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 9: Upheaval

"Would your love in all its finery/tear at the darkness all around me/until I can feel again/ until I can breathe again/'Cause I'm a train wreck waiting to happen/waiting for someone to come pick me up off the tracks/a wild fire born of frustration/born of the one love that gets me so high/I've no fear at all...To fall so deep into you/lose myself completely/in your sweet embrace/all my pain's erased/From your mouth it's all that I wish/the mercy of your lips just one kiss/until I can breathe again/so that I can sing again." ~Sarah McLachlin, "Train Wreck"

As disappointed as Buffy had been about her friends' decision to spend the holidays elsewhere, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. Not only did she not have to worry about everyone getting along, but also it was such a different group of people that Joyce's absence did not loom as large as it might have.

Buffy missed her mom, and there was definitely a hole there, but Joyce wasn't the only one missing from the festivities. This was the first Christmas Spike had spent with them, and only the second Christmas Tara had been there. It was just different all the way around. She thought that might have been better than trying to pretend that nothing had changed.

Instead, everything had changed, and maybe that was okay.

With Spike and Tara cooking, and her and Dawn as onlookers and occasional participants, it was all strangely new. Spike was more refined with Tara than he was with anyone else, and Tara was bolder with Spike. Dawn was equally cheeky with both of them, and Buffy just let the scene and the sounds wash over her. The three of them seemed to drop into a rhythm, and she wondered if she wasn't getting a peek into what things had been like while she was gone.

It was so simple just to take it all in, let the smells and sounds wash over her. No one was asking her to participate or to talk. Everybody seemed to take for granted that Buffy wasn't going to be playing the happy hostess.

Dinner probably turned out a lot better under Tara's capable hands than it would have if Buffy had been in charge. They all ate, then they all helped with the clean up, and she allowed the peace of the moment to settle into her soul. It was the first time since she'd been back, other than the times she'd lost herself in Spike's embrace, that Buffy had felt good about being alive.

After dinner, they drank eggnog and talked, Dawn allowing Tara to play with her long hair, Buffy leaning against Spike in contentment. Everyone there knew about them. There was no reason to hide.

It was late when Tara left, and Dawn finally went to bed soon after. Spike had insisted on taking Tara home, but the Slayer had asked him to come back. He sat next to her on the couch, where she'd remained. "You okay, luv?" he asked softly. "You were quiet this evening."

"I'm okay." Buffy leaned back against him. "It's just different."

"I can imagine."

She was silent then, letting him run his fingers through her hair—longer now than Buffy had let it get in a long time. It was so easy just to sit on the couch, watching the crackling fire. Joyce had always had a fire on Christmas Eve, even if it meant cranking up the air conditioning. Buffy had wanted to continue the tradition.

Spike just stroked her hair, content to be with her. He was a little awed that he had been allowed to be here. She had invited him. More than that, Buffy had really wanted him there. He listened as her breathing evened out, and when he was certain she was asleep, Spike picked her up and carried her up the stairs.

