we go."

She found the purple elastic band, and tugged it into place.

"All better, no more bed-hair. Perky Buffy, ready to take on the world."

She struck a pose in the mirror, and gave herself a smile. But the smile cracked at the edges and it never met her eyes. She set her shoulders, and headed back out into the hallway. Just as she reached the top of the stairs, she heard a voice below.

"Buffy? You in here?"

Xander stood in the foyer, at he foot of the stairs. He was a little worried. The door had been unlocked, and no one had answered when he rang the bell. Swiftly he strode into the living room, peering about, calling toward the kitchen.

"Buffster?"

Then he took in the room around him.

"Definite Weirdness, here."

In a pile next to the coffee table were some wet clothes, soaking into the rug. On the coffee table itself was a saucer, with two cigarette butts in it, and ash. Lying next to it was an open metal flask, the lid of which was on the floor by the clothes. And now he noticed the air itself held a stale, musty smell, of cigarettes and hard liquor.

"Xander!"

Buffy was on the stairs now, and he turned his back on the conundrum of the living room to study her.

She looked good, he decided. There was a confident smile on her face, and a bounce in her step. But as she descended the stairs, he got a good look at her empty eyes, and revised his opinion.

"Hiya Buffy. Thought I might come by, see if I could take you to breakfast"

Buffy gave him a friendly smile. He was so transparent. They all were, really. It was four days since Dad left with Dawn, and this made four days running that someone had been here trying to make her eat. Four days of :

"Let's go see a movie, Buffy."

"Wanna go shopping?"

"You need to get out of the house, Buffy, it's not healthy to be alone so much. And all this cleaning..."

And now here was Xander, doing his part for the team. Endearing, really it was.

"I'm not hungry, Xander. But thanks, anyway."

She moved into the living room, and wrinkled her nose up at the mess.

"Ew. I guess I was more tired than I thought. Didn't mean to leave this stuff all out down here…Sit down, Xander, I'll get this picked up and then we can do the visit- thing, okay?"

So he plopped down on the couch, while Buffy hauled off the laundry to the basement. She was back directly to whisk the saucer and the flask off into the kitchen.

Something was digging in to his hip, he realized, shifting on the couch. He put his hand down between the back of the sofa and the cushion, and came up with a box of Marlboros. Flicking them open, he counted five cigarettes, and a cheap blue bic lighter.

"What the"-?

She saw him then, and for some reason she blushed. Then she reached her hand out.

"Umm- here. Those are mine."

He handed them to her with a skeptical look.

"Since when did you start smoking, Buffy?"

She sank down onto the seat next to him.

"Since now."

Her voice was hard, and Xander decided they'd have this whole conversation some other time. Like maybe when she didn't look like Her Mom Had Died.

"Er… Umm."

He cleared his throat, and tried to make friendly conversation.

"I was serious about that whole, breakfast thing. It'd be charity, Buff, you coming with."

He gave her a knowing grimace.

"Anya made homemade pancakes from scratch this morning. I didn't have the heart to tell her you flip them BEFORE they dry out. Anyway- I'm a starving man. Sure you don't want to swing by Denney' s with me?"

"I' m sure. Not really in the mood to go out this morning, Xan. I have a lot of stuff to do around the house today."

She grimaced.

"Salvation army truck's coming. I'm gonna bag up the unwearables, see what room I can make in the closets."

Then she brightened.

" But hey- bear with me, I think there might possibly be food-type items in that pretty room at the back of the house. Let's go see."

He followed her into the kitchen, and she rooted around in the cabinets until she came up with Coco puffs and Milk for him. She poured them into a large salad bowl, and fished a spoon out of the dishwasher rack.

"There you go. Breakfast A la Buffy."

"A real taste treat." He answered, teasingly.

Between crunches of cereal, they talked.

"Mmm."

Crunch crunch crunch.

"Delicious preservatives and sugar, the breakfast of

Champions."

She got another saucer out of the dish cabinet, and took the seat across from him. Then she pulled out the box of cigarettes, and proceeded to light one.

The box was familiar, he realized, then he made the connection. It was Spike's brand.

"You're smoking Spike's kind of cigarettes?"

"Um Hm", she murmured, nodding.

As she exhaled, she met his eyes.

"I stole them from him."

He considered that for a minute.

"Okay."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"He gave me a ride back home from the cemetery yesterday,"

"Buffy, if you need a ride someplace, you know me or Anya"-

She cut him off.

"Yes, Xander. I know. But I've been bugging you guys to do stuff for me for the last month. Yesterday I thought I'd just take the bus. But once I got out there, it started raining. Spike saw me, and offered to take me home. No Big Deal, okay?"

"Buffy, how can you say `No big deal'? The guy is a VAMPIRE, remember? You slay `em occasionally? And he's got this creepy obsession thing going. I just don't think it's a good idea"-

"Listen, Xander, Me and Spike, we- we worked it out, came to an understanding."

She took another drag off her cigarette.

"We're cool."

Xander's frustration was readily apparent. His hands raked through his unkempt hair, and his mouth fixed in a hard line.

"Buffy, you and Spike, you are- you are NOT COOL. The guy is a STALKER. Hello? He chained you up and tried to feed you to his crazy ex-girlfriend?"

"Xan"-

But he would not be stopped.

