Chapter 4
A/N: This story was written without being divided into chapters. I am trying to organize breaks in the story that strike me as appropriate places to pause, therefore the final number of postings may yet change again.
The ancient neon sign in the small motel flickered and buzzed as they turned into the parking lot. Buffy led Spike to the last lime green door on the first level. She fished a key from her pocket, unlocked the door, switched on the light and entered.
Spike stepped up and leaned against the door jamb. He felt the barrier lightly with the back of his index finger. Motels wouldn’t usually keep him out but Buffy had lived there for quite a while and that made the difference. She thought of it as her home and had been there long enough for it to become one. Vampires were therefore excluded.
Her coat found its way to a hanger on a lonely metal rod. Buffy looked at the open door and walked over. Spike gave her his best come hither look. He wasn’t through playing even though he knew he wasn’t going to kill her that evening.
“Friendly chat over for tonight?” He asked with a sweet expression trying to get a rise from her.
“What do you want, Spike?” She rubbed her forehead.
“Well pet, I had my pie and we had a nice little tussle in the alley. I could go for a good hard fuck or some more cheery conversation right about now.” His voice rolled hypnotically off his tongue.
Buffy was hit by the lulling timbre of his voice. It buzzed in her teeth. The meaning of that sentence didn’t exactly register immediately. She was concentrating on her throbbing toe. That pain was fast occupying her entire being.
“What?” she tried to focus. “What was that?”
“You gonna invite me in, hmm?” He raised his eyebrows and bent his left hand pinky finger. “Truce?” She stood and blinked at him instead of slamming the door in his face.
Shit. If he’s here at least I’ll know he’s not out chewing on our quarterback. This town needs that kid.
“Come in.” Her voice was a dead ringer for perfect defeat. Too tired to think she turned her back on the vampire entering her small room. “Welcome to Casa Slayer,” she sighed.
Spike shut the door and surveyed the bleak room: bad wallpaper, horrible pink bedspread, nondescript mismatched furniture, Gideon bible, weird paint by number harvest scene and a tiny television with rabbit ears.
Spike nodded at the horror surrounding him. “It suits you,” he pronounced with authority.
“The water pressure is awesome. I guess that’s something,” Buffy offered as she sat in a low easy chair. There was little in the room to suggest that someone had been living there as opposed to staying for one night. A coat, two more uniforms and two pairs of jeans hung beside the bathroom door. She filled two out of six drawers in the low dresser. A few personal items sat on top.
“What are you doing here?” she sighed wearily. “This is hardly Spiketown.” Even Mayberry was a tad too cosmopolitan a moniker for this little town. When she first arrived Buffy wouldn’t have been surprised to see a stagecoach rattle down the main drag. There was a definite one horse vibe to the whole community.
“Don’t know about that pet, you’re here.” She stared at him. He shrugged his shoulders. “I fancied a road trip is all. I’m a back roads fella, myself.”
“Really?” Buffy angled a disbelieving eyebrow at the downtown saturated figure before her. It really pissed her off that he could swagger and remain perfectly still at the same time. She had no idea how he did that.
“And there’s always something interesting off the beaten track, ain’t that right, Slayer?” Spike winked at her and shifted his weight onto his other foot.
Buffy sighed and crossed her legs. She removed her utilitarian footwear and began working on her knotted toes.
“Here.” Spike stepped to her and held out his hand.
“No, you already wrenched my foot enough, thanks.”
“You’re bloody doing it wrong.” Spike’s critical tone was undone by his kneeling at her feet with one hand held out patiently.
“No.”
“Slayer, I already passed up the chance to munch on your precious self earlier, any brain cells left in there at all? Give me your soddin’ foot.”
“I’m completely insane.” Buffy muttered to herself as she put her foot into Spike’s hand.
“Don’t flatter yourself, love.” Spike smirked and began working over her beleaguered arch and metatarsals in a thorough and competent manner. Buffy leaned back in the chair, her feet hadn’t felt this good in a long time.
“What are you doing here?” Spike fished casually.
“Juggling pies,” a blank expression occupied her face. A hint of a smirk touched his upper lip. “Shut up,” Buffy demanded weakly.
