Chapter 24
Chapter Notes: I’ve been obsessing over three paragraphs in this chapter for two weeks now. I actually had it done on Christmas but because I am insane and nit-picky, I had to make sure it was right before I posted. I did post two chapters back-to-back the last of December, so please make sure you’ve read the last two updates before you read this one! Thank you for all the reviews and encouragement! Enjoy!
Buffy did not light candles in her room for Spike. She always burned candles at night because it was relaxing, not because she was trying to make her room look more inviting.
She didn’t insist that they hang out in her bedroom because she wanted to make out with him; she did it because her house was boring and old and they could listen to music in there, that’s all. Besides, he’d already seen the game room with the television and the full bar and the pool table and dart boards and other things he liked. Who’d want to see that again? And the only reason she was wearing the jersey knit slip dress was because it was comfortable, not because it was one of her favorite casual dresses for the wonders it achieved on her average size bust.
Spike would absolutely understand that and not get the wrong message.
“Oh, Buffy,” she said to her reflected image in her vanity mirror, letting out a deep sigh. She’d even put on lipstick! “Why don’t you just bend over and present yourself to him while you’re at it?”
She blew out half the candles, switched on her bedside table lamp, then she tugged a pair of jeans up and over her hips and took the dress off, flinging it to the floor and kicking it underneath her bed. She put her hands on her hips and searched the room, as if a top would appear out of thin air if she did it long enough, before walking over to her dresser to pull out a tee-shirt.
“Sorry I’m late.”
She shrieked at the sound of Spike’s voice, quickly covering her bare chest as she jumped, turning around to face the intruder. He stood in the doorway as if he was born to lean inside of it, one ankle crossed over the other, something clasped in front of him in his hands, and a smirk that told her how long he’d been there. She’d seen that smirk before, though it had been slightly obscured by the inner portion of her thighs at the time. She shouldn’t be remembering that when she was naked from the waist up.
He licked his smiling lips. “Rupert asked me to run an errand for him and it took longer than I expected,” he said, as if he never needed to apologize for spying.
“Ever heard of knocking?”
“Yes, I have. Nasty habit. May I?” He gestured inside with a nod of his head.
She exhaled, glaring at him, and then turned away, hurriedly slipping on a t-shirt so he couldn’t see what he’d already seen. “Just come right in, Spike!”
“Now this is a woman’s room,” he said, chuckling as he looked over her feminine décor, predictably fixating on her four-poster bed. His smile faded when he finally caught on to Buffy’s embarrassment. She imagined he was trying to be helpful when he said, “I didn’t see any nipples if it makes you feel better,” but for some reason, hearing him say, “Nipples,” was far worse than knowing he’d seen anything at all.
“God!” She could feel how red her face was, which only served to piss her off even more.
“Not my fault you didn’t hear me clear my throat when I walked up to the door. Thought I was getting a free show.”
Leering at her, Spike helped himself to a seat at the foot of the bed, bouncing boyishly up and down on it to check its firmness. She leaned against the vanity across from him.
His black-chipped fingernails slid over her bed to feel the soft texture of her blanket. “Nice bed. Bloody enormous, too. What is this, two king mattresses squished together and a hundred llama pelts to keep warm?”
“It’s only one king mattress, and I’ll have you know that’s a faux fur comforter. No animals were harmed in the making of my coziness.”
“Ah. Was wondering if you’d had a tribe of Sherpas over for a party you didn’t invite me to.”
He was still touching it. Caressing it, really. She didn’t think he realized it, though. He was hypnotizing her with the movement of his hands. She imagined herself as a kitten curled up in his lap while he stroked and smoothed and cuddled and rumbled sweet things in her ears while—then she started to panic, because Spike was in her bedroom, and on her bed. Her bed! Touching it… Why did she insist that Henry send him up here?
“Oh, yeah, I got you something.”
Buffy finally looked at the object he’d brought with him, glad that the conversation hadn’t veered towards the dirty place her mind had already traveled. He held a crumpled gold box with a red sash in the middle that had fallen off on one edge. He immediately tried straightening the sash and the dimples in the box when he took notice of its poor state, grumbling to himself when he couldn’t do anything about it.
“Shit,” he said quietly, and looked up at her, defeated. “I-uh…well, here.”
He picked it up and handed it over, looking away as she leaned forward to grab it from him. She opened it, visibly touched by the box of assorted chocolates he’d purchased, though the majority had slid to one side, half of them out of their crinkled wrappers, and the box probably couldn’t be closed again due to the large tear in one corner. She had no idea what he could have possibly done for the box to be in this condition, but it didn’t matter to her what it looked like. She instantly popped one round chocolate into her mouth and grinned at him.