And then he kept watch over her until sunrise, in an attempt to keep her nightmares at bay.

~~~~~

Xander wasn't sure what he'd expected from their vacation. Maybe to get a little closer to his fiancée, maybe work out the wedding plans. He had definitely expected some rest and relaxation away from the Hellmouth.

What he'd gotten was five days of hassles. Their plane was late, and the reservations for the hotel hadn't been booked so they were forced to find a room at the Budget Inn, instead of the three star hotel with a pool they'd wanted. Anya complained that the room smelled like smoke the entire time they stayed. Xander had bad seafood the second night, which resulted in him puking his guts up for the next two days.

Anya had tried to be attentive, but she had gotten tired of spending their vacation inside a stinky motel room, and so she'd finally left to go sightsee on her own the third day. Xander had been feeling better, but he hadn't been up to playing the tourist. He had been upset that she hadn't stayed with him and angry that everything had gone so horribly wrong.

Of course, Anya had been just as disappointed about their ruined trip. The first and last days were the only ones they'd been able to have fun, and Xander was not a good patient. She probably would have tried to nurse him the whole time, even after he'd been able to make it to the bathroom on his own, but he had continually complained about how horrible he felt, and why did they have to eat seafood anyway, and why had Anya picked that restaurant.

Oh, and then he'd started talking about how they should have stayed in Sunnydale because it was Buffy's first Christmas without her mom, and she was still depressed about being back from the dead. Anya wanted to know when the heck she was going to come first.

All in all, their little vacation hadn't done much for their relationship. What it had done was to make them seriously reconsider getting married. They had both been having doubts; the singing and dancing had brought that out, but they hadn't discussed it. Once Sweet was gone, and the musical was over, it was full-speed ahead with the wedding plans.

Xander was beginning to think that it might have been a mistake.

He still wanted to marry her, of course, but Xander was thinking that maybe he'd rushed into things. Popping the question had seemed like a good idea when he thought that Glory would wind up killing them all, but the reality was looming scarily on the horizon.

And Anya had not yet quite forgiven Xander for keeping their engagement secret all summer. It was like he wasn't proud of the fact that they were getting married in the first place. Like maybe he wasn't very proud of—her.

With those thoughts running through their heads, it was no surprise that silence had reigned from the moment they'd gotten on the plane in San Francisco to the moment Xander pulled into their space at the apartment complex.

They sat there for a moment, both debating on whether or not to say anything, to apologize for harsh words spoken in the heat of the moment, for being less considerate of the other's needs than they might have been.

"I'll carry the bags up," Xander said.

"Thank you." Anya got out of the car.

It felt like a cold front was moving in.

~~~~~

Buffy sipped at her coffee in thoughtful silence, knowing that Dawn would most likely sleep for hours yet. She had left Spike still sleeping at his crypt last night, where they had ended their patrol in the usual way.

Things between them were changing, turning. Sometimes things between them were desperate, hungry, fierce. Other nights it was something else altogether. Those were the nights that Buffy was hesitant to put a label on, tinged as they were with the tenderness that had sprung up between them in those last days before her death and just after her resurrection. If she didn't know any better, she'd say that they were making love, but they weren't.

Spike might be, but she wasn't in love with him. Not really.

Not yet.

Those two words just seemed to explode inside her head, laden with possibilities. They carried with them the understanding that she could love Spike, and somehow that didn't scare her nearly as much as it probably should have.

She'd seen in him the capacity for change, and Buffy was going to hang onto that for all she was worth. Oddly enough, it was that change that made her feel most secure. Spike was changing because he loved her. How crazy was that?

"Buffy?" Xander's voice carried through to the kitchen, and she called him back. "How was your holiday?" he asked once he could see her.

She smiled. "It was good. How was San Francisco?"

Xander hesitated. He wasn't sure that Buffy was the person he ought to be telling about his problems. After all, she had enough of her own. Still, she seemed to be in a good enough mood, and Willow wasn't answering her phone. He didn't have anyone else to talk to. "Pretty much a bust."

Buffy frowned, concerned. "That bad, huh? Do you want some coffee?"

"Yeah, I'll get it." Xander grabbed a mug from the cupboard and filled it up. "Well, aside from the fact that anything that could go wrong did, I ended up with a case of food poisoning."

She gave a sympathetic wince. "You did get a chance to see the city, though?"

"For all of two days," he sighed. "Anya wasn't much help, either."

Buffy frowned, remembering Anya's rather blunt solicitousness when Xander had caught all those diseases from the Native American spirits. Maybe her bedside manner needed a little work, but she hadn't left his side. "What did she do?"

"Nothing," Xander quickly said, realizing how uncharitable he was being. "She was great. She stayed with me the first couple days, but then she went out. It's probably a good thing that one of us enjoyed the trip."

"I'm sorry, Xan," Buffy said, at a loss for what to say. She wanted to give him all her sympathy, to pat him on the back and tell him how horrible it was, and how wrong Anya had been to leave him at all. On the other hand, she was pretty sure she'd have done exactly the same thing. "That's too bad."

Seeing that Buffy wasn't planning on giving out more sympathy, Xander shrugged. "It's fine. We'll get over it. What did you guys do?"

"Not much," Buffy said. "Spike and Tara cooked, and we ate. That was pretty much the extent of things."

Xander's eyebrows went up. "Spike? You asked Spike to spend Christmas with you guys?"

"Dawn wanted him," was Buffy's even reply. "Besides, there weren't a lot of other people I could invite."

