Collide

By: enigmaticblue

Rating: PG-15

Disclaimer: The standard "I don't own; please don't sue."

Archive: Anywhere that already has my stuff; anywhere else just ask.

Summary: What if that house-demolishing in Smashed was a metaphor with a different meaning than the writers gave it? What if that night marked a release of a different sort? Goes seriously AU immediately after Smashed, and makes reference to my short story, "The Promise I'm Keeping," written for summer_of_spike.

Chapter 13: Finding You

"...I've been thinking everyday about you/Don't fit anywhere into my life, but that's okay/ 'Cause I think I might be right for you/And because of that, I'm not scared at all/And everyone says I'm crazy/And everyone says I'm a fool/Would you meet me by the water tonight/'Cause I'm ready to break all the rules/Please don't leave me standing/With my heart in my hand/I can't last here/I'm breaking down/And no one understands why I got here..." Rachael Yamagata, "Meet Me By the Water"

Anya cleaned the glass on the front counter methodically. She wanted to get married, but she nursed a growing fear that Xander didn't anymore. It wasn't anything he said. Instead, it was the way he seemed to spend time with anyone who wasn't her, his unenthusiastic responses to the wedding plans, his near-continuous distraction.

What if he left her? What if Xander didn't want to marry her? What if this whole thing had been one gigantic mistake? She'd seen enough situations like this to know that it never ended well.

The door over the bell rang, and Xander walked inside. "Hey, An."

"Hi."

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Anya remembered how easy it had been when they didn't have their memories. Thinking she was Giles' fiancée had been simple if only because there had been no fear. At least, not about their relationship. They had yelled at each other, and Giles had conjured up a whole mess of rabbits—well, that had been her fault—but it had been nice in an odd sort of way.

She loved Xander, but right now she was terrified that he was going to break her heart.

"I think we need to talk," Xander stated, his dark eyes troubled.

Anya took a deep breath, bracing herself. "What about?"

"It's about the wedding. I think we need to call it off."

She grabbed the counter with both hands. "Call off our wedding? You don't want to marry me?"

"Not right now," Xander replied. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You don't want to hurt me?" Anya repeated incredulously. "What do you call this?"

Xander winced. This wasn't going the way he'd expected it to. "I love you, Anya, but I think we're rushing into things. Maybe we could just take some time to be engaged first."

"What? Why would we need time, Xander?" Anya demanded. "We've been dating two years! Is this your way of telling me you don't want to be with me? Or was I supposed to figure that out when it took you months to tell your friends that we're engaged?"

Xander frowned. "That's not the way it is. Buffy—"

"I don't care about Buffy! It's always about Buffy, isn't it? She's always going to come first. If we get married, that's the way it's always going to be. You'll be rushing off to save Buffy, and you won't even think about your wife."

"That's not what this is," he protested. "I just think this is moving too fast. We could slow down a little bit."

"So you can what?" Anya threw her towel down on the counter. "So you can wonder what you're doing with an ex-demon? Don't think I haven't noticed the way you talk about Spike. You and Willow are always talking about how horrible he is because he's a vampire. Does that apply to a former vengeance demon?"

"Anya, you know that's not how I feel about you! I'm not ready to get married."

"Well, either get ready or break up with me," Anya challenged him. "Because I'm not waiting around forever."

Her heart was breaking. Xander really didn't want her. Anya didn't know what he wanted, but it obviously wasn't her. He was calling off their wedding because he didn't want to be with her. She wished it were just a bad dream; that way, she could wake up next to him, secure in the knowledge that he loved her, and make him chase her nightmare away.

