Chapter 14
Buffy knew that Angel was avoiding her and that the only way she could corner him into a conversation was if she sought him out at his place, in the daytime, and early. It was noon and sunny and she’d have plenty of time to talk to him without fear of him bolting, and she had a lot to say.
Helping herself, she turned the front door handle. It was unlocked so she tried opening the door, frowning when something seemed to be blocking her entrance. Looking through the tiny open crack, she noticed a large stack of cardboard boxes. She rammed her shoulder into the door to push it open the rest of the way, scooting the boxes aside to give her room to enter. She frowned when she shut the door behind her as her eyes laid upon even more boxes, stacked haphazardly about the large room.
“Angel?”
She walked inside slowly as it finally started to sink in. He was leaving.
She heard him moving around in the adjacent room and he darted out into the hall to face her, holding a packing tape dispenser in one hand, a marker in the other, with a rightfully surprised expression on his face.
“Buffy, hey! Uh…what are you doing here?”
“Hello to you, too. Working on a project?” She folded her arms and smiled smugly as she baited him.
“It’s uh,” he said, scratching the side of his head with the tape dispenser. The tape caught in his hair and he winced embarrassingly as he tried to yank it out. Once he’d freed his demeanor turned more serious and he sighed.
“We should talk.”
“You think? Let’s start with where the hell you’ve been for the last week.”
He walked past her to get out of the confining space of the hallway and into the confining space of the living room where he had placed the bulk of his boxes. He brushed the top of one off and motioned for her to sit. Luckily, she obliged without protest and he took a moment to collect his thoughts. He wouldn’t look at her though, already knowing the expression she had on her face. He never liked that look.
“I’ve been doing some thinking and I think it’s best if I leave Sunnydale.”
Buffy was silent, his words hitting her like a ton of bricks. “You think it’s best,” she said quietly, staring at the floor with a hard expression. Pissed that people kept making decisions for her, she rose from her seat and stared at him.
“What else do you think is best, huh, Angel? Maybe you think I should get a tattoo! Perhaps you can pick out which college I’m going to attend since I can’t seem to do anything myself. O-or maybe I should join a convent and be a nun for the rest of my life!”
“I like that last suggestion,” he said, hoping his lame joke would calm her down a notch but she glared at him and succeeded in wiping the grin off his face. “So, I guess you know everything.”
“Yeah. I know everything. Thought I’d come by and see if you got me anything from the bridal registry. You think Spike likes monogrammed towels?”
Her sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed but Angel’s main focus was on the scar on her neck. It was the first time he’d seen it and it enraged him to think of how she received it, enraged him even more when he realized it had been reopened.
“Did he hurt you?”
She blinked, not expecting that response. “Who?”
He nodded towards her claim mark. “Spike. He bit you again.”
Her hand came up to cover the scar and she looked away from him as the contact sent tingles through her. “No, he didn’t hurt me.” She needed to get back on topic. He was changing the subject and her nerve was slipping.
“He claimed me. Did you know that?”
Angel’s expression tightened and he folded his arms snugly around his chest in an air of indifference, though his anger was so apparent that his attempts at seeming casual fell flat. “Yeah, I did. Welcome to the family, I guess. That makes you, what, my granddaughter-in-law?” He flinched at that realization and Buffy started inhaling deeply as her mouth twisted into an angry grimace.
“Don’t you family tree me! And quit acting like it’s no big deal!”
“What do you want me to say, Buffy?” He held his hands out at his sides in surrender. “I can’t do anything about it. Spike’s claimed you and that’s it. So I’m leaving.”
“I can’t believe you,” she said evenly, quietly, shaking her head as she held him with her gaze. “You’re not even going to try to fight for me?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m over the whole…you and me thing,” he said, throwing her own words from a week ago back in her face.
“I was under a spell, you moron!” She stood inches from him, tilting her head up to shout in his face.
“Right, a love spell, Buffy! And you didn’t love me.” He backed away from her. “You don’t love me.”
