Chapter 3
Spike was not concerned with Buffy when he reentered the shop after his smoke to finish up his work. He was not concerned, because his uncle was on the telephone in his office with the door slightly ajar, just enough for Spike to eavesdrop on his conversation.
“I understand,” he was saying. Rupert sounded annoyed about something. “But it is abundantly clear that your methods haven’t worked thus far and if you want me to take care of him, you’ll have to trust me to do what’s best.”
Spike’s spine straightened, then he looked at his chipped black nail polish uncomfortably as he listened on, leaning against the brick wall by the office door.
“I got him working, didn’t I? You’ll see. A positive male role model is what the boy needs. Anne, I am not judging your past relationships. No, I’m not, but you have to admit that the last one was not a healthy—would you please just listen to me? I am not yelling!”
Spike’s mouth tensed and he suddenly didn’t give a shit about listening to gossip any longer. He was rapidly filling up with the urge to hurt something. That’s when he saw Buffy twirl past between the vintage records, her arms high in the air as she danced down the aisle. His eyes searched for excuses: expensive dance gear, expensive mp3 player, spoiled rotten attitude and no respect for anything. Good enough. He inhaled slowly and stalked towards her.
She had tiny headphones on and the white cords trailed down to her side where she had her iPod clamped to the waistband of her skirt. She extended both arms wide and did this sexy hip wiggle thing, flicking her head to the left and nodding, counting soundlessly with her lips.
“Six, seven, eight,” she said aloud, before she rolled her body from her shoulders to her knees, and then she spun around, facing him. She gasped and clutched her chest in fright.
“Don’t do that!” she said louder than needed with the headphones in her ear.
“Trying out for a music video?” he said, leaning against the records and folding his arms. “You’ll need implants if you go pop. You could do R&B no problem with that ass, though.”
She yanked her headphones out of her ear, wincing in pain a bit as she did, but then she was locking him down with a fierce glare and stomping towards him.
“I’m practicing for my recital. I already told you.”
“Looks like you’re humping the air to me. You hard up for some, Buffy? Not enough men left in your daddy’s country club roster to get off with?”
She grew deathly quiet then, but her irritation hadn’t gone away. She just looked at him. Waiting. Letting his insult hang in the air. He stood a little straighter, staring her down.
“What?”
He watched her swallow hard, and then she took another step forward. He pretended to look at something on the wall.
“You have anything else to add to that, tough guy?”
That got him pissed, reminded him of the initial purpose for coming to talk to her. “Yeah.” Both hands in his pockets now, he leaned his torso forward, easily looking down on her smaller frame. “You’re making me sick.”
She started laughing. Laughing! Didn’t she hear what he just said to her? She was supposed to sniffle or throw a tantrum like the stuck-up rich girl she was. Not Buffy, though. Buffy was laughing at him, covering her mouth with one hand and pointing with the other.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, stuffing her headphones back in her ears and ending the conversation. “Leave me alone.”
Spike narrowed his eyes. “Gladly.” Turning sharply on his heel, he stormed to the backroom, using both of his hands to shove the door open in case anyone forgot that he was angry, and he kicked the wall once he was out of sight. That wasn’t enough destruction. He wanted someone else to suffer with him, someone else to feel the weight he’d been carrying. Buffy wasn’t open for business and he felt slightly ashamed that he’d tried to hurt her deliberately. He was also ashamed that twice now, that bitch had made him hard.
“I hate you so much,” he said, staring down at his cock.
With a groan of teenage impetuousness, he picked up another box needing to be sorted, stomped to the adjacent room, and started to move things around. Before he knew it, an hour had passed and he’d moved just about every box into storage, each one perfectly placed and easy to catalog later on. He smiled, proud and shocked that a little bit of work had helped him forget what he’d been upset about in the first place. There were a couple of boxes left to move, but he’d be done with them in no time.
As he walked into the backroom to grab the next one, he started to feel dizzy. He still hadn’t adjusted to the change in climate, and it seemed that neither Joyce nor Rupert thought it important to turn on the air in the back of the shop. He was drenched from his efforts, he couldn’t quite breathe, and it felt a lot like he did after a brawl, minus the broken bones and blood. He sat down on a crate and tugged off his ratty t-shirt to wipe his damp face with it.