The massage was repeated on her other foot. Buffy’s mind drifted and she actually closed her eyes. Spike is massaging my waitress feet. Spike is– Her eyes snapped open.
“Don’t think this gets you struck off the ‘Totally Evil’ list,” Buffy warned with a glare.
“Never even entered my mind,” Spike grinned at her. At the moment his mind was quite delightfully occupied. Faint traces of a lotion she had spread on her skin hours ago filtered their way to Spike’s nostrils. Under the scent of lard, sweat, pastry dust, egg salad and cigarette smoke was the delicate waft of old fashioned roses and the call of something powerfully feminine.
Remnants of her aroused defenses from their recent interaction spoke directly to him. Well, mostly just the heat of rage and disgust and a general pissed-offedness, but heat is heat, and a heated slayer smelled delicious.
Buffy floated on the surprising luxury of Spike’s cool muscular grip. Those were the hands of a man on her skin. She breathed deeply, simply enjoying something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Her eyes finally opened to find Spike looking at her. His face was oddly calm without even a trace of the standard ‘Baddest Badass in the West’ countenance he always showed her. He glowed in the strange shadowed light of her room. His piercing eyes pulsated with blue flames, looking eerily like a neon sign. His smooth facial contours shone like curved glass tubing filled with luminescence; an otherworldly entity plopped into this sleepy town.
The room looked shabby and wan compared to his glinting leather refracted form. Never before had her anonymous room felt so empty as when this shimmering dead man illuminated its want.
He was hauntingly beautiful amid the Goodwill refuse of her room. Buffy had seen paintings in her mother’s art books that were eerily similar to this scene: a resplendently still dead boy kneeling on the faded carpet.
She felt suddenly self conscious and lacking. Buffy Summers: pie juggler and pariah in polyester, hiding in an anonymous motel. Then he rolled his lips at her with teasing animation and the moment was lost.
“I have to have a bath,” she said plainly, removing her foot from his hands and hoping against hope he’d take the hint and leave. Spike stood and removed his long coat.
“Fine, I can go for a bath.”
“Yeah, right.” Buffy huffed derisively as she stood up into a wall of muscle. Spike grabbed her forcefully around her biceps. Suddenly those strong hands that had brought her relief and unexpected pleasure were now piercing her arms with something Buffy could not decipher. Was it need? Murderous vengeance? Loneliness?
“What do you want?” Buffy asked failing to control the slight hitch in her voice. Her palms spread flat against his chest but they were not exactly pushing him away. They seemed only to acknowledge a boundary that was not to be crossed, and yet the sweat of her hands that beaded against his chest threatened to melt through flesh to the bone. Her voice wavered at his proximity and her fatigue. There was something softer in his expression as he gripped her than she’d never seen in him before.
Quietude overtook Spike as he stood inhaling the soft scents of the tired slayer in his hands. What did he want? He began to mull that question over in his mind as he studied her hairline and the curve of her cheek. Choice required careful consideration. He tilted his head and regarded her.
She was only a shadow of what he once knew. He remembered a saucy ego driven maniac all wound up in suburban righteousness, the perfect faux sheep in pastel mini skirts and frosted lipstick. The one who continually infuriated and hardened him with her tantalizing wiles.
Now it seemed only the color palate was unchanged. Where was that saucy bitch? The one worthy of his obsession. She made him pace in the daytime when sleep mocked him. This girl in front of him, the one embracing small town numbness had a whiff of a future hausfrau about her, wide hipped with screaming children yapping at her heels.
It was a vision that made Spike wretch.
The future was already decided. He was sure of that. Her future lay in his grasp and under his fangs. A slayer didn’t take her marbles or dollies or whatever the hell this one played with and run away. It was just not done. She belonged to him and not to some deeply tanned fruit farmer who tipped her extra and twisted his lips around a toothpick.
Belonged. Yeah, that’s what he meant, and here in this sad little room he truly felt it. She belonged to him. There was an order to things. Even a damned creature like Spike knew that. The big picture starred bona fide hero types like the Slayer but he also was a player. There was no denying that. Cosmic order was reliable and reassuring. It made the evil that much sweeter for its certainty.
He was important and necessary, and he was ready to prove that to her.