Title:  Pillow Talk

Author:  Miss Murchison

Rating:  Moving deeper into R territory.

Disclaimer:  All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc.  Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Notes:  A Spuffy story that starts in early Season 6 before deviating from canon.   A slight change in circumstances, a different decision or two, and you wind up with very different results.

Thanks: To Keswindhover and revdorothyl for the beta.

The story begins here.

Chapter 22

Buffy had to go to Willow, of course.  A sobbing witch in the hall trumps a naked vampire in the bed.  It's a friendship rule.  I'm sure it's written down somewhere.  Ignoring Spike's growled obscenities, she pulled on the first clothes that came to hand and said, "Wait here," before opening the bedroom door. 

Willow threw herself at Buffy, sobbing into her shoulder.  Buffy stiffened as Willow sniffled, "You need to make her stop."  She looked over Willow's shoulder and saw Tara coming up the stairs, carrying some empty cardboard boxes.

It was a long time before Buffy was able to fully understand what Willow's references to Lethe's Bramble.  Tara didn't want to talk about it at all, and would only discuss packing and where she was planning to stay.  Willow kept breaking off her explanations to plead with Tara, who wouldn't meet her eyes. 

Halfway through Tara's packing, Dawn came home, dropped a shapeless plastic bag by the door, and demanded explanations.  This meant the whole confused story had to start again someplace in the middle without ever having reached the beginning.  Buffy couldn't think of anything to say, and fled to the front porch with boxes and an ancient suitcase, only to feel a wave of guilt when Willow demanded to know why Buffy was helping Tara leave her. Dawn was crying and kept hugging Tara, who was trying to reassure her that they would still spend time together. 

The friend who had come to help Tara move took a half-step inside the door before retreating to wait in her car with Tara's belongings.  Buffy wished she could join her, but it felt like her duty to stay with Willow.  Dawn's sense of duty apparently followed different rules; she disappeared somewhere.  

Finally, Tara stood in the hall, a slip of paper in her hands.  "You can reach me here in an emergency," she said.  "Please don't give it to Willow."

Buffy took the paper.  "Are you sure?"  She wasn't talking about the phone number.

Tara nodded miserably.  "She took my memories, Buffy.  So that I wouldn't fight with her."

"Oh."  Buffy understood at last.  

She wasn't sure what she felt about it, though.  Over the past few days, she'd been digging through a lost-and-found box full of emotions and finding things she'd thought she'd left behind a death ago, like enthusiasm and anger and even passion.  I was wasting my time.  It's like that time I found one of my favorite boots that went missing when we moved to Sunnydale, and I was all excited, but then I couldn't find the other one.  I just had a useless half of something that has to be whole to do any good.

She looked at Tara, knowing she should show some reaction to this news, but unable to imagine what it should be.  The part of me that would know what to say or do right now is still missing.

After Tara left, Buffy forced herself to go upstairs.  She got as far as the door of the room that used to her mother's, and now used to be Willow and Tara's.  Now it was just Willow's.

This was the time when a Best Friend's Duty was to knock, hug Willow, and after a decent interval of crying-on-a-shoulder, feed her ice cream.

She stole Tara's memories.

Buffy couldn't make her hand touch the doorknob.  Feeling like the Suckiest Best Friend There Ever Was, she went into her own room.  "Spike?"

He wasn't there, of course.  Words like, "Wait here," were pretty much guaranteed to make him leave, as she'd realized even as she'd said them earlier.  I wonder why it never occurred to me to tell him to stick around when I really did want him to go.

She shut the window he'd left open behind him, and picked her pillow off the floor and put it back on the tumbled bed.  She hoped that wherever Spike was, he was keeping away from sunlight. 

She went downstairs.  There was a different kind of mess to deal with there.

A half-hour later, Buffy surveyed the scariness that was her kitchen.  She'd scraped most of the crud off the island and started the dishes in the sink because the dishwasher was broken again, but there was stuff all over the counters and she couldn't put it away because even though there wasn't enough food in the whole kitchen to make a decent meal, the cabinets seemed to be full.  A strange orange spot on the stove had resisted all her attempts to scrub it away, and she was trying not to even think about looking inside the microwave.  Better to concentrate on more pleasant things, like the stink and black slime of a Bezoar demon that was trying to swallow her.  That, she could have dealt with.  Cleaning, not so much.

Cleaning had been one of Mom's Gifts.  A Capital Letter "Gift."  

When Mom had walked into the kitchen, it had stood up and come to attention.  Cereal boxes had sealed and slipped neatly into cupboards, lids had matched themselves to containers and stowed away with their contents in a refrigerator where no fuzzy, blue life-form would dare contemplate lurkage on the back of a low shelf.  The dishwasher had obeyed Mom's touch and hummed away, producing glassware free of nasty spots and dishes without egg stain patterns.  It was like that scene from Mary Poppins, but without the craptastic music.

Ned could do it too.  Buffy had watched him at The Hill of Beans the night Nancy had offered her a job, moving quietly around them, changing the coffee shop from a crime scene back into a shiny, comfortable second home for caffeine addicts.  He could wipe the tables, mop the floor, and rearrange the chairs in the time it would take George to clean the espresso machine or Buffy to scrub one nasty pesto stain off a counter.  And he never seemed rushed.

