WHAT IS THIS IS THIS AN ACTUAL UPDATE.

Augh this is not easy to write especially with evil Tumblr tempting me with pictures and Photoshop and how damn pretty Buffy and Spike are together. But I have a new chapter, at last, and even though I'll be completely offline for several days this week, I fully intend to have another one by the end of it anyway. (Key word being "intend," of course.) Thank you all for your feedback and support and just being wonderful in general!

(bits of the updated summary stolen shamelessly from Moscow Watcher @ LJ's lovely rec and summary of this fic! Thank you for both!) :)

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She wakes up in the morning to an emphatic note from Spike on the cereal box that she’d “better eat right today” and instructions to take out the plate in the fridge. He must have realized later in the night- much, much later, after she’d finally fallen asleep- that she hadn’t had any meals during their trip and come back to make sure that she made up for it, and it’s such a sweet gesture that she heats up his blackened omelet and wolfs down as much of the edible bits of it that she can. 

Nutritious breakfast or not, she’s still stumbling into tables and forgetting orders all morning, trying desperately with more caffeine than she’s consumed in a long time to keep her eyes open long enough to get through work. Calling in sick the day before makes the perfect cover, at least, and she's able to use her presumed illness as an excuse to Josh for her utter exhaustion. Leanne isn't nearly as convinced, making sly comments about what she must've been doing with the blond hottie to wear herself out so completely, and even Tina is grinning and teasing by midday. 

She finally snaps during the slow afternoon hours. "We're not dating, okay? We had to go somewhere upstate and got back late. That's all. No hot monkey sex or- I don't know what you're thinking, a rave? None of it."

"Okay! Jeez, Buffy, overreact much?" Leanne rolls her eyes and prances off to go flirt with the gay couple at the corner table, her earlier interest as quickly forgotten as it had come.

Buffy swallows her frustration and focuses on rubbing down the table. Leanne's just being herself, and it's not the other girl's fault that Buffy's thoughts have the slayer so unnerved. 

She wonders how Faith is doing, if Leah's in much pain. If Satsu and Kennedy have put together the pieces and figured out what's causing the slayer-virus. If Willow knows anything yet. If Spike...

Right now, she wants nothing more than to lose herself in Spike, to have him patrolling at her side and assuring her that they'd beat this thing. But that would involve telling him what she suspects, and she can't. She's certain that it would tear her apart to admit it to him, and she can't afford to be weak right now. She needs her strength more than ever. 

So an hour before sunset, she leaves a hurried note for Spike and heads over Xander and Dawn's apartment. It won’t take Spike long to find her, she knows, but she needs a buffer or she’ll spill everything to Spike in moments. 

That’s the problem when all your friends move on and only your…Spike…is around. There’s nowhere to hide from those knowing eyes anymore.

--

Xander’s eyebrows shoot up when he opens the door. “Buffy! I didn’t know that you were planning on coming over tonight.” 

She blinks at him. “Not that it isn’t swell to see you here again,” he adds hastily. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Dawnie’s been worrying about you.” He stumbles over the words, frowning. “You can take care of yourself, of course, but we’ve missed you, and…”

Something is stirring inside of her, emotions she’s kept tamped down for a day now- or a year, if she’s completely honest. There are some things that even her shared history with Spike doesn’t really touch, things that she doesn’t dwell on when he’s around because it all feels so distant from their relationship. But standing here with Xander, it’s impossible for those feelings not to bubble up. “I went to Giles’s house yesterday,” she blurts out.

Xander’s eyes widen and he steps aside silently, closing the door as she enters the room. They’re both on the couch immediately, she wrapped in his embrace and gulping in air with loud, audible choking sounds. “It’s not…I’m not…” She tries needlessly to say something, anything that might stop the imminent breakdown she’s been so determined to avoid, but it’s too late, now that the floodgates are open, and Xander’s whispered words of comfort can’t hold her back anymore. 

She doesn’t cry, exactly, just shakes and gasps and buries her face in Xander’s shoulder as he tightens his grip around her, and when the sobs have finally passed, they’re both staring at each other with desolation. “What…how does it look?” Xander whispers. “The same?”

