Chapter 37
After a movie in which Spike and Buffy sat and enjoyed not so much the movie, but one another with the occasional squeeze of a hand, an innocent touch here and there, and a whisper to make the other giggle, they retreated home.
The pair was exhausted. Both of them having spent the night before in incredibly uncomfortable conditions and having spent most of their day talking about heavy topics, they were wiped.
“It’s so exhausting talking about your feelings,” Buffy said, yawning as she and Spike walked hand in hand up to the house.
“Well, when you hold onto something for quite a while and then you get to release it finally, it takes a lot out of you.”
“I remember. When I was at the facility, after I started therapy with Giles, I slept hard.”
Pulling her in the house and locking the door behind him, Spike grabbed her in his arms and hugged her. “When are you going to call about setting up an appointment with one of the referrals he gave you?”
Buffy closed her eyes and burrowed her head in his chest. “Tomorrow, I think. I feel a little out of it still with only coming back yesterday, ya know?”
“I know. I have to get back to the gallery tomorrow, and I’m not really looking forward to finding out what happened while I was gone.”
“Sorry.”
”Don’t apologize, kitten. You come before everything and anything else.”
She smiled into him, pressing a kiss to his chest. “I like that. I love you.”
“I love you too Buffy, so, so much.”
“I’ll come in with you tomorrow,” she said and looked up at him. “I recall someone telling me once I was being ‘irresponsible’. Do you think if I’m on my best behaviour tomorrow, my boss will let me work again for a while?”
Spike grinned, opened his mouth to speak, and then frowned. “What do you mean for ‘a while’?”
“Well, we talked about it not being a permanent thing before, Spike.”
His hold tightened. “You don’t like it?”
“I do like it, but you gave it to me as a favour.”
He shook his head. “If you want a permanent position there, Buffy, you have it.”
“Can I think about it? I don’t want to completely follow in my mother’s footsteps.”
“What else would you like to do?”
She shrugged, “Not sure yet. One day, one step at a time.” Yawning again, she smiled and buried her face back in his chest.
“How about we take some steps upstairs and get some sleep?”
Nodding, she allowed him to lead her up the stairs. They split at the top, he going to his bathroom and she going to hers to get ready.
Changing into shorts and a tank, Buffy washed her face and snuggled into bed, waiting for Spike to come in.
When he did, in nothing but black sweat pants, he sat by her on the bed and stroked some hair from her face. “Good night, kitten.”
It was Buffy’s turn to frown. “Where are you going?”
“What do you mean where am I going? I’m going to bed.”
“With me in here, right?”
“You want me to stay in here with you?”
“I’m not staying in there with you.” No way, now how, am I sleeping in the bed you shared with my mother. “I have all this bed…”
“All right, what my girl wants, my girl gets.” Crawling into her bed, Spike reached for her just as she snuggled up to him. “If you lived with me, this could be the way we fall asleep every night–”
“Good night, Spike.”
Spike chuckled, “Wench.”
“Persistent pain in the ass.”
“Stubborn bitch.”
“Well, you got me there.”
********
January 25, 2006
I know it’s most likely terrible and incredibly selfish of me, but my goal is to make Buffy want to live with me. I want to make things so wonderful and right with us that she decides to stay.
I can’t help but shake the feeling that I’m going to lose her if she moves out. I feel like I’m reliving her taking off with Angel on vacation all over again – and look what happened when she went away. Sure she lost the ponce, but then she got it in her head to see her father and then I get the phone call that she’s checked herself into a mental health facility.
How am I not supposed to worry here?
The kicker of it is: I was the one that told her to go away with him.
I just…I can’t describe it. I don’t trust any of this. I feel like if I don’t hold onto her, I’m going to lose her and I can’t let that happen. I feel at any moment she’s going to slip through my fingers and it’s driving me insane.
She tells me she loves me, I can feel that she does, and that she’s right there with me, but…I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it, all I know is how I feel and I feel desperate.
She thinks I need to do this, well, like her, I have done the living alone thing. I did it before Joyce came along and my parents died. I know how to do it, and for that matter, so does she – so then why does she want to do this alone when I’m right here? She doesn’t haveto be alone here. I won’t pressure her into anything, we could even get a two bedroom and make like roommates. I’m willing to compromise. More than willing, even.
I need to come up with some sort of plan. The only thing I got so far is showering her with my love. And God, I love her so damn much.
Please, don’t take her from me.
********
Getting back into life was not an easy task as Buffy was finding out. There were certain things required of a person to make it through after having gone through a spell of being unable to deal with those same simple tasks. It took tenacity, strength, and a good sense of humour. It took being kind to oneself, a concept still alien in her mind.
It was funny, she thought the daily routine was supposed to be the easiest one to get back to, but it wasn’t. It was a little scary. She’d been living in time out of time, almost in another world where there were different rules to abide by, and now she felt as though she was embarking on a different path, one in which the rules were not clear just yet.
She wanted to jump into the fray of getting her life back and yet she felt like a child about to attempt swimming for the first time. Her feet were at the edge, the water was licking her toes, but she wasn’t sure just yet how to proceed. She knew she had to, but it was all just a little more than daunting.
It didn’t help that that morning while Spike had been showering she’d gone looking for her journal and found the unsent letter to her father. She’d put it off, for what, she wasn’t sure. Possibly because despite how angry she was with him, he was still her father and he was her father that had cancer. No matter how hurt she was by him, she still didn’t want to hurt him. Even if he did deserve it.
With thoughts of getting back into routine, of finding an apartment, calling a new therapist and sending that damn letter, Buffy was feeling a bit out of sorts. And Spike was not helping matters.
He was asking her how she was every five minutes. When she left the room, he followed, when she was talking to one of his assistants about how to hang a decorative curtain on the wall to make a dramatic and romantic look, he was right there to help her. She was about ready to tell him to stop being up her ass when he was called on for some inventory problem and he left her in peace. Buffy knew he meant well, but having him breathing down her neck was making her feel more than just a little claustrophobic. She decided to use that time to leave the gallery for a while and make those phone calls to a few of the therapists Giles had referred her to.
Sitting on a bench in the shade outside the public library around the corner, Buffy called and left some messages for the therapists, making a mental inventory of the way they sounded on the answering machine, and making a bet on who was going to call first when her eye was caught by a guy unloading flowers from the back of a truck across the street.
She smiled at the sight. Flowers. She loved flowers. She loved walking into a florists shop and seeing the displays, loved seeing them at work, putting those displays together. It always seemed like such a peaceful sort of thing to do. Creative and relaxing.
She watched the guy unload the flowers and in her head she was mentally arranging flowers in her mind, thinking of what flowers would look really good together, when soon he was gone and she saw a big sign in the corner of the shop that said “Help Wanted”.
Giles had told her once to just let things be and not to force them. He said that when you didn’t fight against the tide that was when answers came and messages arrived to help you on your next step. So, while sitting on a bench watching the world go by and pondering that next step, that step came to her.
How could she pass it up? So, with determined steps Buffy entered the heavenly scented shop and asked the red head behind the counter for an application.