Somehow, Dawn managed to stay quiet all the way back to the hotel, though she was clearly fuming. Spike was fuming as well; Buffy had seen that look far too many times to think it was anything else.

She'd screwed up and she knew it. All the efforts she'd made to be open and honest with her sister and her lover and she'd gone and screwed it up to get Willow to stop crying. Just brilliant.

Spike lead the way, taking them all up to the room he and Buffy were sharing. No sooner had the door closed behind them than Dawn said, "I don't believe you did that. You told Willow she could come live with us? Don't you know what she's like when she's depressed? She gets needy and wants to skip all the work to get through the grief. Remember the Tabula Rasa spell and her will spell that had you and Spike engaged?"

"I was going to do everything I could to make sure she didn't actually come. I talked to Giles and he said he would find her somewhere else, which he did. It's not a problem."

"I think Dawn's point is that you made a major decision that would have affected all of us with discussing it with us first," Spike said quietly. The duster was off, draped over the the back of the couch in the sitting area.

"That's right," Dawn said. "Remember Andrew? You just sprung him on me one day. Spike...okay, I can understand that one because I would not have wanted to hear that news over the phone. But this is Willow; you know that once she moved in, she wasn't going to move out."

"That's a little harsh." Buffy could feel herself growing defensive and she didn't like it.

Dawn stood her ground. "Maybe. But I have to ask that if you were going to let Willow stay with us in Rome, do you have any idea how long she was going to hang around? She was talking like it would have been a transfer, which sounds like it was not going to be a flying visit. Buffy, you said we weren't going to do this anymore. We were going to talk to each other."

Buffy didn't know how to respond. She felt like she was falling into old patterns and she didn't know how to stop it. Using another old pattern, she decided to avoid responding by turning to Spike who had been sitting silently on the couch during all of this. "Do you want to say anything?"

He looked up at her with guarded eyes. "I think I'll wait until you and Dawn have finished."

She knew that tone and it promised that there would be very little about this evening that would be either peaceful or romantic. Sighing, she closed her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I screwed up. I should have spoken with you before I promised Willow she could come stay with us...especially when she's in a state like that. It's just that I couldn't see any other way to shut her up and I told Giles that I wanted to find someplace else for her to be assigned. I had hoped we'd be able to settle this without you guys finding out."

There was deadly silence following this and after a minute Buffy opened her eyes to find Dawn still looking annoyed, though there was the slightest hint she was thawing. "Well, if she's not actually coming, I suppose I can forgive you. But will you think next time?"

Buffy promised that she would and was relieved when Dawn gave her a hug before bidding both her and Spike goodnight. Yes, she'd screwed up, but at least things weren't hideously damanged betweetn her and her sister.

Spike was another issue.

"What would you have done if Giles hadn't been able to convince Willow to take another posting?" Spike asked once Dawn was gone.

"Giles would have insisted she go. He doesn't think you and I need the complication of having Willow with us right now."

Spike looked a touch surprised. "Remind me to thank him. You didn't answer my question, though. What would you have done if she insisted on coming to Rome? Would you have told her no or presented us with a done deal?"

When she didn't answer, he said. "You would have let her come, because you promised, wouldn't you?"

"Spike, I think you're over-reacting."

"Am I? You want to keep the fact we're together secret for three months because you're afraid your friends are going to react badly and try to break us up -- and then you consider letting one of them move in."

There was a touch of bitterness to his words she hadn't expected. "It's not like we don't have enough space; we have that whole damn palazzo so it's not like she'd be living on top of us. You don't object to having the slayers live with us."

"That's different. They give us our space."

"And you don't think Willow would?" Buffy started to pace. "I forgot that you don't like my friends."

"I don't like Harris; Red's passable and Giles is a reasonably upright fellow. Doesn't mean I want either one of them bunking with us -- especially when Willow's grieving. I've seen what happens under those circumstances before, remember? And it's not just me; you hurt Dawn."

"I don't understand..."

Spike threw up his hands. "Fine. Dawn feels that sometimes you put her friends before her a little too much, that their needs come first. For the record, I've felt that way too sometimes."

"I do not. I told Xander that I was with you and we weren't going to break up just because he didn't like it."

"And you don't know how glad that makes me. But the fact remains that you've shown a tendency to do this and I think Dawn is worried you're doing it again. Personally, I can understand why she'd be upset over you letting Andrew kip on your couch while you were playing kissy-face with the Immortal."

"Okay, I'll admit that wasn't the brightest of ideas, but I was..."

Buffy stopped in mid-pace and turned back. "What did you say?"

He was a terrible liar and always had been and she saw the "oh, shit" that flashed across his face which announced in big neon letters he'd said something he hadn't meant to. "How did you know about the Immortal? I know I haven't said anything and Dawn keeps acting like she wants to pretend it never happened."

"Umm..."