“Thank you, Spike. You didn’t have to bring me anything.”
“Know I didn’t,” he said, pretending to be offended instead of nervous.
“I-I was just, y’know… Well, Rupert asked me to get him a scratch-off because he was feeling lucky, so I went to the gas station and I saw these chocolates and remembered you saying how much you like chocolate. Sorry it looks like that…got a bit twitchy waiting for Henry to answer the door, I guess. Know it’s not anything fancy, and they even had a bigger one that came in a prettier box but I didn’t have enough money.”
Oh, her heart.
“I don’t need the bigger box, this is perfect,” she said sincerely, her smile growing when that seemed to soothe his insecurities and give him back his confidence.
This had to be weird for him, too.
“The bigger one has too many of the marshmallow kind in it, and those are the gross ones anyway, so I figure this was the better bet on account of all the caramel ones.”
“Agreed.” She sat beside him, chewing another chocolate, and offered him one by shaking the box at him.
“No, those are yours. You go ahead.”
“More for me,” she said, tucking one foot beneath her to get more comfortable, and popped another in her mouth. “Mmm…bliss.”
She caught Spike smiling at her, but he turned away a second later. “So…what should we do?”
“Hmm?” It was hard to speak with sticky caramel filling lodged in her molars.
“I don’t see a TV in here or anything. So what are we going to do?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. I figure I’ll finish eating this here box of chocolates and you can entertain me with a story.” She popped another in her mouth and smiled.
“Oh, I see,” he said, laughing, “so I’m merely here for your amusement.”
“No…you’re—” She paused so that she could swallow. “You’re also here to do my taxes.”
“I’m terrible with money.”
Working on a cherry-filled confection, she said, “Damn shame. Do you do bar mitzvahs?”
“You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, it’s not very ladylike.”
Her laugh turned into a gasp when she realized something horrific. “Holy frijoles, I just ate this whole box of chocolates.” She gulped the last bite down that she’d yet to swallow, chuckling softly.
“You Hoovered it, if you want to be specific.”
“You know what this means?”
“No idea.”
She sighed dramatically and set the spent box of candies on the floor. “This means that I have to go puke it up so I’ll always be thin and pretty.”
Spike started laughing at her joke, and without thinking, managed to get his body reclined all the way onto her bed.
“Uh…excuse me? Boots?” She slapped the side of his ankle with the back of her hand.
“You’ve got to be…” He sighed heavily and sat back up on the bed. “Who the fuck cares if my shoes are on the bed?”
“It may be faux fur but it’s hell to clean so…boots off!”
He lay awkwardly on the bed, on purpose, his lower half ridiculously dangling off the edge. “There. Happy? This is so much more comfortable.”
“Just take your shoes off if you’re going to be a baby.”
He sat up straight to dramatically point with his fingers as he said, “These boots only come off for two reasons: sleeping and showering.”
“You don’t take your boots off? Ever?”
“No.” He shook his head emphatically, his eyes closing.
“Ever-ever?”
“Never-ever.” A pause. “No! Not even then,” he said, catching where her dirty mind had wandered.
“That is dedication.”
“It’s out of habit, been doing it for years. Last thing I need is to be caught barefoot when something bad happens.”
That statement sucked the air out of the room, and she didn’t think he had even meant to reveal anything, because he started futzing with his nails and avoiding eye contact a second later. Spike wouldn’t let himself relax, even in his own home? Something as simple as taking off one’s shoes never held any weight to Buffy before, but now she was determined to analyze every detail.
“Why do you think something bad is going to happen?”
“I don’t mean here. I’ve always been…can we talk about something else, please?”
She nodded gently, her brow furrowed with concern, suddenly engrossed with his leg that he anxiously bobbed up and down as her mind wandered. It somehow made sense to her, too, because Spike was always on edge, always about to do something else, about to smoke, about to bolt, about to kiss her, always ready and bouncing and twitching until the next opportunity presented itself to take him elsewhere. She put her hand on his vibrating leg and he stopped at once, taking in an audible, but soft breath.
“Maybe you should look into flip-flops.”
It took him only a second to smile at her playful teasing. “Yeah, maybe. Don’t think they go with the rest of me though,” he said.
She felt the tension ease a bit, so she dared to say, “My mom keeps a packed suitcase in her closet. Well, it’s more like a trunk come to think of it. Anyway, it’s been in there ages. She said she’s a wild spirit,” Buffy said, rolling her eyes, “and that living in this house feels like a prison sometimes. So she wanted to give herself an out if she ever got a wild hair up her ass to travel and neglect everything, but she’d more than likely talk herself out of it while packing a bag. So, she packed first so there wouldn’t be any time to change her mind.” She shrugged, keeping it casual. “But I guess it’s good to be prepared. Even if it’s ridiculous.”
