I missed last week and this one's mostly filler, but I can promise you much new information and action (of several sorts) to come after this! Your reviews, as always, sustain me, and I thank you for each and every one. :)

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All in all, Buffy muses, taking an order absentmindedly, her job isn’t bad at all. Especially since she starts at noon, giving herself more than enough time to sleep in after patrol and more than enough tips from lunch breaks to make it worthwhile. Plus, the coffee shop is usually pretty empty after the lunch breaks end and before the post-work caffeine rush, leaving the other waitress and the baristas to chat and Buffy to enjoy the combined stillness-and-bustle of an empty shop in a San Francisco afternoon.

Today, of course, they’re talking about boys. Leanne is gushing about her newest boyfriend- and this one’s already lasted a week, so it must be serious- and Tina and Josh are listening avidly, neglecting the two occupied tables in favor of scrubbing the counter thirty times over and leaving Buffy to waitress.

She doesn’t mind, really. It’s easier than gabbing with them about their love lives and enduring the frequent, “I’ve got the perfectguy for you!” that Leanne is constantly inflicting on her. 

More often than not, Leanne ends up dating said perfect guy for a few days, so it isn’t all bad for her. In fact, she’s probably better off skipping the first step and not mentioning it to Buffy altogether. Shame Leanne wouldn’t appreciate that suggestion. 

“Buffy!” Leanne calls her over as soon as the last coffee is cleared from a particularly filthy table. She smiles in that patented Cordelia Chase, I-know-you’ll-never-be-as-lucky-as-I-am style. “So? Meet anyone interesting lately?”

“In the past twenty-four hours?” Buffy asks dubiously. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, she’d met the gorgeous goddess who was her former lover’s partner in crime. She’d been interesting.

And Buffy isn’t dwelling on it. She isn’t spending most of her time wondering what exactly Illyria wanted with Spike, and whether Spike was willing to give it. She isn’t scowling about what might have happened when Spike was away all day. She isn’t raging inwardly about the moment she’d arrived in LA after hearing of the devastation and being told by Harmony, of all people, that her “Blondie Bear” was alive and well and had gone off exploring with the goddess.

Nope, she isn’t dwelling at all. 

She pastes a plastic smile on her face. “Not really, no. But let me guess. You have?”

“And he’s perfect for you! He’s sexy and has a car and he works on the next block, so you can totally coordinate lunch breaks, and he’s got this whole-“

“Sorry, Leanne.” She passes an order to Tina. “I’m kind of taking a break from the dating scene, getting comfortable with being alone again…” Josh is smiling and nodding, but Leanne is unimpressed.

“I know what this is about,” she announces triumphantly.

“Do you now.” It comes out too wearily to be a question, but Leanne doesn’t notice.

Leanne nods vigorously. “You’re still hung up on that hottie!”

No, she is most definitely not hung up on “that hottie,” no matter how many times Leanne brought it up. And she isn’t sure whether to be amused or irritated at how well her coworkers still remember Spike, when they won’t even glance twice at Willow and Xander.

He had made an entrance, of course, sweeping in just a half hour after sunset the first time she’d worked late and flirting outrageously with Leanne until the other waitress was blushing and offering him free croissants and coffee. Even Josh had been eyeing him as he’d sprawled out onto a chair and stuck his thumbs in his jeans, and Josh was usually professional about these things. 

Buffy had finally given up on glaring at him from her vantage point behind the counter and snatched up the plate of sugar-encrusted pastries from Leanne, sliding into the seat beside him and demanding, “What are you doing here?”

He had smirked. “Just giving the workplace a look-over, pet.” 

She had sighed. “Spike…”

But then the smirk had vanished and in its place was the soft smile that she could never quite resist. “I wanted to make sure…after last time…I wanted you to be happy.”

And she’d gaped at him in shock, old memories returning, memories of the Doublemeat Palace and an earnest lover begging her to leave; and then he had done that thing with his eyes that made her cry every time, dammit!, and she had excused herself to the bathroom, wiped away the tears, and taken in a shaky breath.

