starlit_desires | FIC: To Fix Broken Things 4/?, W/S/X (Reply)

Title: To Fix Broken Things 4/?

Pairing: Willow/Spike/Xander (interaction)
Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and company own the Buffyverse and its characters.

Notes: Written for velvetwhip who wanted to see this pairing set shortly after Willow returned to Sunnydale from England at the beginning of BTVS Season Seven. For the sake of this story, The First isn’t driving Spike insane.

Just before Spike could leave the living room of the mansion, Xander burst into the room surprising both Willow and Spike. He looked at both of them and saw the impatient look etched on Spike’s cold features, and the confusion marring Willow’s. He was happy that the two of them were there, and now he had his biggest task in front of him: convincing them to accept his help.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Xander apologized.
“’Bout time,” Spike snarled in response as he impatiently lit a cigarette, and Willow nodded.
“I would have been here sooner, but Buffy was having a crisis with Dawn,” Xander offered as an explanation.
“Everything’s okay, right?” Willow asked.
“Oh yeah, it was just typical teenage stuff. Dawn wanted to go to the Bronze in some slutty outfit and Buffy wasn’t have any of it.”
”So what’s the deal?” Spike asked as he stopped pacing right in front of Xander.
“Well,” Xander took a deep breath before he continued, “I’ve been noticing that neither of you have been yourselves lately. And I’m tired of putting everything I’ve got into helping Buffy. She might be the Slayer, but the two of you are her most important allies. Without either of you, Buffy probably wouldn’t still be here.”
“Don’t!” Spike harshly exclaimed.
“Don’t what?” Willow questioned him cautiously.
“I don’t wanna hear you bashing her.”
”What? You’d rather be used by her as some sort of sex toy, and then discarded because you don’t have a soul like Dead Boy?” Xander asked him harshly.
“Shut up,” Spike snarled.
“No, I won’t shut up, I know what Buffy did to you and what she thinks of you. She told me when you were both away during the summer. And don’t try to put her up on a pedestal, Spike, she regrets ever looking at you and not being strong enough to stake you when she had the chance.”
“I’m warning you,” Spike threatened.
“What? You don’t like hearing the truth? That Buffy wishes that you had never come back from wherever you’d gone. That she’s only using you again because Giles told Willow that some bad was brewing? That Buffy thinks that you’re less than the dirt beneath her feet?”
”That’s it,” Spike snarled.
“Stop it!” Willow yelled.
Both Spike and Xander turned towards her and paused as they saw the look on her face. Xander trembled in fear, because it reminded him of the way she had looked just before she had destroyed the robot version of Warren. She was furious, and he was afraid that he had pushed them too hard.
“This is stupid. He’s right; Spike, and I didn’t need a summer of listening to Buffy to know that. I don’t like hearing it, but I think that we should both hear Xander out.”
“What you like hearing this crap? You brought Buffy back to life and now he’s badmouthing her,” Spike said as he backed away from Xander.
“No he’s not, he’s telling the truth. She has the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she can sometimes be very self-involved. I’ve known it from the start of our friendship. So let’s just hear Xander out?”
“Fine,” Spike spat out in disgust.

**TBC**