"But it's Spike," Xander repeated. "Vampires don't celebrate Christmas."

Buffy hid her annoyance behind her coffee mug, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Really, this was getting a little old. She knew that they'd all worked with Spike over the summer. What was their problem with him now? "You could have fooled me. Spike even had gifts for us."

"Like what? He probably stole it."

"He got me a trust fund."

"What?" Xander stared at her. "Come again?"

"Spike got me a trust fund." Buffy smiled serenely. "I'm pretty much thinking it's the best gift ever."

Xander blinked. "Did he rob a bank?"

"No, he went and dug up some buried treasure."

"You can't take that from him," Xander insisted. "You know he's going to want—things from you. That kind of money—"

"I needed money, Xander," Buffy said quietly. "Badly. I haven't said much about it, but we were barely scraping by."

"You could get a job," Xander said. "The rest of us have."

"The rest of you aren't the Slayer," Buffy retorted, her voice rising. She was starting to get just a little pissed off, and it felt good. "The 'rest of you' don't patrol every night, or have to worry about apocalypses, or making sure your little sister stays out of trouble so social services doesn't come in and take her away. And the rest of you sure as hell weren't dead and happy about being there."

She hadn't meant to say all that. Buffy really hadn't meant to let all that out, but Xander's thoughtless words had hit the right button. He was always doing that—always seeing her as some sort of superhero and then holding her up to an impossible standard. She shouldn't have been with Angel, she shouldn't have freaked and run away when she'd killed him, she should have been able to hang onto Riley.

Well, maybe that had been true of the Buffy they'd buried, but it wasn't true about her.

They stared at each other, two old friends suddenly separated by a seemingly unbridgeable gap. Xander swallowed hard, not liking this sudden turn, and yet knowing that it was partially his fault. He'd been one of the people to bring her back. "Buffy—"

"I'm sorry, Xander," Buffy said softly. "That wasn't fair."

"But it's how you feel."

There was a long pause. "Yeah, it pretty much is."

Xander looked down at the countertop for a long time. "Spike's just using this, Buffy. He thinks he's in love with you, and—"

"He is in love with me."

His head came up, and his eyes widened in disbelief. "He hasn't actually convinced you of that!"

"He didn't need to, Xander. Spike's actions speak for him." Buffy shook her head. "Believe what you want. I know better."

Xander's face twisted in disgust. "What are you going to do when he's not satisfied with the crumbs you're giving him?" he demanded.

Buffy just smiled. "Who said all he was getting were crumbs?"

~~~~~

Dawn woke up to the sounds of shouting. At first, she thought maybe it was Buffy and Spike because she could hear her sister and then a male voice. It didn't take her too long to recognize Xander's strident tones or to pick Spike's name out of the mess. Apparently Buffy had decided to spill the beans early.

She hauled herself out of bed, intent on getting downstairs and doing whatever she had to do to make Xander see reason.

Okay, so she probably wouldn't be able to do anything, but she could offer Buffy her support.

By the time she got downstairs, however, the shouting match was over, and Xander was on his way out the door. He didn't even stop to say hello, and Dawn immediately went to check on Buffy. "What happened?"

"I might have let it slip that I was sleeping with Spike," Buffy admitted.

Dawn winced. "I guess he didn't take it well."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "'Spike is evil, he's giving you money to get in your pants, you need to do the right thing this time.' I told him that I'd been doing the right thing, and if I had to kill another boyfriend I would, but until then it was none of his business."

"Wow, Buffy," Dawn said, watching her sister with a mixture of admiration and concern. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Because I didn't cave?" Buffy demanded. She wasn't angry with Dawn; she was just still on edge from the fight. "I like being with Spike. Spike likes being with me. What's so difficult about that?"

"He's a vampire?" Dawn hedged.

Buffy scowled. "So what? I'm a Slayer, and you don't see them giving Spike an intervention. Or, you know, his demon friends doing that. They aren't telling him what a bad vampire he is for sleeping with the Slayer. Why should I get different treatment?"

"But Spike's always getting told that," Dawn replied. "Clem said—" She stopped right there. Buffy didn't know about that night, and it was probably better that she never find out.

It was too late. "What did Clem say?" Buffy asked. "And who's Clem?"

Dawn shifted uncomfortably, finally deciding that she wasn't going to get off the hook this time. "Clem's one of Spike's demon friends. He's really nice," she added quickly. "He came over once when Spike was—staying with me this summer. He said that there were some rumors going around that Spike had gotten soft because everyone knew he was hanging around Sunnydale for the Slayer. Clem said that if anyone found out that Spike was helping you baby-sit me, he'd be in deep trouble."

"When was this?" Buffy asked.

Dawn tried to remember. "Towards the end, right before school started. I didn't tell anybody, because they weren't supposed to know that Clem came over."

Buffy closed her eyes. The tranquil mood from earlier had been broken completely. Even if the demon population of Sunnydale hadn't known that she was dead, they were apparently cognizant of Spike's changed allegiances. It was the first time that Buffy realized what Spike might be giving up, and what kind of danger he could potentially find himself in.

"Did Spike seem worried?"

"No. He said that it wasn't a big deal, and it was just talk." Dawn gave her sister a hopeful look. "You're not going to break up with Spike, are you?"

Buffy shook her head. "No, but I think I'm going to have to find a way to make things up with Xander. I just don't know what to say. Everything I said was true, but it didn't come out very nicely."

"Xander wasn't being very nice either," Dawn said philosophically. "I could hear him from my bedroom."

