Chapter 14: Being Friends
Manon had been living with Willow and Tara for two days already. Two days during which she had completely declined to come to the Magic Box to train and declined once to patrol, claiming that she still felt weak after her near death experience. Her excuse didn’t fool either vampire; she had been just fine up to the moment she talked to Spike about her feelings for him. It was clear she was just trying to avoid him, avoid them both maybe.
Tara had stopped by Revello Drive, and had told Buffy that something was going on with Manon, though she refused to say what was wrong. The Wicca was supposing that she felt lonely, being so far from her country and having no one her own age around. Buffy had nodded, not mentioning the other reason the kid had to feel lonely and sad, and promised to stop by after sunset.
She knocked softly and heard some scrambling inside the bedroom, then the door opened, revealing a pale looking, red eyed Manon. The young Slayer stared at her elder for a second before turning her back and going to sit on the bed, clutching a pillow to her chest. Taking the behavior as an invitation to come in, Buffy did just that, carefully closing the door behind her. Pulling a wooden chair away from the desk, she turned it around and sat astride it, her arms resting on the back.
“He told you, didn’t he?” Manon asked in a whisper, studying a suddenly very interesting spot on the wall behind Buffy.
“Told me you have feelings for him?” Buffy replied gently. “He didn’t need to. I knew before him. Men can be so clueless sometimes.”
A very small shiver ran through the girl’s body, and she seemed to hold the pillow a little tighter. Without vampire’s ears, Buffy might not have understood the so quiet murmur that came next.
“Are you angry against me?”
Buffy shook her head slowly, smiling kindly at Manon.
“No, I’m not angry. I do realize you didn’t choose to fall for him. And I am sorry for you. Falling in love is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it hurts so much it feels like it’s not worth it. Believe me, I know how it hurts. But I also know it gets better with time.”
Manon’s closed expression showed quite plainly that she doubted it would stop hurting, but she didn’t comment on that.
“What about…what about Spike?” she asked instead, hesitantly. “Is he angry?”
Again, Buffy shook her head. “No one is angry, Manon. We’re just worried for you. You can’t stay in this apartment forever. The Scoobies are going to the Bronze tonight. It’s a club, there’s music and dancing and lots of young people. If you’re going to stay in Sunnydale, maybe you can find friends your own age. Do you want to come with us?”
Buffy gave the girl a moment to think, watching as she nibbled her thumbnail absently.
“He’ll be there, won’t he?” she finally asked with a sigh.
“Yes, he will. But no one will embarrass you in any way. You’ll have face him eventually, you know. And yes, it will be awkward. But you two can be friends like you were before. And with time it will get better, I promise.”
The girl’s features relaxed very slightly, and Buffy repressed a smile, certain that she was going to accept. But she was surprised when she said, still very quiet, but with the barest hint of defiance in her voice.
“I tried to kiss him, you know.”
A flash of white-hot jealousy ran through Buffy, and she had the sudden urge to vamp out and shout ‘mine’. She repressed the instinct though, promising herself a little talk with her Mate. He hadn’t mentioned anything about a kiss. But for Manon’s sake, she just nodded, keeping her features smooth.
“He got so scared,” Manon continued, “he fell off the bench.”
A very small, hesitant smile flickered on her lips, and Buffy grinned in return.
“Looks like you found a new weapon against vampires”, she joked, happy to see the girl’s smile get just a little bolder. “So, will you come with us?”
Manon took a deep breath, and replied simply: “OK”.
“Good!” Buffy exclaimed as she got to her feet. “I’ll see you there then.”
She took a couple of steps to the door, but hesitated, frowning slightly.
“Kidding aside,” she said in a serious tone, “stakes are way more efficient than kisses against vampires. And as a member of the ‘been there, done that’ club, I really don’t recommend you get too friendly with the undead. Spike and I are the only ones who aren’t a threat to you. For any other vamp, your blood is a delicacy. Please don’t forget that.”
*****
Sitting by himself at a table, Spike was sipping on a distressingly bad beer and keeping an eye on his Mate. She was presently on the dance floor with the Harrises and the Witches, dancing to something that could barely be called music as far as he was concerned. Still, he could watch her dance all night. He had done it in the past. The good thing now was that he would go home with her and not find himself alone come morning.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” a hesitant Manon asked as she sat down at the table, leaving an empty seat between them.
She had gone a little moment before to get another diet coke, and had lingered for a while with a group of teenagers who looked somewhere around her age.
“’Could ask you the same thing, Bit,” he replied with a careful smile. “Don’t your new friends dance?”
“They do, but I have no idea how to dance to that kind of music, so I passed.”
He laughed softly. “Can you keep a secret?”
At Manon’s puzzled nod, he continued on in a conspirator’s tone: “I can’t dance to that either. Actually, I’d say what all these people do is bouncing up and down, not dancing.”
She gave him a true grin, and he mentally cheered. The evening had been pretty tense so far between the two of them, each not too sure how to act toward the other. But as his Slayer had told him earlier, they had to face each other eventually.
A boy from the group Manon had been talking with a moment before approached her and asked her to dance. She started to refuse, protesting softly that she didn’t know how, and Spike motioned to her to go.
“Just try it, Bit. At your age, I’m sure you can catch on to their so-called dancing pretty quickly. Have fun.”
She relented and got to her feet, but before walking away she gave him an amused smile – second cheer.
“You know, that nickname you call me?”
“Bit?”
“Yes, that… There’s that word in French, said the same way but with an e at the end… Maybe you can call me something else?”