"And that was AFTER declaring his Eternal Love to you. And if you recall, His Last "ETERNAL LOVE" he knocked unconscious with a tazer.

And offered to stake. Trust me, Buffy- Spike is not your Pal."

"He's changed."

"Buffy, he's a soulless bloodsucking FIEND. He doesn't GET to change."

"Xander, I"-

"No. No way, Buffy. I won't let this happen. I know where this is coming from. What, Angel didn't give you enough grief? Or are you waiting for the chip to come out, so you can do "Angelus, Part two."

He ignored the look of pain in her eyes at that one. He had to get through to her, somehow.

"Buffy, Spike has tried to kill you more times than I can count. He devoted his Unlife to it. Then, all of a sudden, he can't hunt; he can't kill- so he redirects that attention into something else. If he can't kill you, he'll screw you."

His words were hard, and he knew it, but sometimes love was Tough. It had to be.

"That's all this is, Buffy. It's all about the hunt for Spike. `Cos he's ultimately just another predator. And any good he does is just to try to get you into bed. He's not capable of more. It's just another hunt."

She stood up, and he raised his head to meet her level gaze.

"Then hey-problem solved…He should be all kinds of `Over Me' now."

She watched as several emotions worked their way over her best friend's face in succession. Confusion, disbelief, anger, and then finally despair.

"Oh, no, Buffy. You didn't"-

She bristled under his displeasure, her chin jutting forward in defiance. She DARED him to rebuke her.

"Not that it's really ANY of your business"-

"BUFFY! WHAT THE hell WERE YOU THINKING?"

"At the time? Mostly that it felt good. Not much more, really"

He made a pained face, and she continued.

"And that was the POINT, Xander. I didn't want to have to think right then. I wanted to feel better, I just wanted to feel SOMETHING that wasn't all about losing mom, or losing Dawn. "

"Well I hope it was worth it, Buffy. He's a threat to us all."

She rolled her eyes.

"Oh, come OFF it. He's no more a threat now than he was last week, or a month ago, or last year even. He'd never kill me- he loves me."

"He's not capable of Love."

"Why not? `Cos he's a demon?"

"Yeah, well, that's one reason."

"Newsflash- Anya was too. And she's still not terribly human if you ask me. But you never question if she can love YOU."

"She's different, Buffy, she's not like him."

"Why not? She had over a thousand years as a Vengeance Demon. And she's proud of every one of them. Ever thought how many men she's killed, or tortured?"

He looked away from her now. This was cutting a little close to the bone.

"Or were you just so happy to have your little Xander-whipped girlfriend that it didn't matter to you? What's a thousand years of Evil compared to connubial bliss, right? Doesn't matter to you, does it? Just so long as she's enthusiastic and really limber."

He stood up from the table, as angry as she'd ever seen him.

"Buffy, you can't talk that way about Anya."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I love her! And I won't have you talk about her that way, like she's some evil thing, like she's nothing better than SPIKE."

She'd hurt him, really hurt him. And as angry as he'd made her, she was sorry about that, hadn't really meant to say those things.

"Xander, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go off like that. Really, Didn't mean to."

He walked over to the sink, his gait as stiff as his frown. Slowly, and with much slamming around of dishware, he rinsed off his things.

Then he came back to her, and the look of contrition on her tired face wilted his ire.

"It's okay, Buffy. I'm sorry I yelled at you."

She looked up at him from under wisps of hair falling out of the ponytail.

"S'okay. To forgive is divine, and all that. I forgive you. And I'm glad you forgive me. We're all forgivvy and stuff."

She hugged him, and he kissed the top of her hair.

Then she pulled back, and looked up at him.

"Xander?"

"Yeah, Buff?"

"Can you like, Not mention any of this conversation to the gang? You know, don't tell Willow, and Tara, and , Oh, God, Don't say anything to Giles."

Her brow furrowed as she considered the ramifications of Giles finding out. That would be Bad, she decided. Really, Really bad.

Xander let go of her and stepped back.

"God, Buffy. You want me to just keep quiet about this? You Boinked the Vampire. Another one. I can see all kinds of different scenarios playing out ahead of us, and all of `em are BAD. Don't you think they oughtta be warned?"

"Please, Xander? I'm just not ready to deal with all that yet, okay? Besides, it's personal.. Not like everyone always has to know every little bit of Buffy-business."

He searched her face.

"Buffy, tell me you don't love him."

"I don't."

"Thank God."

He released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

"But I do care about him, Xander. And I believe him when he says he loves me. I'm not sure exactly where we are now, but he is my friend. I trust him like I trust you."

"Yeah? You never exactly expressed THAT kinda trust to me."

She rolled her eyes at him.

"Okay, that was Really Uncalled For."

He knew it. He was being petty. He loved Anya; he was long over Buffy. But it hurt his pride, it did, that she'd gotten involved with another Vamp.

"Look, I'm sorry about that. It's a Pride thing, I guess. It's never me. Never Xander for Buffy. It's always someone else. Angel, Parker, Riley. Now Spike. And I've been here all this time, and it's never me you want."

His shoulders sagged.

"Kinda stings."

She went to him, and hugged him.

"Xander, I know you're a guy, and so this is gonna be a little hard for you to understand. But not every kind of love is about sex."

She was right. He really didn't understand at all.