She had nothing to say to that. Why didn’t she have anything to say to that? All she could do was stand there quietly, her mouth open, ready to speak though nothing came out but a scoffing, gasping noise.
“Breaking that claim would mean that it had to move to someone else. If I challenged it, it would be me you’d be mated to.”
“And you don’t want that,” she said quietly.
“I never wanted that.”
He watched her sit down again, wishing he could bring her some comfort as her eyes welled with tears. “Buffy, this thing is…it’s going to be hard for you but I can’t be there to help you through it. I can’t watch…” He ran his hands down the sides of his face in frustration and sat beside her. “To be honest, I was going to leave anyway.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want this life for you. You should be able to grow old with some idiot and make babies and go to the beach with him and I can’t give you that.”
“You never asked what I wanted. You just assumed—”
“Buffy, you’re young. You don’t know what you want.”
He was right, but she wasn’t giving in just yet. “So…so, maybe I don’t know what I want but that doesn’t mean you can just decide what I want for me.”
“Whistler asked me to help you, to keep the balance between good and evil. That’s my destiny. He didn’t ask me to love you. It just happened.” He leaned forward, clasping his hands together between his knees, unable to look at her. He couldn’t, didn’t want to see the expression on her face when he told her the rest. “But maybe I was supposed to be in your life for something other than love. I mean, we both know how bad it turned out when we…”
She laughed a bit, calming down slightly at his words and offered a small smile. “Yeah, not the best morning after skills.” She nudged him in the arm when he frowned guiltily. “Kidding. Sorta.”
“My point is, maybe I was meant to guide you—God, I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
“Just say it.”
“I think I was supposed to guide you to Spike.” His face scrunched up uncomfortably and Buffy burst into laughter.
“Sorry…I’m just…” She continued to giggle and finally calmed down, tucking her hair behind her ears as she sucked her lips into her mouth to ward off her laughter. “That might be the most amusing thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, think about it. Whistler came to you when I was Angelus, right?”
“Yeah? He warned me about Acathla.”
“I wasn’t supposed to bring about Acathla, I was supposed to stop it. I wasn’t supposed to lose my soul.” He looked at her with his eyebrows raised, hoping he didn’t have to spell it out for her. Her face was a mask of confusion, though, and adorable as it might have looked, he decided to cut her a break.
“We weren’t supposed to…make love. And that would mean that we weren’t supposed to fall in love. You have a different path and it’s not with me.” He sighed heavily and stood up again, needing to put some space between them.
She wrapped her arms around herself protectively and tried to digest everything. “So, you’re saying I’m destined to be with Spike?”
He picked up the tape dispenser and folded up a box and began to seal it shut. “I guess. It’s what the spell implies. Though, that seems more like punishment to me. I lived with him for…God, the table manners.” He shuddered in remembrance.
“You actually ate at a table?”
“Sometimes. Darla was old fashioned and Spike took delight in being messy with his kills. I think he did it to piss me off. This one time, we had a group of carolers, Dru’s idea. It was Christmas.” He shrugged, missing the appalled expression on Buffy’s face as he took a turn down memory lane. “They were all laid out and tied down on the table and Darla raised her glass to toast. Spike just dove right in, not even waiting for her to give thanks, and started sucking away. The other three carolers started screaming and we had to kill them off to keep quiet so they tasted awful and…that might be too much information.”
“Just a bit.” She scowled and rubbed her arms as she warded off the disgust from the visual he’d depicted.
“But, Buffy, that’s what Spike comes from. What I come from. That’s part of who we are. That’s the reason…well, it’s why I was leaving. I didn’t want to bring you into that world.”
“Well, too late for that!” She stood up and laughed humorlessly. “I’m knee deep in vampire crap. That’s kind of my gig, Angel. I wouldn’t ever have a normal life, no matter how noble you think you’re being by leaving. I just don’t understand why it had to happen this way and why I can’t seem to find a good reason to hate Spike.”
“I could give you a few.”
