The Way Home

**Story Notes:** A meeting between Buffy and Spike. Set years post-Chosen and post-Not Fade Away.

**A/N:** This was supposed to be a non-angsty first meeting between Spike and Buffy. A certain amount of angst just crept in- and brought Faith. And I don't know what to say about the whole present tense thing- let me know if it works though, please. Apologies to all for any grammatical errors or just plain wrongness. Feedback is always appreciated.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Never gonna be mine. Not making a profit here either.

**Rating:** PG-13

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Fingers ghost along her spine and she almost jumps, thinking they feel wrong. She raises her head with a sleepy smile that feels almost real and shifts away. _So sorry, can't have monkey sex just now, too busy trying to remember who you are. Or forget who I am. _And it's time to put this one down gently because it's gone on too long and any day now there'll be declarations of love or faith or something equally stomach clenching.

The bed shakes and lightens and she's left alone as the bathroom door opens. The quiet snick of the door closing is a comfort and maybe it should bother her more that all she feels is relief.

The phone by the bed has a shrill ring and it sounds too loud in the quiet gloom of the apartment. She thinks she ought to get it, but that would mean moving. And then she thinks the bathroom door will open soon and, if she doesn't answer, she'll have no place to hide.

She makes sure her voice is scratchy with feigned sleep as she whispers into the phone. "Talk to me."

"Buffy? It's Jena? I've got something important tonight- ritual? Could you maybe do a quick patrol for me while I take care of it? Ms. Newcomb said to ask you?" And she wonders why everything out of the girl's mouth sounds like a question, but then, she's noticed most of them do that when talking to her.

"Sure. I've got nothing better to do for the rest of the night." _Sad, but so true. _"Do what you need to and don't worry about the rest of it."

She hangs up before Jena can start stuttering questions of thankfulness at her, and quickly throws on some clothes. She waffles over whether to leave a note and, in the end, jots down a quick _lock the door on your way out _and places it on her pillow. It's not really as heartless as it seems- merely a warning shot across the bow.

The night is crisp and clear and the tension melts from her neck and shoulders. She's glad she went with short sleeves as a stray breeze caresses her skin. Just a minute, standing in the night air and reaching out with her spidey-sense, and she confirms there's nothing stupid enough to be hanging around her apartment building.

She decides to start out at Walnut Hill Cemetery; it's always good for a few newbie vamps. It doesn't disappoint this time either and she plays with the poor, confused fledge until its sire and a few minions show up. Then it's down and dirty and over way too quickly. Adrenaline is racing through her body and she can't wait to get to her next victim.

The rest of the patrol doesn't live up to the start. She's been on rotation to the new slayers for a year and a half now and this assignment has to be the most boring yet. Apparently, word went out as soon as she stepped off the airplane that "The Slayer" was in town because Newcomb has been puzzled, but relieved, about the drastic decrease in activity around the tiny Hellmouth.

Feeling worked up and frustrated, she wanders back over to the seedier side of town- the side with all the bars. Alcohol and slayers usually don't mix well, but she's learned a thing or two about holding her liquor and the Wet Whistle has the kind of clientele that won't remember your face, if you won't remember theirs. It's a nice arrangement for all concerned.

Only a few heads rise when she walks in and those are rapidly lowered after a quick once over. She takes her usual seat at the bar and lays a few bills on the counter- no need to tell the barkeep what she wants, he already knows. She stares into the grungy mirror above the bar- _probably hasn't been cleaned since the place opened_- and lets her eyes unfocus. She's able to pick out a few suspiciously blank spaces she'll take care of later, but the thing she's looking for can't be found in any of the grimy shadows reflected by a barroom mirror.

The Jack, slapped down by a hand that manages to tremble only slightly, burns down her throat and warmth detonates from her stomach outward. She doesn't even grimace. Spike would've been proud, and appalled, probably in equal measure. God only knows what Angel would think, but she's pretty sure loving concern and a certain amount of disappointment would figure in there somewhere. Not that she can be certain about anything where Angel is concerned. Not anymore.

For a minute, she wishes Faith were here. If nothing else, they could hold each other up on the walk back. But Faith took off a couple of years ago, just disappeared one night after patrol. They'd finally gotten a rumpled and stained letter six months later, postmarked from New Mexico, saying she was going to be doing her own thing for awhile.

Faith made it seem so easy to leave them, to leave her.

Buffy hates her a little for that.