When he finished, dropping the shirt on the floor, he looked up and saw Buffy standing there. She appeared to be in a daze of some sort, her mouth slightly opened, eyelids heavy as if she were seconds from passing out, and then she licked her lips as if by reflex.
He smiled with the knowledge that she’d been ogling, his eyelashes lowering in contentment like a cat in a sunny window.
“Not nice to stare,” he said, standing up so she could see more if she wanted, ran one of his hands down the center of his sweat-slicked and nicely shaped chest. When he tilted his head, something his ex used to tell him always got her motor running, Buffy’s eyes glassed over.
“Huh?” She shook her head and blushed. She blushed! Then she turned around to hide her eyes that had previously locked onto his pectorals, and she said, “Mom told me to tell you that you can take a lunch break now.”
“I didn’t hear you, could you turn around?” he said teasingly.
“I said lunchtime,” she shouted, her back still facing him, and then she very quickly walked out of the backroom.
Snickering to himself, Spike unrolled some paper towels near the sink, ran them under cold water, and sighed in relief when he wiped them over his heated skin. He couldn’t go out front without a shirt, and the one he had been wearing was pretty much disgusting. It was too bad. He would have loved following her around topless and make her admit how badly she wanted him.
Joyce had either heard from her daughter of Spike’s indecent exposure, or she had mental-radar for teen insolence, because in the next moment, she was standing in front of him, holding a t-shirt in her hand.
He smiled awkwardly at her, swallowing. “Hello, Mrs. Summers.”
She held the shirt out, an unreadable expression on her face, one eyebrow cocked. “Put this on and come to the break room for lunch. Your uncle ordered pizzas.”
“Thanks,” he said with a tight, embarrassed smile, and took the proffered garment, lowering his head as he shook it out since it was a bit dirty.
She sighed, folded her arms and left the break room. When Spike held the shirt up to inspect it, his eyes widened in absolute horror. She’d brought him something from the vintage clothing bin, the bin that you’d never see since it was hidden beneath an antique Victor-Victrola covered in dust. He knew there had to have been better options than this, though. She’d handed him a black tee with the wordsMore Than a Woman silk-screened on it, Bee Gees proudly displayed on the back.
He turned it inside out, scowling, feeling every last ounce of his anarchist blood pumping with betrayal as he slid the tight shirt over his shoulders and down his stomach. He knew Buffy had been the one responsible when she perked up with that fucking evil grin of hers to see him enter the break room, only to sulk and sink back in her chair when she saw he’d found a way around the humiliation.
He smiled sanctimoniously as he sat down across from her, straddling the chair of course, and picking off a lone pepperoni from her slice that had slid to the side.
“Hey! Now I have to give my pizza herpes medication.”
“Buffy,” Joyce scolded as she sat down between them with her plate in hand. “Is that any way to talk?”
“Yes, Buffy. Is that any way for a lady to act?” Spike gave her a toothy grin as he chewed the last bit of pepperoni in his mouth.
Buffy snorted and grabbed another slice of pizza, no longer wanting the one he’d touched.
“You should bring extra clothes,” Joyce said, primly biting the edge of her pizza, pinkie fingers extending out of habit or avoiding grease. “Just in case you get dirty with all those old boxes back there. Maybe a smock or something.”
“Yeah,” he replied, looking at Buffy with a challenging smile. “I get dirty more than I care to admit. Might as well work shirtless until the end of the day. Just gonna ruin this one.”
Buffy choked on her bite.
“Well, that’s up to you if it’s more comfortable,” Joyce said, completely oblivious. “As long as you put something on when you come to the front, I don’t mind.”
“Hear that, Buffy? Peep show still on in the back room if you’re bored.” He dropped another pepperoni in his mouth.
Joyce looked at her daughter’s bright red, angry face for an answer, but Rupert entered, distracting her focus when he sighed and sat down at the table. “No customers, let’s see if I can work in a meal today.” He reached for a slice of plain cheese.
“I can help if the doorbells jingle,” Spike said sincerely.
