6.
The stillness in Angel’s office ended when he abruptly remembered his manners and stood. “It’s good to see you, Buffy.” He sounded calm but he had many lifetimes to perfect masking his feelings. Buffy was here in his office with no warning at all. The Italian private investigator obviously was shirking his generously compensated stalking duties. Firing that deadbeat was now on the top of Angel’s To Do list.
“Angel.”
“You’re in L.A.” Small talk was never Angel’s forte. This attempt was painful.
“I am.”
“Business?”
Buffy cut to the chase. “Not really. Is he here?”
“Is who here?” An inquisitive wrinkle gathered at the corner of Angel’s left eye.
“Spike, Angel.”
It wasn’t like he didn’t expect that answer. It just riled. Angel sat back down in his top of the line office chair. “I don’t have a Spike on my payroll.” It was the truth. Only just.
Buffy paused before continuing. “Let’s not do this, okay? I need to see Spike.” Her face was calm and her demeanor non-combative but there was a subtle inflection in the word need that caught Angel’s notice. Need. He felt the hairs at the base of his skull tingle. Buffy needed Spike. Every muscle in his body tightened in a slow methodical reflex.
Angel spoke impulsively. “Spike doesn’t work here. I’m not his keeper and I have no idea where he is.” Angel could have offered Buffy some reasonably accurate guesses as to Spike’s current location but he was feeling peevish and went with it.
Buffy didn’t rise to the bait. She merely looked at him with eyes clouded by disappointment. “You didn’t even tell me he was here.” She spoke softly and didn’t bother covering up the hurt. Withholding the truth wasn’t something Angel was particularly proud of but what was done, was done. He wasn’t in a position to argue the point. A muscle in his jaw flexed. Buffy’s gaze did not waver. “You could have called, e-mailed, sent a postcard…something.”
Clearly Angel could have been more proactive, if he were so inclined. They were adults. Couldn’t they be adults about this? The sudden severe line of Angel’s mouth told Buffy what she had already deduced after hearing the news. His inaction was a deliberate choice.
“Andrew…” Angel muttered and chewed the inside of his mouth. From his recollection of the way Andrew had embraced Spike, Angel figured it was only a matter of time before a certain someone heard the news. Andrew was too much of a noodle to keep a secret.
“Couldn’t contain his glee,” Buffy finished the thought. “Funny thing though, he thought I’d want to know that Spike was back from the beyond and in Andrew’s words, looking way hot.” She nailed Angel with an inquisitive stare and waited for his reaction. Any reaction. The phrase when hell freezes over came to mind. Maybe she should have been more shocked that Angel kept the information from her. What was a few petty omissions among exes? Now that the truth was out, he’d have to deal.
“You should have told me.”
Her sentence disappeared into an eddy of swirling thoughts. What could Angel say in response? That he was busy? That Spike was the least of his concerns? He pushed away from the desk and hunkered down defensively in his chair. When he spoke again his expression hardened.
“Andrew said a lot of things,” Angel mused. “I remember, Buffy doesn’t trust you anymore.” There was the slightest trace of a smirk in his expression. Tit for tat.
How many centuries did he need to mature again?
It wasn’t exactly a direct quote. Andrew had a tendency to go off script at inopportune moments. It went hand in hand with his practiced arched eyebrow and penchant for emphasizing unexpected syllables. Buffy chalked it up to too many years immersed in role playing games with other like minded weenies.
She stood her ground. “You’re suddenly the CEO of Wolfram and Hart, Angel, what was I supposed to think? It’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy corporate wave you’re riding.” Buffy’s eyes zeroed in on an ominous looking doubled sided blade that hung on the wall behind Angel’s desk.
“This is where I need to be.”
“Looks like you’ve been swallowed by the beast.”
“That’s not what’s happened.”
Buffy wandered over to the windows and looked down toward the street. “All those people you wanted to help, tried to help. Funny, but I can’t see them from way up here.”
“I’m still doing my part.”
“This isn’t what Whistler saw for you.” Buffy looked around at the sumptuous interior of Angel’s office. “Shuffling files and demons and who knows what else. I know it isn’t.” Angel averted her gaze.
What Whistler saw.
Whistler operated in a world of absolutes. His textbook paradigms of good and evil seemed rather quaint to Angel in retrospect. Trying to make a difference required more than good intentions and rolling up one’s shirtsleeves. As much as he wanted to deny it, Angel had been more than a little naïve back then. Those days seemed so far away.
Nickel and diming it through one crisis after another seemed awfully shabby with the realization that it never made a dent. Evil wasn’t impervious, Angel knew that first hand, but he also knew that in the greater scheme of things the old Angel Investigations team was about as successful as a gnat versus Godzilla; a minor irritant at best. Maybe this way things could change. There was a bigger picture of corruption and decay and that’s where the battleground was now.
“I’m in this for the long haul, Buffy and I’ve learned to pick my fights.”