He looked at her strangely then, his expression both mad and flattered, if that were even possible. Whatever he was thinking, it was taking him a while to process.
“I bet I can get you to take off those boots right now.”
“Sorry, love, not gonna happen.”
She smiled mischievously, then scooted all the way back on the bed, crossed her ankles and nestled her back against the headboard, far away from him.
“You think I have to be near you so badly that I’ll take off my boots?” But he was already unlacing them, and Buffy couldn’t contain her mirth. He looked over his shoulder at her, smiling, as he hurried to take them off. “You’re going to regret that in a minute if you don’t stop laughing.”
“Oooh, I’m super scared, Spike.”
He tossed one boot to the left of him. “Get ready.”
“I was born ready.”
He tossed the other boot to the right of him. It was as simple as that. Apparently, Spike didn’t like being compared to Joyce’s cowardice. She couldn’t really blame him.
He stood up, turned to face her, cracked his neck and said, “You’ve never seen a foot this sexy.” He slowly put one foot on the edge of her bed, and she looked down to see his bare toes peeking through several holes in his grey, worn socks.
She covered her mouth as she laughed, bending forward at the waist as she inspected the sad state of Spike’s socks.
“Oh, but you haven’t seen the other, my lady.” He hopped and switched feet, displaying the other proudly by flexing his toes so that she could see the runner that accompanied the holes in that particular sock.
“My God, do you put gravel in your boots?” She was still laughing, but he was too, so she didn’t feel too bad about it.
He climbed onto the bed and plopped down on his back beside her, lacing his fingers behind his head. “No. I don’t think they’re that bad.” The skin beneath his jaw folded as he looked down at his feet, his smile crinkled his cheeks, and she didn’t think she’d ever seen him looking so laidback before. She could get used to this.
“You don’t think so? Are you blind? There are more holes than sock on your feet. Your foot looks like Chernobyl.”
He crossed his legs and rubbed his feet together. “They’re still good socks! No sense in throwing them away if they still work.”
“That is insanity.”
“It’s funny, because Rupert got me a pair for my birthday and I haven’t even worn ‘em. Must’ve seen these in the wash once and felt sorry for me.”
“When was your birthday?” she asked.
“Day after your recital.”
Her chest burned from guilt, expecting the date to have been before the two of them ever met. But it wasn’t. It was the day after her recital, when she’d told him she needed space. The day after the recital he came to of his own accord, because he loved her and wanted to show his support. The day after the recital where her ex-boyfriend tried to run him over, and Spike never said a word about it until he was forced to defend himself. He had no friends here, no one to celebrate with, and she had no idea.
She said softly, “Oh, Spike…”
“It’s all right.” He smiled for her benefit. She knew he’d smiled for her. She could see the regret in his eyes, and she felt awful.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Don’t get pouty,” he said quietly. “No big deal. Was a nice time. Rupert and his girlfriend took me to one of those kiddie arcades and wore pointy hats.”
She laughed a little, smiling sadly. “I should have been there to make fun of it all with you. I suck.”
“You do not. You didn’t know about it, so there’s no harm done. Just the nineteenth birthday. Not another good one comes until twenty-one in the States, right?”
“I want to do something for you.”
“You don’t have to, love, really.”
She caught it earlier in the conversation, the instant that it happened, but that was three minutes ago without either of them saying anything about it, so she went ahead and let Spike continue to hold her hand.
“I know I don’t have to. Birthdays aren’t about have-tos, they’re about celebrating. And if I’d known that it was your birthday, I would have done something.”
“Really, no point in worrying over it now. Just another day.”
“Well, will you at least come over tomorrow so I can make cupcakes or something? It’s more for me than for you at this point.”
“Well, if it’s for you, then…how can I say no?”
Buffy loved that he didn’t have to guess if she was being sarcastic with him or not. In fact, a guy’s ease in understanding her sense of humor hadn’t seemed important until she met Spike, when she noticed immediately that Angel never quite had the talent to pick up on it. She didn’t have to explain things with Spike. He could follow along and throw one right back at her and therefore, even in the days she pretended to hate him, there was never a dull moment between them.
She felt his fingers lace between hers, so she decided to ask, “Is this ok?”
“Friends hold hands, right?”
“Yeah…but I think they only do it when they’re skipping or pulling each other somewhere, not when they’re lying in bed together. I don’t think either of us are skippers, either.”