She nods woodenly. “Ang- Faith keeps it up.” Xander is possibly the only person out there who cares less for hearing about Angel than Spike- and even Spike isn’t as opposed to Angel discussion as he’d once been- and she isn’t going to bring him up now. Not during this discussion. “It’s like…it’s so Giles.” She laughs shakily. “Books everywhere, piled up on the tables and the shelves, homey without being too crowded, and I think I smelled tea boiling in the kitchen.”

Xander takes in a sharp breath. “God, Buffy…”

“And Faith’s dying.” She can’t stop talking. Why can’t she stop talking? “Not just Faith. Other slayers. There’s this disease, I don’t know what, but it’s already killed Simone and Faith’s getting worse and worse. And I think it’s from me, Xander. I think I’m the one who’s done this to her.”

She lets out a frustrated whimper, rubbing the heel of her hand against wet eyes. “Willow thinks it’s the scythe that’s doing this. Because I broke it destroying the seed. And since doing that got rid of magic, there’s no way for us to…” There’s nothing. It’s worse than ever before, because even with deadlines and imminent death, there had always been magic to fall back on. Willow had always been able to do a spell. Giles had always found the perfect one. Buffy had gone into battle against the tangible, and Willow had fought the mystical.

And what do they have to war against science, against virus and disease? Her head is aching at the hopelessness of the situation, memories of stolen glimpses into hospital rooms and her mother’s dead eyes staring into nowhere seeping into her thoughts even now. The events of last year have left them all helpless to respond, and now she can only pull away from Xander and murmur blankly, “I really fucked everything up, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t-“

“I did.” She swallows. “I gave…I gave Twilight an in. Unleashed it on the world because…well, I don’t know why I did it. I don’t even understand what I was- I loved Angel, but I was furious with him when he pulled that mask off. He’d been killing my girls. I wasn’t going to listen to his reasoning! And then there was that glow, and then…”

“You fucked everything up?” Xander suggests dryly, reaching over to snatch a chocolate chip cookie from a plate on his coffee table and passing it to her. 

She ignores it. “That started it. Not some demon or evil or even a bunch of idiot nerds. Me. I screwed up, I had to destroy the seed, I couldn’t save…save Giles, and now I can’t save these girls and I’ve eliminated their only way out from the world.” Her eyes fall shut as she slumps against the couch again. “Who needs the Big Bad when you’ve got the slayer to wipe out the good guys?”

“Hey.” Xander slides an arm around her again, firm and supportive. “You know I love you, right?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “You’re basically my best friend and my sister and my personal idol all wrapped up into one lethal blonde package.” She opens her eyes long enough to see him flash her a grin that fades into earnestness almost immediately. “And yeah, this is bad. This is probably the most badness we’ve had since Twilight- and I’m talking those god-awful books, not the vampire with a mask,” he cracks, and she can’t stop her lips from curling upwards into a smirk. “But it’s not the world in danger, which is always a plus, and no matter what you say, you can do this.” 

He squeezes her arm. “You never stop trying. You never give up. You can be caught in space with some crackpot power who wants to give you eternal happiness and a spanking new world and you’ll still come back to fight for us.” She closes her eyes, willing him to stop and let her hate herself, but this is Xander, and the day he lets that happen is the day that there’s no world to save. “You’re pretty much a superhero, Buff. You can do anything- you have done anything- and I have faith in you.” He smiles sheepishly. “And we’ll help, too, if we can. We might not be your sidekicks numero uno anymore, but Dawn’s still good with the research and I know a great donut shop two blocks down.”

She laughs at that, tears clouding her vision as she leans into his shoulder affectionately. “You know you’ve always been more than that, right?”

“I saved the world once,” he agrees immediately. “Of course, that was by getting thrown around by my evil Sith Lord of a best friend, but I do what I can.”

“Stick with what you know best,” Spike’s voice drawls from behind them, and Buffy starts and turns to the side of the couch by the fire escape, where he’s watching them unsmilingly. “Me, I like the jelly donuts. Round and puffy with that nummy red goo inside.”

Xander blinks. “Did your boytoy just call me a donut?”