~~~~~

"This one looks nice."

"How far is it from the Slayer's place?"

"Maybe a ten minute walk," Tara guessed.

Spike frowned. "Dawn's school?"

"About the same," Tara replied. "It's closer to her school than your crypt is." She gave him a look tinged with affectionate exasperation. "Are you really that attached to your place?"

They were at Tara's place, going over newspaper ads for apartments. Deciding to find other living arrangements was not a decision Spike had come to lightly. It was a combination of factors, really. Buffy's statement that she didn't want Dawn hanging around cemeteries all the time, her own distaste for the crypt—cozy as it might be, Tara's admonishment that he was going to have to play his cards right.

To a certain extent, it galled him. Spike hadn't paid for a place to live in—well, he'd never really paid. As a man, his home had been inherited from his father. As a vampire, he'd taken what he needed when he needed it. For him to change now seemed almost ridiculous.

But Buffy was coming around. She'd invited him into her home, into her bed. She was beginning to tell her friends about their relationship. She was treating him like a man, even if it was more like a problematic boyfriend, rather than a welcomed lover.

Spike had started thinking that if she was unbending that much, perhaps a gesture on his part was warranted. If he moved out of the crypt, got his own place, it might be enough to show Buffy that they could work.

So because she'd given a bit, he would give a bit. In time, maybe, they'd manage to make a cozy little place for themselves somewhere in the middle.

Spike wanted it to be a surprise, though, and so he'd gone to Tara for help. There hadn't been many offerings this time of the year, but she'd insisted that something would turn up. It looked like something had.

"Basement?"

Tara nodded. "It looks like they're offering discounted rent, too."

Spike cocked his head to the side, thinking about it for a moment. "Guess we'd better check it out then."

"You want me to go with you?" Tara asked in surprise.

Spike raised his eyebrows. "Unless you'd rather not. I don't bloody well know how to talk to these people, ducks. It's not like I've had to do this before."

"I don't mind," Tara was quick to assure him. Amazingly enough, Spike wasn't too hard to get along with. Around the Scoobies, he was prickly and sarcastic, and it was easy to see why they disliked him so much. Around her, or Buffy and Dawn, he was actually a pretty nice guy, if you discounted the fact that he was a vampire.

"Good." Spike sighed. "And then I need to program my sodding mobile."

Tara managed to hide her surprise, making her question sound like she was merely expressing mild interest. "You got a phone?"

"Had to, didn't I?" Spike asked. "Last time Dawn invited herself over to my crypt, she nearly gave Buffy a heart attack since we had to wait 'til after dark for me to walk her home. Buffy said I had to get a phone so I could let her know where Dawn was. Or in case she needed me."

Tara smiled. "It's good of you to be there for both of them, Spike."

Spike shrugged, his mouth twisting into a sardonic smile. "What's one more leash when they've already got me tamed?"

"Not tamed," Tara responded thoughtfully. "I don't think you'll ever be tamed."

Spike's eyes warmed. "You're alright, Glinda."

She just grinned. "You're not too bad yourself."