Chapter 8
Chapter Notes: I have been to the UK twice, and I’ve used the knowledge gained from those trips as well as some extensive research about Burroughs that are slightly more dodgy than say, Camden Town (which isn’t really dodgy if you aren’t a jerk tourist, but I digress). That said, if you are a local or a native of London and you catch something off, please let me know in a private message so I can correct it. I don’t think I’m off base, though, so hopefully it won’t be necessary. Enjoy the update!
“Who are you, and what have you done with my nephew?” Rupert asked when he entered his apartment, grocery bags in tow.
Spike smiled proudly and sprayed an end table with wood polish before he wiped it down with a white cloth. He had cleaned the entire living room. There were vacuum lines in the carpet. He even fluffed the pillows on the sofa. Rupert sputtered in surprise when Spike came forward and took half the grocery bags from his hands and walked into the kitchen. He followed, watching him unload the bags onto the countertop, singing a quiet tune to himself. It was then that Rupert noticed that the kitchen was clean, too.
Rupert smiled. “Spike, you…you cleaned.” He set the remaining bags down on the floor, and opened the oven. Spotless.
“House rules, right?” He smelled the bag of French bread and hummed his approval.
“Well, yes…but I didn’t expect you to do that on your day off.”
Spike shrugged. “Got bored. Busy today?”
“Not especially, no,” Rupert replied as the two men put the groceries in their proper places, easily moving in sync together. “Some music event going on at the beach so we didn’t have much traffic.”
When Spike pulled out a bottle of wine from the sacks on the floor, Rupert rushed to take it from him. “I’ll get that, thank you.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Wasn’t going to drink it.”
“I know you weren’t,” Rupert said, quickly realizing what the boy had inferred. “I didn’t want you to drop it. It was very expensive.”
A knowing smile spread across the younger man’s face and he leaned against the counter, staring his uncle down. “Got a date?”
“What?” Rupert blinked rapidly, huffing and bumbling as he carefully sat the bottle down on the counter, turning the label outwards so it could be easily read. “I have no idea who…or wh-what you’re talking about.”
“Mmhmm,” Spike said, his toothy grin opening to make room for his tongue. “So, you and Joyce make nice today? She ask you out or did you grow a pair?”
“Spike,” Rupert hissed in embarrassment. “She is married.”
“So?” He shrugged. “She obviously wants it.”
“Be that as it may,” he pushed his glasses up his nose, unable to hide his grin, “that does not mean that I should take part in adultery.”
Spike chuckled low and wicked, and Rupert did not like how easily his nephew could put things together on his own. He needed to change the subject, and he knew just the topic to shut the boy up.
“Buffy asked about you.” Rupert’s lips twitched in mirth, spotting the boy’s smile from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah, what of it?” he said gruffly after a long moment, twisting the saltshaker on the counter between his fingers. “Why should I care what Buffy has to say?” He spun the shaker like a top and then said, “What did she say?”
Grinning with the same evil countenance his nephew had bestowed upon him earlier, Rupert said, “I thought you didn’t care. Besides, I don’t remember.”
Spike glared at him, clenching his teeth. “You remember! Just tell me!”
“You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
“Maybe!”
“Why are you shouting?”
“Because! I shout when—I shout when I’m uncomfortable!”
“Well, it is very loud.”
“I’m sorry!” Spike closed his eyes and sighed, gathering his wits. Then he looked at his uncle and raised his eyebrows. “So?”
“All right, all right,” Rupert said, laughing. “She said, ‘Where’s Spike?’ and I said, ‘He’s off today.’”
Spike’s fingers drummed on his hips. “Then what?”
“Then…she asked if you were coming in tomorrow.”
Spike smiled. “She did? She do that licky thing with her lips when she’s being shy?”
Rupert rolled his eyes and walked out of the kitchen to check the stack of mail on the dining table.
He groaned pathetically as he followed him into the living room. “Come on, then what’d she say?”
“Spike, I honestly don’t remember. Ooh, National Geographic came,” he said, spying the magazine in his hand amid the stack of envelopes. He flipped through the first couple of pages and then said excitedly, “They found items dating back to the Tang Dynasty in a twelve-hundred-year-old Belitung trade ship! Astonishing…”
“Rupert! I don’t sodding care about that.”
Rupert looked up innocently. Spike pursed his lips.
“Oh, right. Buffy. I had forgotten that teenage crushes were far more important than the possibility of global trade in the ninth century.”
“It’s not a crush.”
“It’s not?”
“No…it’s…horny hormones. That’s what it is.” Spike held his head high and folded his arms. “Just want a piece of that…fine ass,” he said, his arrogance faltering as he flinched on the last phrase.