Sometimes…when he’d do things like that, things that made her wonder if he still loved her, after all, she’d want nothing more than to kiss him. She had tried not to think about that then, instead returning from the bathroom to cup his cheek and whisper “Thank you.”

He’d smiled at her again, squeezed her hand, and promised to meet her after patrol with Mexican. And the moment he’d left, Leanne had jumped on her, demanding to know why she hadn’t mentioned her “gorgeous punk boyfriend” before then. 

She’d insisted that there was nothing going on. They still didn’t believe her, not really, and especially not after Spike had started making a habit of patrolling for her on nights when she finished late and picking her up afterward.

Well…maybe it had been a little boyfriendy. It didn’t mean that they were dating. And after a few months of it, Buffy had asked him to stop coming, if only to escape the unnervingly knowing stares of her coworkers. So Leanne had assumed that they’d broken up, and Buffy had let her think that.

“They’re still friends,” Tina says with sympathy, setting two coffee mugs down on Buffy’s tray. “That must be tough.”

“Not really,” Buffy murmurs distractedly, heading for the far table. Two girls sit silently, their eyes fixed on her, and she blinks, watching them warily. It isn’t the first time that former slayers have come to harass her at work, and she’s sure it won’t be the last time, either. Some are local, some come from elsewhere, and all are bent on blaming her for a betrayal that is very much her fault. Over the course of the past five years, she’s destroyed the balance between good and evil, forced an unwanted destiny onto hundreds- thousands?- of girls, and then cut off the slayer line completely.

As slayers go, she’d once been called the best. She’s since been labeled the worst, too. She doesn’t fault them their anger. But it doesn’t mean that she’ll let them attack her.

These two might very well be slayers. One looks vaguely familiar, though she can’t place her, not under the hat and sunglasses and heavy coat. The other watches her with the sort of searing hatred that’s become familiar since the destruction of the Seed, and she’s immediately certain of what they are. 

She sets down the coffee, frowning at the dark markings on the hand of the first girl. They form a latticework of black bruises, emanating from somewhere deep in her sleeve and moving outwards to cover her fingers. The girl doesn’t speak, but Buffy can feel the hatred radiating off of her, and it comes as little surprise when the second hisses, “This is all your fault.”

“Probably,” she concedes evenly, wondering if this is a safe enough setting to propose a truce. Nobody’s weapons are out, and she chooses to take that as a good sign. “Listen, if there’s anything I can do…”

The first girl’s head pops up and her mouth curls into an unpleasant sneer, and only then does Buffy make the connection. “Simone!” 

The rogue slayer sweeps one pockmarked hand over the table, sending scalding hot coffee sloshing across Buffy’s top and cracking the mugs onto the floor. “You did this,” she hisses, her eyes dark behind her sunglasses. “You’re going to pay.”

Searing pain washes over Buffy, and as though from a distance, she can hear Tina’s concerned cry, but she’s fixed in place, staring in horror at the other slayer as she limps to her feet and walks out of the coffeehouse, leaning on her friend for support.

--

Josh insists that she leave early to take care of the burn spreading across her abdomen, and she agrees without an argument, her thoughts in turmoil. Simone is in town. Simone, who’s a fan of guns and slayer superiority and stamping out anyone she doesn’t like- and Simone doesn’t like anybody, really. It makes sense that she’s gunning for Buffy, and Buffy can handle that. It’s the casualties along the way that she can’t bear.

She considers calling Dawn or Willow, but thinks better of it. They’re committed to normalcy now, Dawn with Xander and Willow with a high-powered job in computers- and Buffy knows that she’s still trying to find something, but Willow won’t talk about it with her- and they don’t need to be brought into this. Simone likes to go after the people who have undermined her in the past, people like Buffy herself or Andrew.

