Him

Xander walks into his apartment, talking fast.

"You're gonnna live in the small room over there. It may look like a closet, it's a room now." He turns; Buffy and Dawn come into the apartment, while Spike stands outside in the hallway. Xander goes on. "You stay away from my food, I get the first shower in the morning, and if I use up all the hot water, that's just your tough noogies." He turns to Buffy. "And I hate this plan." Immediately back to Spike, still outside the threshold. "Are you keeping up, or do you need some kind of English-to-constant-pain-in-my-ass translation?"

Spike starts to say something, maybe thinks better of it, doesn't speak.

Buffy looks at Xander, eyes big. "Invitation?" she reminds softly, maybe not wanting Spike to hear the prompting. But Xander ignores her.

"Is there something more emphatic than hate? Can I revile the plan?"

Buffy gives him a patiently exasperated look and lifts a shoulder. Could you get with it, here, please?

Eye roll from Xander. "Fine. I invite you in..."

And presto, no barrier. Spike steps through the door with a nod of thanks.

But Xander can't leave it at that, and he mutters under his breath as Spike steps in, "...nimrod."

"I don't want your sodding food anyway," Spike says as he walks past Xander. He's together, with the Slicked-Back Hair of Sanity. He's wearing black.

Xander ignores Spike. "I just don't understand when his problems became your problems," he says to Buffy, lowering his voice. " More specifically, mine."

"The school basement is making him crazy," Buffy says. She's lowered her voice, too, much good though it's doing; Spike can still hear them. "We can't just leave him there." She's being patient with Xander; they've obviously gone over this several times already.

"Why not?" Xander says. "School basement guy is better than stalking Buffy guy."

Spike, standing off alone and watching the whole exchange, looks down. Tiny flare of guilt, but it's something he's so used to he can push it back without thinking.

"It's true," Dawn says, agreeing with Xander. She sounds worried. "You guys aren't... you guys aren't starting up again with the whole..."

"=No=," Buffy says firmly. "A thousand gallons of no." Her expression softens. "It's just, things are different now," she says, glancing over her shoulder at Spike. "He has a soul." It makes a difference to her.

But not to Xander. "I'm sure that'll be a real comfort when he soullfully attacks you again," he says, and he seems to be trying not to be excessively snarky about it.

"Yeah," Dawn says, "what does that mean exactly, that Spike is all soul-having?" She's nervous, still a little worried, but perhaps she wants Buffy to tell her it'll be all right now that Spike has a soul.

"I don't know," Buffy says. She's still trying to figure that out... "But he's been through a lot, and nobody's attacking m..." She gasps as Spike, having had enough, comes over and catches hold of her arm.

"Buffy..." He lets go as soon as she jumps, looks down. "Sorry."

"No," Buffy says, maybe a little embarrassed to be so jumpy, maybe trying to make him feel better. "It's me, I just..."

"I'll go," Spike says, not looking directly at her for more than a fraction of a second. "This can't work." Xander smiles. That's just peachy with him.

But Buffy isn't having that. She looks up at Spike, and this is White Buffy from Selfless, gentle and concerned. "It will," she says softly. Perhaps she senses that he's not agreeing with her, because she goes on, "It already is, okay?" If Xander and Dawn weren't there, she might put her hand on his arm. "You know, you've been out of the basement for half an hour, and you've already stopped talking to invisible people."

"Bollocks."

"Well, okay," Buffy says, trying to make light of it, "so there was that one incident in the car, but..."

Spike interrupts her. "No, bollocks to the whole thing," he says. He's not sure she's really concerned about him; maybe this is just pity. " I don't need your mollycoddling." Still not looking at her for more than a split second at a time.

"It's not coddling," Buffy says. Reasurring him. And then she remembers that Dawn and Xander are listening. She looks away from Spike, around the room. "Now...go to your closet." It's her typical you-caught-me-but-I'm-pretending-you-didn't-see-anything reaction.

Buffy and Dawn are talking, sitting on the bleachers at the football field as practice is going on. Dawn wants to know why Buffy is helping Spike. "You said it's not out of pity," Dawn says, and wants to know what it is, exactly. Buffy hesitates.

"Sometimes I think I can't stand him," she says, clearly reluctant to answer this, "and sometimes..." She trails off, and Dawn goes on, as though finishing the sentence for her.

"You love him?"

"No," Buffy says, without hesitation. "I...I feel for him," she goes on.

"Feel what, exactly?" Dawn wants to know.

Buffy starts to evade that one, but Dawn says she's just trying to understand. "You say Spike disgusts you, but you two are doing it like bunnies. Spike says he'd die for you, but then he tries to rape you."

This bothers Buffy. "Dawn," she says, "for the record, Spike knew how wrong it was. That's why he went away."

"But...to get a soul? Like that would make him a better man?" Clearly the whole Angel hoo-ha has faded from her memory... She points out that Xander had a soul when he left Anya at the altar.

Buffy doesn't know how to come back to that, and she has to go anyway.

In the Bronze, Buffy, Xander and Willow are sitting at a table, talking. Xander says that Spike is more cogent, and wants to know if the soul means he ought to be picking up his own wet towels. Willow says maybe it means he'll feel bad about leaving them there. And then into the Discovering Dawn scene.

Xander and Spike are walking up the pavement to Lance's house. Xander isn't too snarky with Spike here; he goes over the plan and warns Spike to watch Lance for signs of weirdness. In the house, they're sitting on the sofa, listening to Lance. Spike, for no apparent reason, gets up and begins to wander. He ends up in a corner, next to a shelf with a bunch of white ceramic angels. One by one, he turns the angels' faces away from him. He moves away from the shelf and notices pictures of Lance and his brother on the mantel, both wearing the same letter jacket. He points this out. When Lance tells them that it's been passed down from his dad to him to his brother, Xander twigs to what's going on and hustles Spike out of there.

Principal Hottie is at his desk, collar unbuttoned, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up (er, is it -hot- in here all of a sudden???), working on paperwork. He's absorbed, and doesn't see Buffy come up to the window with a LAW. She points it at Wood, but Spike rushes up to her, snatches the weapon, runs away. After a moment, he comes back the other way, with Buffy clinging to his back. She drops off, chases him back the way they came, then back the other way again. Principal Hottie looks up, trying to figure out if he heard something.

Spike runs from Buffy, carrying the LAW, and she chases him to Xander's car. He stops, cradling the huge weapon, but doesn't speak. Willow is sitting on the ground, casting a locator spell to find Dawn.

Xander's car screeches to a halt at the railroad tracks, and all four of the Scoobies pile out. Buffy and Willow are arguing over RJ, and Xander points out Dawn, lying with her head on the tracks and the train coming. Buffy takes off to rescue Dawn, and the others watch.

Xander and Spike are skulking along the street in downtown Sunnydale. They see RJ with the injured cheerleader, walking along. Xander checks with Spike to make sure that he knows what the plan is, then the two of them dash toward RJ and the girl. Xander grabs RJ, Spike pulls off the jacket, and the pelt off down the street, leaving RJ and the girl standing there with their mouths hanging open.

Apparently Xander drops Spike off back at his apartment before they take Dawn home, because he's not in the final scene.

Dori

TOP