Chapter 9
“Spike?”
Spike looked up from the forms he was looking over to find Buffy chewing her bottom lip and playing with the hem of her shirt. She reminded him of a little girl at that moment and he smiled. “Yes?”
“You weren’t really that mad at me earlier, were you?”
“When?” he asked, confused.
“When we were arguing about that painting.”
It was times like this when Spike was reminded that Buffy was not tiny-hearted and that things did not just roll off her back like they were nothing. The girl felt things hard and deep. She played a good game of pretending she didn’t care, but she did. And since that night she’d unloaded on him, they’d had a funny kind of relationship. They still danced around issues at times; sometimes they’d talk about them, but only briefly. If there were one word he had to use to describe their relationship it would be delicate. Well…maybe not even that. It lay somewhere between strong and delicate, but leaning toward delicate. This whole thing was new to them still and he knew that. More than once a day he was struck with the thought that Buffy was all he had right then. And on the other side of that coin, he was all she had. It was a delicate situation to be in for it begged the question: Did they really like each other or did they just put up with each other for fear of dealing with things alone?
But, looking at her now, at the fear in her eyes, the way she looked at him as if he held her life in his hands, Spike decided to go with the idea that she truly liked him, as well as needed him. God, how lonely and afraid must she be to feel that one little tiff that was soon forgotten was something that could end their…whatever they were.
Hank truly was a bastard.
“Buffy, I can be quick to temper–”
“No, shit.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“No, shit.”
He grinned, “But we said our peace, yeah? You called me a jackass, I called you a bitch, you went for coffee to cool off and we’re fine. Okay?”
Instantly, she relaxed, letting out a breath that it would seem she’d been holding. Her entire posture changed; a weight was lifted. He had the sudden urge to hug her. Before that night they’d shared a bed and he’d held her, when was the last time she’d been hugged?
“Okay,” she nodded and started back to the front.
“Buffy?”
“Yeah?”
“How did you meet that guy?”
“Who? Angel?”
“Yeah, Angel.”
“In line at the coffee shop.”
“Oh.”
“I think I freaked him out too, I’m surprised he asked me out.”
“How’d you freak him out?”
Buffy chuckled a bit, “Well, he asked where I worked and I told him. He made a comment about how it must be cool to work for my mom or whatever and I said ‘No, she’s dead.”
“Buffy!”
“What? It’s true isn’t it?”
Spike shook his head. “That’s cold, Buffy.”
“It’s not cold,” she said indignantly, “It’s the truth. She is dead. What was I supposed to say? ‘Yeah, it is cool working with her’?”
“You could have said she ‘passed away’.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”
“You’re such a brat.”
“I know it,” she said proudly.
“Go back to work, brat.”
“Yes, sir!” And she made a big show of saluting him. “Need some fuckin’ direction in my life don’t I?”
Spike heard her laughing all the way to the front and he couldn’t help but laugh too.
*********
“Do you ever think what it would be like to have a mental illness?” Buffy asked on their way home from work that day.
Spike glanced over at her, “I’ve wondered, but not in depth or anything. Have you?”
“Yeah. I mean have you ever wondered what it would be like if one day you woke up and heard voices? Or if you thought the TV was talking to you. If you were like that guy in ‘A Beautiful Mind’, and you thought the government was after you.”
“You have to stop watching and reading these things about mental illness, pet. They’re starting to get to you.”
“Nah. I just…I guess I find comfort in knowing I’m not that bad off. And then I get scared cause I think I could be one day.”
“Buffy,” Spike said sternly. “You’re not going to be like that. I won’t let you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think it’s something you can control.”
Silence, then, “You know what I wonder?” Spike asked, smiling.
“What?”
“If people who are crazy know they’re crazy.”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Brat.”
And Buffy just laughed again.
********
November 13, 2005
That ponce Angel called Buffy this evening. Now, he was supposed to have called last night when he got home like any truly enamored boy would do. That’s the operative word here: boy. What is with making the girl wait for his call? Fucking amateur.
She went into the other room to talk with him; right in the middle of a movie we were watching together. That kind of hurt. It made me want to stamp my foot and demand that she stay and call him later – this was my time.
But, I have to keep myself in check here. Buffy is allowed to have friends, she’s allowed to date if she chooses. Just because I don’t have many friends to speak of, just because Joyce was pretty much it, doesn’t mean that I have to hold it against Buffy for trying to live her life.
I just don’t think she realizes that I need her. I know she needs me—her reaction to our stupid little tiff was testament to that, but I don’t think she knows I need her too. Maybe I should tell her?
“What’s this?” Buffy asked when Spike placed something thin and rectangular wrapped in aluminum foil on her lap.
“Open it.”
Tearing into the gift, Buffy smiled. “’Queen’s Greatest Hits. Volume One and Two.’” She looked up at him. “Don’t you have this?”
“I don’t actually. But now you do and we can listen to it when we’re working or when we’re cleaning the dishes from dinner.”
Buffy beamed at him, “Thank you.”
“I’m thinking we should expand on the things we have in common: Queen, moping, and candy.”
Buffy laughed.
“Though I think we’re learning we have more in common everyday, don’t you think, pet?”
“I do. Thank you,” and she jumped up from the couch and pecked him quickly on the cheek. “I’m going to play it while I get ready for ‘The Date.”
Spike nodded, his cheek tingling from her kiss, and his blood simmering to a boil over her date.