***************************************

Buffy sat on the edge of the bed. Instead of the tears Dawn expected her eyes were dry and clear, fixed beyond the darkened room. Sitting down next to her, Dawn handed her the mug. Buffy accepted and took a sip, then turned her attention again on the faintly cracked window. The night was humid and heavy with the promise of rain.

They remained in not-awkward silence for a while, the two solitary Summers sisters. Spike's leavings, Dawn thought.

Buffy didn't rush to explain, didn't hide her face or send Dawn away with harsh scared words. She just sat there, sipping her tea with a kind of rueful poise that unnerved Dawn. She kept waiting for the explosion, the scene. Time passed and there was nothing. It was starting to get eerie.

"Buffy? Are you, um...okay?"

Buffy finally dragged her gaze from wherever and graced her with a tranquil smile. Dawn shifted uncomfortably. Spike had told her, once, of Buffy's whacked-out coma head trip when Glory took Dawn. Despite what she suspected were Spike's healthy embellishments to the tale, Dawn hadn't been anything more than mildly intrigued; she pretty much only knew Badass Buffy and the idea of her being both sedentary and substantially bummed over her sister's kidnapping was kinda neat, but just about impossible to really picture.

Since they'd arrived in Cleveland (since the day they'd watched Sunnydale crumble) Badass Buffy had disappeared, and Dawn was actually starting to miss her. Spike's return had conjured Weepy Buffy, who was a total downer, no question. But Contemplative, Zen-calm, Wise Woman Buffy was entirely new, and she was seriously freaking Dawn out. "Buffy?" Dawn waved a hand in front of her face. "Are you in there?" Her sister set the tea on the floor at her feet.

"I think," said Buffy, "that I've been going about this all wrong."

***************************************

He was walking down Carnegie Avenue, wishing he'd not chain-smoked his way through his last pack of cigarettes the night before, when suddenly they were beside him. Linking an arm in each of his, all gay and giggling, like he was escorting them to a bloody debutante ball.

"The hell?"

They only laughed some more and cooed almost absent-minded hellos up to him. Carried on talking about - Johnny Depp?

"I never thought eyeliner on a guy would be sexy," Dawn was saying, while Buffy nodded sagely and told her, "You have to see pictures of Billy Idol when he was young -"

"Stop!" Spike barked. And then those two open, questioning faces tilted up to his. For a second his head swam.

"Spike has some Billy Idol issues," Buffy informed Dawn in a conspiratorial tone, and he recovered himself.

He bestowed on Buffy the nastiest sneer in his repertoire. "Mary Kate." He turned the sneer on Dawn. "Ashley. Why don't you both just fuck right off?"

Dawn's temper flared at that, he could see, but instead of letting comment fly she shut her mouth with a snap and smiled. It was such an unexpected thing to witness, and once it would have charmed him. Now he simply couldn't fathom it.

"Where are we going?" Dawn wanted to know, as if he hadn't spoken. He gritted his teeth.

"I'm going on my way, and I don't much care where you two are headed. Just make sure it's in the opposite direction."

That, inexplicably, earned him humoring smiles. "Have you eaten?" Buffy asked, and now he was being steered into a deli that had appeared on the corner. He supposed there was a chance it had been there before, but between the Hellmouth and the unfamiliar creatures beside him he wasn't counting on it. He knew his girls well enough to realize that they were on their very best, company's-here behavior, not that he'd ever before been its recipient. And Spike couldn't help but feel that he was being played.

They'd bustled up to the counter and were placing detailed orders when he wrenched out of their grasp. "What, you think I'm just going to sit down and have a meal with you two?"

Dawn shrugged. "Why not?"

He opened his mouth to speak. Buffy blinked up at him innocently. "Spike, it's not like you hate us. Do you?"

He cocked his head, astonished and grudgingly impressed. Who's a clever girl?

It was a calculated risk. To admit hatred was to admit the remnants of love. The Buffy he'd once known wouldn't have puzzled that out, wouldn't have even bothered. He'd adored her and all her foibles but the girl was utterly unintuitive in matters of the human heart. Motivation, secret resentments, jealousy and longing - all that was Spike's dominion.

No matter. Whatever she had in mind, she'd lose interest soon enough. She wasn't built for this, this relentless rejection, and she certainly wasn't built for the coming-back-for-more. That was what got you, in the end: when you didn't disgust the other person near half as much as you disgusted yourself. She wouldn't debase herself like that; not for long, not for him.

Of course, she hardly seemed debased now. Chattering with Dawn, finally eating like he knew she hadn't been. Hadn't he felt her fragile flesh under his questing fingers, just hours ago? It occurred to him that neither of them looked how he'd left them last, Buffy in her battered state and Dawn hurling hot accusation.

Out of habit he'd emptied his pockets out onto the table. Dawn grabbed up his cell phone eagerly. "Is this yours?"

"Yes. Now quit messing around, you'll break it." But she kept pressing buttons and lights, happily occupied for the time being. He recalled unbidden the child he'd once entertained in his crypt. Irked, he grabbed the phone out of her hands. As he did, though, their fingers brushed, and in an instant her wide unblinking gaze was fixed on him.

"Spike," she asked. "Do you remember when we first met?"

He prowled the Summers living room while Buffy and sweet mum duked it out in the kitchen. A fine, homey place, he decided with detached approval. He would have liked to come back some time, if-

Noise cast his attention to the stairs. A little girl stood there, long brown hair falling haphazard over the collar of an alarmingly patterned pajama top. She eyed him with unabashed interest.