She wasn’t prepared for the note of caution she heard in his voice. This wasn’t the same man who came to Sunnydale with that amulet mere months earlier. He had changed.
“You’re young, Buffy, and despite all you’ve seen and experienced I can still smell the optimism in you.” Angel couldn’t afford such luxuries anymore.
“Can we have a moratorium on the smelling parts?” Buffy requested. “That never ends well.”
Angel smiled and stood. “It’s great to see you, really, but you’ll have to excuse me. I have a business to run.”
“And you have no idea where Spike is?”
“He doesn’t give me a copy of his itinerary.”
Again, Buffy couldn’t help but notice how smoothly Angel avoided answering simple questions. She reluctantly turned for the door. She hadn’t expected Angel to behave any differently but that didn’t matter. She’d track down Spike with or without Angel’s help.
“We should do lunch while you’re in town.” Buffy paused in the doorway and then passed through without responding.
Angel watched as she walked to the elevator then he turned his attention back to the papers on his desk.
*
When the elevator door opened Spike stood agog at the vision before him: Buffy in jeans, a lace t-shirt and fitted leather jacket shouldering a shapeless piece of luggage. His lips started to move, struggling to form words.
“Hey, speak of the devil. There you are. And here I thought I’d have to scour the dungeons for you.” Her eyes danced at seeing him again.
“B-Buffy.”
“Nice to know you remembered my name.” Buffy offered a small grin. She wasn’t going to gush, that was Andrew’s thing. The elevator door pulsated. It had a job to do. Buffy pressed against it with the palm of her hand and stepped forward.
“Your hair.” He spoke impulsively and stopped his hand from rising. Her hair looked scruffy and bed swept and he wanted to bury his fingers in it. The last time he’d seen Buffy she was a California girl through and through. He could see that in the intervening months she’d sloughed off that beach bunny skin. This was a woman in front of him.
“Yeah,” Buffy tousled the back of her hair with a self conscious flick of her fingers. “I needed a change. I haven’t decided if I like it yet.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Rampaging Recchia demons in Cleveland. I figured I came all this way, why not check out you guys in L.A.?” Her face was unreadable. “What do you think I’m doing here?”
“Recchias?” That made no sense to Spike; Buffy was in Rome, not Cleveland and Recchias were hardly the rampaging type. “Ain’t they the timid sort? Good at hiding and the like?”
“Yeah, you’ve got something in common.”
“Buffy–“
“I couldn’t take it any longer, Spike. Should I go to L.A.? Should I stay in Rome? It was becoming a whole thing.” There had been sleepless nights and wringing of hands, real stereotyped stuff. Spike didn’t need to know all of Buffy’s current Spike related idiosyncrasies. She did have a few microscopic strands of pride left to cling to.
“Andrew?” Now that she was actually in front of him Spike felt grateful for Andrew’s inability to keep a secret.
Buffy nodded. “Andrew.”
Of course it was Andrew. What was the point of possessing the very best news ever if he couldn’t share the happiness? And share he did, every detail and all in an operatic fervor Buffy found both endearing and annoying.
“He says hi, by the way.” Andrew’s entire message was fairly lengthy, approaching soliloquy status even. Hi seemed a fitting summary. “I got tired of waiting for you to show up at my door, so I thought this would be the next best thing.”
Spike simply looked at her. A slow smile brightened his face as he drank up her presence. She looked good if a little awkward. Rested. The old cobwebs were gone from her eyes. Rome had been good to her. She looked radiant in the harsh elevator lights give or take a few fluorescent splotches. He wanted to touch her but looking was just fine. There was no hurry now. Buffy was here, in this elevator. It was perfect, the girl had come to find him. It took a few seconds for him to register that she said something else.
“Come again, love?”
“I said: I’m so pissed at you I could spit!”
Yeah, that was his girl, surly and oh so kissable at the same time. “What?”
“Pissed. As in off? That whole cavern death scene pissed me off. I said what I said and you– you–“
He knew what he’d said. “Look, I sacrificed myself willingly–and a bloody excruciating bit of business it was too–and you’re pissed off about it?”
“You were wrong when you said I didn’t love you. I thought maybe you said that just to get me out of there but obviously you really feel that way or else we’d be in Rome right now eating profiteroles in chocolate sauce off each other.” Funny how that was the first image that popped out, cream stuffed pastries in a bowl of naked flesh. Her mouth tightened. Spike seemed so casually comfortable in the elevator of evil and she was feeling her frustration acutely.
Spike’s brain seized briefly on the visual of a chocolate slathered Buffy belly. “Huh?”
“Zip it! You don’t get to talk now.”
“The hell I don’t.” They slid back into their comfortable banter like a well worn slipper.
Buffy launched into it full force. This opportunity was not going to be squandered. Perhaps a quiet corner of Starbucks with some foaming liquid courage would have been preferable but it was going to be an elevator at Wolfram and Hart with fake wood panel interior and some thready robotic muzak for a soundtrack.