“That’s so much better,” Rupert said sarcastically. He set his mail back on the table, tucked the magazine under one arm, and headed towards his bedroom. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to rest for a couple of hours.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Want me to help make something to eat later?”
Rupert stopped halfway down the hall and said, “No need to worry with that. Joyce has invited us to dinner.”
“At Buffy’s house?” he asked, panicking.
“Yes, Spike. They do live together.”
Rupert closed his bedroom door behind him, laughing softly to himself. That’s when he noticed his unmade bed, dusty furniture, and dirty carpet. Spike had never touched his room amid his cleaning frenzy. He had respected his privacy. Perhaps the boy would soon earn the right to lock his own bedroom door if he kept up this sudden change in behavior.
* * *
Dinner at Buffy’s.
Dinner at Buffy’s.
Spike couldn’t stop thinking about this. Was it Joyce’s idea, and would Buffy feel obligated to be nice to him? Was it Buffy’s idea? Should he be nice to her? Should he wear pants?
“Of course you wear pants, you git,” he said to himself as he looked in his closet. He’d showered for almost forty-five minutes, shaved, and got his hair standing perfect, eyelids lined in black the way they were intended to be, and now it was a matter of picking out something to wear. He had five pairs of jeans, all in various stages of wear and tear. He pulled out his favorites, the tight, dark black ones with the frayed hole from keeping his wallet in the back pocket. They were a bit too long so he usually cuffed them, which made him feel like Ian Mackaye, though he’d never say that aloud.
Besides. Black jeans were fancier. Matched his nails.
When it came to shirts, though, he was supremely lacking anything decent. He pulled out his thin white tee with the black Crass logo on it. It had the least amount of holes and they matched the pants, he figured, so he laid that on top of the jeans on his bed. He looked at it all together. Seemed right.
Shoes.
Dinner at Buffy’s.
He only had one pair of shoes, his favorite combat boots, the steel toes of which had seen its fair share of jaws, ribs, walls, and stomachs. Christ, he missed live punk shows. Maybe LA had a good music scene to check out.
He opened the top shelf of his dresser, humming along with the music that played on his stereo, and pulled out a bottle of cologne. He popped the lid off and sniffed it, making a face, and then shrugged, spraying it under his armpits. He slapped the lid on, closed the drawer and started to get dressed.
Dinner at Buffy’s.
The final touch was his belt, and as he pulled the studded leather through the buckle, his uncle knocked on the door.
“Come in, I’m almost ready.”
“Is that what you’re wearing?”
Spike looked up as he patted his belt buckle shut, taking in Rupert’s suit. A suit.
“That what you’re wearing?” he countered, standing proudly.
Rupert adjusted the collar of his eggplant dress shirt, which he’d left unbuttoned, and then smoothed his hands down his charcoal grey suit jacket. “I think I look quite nice.” He smiled smugly.
“You look like Don Johnson from Essex.”
Rupert scoffed in offense. “Well, you look like…like that idiot punk star who stabbed his wife and then killed himself.” He snapped his fingers as he tried to remember the name. “Oh yes, it was Syd Barret!”
“Sid Vicious,” Spike said incredulously.
“Right! That’s the name. I really am getting old. Anyway. You look just as haggard and homeless as he did. Well done!”
“That should be a compliment, but I’m more filled out than that junkie,” he said arrogantly, puffing out his muscular chest.
Rupert rolled his eyes. “You would preen in a burlap sack, wouldn’t you?”
“Can’t help it that I’m so devilishly handsome. Are we going?”
“You really insist upon wearing that?”
“I insist.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, man!”
“All right, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Got nothing to worry about, Rupes.”
* * *
As Rupert’s 1983 navy blue Volkswagen Bug sputtered black exhaust along a stunning winding road lined with finely manicured trees, Spike’s eyes took in his first sight of Holmby Hills and he could not say a word. These weren’t homes. These weren’t even mansions. These were like modern day castles with atriums and fountains and statues and Olympic-sized pools and tennis courts with their own bathrooms.
“There’s Hugh Hefner’s estate,” Rupert said quietly as they passed a gate and the fence that hid the estate from view.
Hugh Hefner.
Buffy lived in the same neighborhood as Hugh Hefner. A man so rich he had three girlfriends that lived with him in their own private quarters. A man so rich he had a sister estate next to this one, just for shits and giggles. Probably naked shits and giggles.
“And I believe Kelsey Grammer’s house is around here somewhere. I don’t like him very much,” Rupert said with a frown of distaste.
Spike swallowed, his hands clasped between his knees.