“Spike.” She can’t hide her annoyance from him, and it seeps into her tone as she glares at him. There are few times in the past year when she’s genuinely wanted him away, and she can tell that he’s taken aback by this now. “What are you doing here?”

He stares at her. “Patrol? We’re picking up pizza on the way because I know you haven’t eaten anything filling since breakfast, and why are you here, anyway?”

“Dinner and a show,” Xander cracks, and Buffy turns to send him a glare of his own. He shrugs. “Buffy’s my friend, Evil Dead. She can go wherever she wants.”

“Not without telling me!” Spike scowls. “We have a system. And we need to go before any vampires supposed to rise tonight pop up and go a-killin’. That alright with you, Pudgy?”

Buffy glances back and forth between the two men, guilt rising at the tension on both their faces. It isn’t Spike’s fault that she can’t open up to him about this. And it isn’t Xander’s that she’d decided to use him as her buffer. “Guys…”

Xander holds up a hand. “Hey, I’m spoken for. No macho pissing contest for me.” He raises an eyebrow at Spike. “Come in. Take your prize. Get her one of those cheese stuffed pretzels that she loves but won’t admit she wants because she thinks she looks piggish when she’s eating them. Go patrolling, watch TV, make with the vampire sex…whatever.” He makes an obligatory grimace. “Make Buffy happy, kay?”

“Yeah.” Spike doesn’t step into the apartment, not even after Xander’s impromptu invitation. “You coming?” He pauses, stares silently at her, then turns to the stairs of the fire escape without so much as a farewell. 

Xander wrinkles his brow. “What’s gotten him all cranky?” 

“I should go,” Buffy murmurs, standing. “Sorry I went all…” She gestures to what she can now see in the mirror is her splotchy red face.

“Hey.” Xander pats her shoulder. “I’m your friend. I’m supposed to be here when you need to talk. And I don’t think I’ve been doing that as often as I should since you moved out.” He brushes damp bangs back behind her ears. “I miss you.”

It’s suddenly hard to get the words out. “I miss you, too.” She hugs him hard, so tightly that he’s choking good-naturedly for air, and things feel a little more all right than they’ve been in a while. “Thank you.”

He shrugs, embarrassed. “It’s all I can do. You save the world, I give pep talks.” Her eyes are shining at him, and he ducks his head. “Go. Punch Spike out of his hissy fit, or whatever foreplay is for you two. Not that I want to know!” he adds hastily as she heads for the window.

She’s still grinning when she makes her way up to the roof, but her expression falters when she sees Spike standing stonily in front of his ship, his eyes cold and his mouth set. “H-Hi. Sorry I didn’t tell you-“ She narrows her eyes, remembering herself. “But you’re not in charge of my comings and goings! I don’t need to leave a note whenever I go off to visit my sister!”

“Dawn wasn’t there,” Spike informs her. 

“I didn’t know that!”

“Didn’t you?”

She doesn’t know where he’s going with this, but it’s pissing her off. “No! And stop staring at me like that!”

“Like what?”

“Like you- like you hate me!” The words burst out of her and she can’t take them back, so she settles instead for steeling her features and glowering fiercely at him.

He softens immediately. “I don’t hate you, love. I was worried. You weren’t yourself yesterday. And then you were missing.” A shadow draws a pall over his face. “And you’ve been crying.” His fingers move to mirror Xander’s actions moments before, and she shivers under his gentle touch. “What’s wrong, pet?”

She can’t say. He can’t know how close she’s been to shattering- how close she still is, even after Xander’s profession of devotion- and how she may be the reason they’re going to lose Faith. But she’s selfish and needy and can’t push him away, so she closes her eyes and enjoys the sensation of his fingers ghosting against her cheek, his cool breath grazing her forehead, his body mere inches from hers.

When he tenses against her, she nearly breaks down again. “Right. Xander talked you through it, yeah?” He says the name with loathing she hasn’t heard in years, and she recoils instinctively.

He takes it as rejection, as she’d feared he would. “C’mon. Pizza, or one of those pretzels you apparently adore. S’getting late.”

He jerks toward the entrance to the ship and she tries to grasp his hand in silent response, but his fingers are stiff and immobile against her own, and they lurch into the ship unsteadily, together and miles distant all at once.