Anya didn't wake up, though, and Xander's next words destroyed whatever hope she had that it would all go away, that he just had a case of cold feet. The magazines she'd read had said that ultimatums were bad, but Anya needed to know. She had to know if he wanted this wedding as much as she did.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and then he left, the bell jingling again as she burst into tears.

~~~~~

Spike heard the footsteps before he saw anyone. He grasped his broken bottle tightly—he'd lost his stake in the second fight, so it was the only weapon he had. His nose wasn't much good here, not when the smell of rot and decay filled his nostrils until nothing else could get through.

"Okay, now this is gross," Buffy stated. "Why did you have to come here?"

Her voice wasn't much of a reassurance, nor was the disgusted look on her face when she got close enough for him to see her. "I know you're not real happy with me right now—" Spike began, thinking that he could get his apology out of the way immediately.

"Why would I be happy with you?" she asked. "My boots are completely ruined, wading around in this muck. Not to mention the fact that you moved without even letting me know. Are you really that interested in getting rid of me?"

"No," he shot back. "Although I thought you were pretty hell-bent on it."

"On what?" Buffy asked, bewildered.

"Getting rid of me."

"I don't want to get rid of you." She glared at him. "I told you that you made me happy."

Spike sneered. "An' right after that you told me I was nothing but your sex toy."

"I did no such thing!"

"You did, too!"

"When?"

Spike stayed stubbornly silent, and Buffy answered her own question. "Let me guess. That last night we saw each other, right before you ran off into the night."

"I did not run," he replied. "I took off after you started acting like an uptight bitch."

"If you didn't look like shit, I would so slap you right now," she warned him. "I didn't say anything to you, not like that. You were silent, and then you ran off when I asked you what was wrong."

"No, I tried to tell you that Willow tried something on me, and you said you didn't want me around."

"Willow?" Buffy asked, her voice very quiet. "She did magic at your new place?"

"Yeah," Spike replied warily. He was now officially completely confused. This was the Buffy he'd been spending his time with, not the girl who had treated him so cruelly the other night.

They both realized what that meant at the same time. "Bloody hell," Spike muttered. "She did something to me. She—"

"She did some kind of spell," Buffy said. "But why isn't it working now? Did it just stop? And why are you hiding in the sewers?"

Spike leaned up against the wall, relaxing a bit. "To answer your last question, someone put a contract out on my unlife. Every time I go anywhere but the worst part of the tunnels, I have demons coming after me, usually in packs. Escaped one such mob without much room to spare."

Buffy shook her head. There was something about this that didn't make sense. It was too much of a coincidence that Spike would get cursed one day, and then wind up getting chased down by a bunch of demons. While the evidence might all be circumstantial, it was pointing back at Willow.

"You need to get out of here," she stated. "My place will be safe enough for right now, until we figure out what's going on."

"What more needs figuring?" Spike demanded. "Your little friend did something to me."

Buffy shook her head. "Don't. You know I didn't have anything to do with this, so don't take your issues out on me."

"Then don't cover it up."

"Who threw Willow out of her house?" Buffy asked angrily. "She won't get away with it, if she is responsible for this. I can promise you that. Right now, though, you look like you need a shower and something to eat."

"Not necessarily in that order," Spike said.

She gave him an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? You're not sitting around in my house like that. Come on, let's go."

Spike followed her, knowing that staying close to the Slayer was presently his best bet for staying alive, even if that idea annoyed him. He hated thinking that he'd gotten in over his head. Just once, he'd like to come out on top.

"You know, if you'd drop that bottle, I might be tempted to hold your hand."

"It's the only weapon I've got right now."

"Who was it that told me a vampire always has his weapon?" Buffy asked. "Besides, you've got me."

Spike dropped the bottle.

~~~~~

Buffy set the cooling mug down on her nightstand, turning down the sheets. This wasn't the first time Spike had spent the night, but it was the first time he'd been there when she'd felt this way. Like she knew she didn't want to live without him.

Not that she couldn't live without him, mind you. Just that it would really suck.

Spike stepped out of the bathroom, steam following him in a cloud, a towel draped around his waist. "You were in there a while," Buffy teased. "I was beginning to think that you'd drowned."

His expression didn't change, and he didn't speak. Buffy frowned, wondering what exactly was going on. "I brought your blood up here. I thought we both could probably use some sleep."

Spike's hand tightened on the towel, and they stared at each other for a moment. Then, he whirled, heading for the bedroom door. Buffy got in between Spike and the exit, and stopped him by grabbing his arm. This time, she kept quiet, going over to the nightstand and pulling a pad of paper and a pen out of the drawer. She quickly scrawled, "What did you just hear me say?"

Spike stared at her, wariness in every line of his body. Buffy thrust the paper and pen at him, watching as he read her note and then scribbled his own. "You said you didn't want a thing like me in your bedroom."

"I didn't say that," she wrote back.

Buffy didn't dare curse. She wanted to, but she was too afraid that Spike would hear something completely different. Buffy wracked her brain, trying to figure out what had changed in the last hour or two. Not that long ago, they were having a perfectly nice conversation, and everything had seemed okay. Now, Spike looked ready to run again, and Buffy didn't know what to do because he wasn't talking to her.

She'd never realized how much she liked to hear him talk. Buffy missed his voice.