Andrew. Crap. Andrew had left them after the last battle, insisting that he still had a responsibility to his slayers. He doesn’t call Buffy, but Xander still keeps up with him, and last they’ve heard, he’s in England with Satsu and some of her other once-loyal slayers. He’s safe. He has to be.

She slides out of the top Leanne’s loaned her, inspecting her stomach in the bathroom mirror. The skin is bright red and strains when she moves, but it’s already beginning to heal at the edges. It should be gone in a day or two at the very most. She scowls at her reflection. Her shirt, however, is gone, a casualty of war. And it had been one of her favorites, too.

Behind her, the front door opens. “I brought pizza fresh from Italy!” Spike announces.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s from the pizza store down the block, doof.” 

He lets out a huffy sigh. “Well, I had to go all the way downstairs to get it. Didn’t much fancy landing in the middle of the street and getting gawked at by- Buffy!” His voice is sharp and angry as he catches sight of the burn. “What the fuck did that to you?”

She folds her arms just above it self-consciously, suddenly very aware that she’s clad only in a bra and jeans. “You know, on-the-job injury. Those coffee shops are dangerous.”

“Buffy-“ He’s lifting her suddenly, sweeping her into his arms, and before she can squirm out of his grasp, he’s laid her down on the couch and is back in the medicine chest.

She closes her eyes. “Simone was here today. She was…she’s a slayer-gone-bad. Took over an island, killed some people, tried to kill me… This is nothing, Spike. Just some hot coffee.”

“These are second-degree burns,” he informs her, dabbing some burn cream on her stomach. “Not nothing.” His hand runs over her stomach in a smooth rhythm, lulling her to peaceful relaxation, and she lets out a grateful moan. The hand freezes.

She reddens. “I…uh…I’ll do the rest.” Hastily, she rubs the cream onto the last edges of the burn, avoiding Spike’s gaze where she can feel it burning into her. He finally turns away to get up and head for her bathroom. “Wait! I can just get a new-“

But he’s already emerging, the bright pink, sparkly tank top dangling from the tips of his fingers. “This yours?” He quirks an eyebrow, smirking.

She snatches it from him. “Shut up. Leanne lent it to me after the spill.”

“So you walked the streets of San Francisco in that?”

Her eyes narrow. “Oh, like you’re one to talk about fashion. Do you even wash that shirt before you put it on every single day?” She sits up and pulls the tank top over her head defiantly, grinning at the way his eyes are immediately drawn to her very exposed cleavage as soon as the burn mark is covered. Out of sight, out of mind, huh, Spike? And now it’s time to ogle. Not that she’s complaining.

He blinks. “I look good in that.”

“And I don’t?” She pouts, half amused, half genuinely hurt.

He sits down beside her, pulling the pizza box off the arm of the couch and dropping it onto the floor. “You’d look good in a burlap sack. Pizza?” It’s all so casual that she doesn’t register his words until he’s handing her a slice.

She busies herself with the pizza, grateful for something else to look at. His hands are still a phantom against her stomach, caressing her to contentment, and she craves more of that toxic, addictive touch that had sustained her for so long when she’d been back from the dead. That could continue to sustain her now, if they only wanted it. For a moment, it’s almost enough to forget about Simone.

Almost. She lets out a sigh, but he doesn’t ask what’s wrong, and she’s grateful for it. He can always sense when she doesn’t want to talk now, a welcome change from the old Spike who never knew the meaning of letting something lie. New Spike just pats her back reassuringly and uses his other hand to turn on the TV. 

It’s barely on for five minutes before her eyes begin to close. She drifts off to sleep, wondering about Simone and Spike and what it is that Simone’s blaming her for now, and why Spike’s breath smells so strongly of pepper when he lays her down and covers her with a blanket, and if she’s ever going to get over this unmitigated attraction to him so the awkwardness can end, and if he’s going to kiss her goodnight. 

He does brush his lips against her forehead, so lightly that she wouldn’t have noticed if not for the pepper breath, and when she wakes up in the morning, she can’t wipe the grin off of her face.