With that, she joined the kid who had asked her on the dance floor, leaving Spike perplexed. It took him a moment to figure out what she meant, and when he did he burst out laughing, startling a couple of people who were passing by. He definitely had to find some other name for her.
He was still chuckling when Buffy and Anya came back to the table, but he declined to explain the cause of his hilarity. Xander shortly joined them with more refreshments and his Slayer chatted with the two humans for a while. Spike himself kept mostly quiet, still slightly resentful about the reaction of the Scoobies a few nights before. He had been burnt once, trying to see them all as friends, he wouldn’t make that mistake twice. The band started playing a slow song. Rising from his chair, Spike caught Buffy’s gaze as he offered his hand to her, and she smiled as she took it. He wouldn’t be caught dead – or alive, or undead, whatever the case – dancing to the stuff that had been playing earlier, but slow, he could do. And with Buffy, more than eagerly.
In the now dimmed lights, they stepped onto the dance floor, bodies, arms and hands finding immediately comfortable and familiar positions as they started to rock to the slow beat. His forehead resting against Buffy’s, Spike could block everything out until all that was left was her. The changing color of her eyes, her subtle and comforting scent, the softness of her skin where his fingers had slipped under her short top at the small of her back. So much, in such a small package, and all for him. Unhurriedly, her mouth came up to meet his, touching gently, chastely, a caress more than a kiss. Similarly slowly and softly, his lips moved to her chin, along her jaw, traveling down her throat to the silk scarf that encircled her neck. Nuzzling it aside, he managed to reach what she was hiding from the world, just like his own collar hid his most recent scars. Except that these marks he licked and nibbled sensuously wouldn’t fade, they would always claim her as his. He felt her body shiver against him, and grinned against her skin, continuing his ministrations as he felt more than heard the quietest purr rise from his Mate.
Nothing existed but the two of them, and Spike only wished this moment could last forever. But all too soon, it ended. Buffy tensed in his embrace, and he abandoned her neck, his head coming up to see what was troubling her. Just as he followed her gaze, she extricated herself from his arms. Understanding what had alarmed her, he followed her around the dancing couples to the edge of the dance floor, where Manon was standing, hugging herself, shivering, in front of the same boy she had danced with earlier, and who was now glaring at her as he wiped his bleeding nose.
“What happened?” Buffy asked in that commanding tone of hers.
“She hit me,” the boy grunted, gesturing toward Manon. “For no reason. Bitch.”
Acting on instinct alone, Spike grabbed the boy’s neck, controlling the pressure of his hand to scare him without hurting.
“I think you owe an apology to the lady,” he hissed. “For what you just called her and for whatever you did to make her hit you.”
The flailing kid stuttered what might have been an apology, but still Spike wasn’t letting go, making sure the idiot was scared enough, until Buffy’s hand gently closed on his wrist. Giving the boy a last glare with eyes he knew were more gold than blue, he trailed after Buffy, who, an arm around Manon, was leading the girl back to their table. He listened distractedly as the young Slayer told her elder that the jerk had been insistently laying his hands on inappropriate places as they danced despite her requests that he cease, arguing to her that, being French, she had to be used to more than innocent touches. Manon had started to get away from him, he had tried to hold her back, and Slayer’s instincts had kicked in.
As they all sat at the table, Buffy was telling the young woman not to worry about it, and that there were stupid people in every country. All the while, Spike was mentally cursing himself in all the languages he knew. Not only had he insisted that she dance with that bloody idiot, but, reacting without thinking, he had just done something that amounted to defending her honor. And by the furtive looks she was giving him every time Buffy wasn’t looking, he had just added one more item to her list of reasons to fancy him. Just what he needed.
Hell, his unlife used to be so much easier when fighting and killing was the only interaction he had with Slayers. Being in love wasn’t any harder than being enemies, or at least it wasn’t now, but how was he supposed to be friends with a Slayer?
*****
A few days before, if Spike had defended her like this, Manon might have grown hopeful. But now, she knew better than that. It didn’t mean anything to him; he would have done the same for any of the others. She just wished she could say it meant nothing to her.
Not very long after the bloodied nose incident, she had left the club with the two vampires to go patrol. It had been Buffy’s idea, and Manon had caught Spike’s brief frown when she suggested it. He hadn’t seemed happy at all to go patrolling with the two Slayers. Manon herself didn’t mind so much. She had missed him for the two days she had spent at Willow and Tara’s. Seeing him, now that she knew for sure that she didn’t stand a chance in hell, was painful, true, but at the same time strangely nice. For most of the evening, he had been playing along, treating her no differently than he had before he knew what she felt for him. And then that stupid boy had ruined the night. After that, Spike had avoided talking to her, wasn’t even looking at her. And before they reached the closest cemetery, he had excused himself, declaring that he was going to scout demon bars and see if he could find any interesting information there. Manon wasn’t stupid; she understood he had left so that he wouldn’t be around her. And it hurt, just as much as when he had rejected her. It hurt, because Buffy had said they could still be friends, and Manon had believed it, hoped it. But it was clear now that the bleached blonde vamp didn’t care much for that idea. He even preferred to be away from Buffy for a little while – and if two people were inseparable, it was them – rather than patrolling with both Slayers.
No, just being friends would never work. Avoiding him completely wasn’t possible either. That left one choice for Manon to ponder. She had toyed with the idea a little, being around the Witches and their books as well as magical stuff had made it seem normal. While she was alone in the apartment, she had gone through their old books, almost as a game at first, just to see if there even was something in there that would help. To her own surprise, she had found a spell. She hadn’t seriously considered it until now, it had just been something to occupy her mind. But maybe it was the solution, after all.