“Yes, Mr. Giles. Spike is very good at answering to all sorts of noises. Bells, dog whistles…” Buffy said, innocently picking a mushroom off her pizza and popping it into her mouth. She smiled at Spike, and he glared at her. “Police sirens—”
“No, that’s quite all right,” Rupert said, glossing over her comment. He cleared his throat and took a large bite, uncharacteristically speaking with his mouth full, not wanting to waste any time in case his break was interrupted with a customer. “You’ve got enough work in the back.”
“Almost done,” Spike said. “Just have the two bigger boxes left.”
Rupert blinked, swallowed in one large gulp, and looked at him curiously, almost smiling. “Really? But that room was atrocious. You really did all of that so quickly?”
Spike shrugged, hid his proud grin with another bite. “Wasn’t that bad.”
Rupert gave Joyce a glance then, a little triumphant one, and then he looked at his nephew. “You’ve certainly helped us out, Spike. Thank you.”
Spike smiled a bit bashfully, not liking all these eyes on him, and he focused intently on his plate, picking at the side of it with his thumbnail.
“If you keep working that hard, I might not have anything left for you to do,” Rupert said, chuckling a bit as he brought his pizza to his mouth once more.
A positive male role model is what the boy needs.
The words he’d overheard earlier started to echo in Spike’s mind, and he tossed his pizza down on the table, stood up, and almost knocked the chair over in his attempt to evacuate.
“Spike,” Rupert said cautiously, raising one hand uselessly in the air.
But he’d already walked to the door, cigarettes at the ready for his defiance, and he didn’t care to hear, didn’t want to eavesdrop on the conversation they were having when he left. He could smell disappointment a mile away just as easily as he could sniff out a fake compliment.
Rupert didn’t care about him. None of them did. He wasn’t going to be a part of this fucking feel good party, not when the invitation was as flimsy as Rupert’s appraisal. In fact, he wasn’t going to stay one more minute in their presence. So he lit up a cigarette and started strutting down the busy L.A. streets, looking for something to perk him up. As soon as he saw a bus crawling to a stop on the other side of the road, Spike made a quick decision, and waited for the cars to pass so he could cross the street and hop on, no matter where it might take him.
Her voice stopped him before he ever left the sidewalk.
“Spike!”
He turned around, lifting his head to see over the crowd of people on the street, and he saw Buffy, weaving through bodies to catch up to him. Obviously, this was going to be good. He plucked his cigarette from the side of his mouth and flicked the end, exhaling through a sideways grin as she neared him.
He lifted his head, a curt little nod.
She folded her arms and cocked her hip out, still in the leg warmers in the middle of the street. And he’d been staring at them for a bit too long.
“What do you want?” he said, suddenly very aggravated. He tapped his cigarette butt nervously, annoying a pedestrian who hadn’t expected hot embers to fly onto her calves, but he ignored her and walked past Buffy. “Trying to get me to come back? Well I’m not! Fuck that prick in there.”
“Oh, please, like I care how emo your life is or whatever,” she said, following him.
Spike stilled and very slowly, moved to face her, his eyes dangerously thin. “Emo?”
Buffy smiled pompously, flipped her hair over her shoulders and her little black skirt ruffled when she started walking again. “Yeah. You gonna start crying, emo boy? Need a lady to show you how to put eyeliner on the right way?”
“You take that back,” he shouted from behind her. When she started laughing, he groaned in irritation. “And why are you running after me?”
“You’re the one running after me,” she said, looking at him over her shoulder. “I was just bored and wanted to see what you were doing, but it turns out you’re still incredibly lame and also a big baby so I’m bailing.”
He laughed humorlessly, sneering and on the verge of strangling her. Two more drags of his cigarette hadn’t soothed his desire. He’d always heard men saying that there were women in this world who made you want to fuck or fight; and that statement had never resonated with him more clearly as it did at the present.
“Hey, Betty!” She was moving swiftly down the street now, but he knew she’d turn at the sound of her false name. When she did, she was smiling. So, he was too, but whatever. Not like anyone had to know about it.
“What?” she shouted, her head turning away for a minute when an older man accidentally bumped her shoulder as he passed by her.
“Thanks for letting me know you care!” He smiled almost sweetly at her as he touched his chest with a splayed hand, bringing his other hand up to take the final drag off his smoke. “It really means a lot to me.”
She flipped him off and made a face, and he started laughing, following her back to the shop. He didn’t really have a better place to go anyway.