Ignoring him, she started to pace the floor, what little room she had to do so. “I’m pissed that I didn’t even have a choice in this. Not in any of it! I was under a spell and didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. You know, I’m kind of the poster-gal for feminists of the world. Tiny girl, kicking vampire ass, taking no guff!”
“Do you even know what guff is?”
“It’s something I won’t take!” She pointed angrily at her chest with a pout. “I’m a…I’m a girl who can do what she wants and damn the man that brings her down. Being claimed kinda ruins that image, you know. Might as well slap an apron on me, throw on some heels and get me to bakin’ in that kitchen. I hate this!”
Angel opened his mouth to speak but it seemed Buffy was set on venting.
“And you…with your…disappearing act! And Xander and Willow are cheaters! And Giles has turned into some wackadoo who doesn’t seem to remember that he’s a watcher and now you’re leaving and I feel weird and itchy and…gimmie that tape.” She held her hand out and Angel cautiously gave her the tape dispenser. She started to seal up boxes, angrily slapping it down on one side of a box and yanking it across the top. “Stupid magic!”
“Buffy,” he said softly behind her and she exhaled and turned around, reluctantly meeting his eyes. “I don’t blame you for being angry. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to face the fact that you and Spike are in this thing together. I really, really hate being the voice of reason right now.”
“But you do it so well,” she said, patting him on the shoulder.
“If it’s any consolation, Spike has longevity on his side.”
“Boy does he,” she said with a tiny smile and quickly caught herself, her eyes going wide as she tried to rectify what she’d blurted out. “I-I mean! You are a very handsome man.”
“I mean,” he said, glossing over her obvious attempt at flattery, “that he’s not going to go anywhere. He’s got time on his side. No one’s asking you to move in with the guy.” He was quiet for a beat and then, “Please don’t move in with Spike.”
She rolled her eyes and smiled at him. As an abrupt silence took over the room, they both stood awkwardly, unsure of where to go from here. Buffy wasn’t even sure why she’d come, except that she thought she owed it to herself to figure out what she felt for Angel. Before everything, before Spike came back, things between them had been amicable at best, but the underlying tension had yet to breach the surface.
She’d tossed the bad history excuse around a lot, mostly to keep from dissecting the pain she felt whenever she thought about him. But the truth was, they did have a lot of bad history together and it seemed like she’d been forcing her emotions whenever he was around, if nothing else because it seemed like what she was supposed to do. He’d come back from Hell, completely unexpectedly, and she had to reevaluate everything. He’d needed her help, needed her to bring him back from his feral state. She had to swallow her heart, put her grief and mourning to the side and roll up her sleeves to help a man she thought gone forever. When he was right again, there was such an underlying obligation to keep things going, for him to stick around out of gratitude and for her to love him simply because she had before he died.
They’d been going against the grain for so long, trying to force something that had twice ended. First when he lost his soul and second when she sent him to Hell. Now, fate had stepped in a third time and permanently linked her to a different vampire. If that wasn’t a hint from the Powers that it was time to break up and move on, then nothing was.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Los Angeles. Got a few things I’m working on. We’ll see.”
She nodded and shoved her hands in her back pockets as she let out a long breath of air. “So I guess this is it, then?”
He smiled sadly. “Yeah, I guess this is it.” She had tears in her eyes though she smiled bravely at him and he said, “I’m not saying goodbye.”
She understood and placed her hand on the side of his face, wanting to hug him or something more but unable to bring herself to. It was time to let him go.
* * * *
Spike couldn’t sleep so he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling that afternoon, wondering just what in the hell he’d gotten himself into. He could no longer deny his feelings for her, could no longer pretend that he didn’t love Buffy. God, he did, and that was the fucking rub. She could go off on her merry way, ignore him forever if she wanted while he continued to follow her around like a dog, turning into some stupid goody-goody prick. And it was all for her, he made no mistake in admitting.