Faith got to go rogue, to drink and swear and smoke and court disapproval like a favorite lover before disappearing without a word, and no one gave it a thought. No one had tried to track Faith down and force her back into the fold. No one had ever been able to chain Faith and they'd all stopped trying long ago.

And Buffy hates her a little for that, too.

She orders her last drink, thinking everyone's gotten a little too complacent if not one vamp has attempted to sneak out while she's been otherwise engaged. These days she hates having to make examples, but she'll enjoy this one, because that adrenaline-laced buzz is still careening around in her system and now it has alcoholic company revving it up and cheering it on.

She wraps her hand around the glass just as the front door opens. There's a hush that usually only falls over the place when she enters and the hairs on the back of her neck start trying to climb up to the crown of her head. She's very careful to loosen the grip on her glass before it shatters.

There's a brush of fabric and a ripple of scent and the stool beside her is no longer empty, though the glass behind the bar stubbornly remains so.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees crumpled bills fall to the counter and a long, slim finger points at her drink before tapping the imitation wood meaningfully. There's a weight in her chest that lightens even as it tightens around her like a vise, confusing her with the contradiction as it comforts her with the familiarity. She may not have been here before, but this is still old hat.

She doesn't bolt her drink; she lifts her glass slowly and takes a long, leisurely sip, feeling the burn all the way down.

The silence is hanging loud until the thick glass bottom makes soundless contact with the bar and then the noise rushes back louder than before, as if trying to make up for its temporary absence.

"You haven't left Faith by the side of the road somewhere, have you," she asks calmly, watching a tendril of smoke wind its way across her sightline and fade into the miasma hanging low and heavy in the air.

"Highly tempted a time or six, but no, she's out scouting around for digs, or something to kill- never can tell with her sometimes."

When she smiles, it feels real, and that surprises her more than anything else. "The others?"

"We left them a ways back, neither one of us being very good at playing follow the leader, even if it's him."

"How is he?" She knows it's fruitless, but her voice softens anyway. It always will, for him. First love is a tenacious bitch and her claws are ever sharp and tireless, ready to rip you a new one at the slightest provocation.

"Getting along. Blue's still with him, and Gunn. Bit of a surprise, that. Picked up his girl a little while after we got things sorted out and took to the road. Don't know why the hell she continues to let him drag her around the country, but she's learned to hold her own in a fight." There's more in his voice, so she waits patiently. "She's been good for him, I think," he finishes, with a strange, discordant note.

"She doesn't mind…"

"What? Knowing he'll never turn to her during the post-coital bliss and lovingly rip her throat out? Strangely, she seems okay with it, the loony bint." His sarcasm is choking the air between them almost as much as the cigarettes he's been chain-smoking since he sat down next to her, and maybe that's why she says it. Or maybe it's the suspicion that's suddenly burrowing its way through her brain.

"And you weren't."

He goes as still and silent as only something dead can truly be and she's sorry she said anything, can feel him staring at her.

"Would you be," he asks softly.

"No."

The silence takes several amber-filled glasses to feel comfortable again and when it finally does, it just comes out. "If it's just the two of you, I've got room." And she's still looking very carefully at the blank spot in the mirror, her latest drink almost forgotten in her loosely clasped hands.

"Set up house here, have you?"

"No, set up apartment. This is the end of the eighth uneventful week of my three month rotation." She lifts her glass and holds it out to the side. "Cheers to me."

The clink tells her when to pull her glass back and she takes another careful sip.

"Actually, I believe I'd heard that somewhere, that you'd been in town here for a while." There's a sly smile lurking in that honey-smooth voice as he asks, "What will your little boy toy think about you bringing home guests?"

"That sniffing thing? Still not getting any less icky."

He snorts, like she knew he would. "That avoidance thing? Still not answering my question."

She sighs and rolls her eyes. "He doesn't live there. These days it's just me."

"The rest of them?"

She waves her hand through the smoky gloom. "Here and there and everywhere."

There's a pause and she can feel him thinking, his head cocked to the side and that searching gaze turned inward, and that's always a bad sign.

"They found out they could put it down, didn't they?" His voice is low and soft and she doesn't like where this is going at all.

"No," she says automatically and far too vehemently. "No, they just have other things. We have so much help now; it's not just us anymore. Life creeps in."

"Did it?"

"It tried."

"But you couldn't put it down."

Not a question, but she treats it as such. "I did. For a while. Almost. Isn't it funny how, when you finally get just what you want, it turns out you don't want it quite as much as you thought you did and don't really know what to do with it now that you've got it?"