Rupert turned the car onto a brick-paved driveway bordered with tiny lanterns that meandered toward a tall wrought-iron gate. When he came to a stop by a concrete booth and a number pad, a man in a suit looked Rupert over as he reached out to punch in the security code.
“Hello, Mitchell,” Rupert said flatly.
Mitchell nodded, the gate opened, and Spike thought he might crap his pants when he saw Buffy’s home for the first time. It was enormous; there were four stories that Spike could see from this point of view, three sharply angled A-frame roofs with red tiles, black double-doors that looked more than fifteen feet in height, a white water fountain covered in ivy around the base in the center of the circular drive, and ball-shaped topiaries like a fence around the perimeter.
Of course, being a Londoner, Spike had seen several great buildings in his life. Most of them were much bigger than this. However, you had to pay to get into most of those places. You went to places like that on field trips for school. People didn’t still live there, unless they were the Queen of England, and if they did, Spike sure as fuck didn’t know them. All his friends lived either in converted flats or shitty little brick-stacked Victorian homes, some of them next to an even shittier abandoned railroad transport station in Primrose. Anyone with even a little bit of money wouldn’t live there unless they had to.
Brixton and Hackney had been his stomping grounds for the past four years, thanks to his mother’s latest choice in men, and the people who lived there, though rougher and meaner than most, were his family. His mates frowned upon girls like Buffy, taking out their frustration from being so unfortunate on the fortunes of the wealthy with a bit of mayhem and raising some hell after a night at the pub. He thought about that, wondered how Joyce might react if he took a piss on that lion statue by the door. That’s what he’d have done if he didn’t know her and Buffy. Probably do a lot worse than that, actually, if he was shitfaced. He tried to laugh but couldn’t, not with his breath caught in his throat from staring at the estate with apprehension.
Rupert’s clutch creaked loudly before he stopped and turned the car off. Spike had yet to peel his eyes away from the enormous building that towered over them.
“Rupert?” he said softly.
“Yes, Spike?”
“You ever feel like…your balls just shrank back inside of your body?”
Rupert laughed and opened his car door. “Come on, you’ll be all right.”
They walked up nine concrete steps, walked over a Spanish tiled patio, and finally made it to the doors. They opened before Rupert knocked, a butler smiled politely, and they crossed over the threshold. At least it wasn’t as cold on the inside as it looked from the outside. Dark hardwood floors, robust chaises and couches, familiar prints on the walls, decorated like a hotel.
With white lace curtains.
“Won’t you come in?” Joyce appeared, ushering the men further inside, taking Rupert’s wine with a grateful smile. “Rupert, you look nice.”
“Thank you, Joyce,” he said kindly. “You’re looking lovely as well.”
“And Spike…you look…” She tilted her head, studying him.
He fidgeted with the rings on his fingers.
“Well, Buffy’s in the dance room,” she said with a great big smile. “Henry will show you. Henry?”
The butler sighed and started walking down a hallway. Spike assumed he was meant to follow. Henry walked up a flight of stairs, opened a set of white double doors with a flourish, and then took his leave after he pointed to another door at the end of the hall. Spike tried to thank him, but he’d already scampered away.
His mouth twisted to the side and he slowly walked down the hallway, suddenly feeling incredibly nervous. There were bronzed, baby-sized ballerina slippers on a pedestal to his left, a framed picture of a seven-year-old Buffy on the right, wearing a pink tutu, her arms in a striking pose, face serious as ever. He smiled, taking a second to look it over, and he imagined her little figure was a very cute sight to behold on a stage.
He could hear music coming from the other side of the door. She was always practicing it seemed, even at home. He knocked on the door, and when no answer came, he pushed it open and quietly walked inside.
This was definitely a room to dance in.
The wood floors were polished to a high sheen, the far wall was covered with mirrors from floor to ceiling, a bar that spanned the width of the room was mounted just above hip-height, and a very expensive stereo system sat in the corner. Buffy was in the middle of the room, watching herself as she lifted her leg in the air behind her, arching her back to grab her foot.
“Hi,” she said, smiling at his reflection, her right leg and arms making a perfect circle when she made contact.
“Hey there.” He put his hands in his pockets and took a step forward. “Nice digs.”
She lowered her leg after a minute to stretch, and turned around to face him. She was wearing black cotton drawstring pants and a cropped white tank, her hair in a ponytail, feet bare and adorable.
“You look nice,” she said sincerely, smiling as she tugged on her ponytail holder.
Well, that was just…
“Thanks,” he said, afraid he might be blushing. A quick glance in the mirror told him he still had his dignity. “So uh…so do you.”
She snickered and wiggled her hand into the back of her hair to shake it loose. He wondered if she really wanted to let her hair down, or if she did that just for him. “Whatever, I’m totally sweaty and gross. I must have lost track of the time back here.”