Every thought, every action, every minute of his days were spent thinking, “What would Buffy say about this? Would Buffy like this? Would Buffy stake me for this?” It was pathetic, really, but he’d been down this road before. So it was old hat to worship the ground she walked on until he got stepped on enough times to finally get the fuck out of the way, as he had with Dru. Buffy hadn’t done much stepping yet, but he knew those cute little boots of hers could deliver one hell of a stomping and he expected it to start fairly soon.
He rose from his bed, resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to get any rest, and dressed. When a knock sounded on his door, his head whipped towards it and if his heart could beat, it would have been pounding in his chest. She was here. He inhaled slowly, willing his balls back, and swaggered to the door, hoisting it up and darting out of the way of the sunlight. She quickly entered and shut the door behind her, fidgeting nervously as she stared at the ground.
“So…what brings you here?” He smiled awkwardly, placed his hands on his hips, then he crossed his arms.
Buffy grinned slyly and walked around him, moving further into the factory. “I thought, uh…that we should talk about some stuff.” She turned to face him, sitting on the edge of his bed. He realized then that it might be a good idea to purchase some chairs.
He sniffed loudly and looked at the wall to the left of her. “Sure. We can talk but make it quick ‘cause I’ve got stuff to do.”
“Oh. Ok, well, if you’re busy I can just come back—”
“No!” he shouted, halting her as she rose slightly from the bed. Then he shrugged casually. “I mean, it’s cool. Whatever.”
She sat down, unable to hide her smile. “If you’re sure I’m not bothering you…”
He gave her a knowing look and sighed. “All right, Buffy. What would you like to talk about?”
“Well, I just went to Angel’s and—”
“Oh, here we go!” He reached for his smokes, scowling as he lit one up.
“It’s not what you think. Wait…what do you think?”
He exhaled slowly. “Angel wants to challenge the claim, right? Now you and your sweetie-pie can live together forever and wear matching necklaces or what all.”
“Matching necklaces?”
“Yeah, you know the ones from the mall that break in half for each of you to wear, then when you’re together and the two sides are one it says something stupid like ‘My Girl’ and—don’t change the subject!”
“I’m not! You’re the one with the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl.”
“Are you making fun of me?” He stared at her challengingly as he flicked his cigarette repeatedly with his thumb.
“A little.” She smiled at him.
Hurt that she came here just to insult him, he straightened up, tossed his cigarette onto the floor and said, “If you came here just to insult me, you can get the hell out.”
“Jeez, sorry. Aren’t you testy today?”
He looked at her sharply, his nostrils flared in warning and she smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Spike, I was…I don’t know how to do this, ok?” She stood up, letting her hands fall hard at her sides.
“Do what?”
“Talk to you like…” She sighed and looked him in the eyes. “I wish everything was like it was before.”
“Well it isn’t,” he said, angry and offended that she could be so callous. “Can’t go back to the way things were, as much as you might like to.”
“No, I mean, I wish that I could talk to you as easily as I could when I was under the spell.”
He gasped softly in realization. “Oh.”
“See, this is what we have to talk about.” She started to walk around the room when his eyes softened and his hard expression melted away, uncomfortable with the way he looked at her. “For whatever reason, we’re destined to be together.”
“Destined?”
“Oh, God, tell me you know about this part?” Her eyebrows rose in worry.
“Afraid not, pet.”
She covered her face with her hands and groaned. Then, peeking through her fingers at him, she said, “You and I were meant to be together for some reason so, claim or no, we probably would have been…a thing, eventually. I guess.”
Spike was very quiet, which was saying a lot, considering his constant need to say something at all times. However, where his mind had wandered off to wasn’t where she would have thought.
“So let me get this straight. Angel isn’t going to be your alabaster prince and I am?”
“Is your stupid competition with Angel all you can think about?”
Chuckling, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked on his heels. “Yeah.”
“God, Spike! Listen to what I am saying!”
“Hey, I’m listening! It’s just that after so many years of being second best it’s nice to bask for a while!”
“Why are you shouting?”
“Because you were!”