"You wanted honesty, Spike. That goes both ways."

For a long moment, the two of them just looked at each other...then Spike turned his head away, mumbling, "angelhadsomeonewatchingyouandwewenttorome"

"Angel did what?" Now Buffy could feel herself start to get annoyed. It didn't help when Spike mumbled again, something about a head. "Spike, I swear, if you don't just tell me..."

"Angel and I had to go to Rome to retrieve some damn demon head and when we heard you were with the Immortal, we tried to rescue you."

A quick calculation told her this had happened when they were still doing the Wolfram & Hart thing...which meant there was likely more to the story than Spike was admitting. "How did you know I was dating the Immortal? I certainly wasn't calling Angel to give him updates on my social life."

Now Spike looked really uncomfortable. "He, ah, he was having you watched and his guy called in..."

Buffy threw up her hands. "I am so going to stake him. God, he pulled this shit when I started dating Riley. He's the one who left me, giving me all these speeches about how I didn't need to be involved in this freak show and should be living a normal life..."

"Freak show?"

Spike was off the couch now. "Angel called your relationship a 'freak show'? Well, that explains a lot."

His tone was growing aggressive, showing his own annoyance and she had to wonder why...until her mind flashed back to a wrecked house and probably the worst morning after she'd ever had save for Parker. "Yes, I was channeling my Angel issues, Spike. I was pretty freaked out and you'd just said that stupid line about the only thing better than killing a slayer. Can we get back to the point, which is that you were apparently in Rome trying to separate me from the guy I was dating."

"The Immortal isn't just a 'guy'; he's this horrible fiend. You don't know how bad he is, Buffy; you haven't been captured and chained by him, had him threaten you if you didn't leave Rome and come home to find he's shagged your women so thoroughly that they won't even look at you for a week..."

There was another one of those "oh, shit" expressions flashing across his face. "You mean he slept with Darla and Drusilla? Oh, god, I don't think I can deal with this."

"Do you see why we were so worried? Why we felt we needed to rescue you?"

"I did not need rescuing! I was moving on because I thought you were dead and Angel and I were absolutely over. It was a fling, Spike. It lasted about two months and then, well, he just took off and I didn't hear from him again. Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"What was I going to do? Hello, Buffy. I'm not dead and I was too frightened to call you because I was afraid you wouldn't want me, which it looks like you didn't because you were off shagging someone who's made my life miserable on more than one occasion and clearly I was so important to you that Andrew felt he had to tell you I was in your apartment several times desperately trying to see you. No, thanks. No sense in looking like a bigger idiot than I already was."

He stalked away to the room's mini-bar and reached in to grab one of the small liquor bottles. After staring at it for a moment, he shoved it back in, but didn't turn back to her, his body stiff. It was Atlanta and New Orleans all over again, talking past one another and opening old wounds when they didn't mean to...and Buffy didn't know how to heal the breach. She took a hesitant step forward, then drew back. What had she told Willow? Mountains of crap.

She resented that he hadn't called or let her know he was alive; she'd resented it from the moment she'd first stared at him across that demon corpse in an alley that looked pretty much like every other alley she'd ever fought in...only this one had her former and supposedly dead lover. When she'd taken the leap and asked him to come to Rome, she'd shoved that resentment down, ready to embrace the now and all the promises it offered. Until this moment, she hadn't realized it was still simmering beneath the surface...or that it was apparently matched by Spike's own resentments.

Feeling the wonderful little bubble they'd built for themselves start to crack, Buffy didn't say a word but headed into the bedroom. Mechanically, she started getting ready for bed, using the actions to keep her mind from thinking too deeply. She didn't want to be here; she wanted to be back in Rome, patrolling or redecorating the rooms that were going to be theirs once the renovation work on the old palazzo that was now Slayer Central was done. She wanted to assemble that great carved bed Spike and Dawn had found in an antique shop that was too big for the room they currently occupied and curl up in it next to him.

Instead, she finished brushing her hair and slid under the covers, lying there silently while the thoughts clamored for attention, not knowing if she'd be able to get any sleep that night. After what seemed like forever -- but was only twenty minutes by the clock -- she heard Spike come in, stripping his clothes off and dropping them on the floor to form the inevitable pile. The bed shifted with his weight as he got in and reached over her to turn off the bedside lamp. She knew she wasn't fooling him that she was asleep; there were all the vampire-enhanced senses that let him sense the changes in her heartbeat and breathing. He didn't say anything, though; just turned out the light and settled down. After a minute, his hand reached out to tentatively touch her arm as if seeking permission. She didn't pull away and he settled into his usual sleeping position, spooned about her. For a moment she wondered if she'd be able to stand this, until he pressed a kiss on the top of her head.

On impulse, she turned and let her body say what she couldn't find the words for. It was sad, though, and when they finally drifted to sleep, nothing had really been healed.

On to Part Nine

Back to Part Seven