She walked over to the stereo and stopped the song she was practicing with, then she put another CD in and pressed the play button. It was a Latin tune, congas and shakers and a lot of trumpets. Lively and upbeat. She turned around, smiling impishly.
“Come here.”
Of course he’d do as she asked, but he still had to ask, “Why?” even as his feet started to carry him over to her.
“I wanna teach you how to merengue.”
“How to what?” Now he wasn’t so sure. “Isn’t that the stuff they put on pies?”
“No, merengue. Just come here you big baby,” she said, waving her hands towards herself in invitation. “You’ll like it, it’s easy. Get to wiggle your hips a bunch,” she said, laughing girlishly.
He had no idea what dimension he’d been tossed into, but motherfucker, he put one hand in hers and the other on her ribcage, and he’d dance the fucking hokey pokey if she asked with that smile of hers.
“Ok, feel the beat, and watch my feet.”
They stood two feet apart, and he looked down between them, watching her hips shift from side to side, stepping with her left then her right foot, her weight dipping into each one, knees swishing overtop one another as they shuffled across the floor. He tried his best to copy, finding it to be fairly simple after only a few missteps.
“Hey, you’re doin’ good,” she said cheerily. “Watch my knees.”
“Sorry. Got a mind of their own.”
“It’s ok,” she said, giggling. “When I use my right, you use your left, and dip into it a bit. Yeah, yeah, like that. Ok, now we can go forward and back…just like that. Wow, you learn fast!”
He wasn’t watching her feet any more. He simply moved, his eyes eating up the sight of her pleased face as she instructed him. The hand that was just beneath her ribs slid to her back and he tried pulling her forward a bit. She looked up at him and smiled.
“Think you’re cocky, huh?”
“A little.” He smiled, tongue glistening just enough to be seen.
She didn’t seem to mind that he’d started moving his hips suggestively. “Learn a dance in five seconds and suddenly you think you can lead me?”
“I’m the man, aren’t I? Supposed to lead.”
He pulled her closer, smirking, and now he understood why people liked to dance so much. Holding her like this, innocent as it was, watching her body move in time with his, smelling her hair, feeling her heat, it was a lot like making love only with more brass instruments in the background. He hoped it was a long song.
He tried spinning her and Buffy’s mouth dropped open into a surprised smile when he did it correctly, then she laughed with an airy, feminine sound that made his nostrils flare with desire, dancing step by step back to him.
“Fancy.”
“Got more.” He dipped her, chuckling when he almost dropped her. “Sorry!”
Her hands scrabbled to hold onto him as he tried to help her up and she was laughing too hard to get herself up right away. That was fine by him. He kind of liked holding her this way. Once she finally had her feet planted on the ground, she easily stood up once more, still smiling in laughter.
“Rule number one. Don’t kill your dance partner.”
She looked at him sweetly when he took her in his arms once more, pulling her so close their bodies were touching. Her hair was in her face, smile on her lips, shine in her eyes, and he really needed to kiss her. She looked like she might go for it, too, when her smile disappeared to gasp softly.
“Whoa, is there a costume party I didn’t know about?”
Buffy’s eyes widened in horror and Spike turned around to face the voice of the man who’d interrupted them, annoyed that the moment had been spoiled. First thing he noticed were the intruder’s broad shoulders. Then it was the cocky grin on his youthful face. He took in his silk black shirt to his grey tailored slacks, all the way down to his shiny shoes. He already hated him.
“Angel,” Buffy said, quickly pushing herself away from Spike and smiling nervously. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
Spike looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out their relationship.
“Joyce called me this afternoon. Said she’d just love it if I came to dinner. Who’s this? One of the freaks from that dumb school?”
Buffy’s mouth tensed up around a reply she decided not to say aloud, something Spike found very interesting.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Spike said with an offended snort.
“This is Spike. Spike…meet Angel.” She folded her arms, looking pissed as all hell.
“Who is that?” he mouthed.
She wouldn’t look him in the eyes after that and Spike was growing increasingly agitated with a knowledge he hoped wasn’t so. Angel walked up behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the back of her head. Then he put his arms around her middle and Spike’s eyes flared with anger as he watched her hands slide over that idiot’s large forearms as if she liked it.
“He’s my boyfriend.”
The song concluded with a brilliant crescendo of trumpets, the congas boasted their many tones, the singer wailed a high F, and then it was over abruptly, the final chord echoing in the dance room.
“So,” Angel said, slapping his hands together and rubbing them as if starting a fire, a move that shook Buffy from side to side since she was still entwined in his arms, “who’s hungry?”