Cleaning had seemed like a stupid Gift, once.  Once, back when Mom had been there to do it.

Buffy wished it were possible to exchange Gifts they way you exchanged gifts.  She imagined walking up to a Celestial Customer Service Counter.

"Hello.  I'd like to return this Death."

"Why? What's wrong with it?"

"Well, it kills you."

"That's what it says on the box it's supposed to do.  Can't take it back as defective when it does what it says on the box."

"Oh.  But I'm not returning it because it's defective.  You see, I got Death as a Gift, and I already had two.  I just want to exchange it for something I really need.  Happiness would be best, but if that's out of stock, I'll take Cleaning instead."

Buffy gazed at the wreck of the kitchen, as helpless as Xander Harris facing his first vampire.  Well, Xander had somehow, with grit and determination, mastered his cluelessness and learned to fight vamps in spite of a total lack of talent.  And now he was going to try to cope with Anya's bulimia, in spite of coming from a family that didn't have a good rep for dealing with emotional problems.

Buffy could do the same with mildew and grime. 

She squared her shoulders.  Maybe I can find a spell to bring that guy on the Mr. Clean bottle to life.  Of course, any genie she let out of a bottle was sure to have been put there to keep him from destroying the world, or at least a continent or two.

She slumped her shoulders, and thought about taking a nap.

The mess will still be here after the nap.  Hiding won't solve anything.

You suck at this.  If you keep trying, the kitchen will still be a disaster, and you'll have missed your nap.

Buffy was sure the second voice was a lazy slob.  But she was almost as sure the first voice was a self-righteous little twerp.  Slobitude or Twerpitude?  That was the question.

She was rescued from this cruel dilemma by a loud thud in the basement.  She was down the stairs much faster than the situation required, especially since by the time she'd opened the basement door, there had been another thud and the sound was settling down to a nasty but familiar rhythm.  By the time she reached the washing machine, Dawn had opened the lid and was yanking out wet, heavy clothes.

"It's unbalanced again," said Dawn unnecessarily.  Her face was grim and there were tear-streaks down her face.  Buffy assumed they weren't due to laundry stress.  "It was just too much," she added.

"Tara leaving?" asked Buffy awkwardly.

Dawn restarted the washer.  "That too.  But mostly the load of jeans.  Spike left some of his here, and when I tried to take care of everyone's at once, I overloaded the washer.  It freaked out in the spin cycle."

"Oh."  Not knowing what to say next, Buffy knelt down and started sorting the mountain of clothes on the floor.   Black, white, colors--  "Is this Tara's?"

"Uh, no."  Dawn looked down.  "I remembered what you said about needing clothes for work, so I went out this morning and got some stuff I thought might work."

"How could you afford—" Buffy stared at the black slacks and white shirts.  They weren't stylish, and they didn't look new.

"I went to Goodwill," Dawn said in a rush.  "I didn't steal anything.  These were really cheap, and I know other people have worn them, so I was going to wash them before I showed them to you, to, like, tone down the ick factor—"  She stopped, her expression saying she was sure she'd done the wrong thing.

It took Buffy a few seconds to understand why Dawn looked so stricken.  She hadn't realized she was  crying until a hot tear splashed on one hand.  "Thank you."  She swiped at her cheek and tried to sound more cheerful.  "They're just what I need.  I have to go to work in a few hours, and I hadn't even thought about clothes.  You got me just what I need."

Dawn relaxed, and they stared at each other.  There was a tacit mutual decision this was not the Moment for a Big Hug.  Buffy suspected that Dawn retreated for the same reason she did.  There was only so much drama even her little sister could handle in one morning.  Dawn turned to the washer, and Buffy, reluctant to go back to her horrible kitchen, went back to sorting clothes.

After a few minutes, Buffy realized she was no longer sorting the laundry by color alone.  Her things and Dawn's were finding their way to piles next to the washer, some things Tara had left behind were in a basket, and Willow's clothes were in exile by the stairs. 

Dawn finished loading wet jeans into the dryer and started throwing more clothes into the washer.  She picked up the sweat suit Buffy had worn the day before and sniffed.  "Ick.  This is what Xander smells like after he's spent the day on the couch watching football."  Mechanically, she checked the pockets.  "What's this?" 

Buffy stood and took it.  "Someone was handing out fortune cookies while Spike and I were fighting vamps last night."  She started to unwrap it.

Dawn tossed the sweat suit in the wash with a half-dozen other items and stopped to judge the size of the load.  "What does it say?"

"What you are looking for is chasing you.  Turn around."  Buffy handed Dawn half of the broken cookie and waved the strip of paper in the air.  "This is just what I was talking to Spike about yesterday."

"Chasing things?"  Dawn popped the cookie in her mouth.

"No, fortune cookies.  They're just not the same any more."

"Oh."  Dawn finished chewing and swallowed.  "Okay.  If you say so."  She leaned back against the washer.  "So, have you and Spike done it yet?"

Chapter 23

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