Chapter 42
January 29, 2006
Who’s a hypocrite? I am I am!
I tell Spike he needs to be open with me about what he’s feeling, I tell him there are no issues and what do I do? I keep my issues to myself and make my issues his issues.
How do I tell him that sleeping with him is not something I’m ready for yet because of my mother…it’s just…weird? I don’t want to hurt him by telling him that and it’s not like he can take back five years of fucking my mother.
And you know…I’m jealous. I’m jealous of her. I’m jealous that he was with her. What if she was better than me? Okay, that’s gross. Who wants to think of their parents having sex? And yet how can I not think of it? It’s not like he was with some nameless chick before me, he was with my mother. He was inside her body, the body that I was born out of, and he wants to be inside me now?
I am so over thinking this aren’t I? I am. I know I am. How can he not? Well, it is different for him. I mean that level of ‘gross’ isn’t there. He just thinks of it as ‘Joyce was my wife so I slept with her’ and ‘I love Buffy and I want to sleep with her.’
That whole my being Joyce’s daughter doesn’t have the same play for him as it does for me.
Maybe this is all a matter of not thinking and just doing?
Spike stared at her sleeping form on the couch. When he came in from at first just driving home and then ending up Joyce’s gravesite, he found Buffy fast asleep on the couch, notebook clutched in hand. Must be her journal. She had fallen asleep sitting up, her head thrown back, her sleek neck displayed and begging to be nuzzled.
Except she doesn’t want you to touch her, he reminded himself.
He stood there just watching her the way he had just stood and gazed at Joyce’s grave. He took her in, studied her, and pondered her.
Seeing Joyce’s grave he caused him to meditate on the concept of endings and beginnings, of dying and of how fragile life was – and how sudden. You go along, living life and you never think something will come around and disrupt it because things like that happen to otherpeople, never to you. So it’s always a blow, it’s always “so sudden”.
The old adage of “when one door closes another door opens” rang true, he was finding out. There had been many endings and beginnings since Joyce had died for both he and Buffy and it was because of those endings that Spike couldn’t help but worry about more of them coming up.
Despite reassurances to the contrary.
But, he’d thought as he sat before his late wife’s grave, If I spend my time waiting for it, I’ll miss out on what I have. He decided to take that as a message that he needed to ease up his hold on Buffy, even if the fear resided in him still. In time, he’d have to let it go, and hopefully in time, he would be able to.
Sitting down next to Buffy on the couch, he leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Buffy.”
Her head shot up, nearly hitting him, and she blurted out, “Spike.”
“Well, at least I was forefront on your mind then,” he drawled.
Shaking her head and rubbing her eyes, she looked over at him. “You always are.”
“Am I?”
She nodded, yawning. “Yes. Where’d you go?”
“I went for a spin. Visited your Mum.”
She tensed. “Oh?”
“I had a lot on my mind. Just ended up there, didn’t plan on it.”
“How’d it go? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, look can I say a few things?”
“Of course.”
“No interrupting okay?”
Nodding, she gestured for him to go ahead.
He stood, facing her, and nodded, “Right then. Look, I’m sorry for what I did, for how I kind of well, forced myself on you like that.”
“You didn’t–”
“I did. And then I scared you.”
“Spike, you apologized for this.”
“Buffy, pet, I love you, but shut up.”
Clamping her mouth shut, she mimed zipping her lip and nodded.
“I have been feeling a little … scared. I attribute it to the fact that I’m so used to having you here, coupled with what happened when I wasn’t there with you, and just life and its suddenness that I feel like I won’t be able to protect you and keep us, as a couple, safe.”
She shook her head.
“I know, I know. You tell me that we are safe. That you love me, that we’re together, but I just can’t shake the feeling that I have.”
Buffy raised her hand.
Biting back a grin, Spike said, “Yes?”
“Is it a ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ kind of thing?”
“I think so yes.”
“I traumatized you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Buffy.”
“I am though. Must be that Catholic upbringing coming out in me.”
He laughed then, easing the tension in the room and sat down next to her, taking her hands in his. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for that. You can’t help how you feel, and you were in a bad place. It’s not like you could have controlled that.”
“I know, but…you asked me to come home and I didn’t.”
“Pet, we’ve both made some bad moves due to guilt and uncertainty and fear. Maybe we need to stop dwelling on those times so we can move forward. Which means I need to let go of you moving out and not dwelling on what could happen based on the past, but what will happen.”
Buffy nodded, eagerly agreeing. “Yes.”
“And that your getting a new job does not mean you don’t want me, but just something for you.”
She smiled, “This is what I’ve been saying!”
“And that when you’re ready to make love, we’ll make love.”
She squeezed his hand. “Soon,” she whispered. I hope, she thought.
“Right. So, can I come with you tomorrow to check out those new places? Or do you want to do it on your own?”
“I want you to come with me, definitely. And then maybe we could see about how to go about putting the house up for sale?”
“Yes,” Spike nodded, “Yes, we could do that. It’s time.”