Looking around the room, she tried to figure out what had happened earlier to open up the lines of communication again. Buffy spotted the necklace sitting on her dresser, and she quickly rose to put it back on again, keeping her back to Spike so he wouldn't see what she was doing.

"Let me guess," Buffy said. "Now you can hear me."

"I could hear you just fine a minute ago, pet. It was the words that were bugging me, not the silence. What changed?"

"This," she admitted, pulling the pendant away from her chest so he could see it. "Tara and I were worried, so we checked out your new place. I found the box, and I figured it was probably for my birthday."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "Your birthday isn't for a couple more days."

"I didn't know when we would find you." Buffy shrugged. "Besides, it looks like this is helping, so I'm thinking snooping was a good idea."

He wasn't convinced you could generalize a rule that snooping was good from scanty evidence indicating that it had been beneficial in this case. "So when you wear that, you can hear me, and I can understand what you're saying. Is that it?"

"Maybe it prevents someone from being influenced by magic," Buffy suggested thoughtfully. "That would explain it. My words don't get twisted, and I can hear you." She took it off and handed it to him, wondering if it would work the other way around.

Spike raised an eyebrow, knowing what she was suggesting, and he put it on. It didn't take but a minute to figure out that it only worked one way.

"Darn," Buffy said, as she put it back on. "I guess that means that it won't actually disrupt the curse itself."

"It's probably meant to allow a person to see through illusions. I've heard of that sort of thing existing before, but I've never run across anything like it." Spike gave her a sour look. "Which would seem to indicate that magic is involved, and I only know one person who might be responsible."

Buffy sighed. "Drink your blood, Spike. And, yes, Willow looks like the likeliest suspect. I'll call Tara tomorrow, and we'll see what we can do to clear this up."

He downed the blood obediently, although his acquiescence had more to do with Buffy's obvious concern than anything else. The Slayer had cared enough to break into his apartment and come looking for him, to go through the worst part of the sewers and heat up his meal. Spike found the whole experience rather novel, and incredibly reassuring.

Spike put the mug down and glanced at her. "Buffy?"

"What?" she asked. She'd already slipped in between the covers, and she was obviously waiting for him to join her.

"You really meant it?"

"Meant what?" Buffy was trying not to get too impatient with him. Spike had had a couple of very trying days, after all.

"That I make you happy."

She sighed. "Let me put it this way. The idea of you not being around scared me. A lot."

Spike dropped his towel on the floor and climbed in the bed next to her, his hand tracing the curve of her breast. "That right?"

Buffy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Spike had to be exhausted, but vampire stamina was something else, that was for sure. "I missed you," she admitted softly, tracing his cheek with her hand. "I was worried about you."

A smile touched his lips. "Yeah? You do know I wouldn't have given up, right? If those soddin' bastards hadn't come after me, I'd have pestered you 'til you let me in again."

She drew his head down, kissing him, her touch lingering, gentle. Buffy wanted to tell him about her epiphany, about what the thought of losing him did to her stomach, but she couldn't. Not yet, anyway. Actions would have to do.

Spike rolled so that she lay sprawled, half on top of him, and buried his hands in her hair. Buffy's hands were busy tracing the lines of his face, stroking his shoulders, his arms. "I know," she finally said, when she came up for air. "You're not the guy that gives up." A teasing glint entered her eyes. "You're like one of those terriers that doesn't know when to let go."

"Hey!" he protested. "You callin' me a dog?"

"What if I am?"

Spike flipped them so that he was on top, his hands capturing hers and holding them still. "I might have to do something about that, then."

"And what would that be?"

Spike held her wrists with one hand, his other beginning to touch and tease. "Tit for tat, luv. You tease me, and I tease you."