He went to the foot of the stair and stood, watching, as she descended. She stopped on the third step, so that they were at eye level. He stared at her, transfixed. She stared back.

Ten minutes later that was how Buffy found them, heads cocked in the same direction, gazes fastened to one another and never wavering. Spike's lips were quirked with the beginnings of a smile, and Dawn also appeared to like what she saw.

"What are you doing?" Buffy demanded. "Get away from her!"

He didn't look away, but the smile crept further along his face. "A moment, Slayer," he replied. "We're havin' a conversation." And amazingly Buffy did step back, receding into the hallway, until at length Dawn and Spike seemed to come to an understanding. Spike nodded, and Dawn flashed her brilliant white teeth, and laughed as she scampered back upstairs.

He shoved the cell phone back in his pocket and stared lazily out at the anxious midday traffic. "Nope," he said.

He didn't need to look at her to sense her disappointment, but of course she wouldn't give up. "What's it like being human?" she pestered.

Back in L.A., he thought, he'd be spending his time taking out collagen-enhanced vamps and rifling through the basement records at Wolfram & Hart. He'd bitched to Angel about needing more action but those pursuits seemed plenty appealing now.

"Fine," he told her. He busied himself with the Philly cheese steak they'd put in front of him.

"Just 'fine'? Come on, tell me. Is sex different?"

Buffy had the dignity to blush at that, and Spike froze with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. Seconds ticked by, the food before him turned to ashes on his tongue as he forced himself to answer. "Why? You offering?"

"Oh, ew, Spike! A thousand times ew. I was just thinking, with body heat and all..."

Buffy jumped in then, and distracted her with a rather pointed question about one of the nightspots Dawn had been known to frequent. He guessed Buffy didn't get out much, not after her wide-eyed reaction last night. Which didn't make sense because she finally had the chance to be a girl again, instead of a hollow-eyed warrior.

And so he found himself seated at a cramped table - outside, no less - while they jabbered on and ignored his seething and sulking and overall best Friday-night karaoke impression of Angelus. After lunch they surprised him again when they tossed bills on the table for a tip, dropped kisses on his cheek, and left. Just like that. Didn't try to bully their way back to his place or enlist him in some scheme even more ludicrous than the one they were currently engaged in. He sat there, unaccountably antsy, for minutes before cursing himself and getting back to work.

Five hours, three staked vampires and one useless fact-finding expedition later, he'd almost convinced himself it had been a fluke. Some bizarre rip in the space-time continuum that put those two laughing girls in his reluctant orbit. Except they promptly turned up again.

They ambushed him as he left the apartment to walk Emma. He was stunned for the moment, while they fluttered around him like starved sparrows. He felt so strange, the way he had when they'd gazed up at him earlier. Lovely in their bones, he thought, and couldn't imagine why. He shook it off.

Dawn tugged on the leash. "Can we walk her?"

"No," he snapped. "She weighs more than both of you. Put together." He looked for somewhere to run, to escape these lunatics except there wasn't anywhere to go. He knew as well as they did that he couldn't keep them from walking down the bloody street with him.

"She likes us," Dawn argued. Buffy reached over and gave Emma a few affectionate pats. "You did say she was friendly," she reminded Spike, and he felt a fool for bickering with them over a mutt. He suspected, too, that protesting would only amuse them more.

"Fine, then," he grumbled. "Let's get a move on. Got plans later." He walked ahead quickly so he didn't have to see them exchange triumphant glances.

They were happy to linger behind him, exclaiming over the dog - who was likely putting on quite a show with all this undivided attention, Spike thought drily - only occasionally calling up questions that he mostly ignored. Nearly stopped him in his tracks, though, when Buffy inquired politely if he was seeing anyone. Not like he could fault her, of course, for finally getting the message.

He turned back and mustered a careless grin. "Several." Buffy just smiled back at him pleasantly and resumed her conversation with Dawn. When they had done a circuit of the block and were back at his building, they each kissed him on the cheek and then took their leave.

And he couldn't say why he was so sure he'd been had.

***************************************

Dawn flopped down on the couch. "This is, like, way hard."

Buffy thought about turning on the lights in the apartment, but instead joined her sister. "We knew it would be," she said, but Wise Woman sounded a little worn around the edges.

"Explain our brilliant Plan to me again? Because I kind of lost the plot after the three zillionth evil-Spike-stare-of-death."

Buffy tilted her head back to rest against the cushions. "We have to love Spike, without wanting -" she frowned, correcting herself, "without expecting anything in return."

Dawn sniffed. "Well, I don't expect shit from him so that's not a problem."

"Dawn..."

"Seriously, Buffy. This is not cool with anything I read in my Feminist Theory class."

Buffy worried her bottom lip. "I know. I can't even articulate it to myself, half the time. But he's done this for us, hasn't he? For you, that summer I was gone. And then for me, after I came back. I mean, I wasn't exactly...myself, then."

"No kidding." Dawn rolled her eyes. "'Oooh, I'm alive and it's sooooo sad! Where is my peasant blouse of despair? I'll just go screw Spike's brains out for the next eight hours.'"

Buffy grimaced. "Thanks for the refresher course. That's my point, though." She twisted around to face Dawn, one hand propped underneath her chin. "Maybe we're not his world anymore. Maybe that's too much to ask, now." Buffy thought back to her conversation with Angel; thought back to the nightly speeches she'd delivered to her makeshift ghost-Spike. "But we're his family."

Dawn appeared to mull that over. "Family," she repeated softly. "I get that." Buffy took her hand and squeezed. They fell asleep there.

Part 9: American Girls

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