Spike massaged the palm of her hand with his thumb mindlessly as he hummed in thought. “You do have a point.” He raised her hand to his mouth, kissing the spot his thumb had just warmed up. “Friends probably don’t do that, either.”
Her toes mashed and curled together as a physical representation of her insides. Even the slightest touch from him was wracking her nerves. It didn’t help watching him innocently kiss her hand, feeling his fingers caress her, watching his eyes darken.
“Don’t,” she said, not very loud, when he kissed her wrist.
“Why not?” His evil, sinful, mushy lips were on the inner crease of her arm as he asked her that, breath tickling her, tongue promising to treat her to the talents she’d been obsessing over for two weeks.
Squirming delightfully against him as his fingertips brushed against her arm, she said, “You know why not.”
“I love why not.” He placed her hand on his chest and rolled onto his side to face her. “Come on, kiss me.”
“No,” she said, smiling.
“It can be my birthday present.”
“Oh, you are mean.”
“I’m being pushy, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are.”
“But you adore it. In secret, in your girlish alone time, you’re thinking, ‘I wish Spike would sweep me off my feet,’” he said, the last part in an absurd falsetto.
“My feet would at least have good socks on.” She smiled, but inside, she was dying. She wanted this, she did, the laughing, the easy conversation, knowing they could probably keep doing this for hours without any awkward silences. She even wondered if kissing him now would be different than it was before he told her that he loved her. If she’d feel something more profound from him, if what she was feeling would start to make more sense.
Buffy could only think about how hurt he would be when she inevitably told him to stop, or that she couldn’t, and how she couldn’t even tell him why because she didn’t know why. If it was this frustrating for her, it had to be a million times worse for him when he knew exactly what he wanted and couldn’t have it, not for lack of constantly and shamelessly trying.
She had no idea how long they’d stayed there, innocently lying on their sides, facing one another with their hands entwined, but it must have been a while because her left arm started to tingle with a need for blood circulation.
“What are you thinking about?” she said softly, watching his eyes dart away from a corner of the room and back to her. He’d been completely silent so it must have been a doozy. The edges of his mouth twitched with a hint of a smile, but he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Nothing, really.”
“Were you thinking that it’s weird being in my bed right now?”
He started chuckling and opened his eyes once more. “In a way, yeah, guess I was. Is it weird having me here?”
She chewed on her thumb, her eyes narrowing as she focused on his face. “No. It’s not weird at all.”
The silence that fell upon their conversation this time bore an intensity that made it impossible for either of them to look away. It was strange and it also wasn’t, this sort of understanding that seemed to creep up on them at the exact same moment, and for that one moment, Buffy looked at Spike. She really looked at him, past the exterior that she’d established a while ago to be almost perfect, through the layers he’d tried so hard to keep upright and strong, and landing on a miniscule flicker of light through a keyhole inside him that seemed to both thrill and terrify her. All she had to do was fit inside to unlock it, and everything she ever wanted to know would be there before her. No more mystery, no more questions, no more doubts.
She felt rather than saw his fingers trailing into her hair near the side of her cheek, but she knew his intent was not to kiss her. The expression on his face held only a reflection of what she’d just been thinking, a confused, excited and heavy expression.
“Tell me something,” he said, his voice as soothing as his fingers whispering over her hair. “I want to know everything about you, Buffy. Tell me something.”
“Tell you what?” Her eyes fluttered when he twirled a lock between his fingers, grazing her neck with his thumb.
“Anything. I don’t care.” He folded his arms over his chest and got more comfortable on his side. He nuzzled his head deeper into her feather pillows, and she decided then and there what side of the bed she’d be sleeping on tonight. “Tell me something personal about you so I’ll be forced to stop touching you and listen instead.”
They both smiled. “At least you’re honest.”
He shrugged, bit his lip, and she knew that even without him touching her she was doomed to want him. “You sure?”
“Course I’m sure. I know you’re not perfect, Buffy. Know you’ve got demons just like the rest of us.”
Buffy took the bait, randomly pulled something out of thin air to speak of, and it was no surprise that her subconscious picked this particular story. “Well, when I was five, my dad and I took a trip to Argentina…” She hadn’t really thought about it in much depth over the years, mostly because she refused to think about it. However, having a bit more life experience to aid her, Buffy could start to piece things together. Spike listened on with rapt attention, his eagerness and genuine want to be close to her making it easier to tell him something this private.
She told him how her father had actually taken her to Argentina so that he could see another woman named Delicia, but she’d been too young to understand that at the time.