Buffy didn't mind a bit.

~~~~~

Dawn knew she was risking an eye-full by sticking her head through Buffy's door the next morning, but she didn't care. Her sister had promised to bring Spike home, and Dawn wanted to see if she'd managed it.

Relief hit her like a tidal wave as she saw Spike's familiar head poking out from under the sheets, obviously nestled close to Buffy.

The Slayer had acted like she wasn't concerned when Spike hadn't come back to the house with her to watch a movie. She had told Dawn that Spike was in a bad mood and had walked off in a snit, but the younger Summers wasn't sure she bought it. Even if it were true that Spike hadn't been in the best of moods, he had promised Dawn that he would be there, and Spike never broke his promises. Or if he did, there was a very good reason for it.

When he didn't show up the next night, or the next, Dawn was even more certain that something bad had happened, and Buffy had finally decided to do something about it. She wished it hadn't taken Buffy so long to figure things out, but the Slayer was as stubborn as the vampire.

It looked like everything was going to be okay now, though. Spike was back, and in Buffy's bed. If they had been fighting, they had apparently made up.

Dawn found a note from Buffy on the kitchen counter. "Dawn, please pull Spike's clothes out of the dryer. He'll need something to wear today. Also, whatever you do, don't say anything to him. Something funny is going on. If you want to talk to him, you're going to have to write it out."

She frowned. That was just weird, even for Sunnydale. With a sigh, Dawn went downstairs and grabbed Spike's black jeans and t-shirt as she'd been asked. Even though she usually couldn't tell one black t-shirt from another, the clothing looked more worn than it typically did. There were a couple of holes in the t-shirt, plus a large rip in one knee of the jeans, and they both looked stained. Dawn wasn't sure what could stain black fabric, and was pretty sure she didn't want to know.

Having folded them neatly, she went back upstairs and put them right outside of Buffy's door, just as her sister was opening it. "Oh, thanks, Dawn. I was just going to grab those."

"Is Spike still sleeping?"

"Like the dead," Buffy said, although her pun fell rather flat. "I just wanted to put them in the room where he could spot them when he woke up."

"What's going on?" Dawn asked in a whisper. "Why did he disappear? And where did you find him? How did you find him?"

Buffy shook her head. "Just a second," she cautioned, putting the clothing inside the room and then stepping back out into the hallway. "Let's go downstairs."

Once Buffy had gone to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee, she felt a little more ready to tell the story. She told Dawn about going to Spike's new place, then about Tara doing the locator spell and her search of the sewers. "Once I found him, I convinced him to come home," Buffy explained.

"What about the demon hit-men?" Dawn asked avidly. "Did they find you?"

Buffy shrugged. "We ran into a few. I killed a couple and then I let the other two go."

"Why?" Dawn demanded. "They'll just come back again!"

"No, they won't." Buffy wore a very self-satisfied grin. "I made sure they knew that if anyone laid a finger on Spike in the future, they'd have to answer to me."

"That's not going to solve the problem," Dawn pointed out. "You're going to have to figure out who set the whole thing up, and then maybe kill them."

Buffy sighed. "I realize that, Dawnie, but last night was not a good time to try something like that. We still have to figure out what Willow did to Spike."

"So you think that it's Willow?"

"Who else could it be?" Buffy took a sip of her coffee, looking angry and upset. "I don't know what to do, though. I could yell at her, or threaten to never talk to her again, but I'm not sure that would solve the problem."

"That's because Willow doesn't understand what we need from her," Dawn observed. "She thinks she has to be this bad-ass Wicca, and in reality, we just want Willow."

Buffy nodded. "That's pretty much it in a nutshell. I just don't know how to get her to see reason. Until we do get this straightened out, though, no talking to Spike, and no hanging out with Willow."

"You said I could write Spike," Dawn pouted.

"Write all you like," Buffy replied. "But whatever you say to him, he's going to hear the worst possible thing."

Dawn pouted. It wasn't fair. Spike was the guy she liked talking to whenever there was a problem, and now she couldn't even do that. It was like somebody had built this huge wall between them.

It really wasn't fair.

~~~~~

Xander couldn't believe what had happened. All he'd wanted was to put the wedding off for a while; it wouldn't even have to be for that long a period of time. Instead, he'd taken Anya's ultimatum and broken off their relationship.

What had he done?

He loved her. Xander was certain of that much, at least. He just didn't know that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. What if their marriage came to mirror his parents'? What if he ended up like his father? If he found Anya irritating before the wedding, what would she be like after they were married?

Xander needed to talk to somebody. When he'd called Buffy's house, Dawn had answered the phone and told him that the Slayer was out looking for Spike. Willow wasn't answering her phone at the dorms. There was no one.

No one except for the bottle of cheap whiskey.

It came to Xander, about halfway through the bottle, that if he wanted to avoid acting like his father, not drinking might be a good place to start. That maybe the best idea would be to pour the rest of the liquor down the drain and go off to find Anya—talk until she understood what he meant, and let her talk until he got a handle on what she wanted, too.

He'd discarded the idea in the next moment, since he was already pretty drunk and in no shape to be going anywhere. It was easier to keep drinking, to let the numbness blanket him, to forget the sound of her crying over the closing of the Magic Box door.

For tonight, it was easier to give in to the pain.