"I wouldn't know. Can't say as I've ever gotten exactly what I've wanted. That why you're here then, trying to sort it all out again, make all the little pieces fit?"

"Actually, I kinda wondered if that's why you're here."

He laughs and the sound isn't bitter, like she thinks it should be, but horribly broken instead, and her eyes are suddenly stinging from the smoke like they didn't when she first stepped into the bar. "Think I'm here to put you back together again," he asks harshly. "How well does that ever work out? No, I'm fresh out of superglue. You're looking for someone to fix your life and wrap it up for you in a nice, neat bow, go call one of your friends. If I remember rightly, they always did know best."

"Maybe I don't want someone to tell me how to fix things. Maybe I just want someone to tell me I'm not really broken, that I'm okay like this. That, that it's okay to just be like this. For that, what I need is not a friend."

"And we've never really been friends, have we?" His voice is back to that silky-smooth, sex on wheels tone and she wonders for the first time how much it costs him.

"Enemies, allies, lovers but not friends in the conventional sense, no."

"And you always were all about convention, weren't you," he asks, almost as if he can't help slipping the knife in just a little farther. Whether he's gutting himself or her is up for grabs.

"You always want what you can't have and never appreciate what you do, isn't that what they say?"

"That is what they say."

"Does _she_ appreciate you? Never mind, that was stupid. I should've stopped drinking once I hit double digits. I never learn. Buffy and alcohol is a bad combination. Buffy and anything seems to be a bad combination. Buffy doesn't play well with others. And Buffy has no idea why she's talking about herself in the third person." It is uncomfortably close to Willow-babble and that realization finally disconnects her mouth from her brain. She squirms in silence, waiting for him to tell her how happy they are and how great their lives are without her.

He doesn't. She's suddenly unsure what this is- never mind what she wants it to be.

"Well," he says after a pause so long she starts in surprise when he finally speaks, "if you're sure about wanting the company, we could use a place. We are a package deal though, pet, me and Faith. Been traveling together, relying on each other, for a while now. Where I go, she goes; where she goes, I go."

"Okay." A simple word and easier to say than she thought.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"So, your couch fold out, luv, or is your bed big enough for three?"

Though it really shouldn't, it takes her a minute to get his meaning. When she does, she knows he can hear her heartbeat start a double-time staccato. This time she does throw back her drink, draining the glass in one graceless gulp. There's a slight shiver that reaches into her bones as the glass scrapes against her teeth. The alcoholic fire has been replaced by another kind of heat and the vamps in the bar are only a distant memory as she slides off her stool and starts walking to the door.

"Come on then, if you're coming." There's more confidence there than bravado; she hasn't been as sure of anything recently as she is about this. She knows what it is now, and she wants it. _Want. Take. Have. _She can almost hear that smoky whisper.

Convention can go take a flying leap.

His hand comes to rest on her lower back as they file out the door and into the night. "Oh, I'm comin', Slayer. No doubt about that, was there?"

It's the way he says her title, her true name- the name that she was disconcerted to find fit her more than any other after the refreshing newness of semi-normality had turned into a crushing, restless yearning- that finally makes her look at him. The fact that he looks the same doesn't surprise her, the fact that he looks at her the same does.

She slides an arm around his waist and settles in next to him, their gaits relaxed and even. The night breeze brushes her hair across her face and he takes his hand off her back to slide the wayward strands behind her ear, allowing his arm to fall across her shoulder when he's done.

"We'll track Faith down on the way home."

His teeth flash impossibly white in the darkness and his voice is smug. "Oh, I don't think we'll have to search that hard."

Then a smiling Faith with dark, dancing eyes slinks out of the shadows to fall into step beside her, a companionable arm winding low around her hips. "I told him you'd bring us home, B. Stupid fucker didn't believe me though."

"He couldn't afford to, Faith." She wonders at the way everything is suddenly so damn easy- easy to see, easy to say, easy to do. She tightens her arms around them. "Don't worry. I'll bring you home, I'll bring you both home."

The silence that falls between them isn't uncomfortable and maybe that's because everything that needs to be said already has been. She looks up at the infinite dark night and wonders if this time next week she'll still be wandering aimlessly through the town chasing thrills, or if, maybe, her sister will be getting a rumpled and stained letter.

Faith bumps her hip and gives her a slow, heat-filled wink.

Tomorrow is probably not too early to start sharpening her pencil.


End file.