“I knew you loved me Spike. I did. You never stopped showing me. I finally figured out that I wanted to do the same for you, not out of pity or anything like that but because it was true and I wanted to tell you when we were in the kitchen and then in the basement but I choked. I’m not so good at making my feelings known–“
“Is that so?” It had been a while since Spike had been on the receiving end of Buffy’s special blend of super octane crap and he was having none of it. Not the best at making her feelings known? He could quote chapter and verse of her well thumbed you-are-an-evil-thing hymnal. Those protestations were frequent, wordy and backed up by some extremely convincing fists. Granted, they had moved past those heady days of courtship but still, strong feelings were felt, and communicated.
“And my timing pretty much sucked but that was a true and honest statement.”
“What was a true and honest statement?” Spike didn’t feel as flippant as he sounded. Having her so near made him itch. It made his throat dry but he wasn’t giving an inch. She could play love’s bitch for a change and see how she liked it. He settled back comfortably and crossed his arms.
“You know,” Buffy stirred her index finger in the air as if that suddenly made things clearer. “The love thing.”
“What love thing is that?”
“The ‘I love you’ thing.” She meant to be spontaneous and earnest, but frustration and annoyance were battling neck and neck for prominence. “And for me that means you can come back from an apocalypse and pick up the pieces of our relationship.” Unless, of course, that was something he had absolutely no interest in doing.
Her uncertain upper lip was the most formidable opponent he’d faced in a while. Spike considered her words. He couldn’t determine if that was a genuine declaration of emotion or not but it did sound promising. To the best of his knowledge the clock wasn’t ticking down to certain doom and without that as a motivating beacon they were pretty much adrift on the sea of ambiguity.
The ensuing pause grew to uncomfortable lengths.
“Stunned silence. That’s always a good sign.” Buffy blinked and waited. There would be no walking away until they had come to an understanding. She should have trapped him in an elevator long ago.
“We have a relationship?” Spike wanted to make sure he’d heard that part correctly.
“Of course we have a relationship!” Buffy tried her best not to roll her eyes. She almost succeeded. What was it with guys? Wasn’t Spike paying attention? They were definitely moving down the long and winding relationship road: fighting, hot sex, tears, self-loathing, buddy stuff and then a fiery, yet inconclusive, not quite ending? Webster’s couldn’t have defined it any better.
“We’ve always had a relationship. I wouldn’t come near Wolfram and Hart if we didn’t. I’ll admit it’s been pretty toxic at times, but that’s in the past. I’m trying out some brand new maturity here, Spike.” Buffy thought she better mention that in case it slipped Spike’s notice. “See how I haven’t punched you in the nose? That’s a good thing.”
Spike stared at her in silence while wrinkles gathered on his forehead. Someone needed to teach this girl that maturity wasn’t the same as collecting gold stars for civil manners. She was something all right. Only Buffy would think that not beating him to a bloody stump would make her the bigger, more mature person.
Punching had its advantages though, Buffy had to admit. Maturity was tough work and plenty confusing. Initiating a persuasive course of dialogue was trickier than she had anticipated.
Spike enjoyed her nervous awkwardness. The absence of flying fists was also noted and appreciated. “So you came to L.A. …” Spike prodded softly, wanting and needing to hear her pitch.
Wasn’t it obvious? “To save you from the clutches of evil,” Buffy declared. Her motivation sounded less goofy than she thought it might. A glint of slayer determination twinkled in her eye. “Big, fat and evil doesn’t get to have you. I’ve decided.”
“You have, have you?”
“Yes,” Buffy nodded her head with confidence. “But since Angel told me you don’t actually work here, the whole rescue scenario kinda collapsed.”
Spike’s lips twitched with amusement. “You thought I needed rescuing?” He was enjoying this.
“I was prepared to fight.”
“Oh yeah?”
Buffy shrugged her shoulders. She’d made some tactical assessments in case heavy duty slayering was required but she didn’t need to share that information. It might tend to swell Spike’s already rabid ego. “I figured, you know, whatever.”
“I think I like the idea of a gorgeous heroine climbing the locked tower to rescue the fair young prince.”
“See? You’re getting the whole Rapunzel vibe and the good part is there was no climbing because after Glory’s tower, I so don’t do heights.”
Spike smiled, soft and sweet. He could be up for some damselling if she’d be the knight in shining armor.
Buffy was proud of herself. As much as she wanted to flatten him with a kiss as soon as the elevator door opened, she could be patient. They’d had an ordinary conversation mostly devoid of angry voices, threats of bodily harm and apocalyptic strategies. It wasn’t their first so-called normal chat by any means but they were still novices in this department. It was best to go slow.
“So…” Spike began.
“So.” Buffy rocked on her toes. This was something new. In the past, awkward moments had been interrupted by impulsive sex, some slobbering demon or an errant Scooby or two with a pressing inquiry. Scooby inquiries often involved ordering pizza.
Self-control was a bugger.
“You hungry?” Spike inquired. “I know a place.”
“I could eat.”