Delicia had bewitched her father the same year of Buffy’s fifth birthday, not only with her looks and charms, but with a talent she possessed that happened to gain her quite a bit of fame. Hank met her for the first time at a concert, the tickets a gift from one of his VPs while they oversaw some business dealings in the South American country. Only he had not met Delicia as a fellow patron of the concert, or as a fellow associate. Delicia was the concert, and Hank fell for her the minute she appeared on the stage in satin ballerina slippers, or so he admitted one night when he and Joyce had one of their famous arguments. Joyce couldn’t really say anything, though, since she was also an entrepreneur in the business of infidelity.
Hank and Buffy ended up spending the majority of their vacation in Argentina with this woman, and Buffy had experienced jealousy for the first time in her life. She would feel it again several times, when her father made a habit of taking her there every summer. Delicia had grown to be more than one of Hank’s women on the side, and the more time he spent with her, the less frequent his visits home would be, and the more Buffy poured herself into dance.
He spoke of Delicia as if she were a goddess, or a faraway place one dreams of, before catching himself and brushing his feelings aside as if Buffy were clueless and didn’t know he’d been boning the woman for years. She was beautiful and wealthy, the type of woman who loved the feel of her own skin and the look of her cleavage, drank wine as if it were water, could socialize with the elite and hold her own in conversation, and stole him away from her. For twelve years, Buffy vied for her father’s attention from this woman, amid so many other obstacles keeping her from ever really knowing him.
When Buffy’s tears came out of nowhere, Spike didn’t wipe them away; he didn’t hold her or tell her everything was going to be okay. He did, however, take her hand again. Spike was anchoring her to reality, not allowing her to slip away, holding her steady. He must have known she didn’t need him to fix it, didn’t need him coddling her or telling her some sugar-coated promise to get her to change the subject. He remained quiet. He knew that she only needed him with her as she worked out something she’d never recognized in herself before now.
She’d known, perhaps subconsciously, that the painting from her father had been a symbol of the woman her father wanted her to be, or at least who she thought he wanted her to be. When her efforts failed to bring any results, she smashed the painting to bits and started working over everything else in her life with a big, meaty fist. It was exhausting. The fact that Hank never even batted an eye at the destruction of something she thought precious told her that he was not to blame for these expectations she put on herself. He didn’t care one way or another. All these years, all this time she’d invested to be a dancer had been nothing more than an attempt to gain her father’s approval.
“I just want him to see me.”
Spike’s eyes misted over, and a second later his lips pressed against hers, a feathery-soft kiss that lasted only a moment yet it managed to shake her to the core. There was no hidden agenda, no sexuality in it. It was nothing but a kiss. Nothing, except that it turned out to be everything. She thought of what he said to her that day in the dance studio, when he’d seduced her against the mirror and made her look at herself for the first time. That she was beautiful when she was in her element, that she was Buffy. She was free. And he loved her.
Hank may never see Buffy, may never look at her and see the woman she was becoming. The same fate shacked-up with her mother, had already taken residence with her ex-boyfriend, and she might have spent the rest of her life living for someone else, had Spike never come to Los Angeles. But he did come, and he fell in love with her, and he saw her. He always had. It both touched her and broke her heart, that a boy she’d only known a short time could see who she was without even trying, and her own family hadn’t a clue.
He kissed her cheek, and then held her head against his shoulder, almost cradling her, though there was nothing patronizing in it. It was so uncharacteristically tender that she wondered if it was uncharacteristic, or if he’d simply started to show her a new side of him. It was dangerous how much she needed this, how much she was allowing herself to need him. She’d never felt so loved before, so overwhelmed, and when he whispered his apology in her ear for kissing her some moments later, she squeezed his body tightly against hers.
“Don’t apologize for that,” she said, wrapping herself around him in gratitude.
“Good, because I didn’t exactly regret it.”
She’d taken too long savoring this, too long wrapped in the fuzzy warmth of Spike’s compassion, but when she lifted her head to speak, he beat her to the punch, saving her from having to explain for the hundredth time why she couldn’t do anything more than this. He probably didn’t want to hear it as much as she hated having to say it.
“Maybe a change of scenery is in order. Feel like getting your ass kicked at pool?”
When he stood up and extended his hand to help her off the bed, Buffy remained still, unable to tear her eyes away from him, unable to hide how special he’d just made her feel, how grateful she was.
“What?” he said, laughing uncomfortably, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Nothing,” she replied as she stood up. “It’s just funny that you believe you’re going to win.”
His breathy laugh showed how relieved he was with her lighthearted response, and they walked out side by side to the game room, unable to put their competitive natures aside as they taunted one another. When she spoke this way with him now, her every muscle and joint and nerve jolted and trembled with anticipation.
He left her body buzzing with the gift he’d just given her, a gift she’d needed for years.
Strength.