“Oh! Well…let’s not do that,” she said, lowering her voice. “The point is, we’re sort of meant to be together and since Angel isn’t going to challenge the claim then—”
“Wait. Hold it right there.” She looked at him, unaware, and Spike said, “Did you go to Angel to ask him to challenge the claim?”
“No. I didn’t!” She flailed her hands in the air in exasperation that he didn’t believe her. “I had to know if there was anything left between us.”
“And is there?” He looked at her, bracing himself.
“Angel and Buffy are no more it seems.”
They were both silent, nodding their heads uncomfortably. “Wanna talk about it?” Spike asked quietly.
“Not really.”
“Thank God.” He sighed and sat down on the bed. “Don’t know what I’d have done if you did. I mean…if you want to, you know…you can. Just…”
“I get it, Spike, it’s ok,” she said with a smile as she sat beside him. She inhaled slowly, looking him over. “This is weird, huh? I mean, who would have thought we’d be in this situation?”
Spike smiled warmly at her. His voice was very soft and serious when he said, “Is a bit weird, but I’m not exactly complaining. Of all the girls I could’ve been with, I can’t imagine anyone better than you.”
She blushed at his compliment and looked at her hands that were clasped between her knees. She felt him swelling with pride and she looked up at him again, knowing full well that her cheeks were still red. “I think we should get to know each other.”
“But we already know each other.” He tapped the scar on his neck.
“We know about our pasts, yeah. But we don’t know anything about how we are together or what our future will be like. Those things are important, too. It’s different when you learn about them as they happen instead of just…having the knowledge like you read my life history or something.”
Touched that they were even having this conversation, he smiled in acceptance. “So, what do you want to know?”
Nervously, she picked at a loose thread in her pants and avoided the sweet expression on his face. “Well, I was thinking that maybe we could…like…go out or something. You know, like maybe you could ask me out sometime and I could say yes and we could watch a movie or something.” She looked up at him, chewing on her lip.
“You want me to ask you out on a date?” She was so adorable he wanted to put her in his pocket but she wanted to go on a date with him and he couldn’t contain his glee.
She shrugged, her cheeks turning crimson. “Is that completely juvenile? I mean, it’s totally up to you and not a big deal at all and I don’t even mean that anything has to happen it’s just a movie, not like people don’t go to movies together all the time without anything happening or—”
“Buffy.”
“Yeah?”
“Would you like to go out with me tomorrow night?”
She was melting into a puddle of goo as she looked at his hopeful blue eyes and his sweet smile and how the hell did she get here? “Ok.”
“Ok.”
“But we’re just getting to know one another. It’s not a big deal,” she rushed to say.
“Right.” He nodded, but he knew she was full of it. “Completely platonic.”
“Yes! That’s the word I was looking for. We’re just a guy and a girl. Going to a movie.”
“And dinner.”
“And…really?” She looked at him in surprise.
Offended, he scoffed. “Know how to take a girl out, don’t I?”
She smiled shyly. “Well, that sounds nice.”
“In a completely platonic way, of course,” he said with a teasing smile.
She rolled her eyes playfully and stood, making her way to the door. He followed after her.
“So, I guess I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow night.” He leaned against the wall on one shoulder, casual as you please.
“Seven it is.” She opened the door and smiled at him.
Before she walked out, he said, “Oh, and wear a skirt.” He walked backwards, smiling wickedly at her.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I like your legs. See you tomorrow, kitten.” He winked at her, turned around and walked away, feeling a bounce in his step.
She gasped and had half a mind to tell him that she wasn’t eye-candy and was most certainly not going to wear a skirt! But she was so embarrassed and flattered by his blatant want for her, which she was currently feeling in spades through their link, that all she could do was hurry outside and shut the door behind her.
“It’s not a date,” she said to herself as she walked away. As she mentally went through every outfit in her wardrobe, settling on the black pleated skirt she purchased recently and knew exactly how to wear her hair and make up, she stopped in her tracks and looked at the sky incredulously. “Oh, who am I kidding? It so is a date.”