Fic: For Want of A Back Porch (Comic!Fic) (3/4)
Title: For Want of A Back Porch (3/4)
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Joss Whedon, and I am making no money, etc., etc.
Summary: Buffy used to worry that she couldn’t love. After Twilight, she's afraid to love. But can she and Spike just be friends? Buffy, Spike, and their balcony, with a side of Dawn and Xander. Part III is 5,700 words (the whole fic is 21,000 words and it is finished; updates every day or two). Part II. Part I.
Part III
May 18
Spike put off seeing her as long as he could. The lack of progress in his investigation helped. Before she might have cared to hear about his failed attempts at finding Meltzer and Allie, who seemed to have moved on to a new hideout every time he reached the last one. He no longer cared enough to tell her.
There was no way to pretend that his new picture of Allie wasn’t important, though. So Spike landed his ship on the apartment building as soon as dark fell, much earlier than he had ever come before, and hoped, as keenly as he had hoped for the opposite last time, that maybe she just wouldn’t be home.
As he strode slowly down the stairs, he couldn’t keep wistful thoughts from crowding his head. It had occurred to him shortly after their fight that Buffy had no way to contact him. What if she changed her mind? What if his words got through to her and she decided she did want to make a go of it? He had fantasized about Buffy trying and failing to reach him, hoping he would come back, and planning speeches of remorse and love for when he did. She would run to him, and Spike would sweep her into her arms, tell her that of course he loved her, and not stop kissing her until she was blue in the face.
His fantasy popped like a burst balloon as he reached her balcony. He had to force himself to tread the last few steps to her window.
As Spike rapped lightly and then made himself rap again so someone actually stood a chance of hearing, he found himself hoping that Dawn would answer, even though she would probably be angry at him on her sister’s behalf.
Xander poked his head out from the kitchen.
Xander would do.
As the boy approached, Spike was not a little unsettled to see that Xander’s usual dislike had been replaced by something almost like…sympathy.
Just what had Buffy told him and Dawn about their argument?
Xander slid the window up and nodded. “Spike.”
“Xander.”
They stared at each other. Spike kept waiting for the boy’s façade to crack, for him to say something cruel or demeaning.
Finally, Xander took a breath. “Do you want me to get Buffy?”
Spike blinked. Xander was giving him a choice?
“She’s in the shower. She just got home from work. I’ll go tell her you’re here if you want to wa-”
“No.”
Xander paused a step away from the window. He looked almost as surprised as Spike felt.
“Ta,” said Spike. “But if you could just give her a message from me, I’d appreciate it.”
Xander hesitated. “I think I should-”
“Give her this.” Spike whipped the photo of Allie out of his pocket and held it out. “Tell her it’s a picture of Allie. She’ll know what I’m talking about.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Xander shuffled closer and took the picture. He stared at the Caucasian man with curly dark hair and boyish features and said, “This is the demon that wants to poison Buffy?”
“One of them,” said Spike. He nodded in a perfunctory, farewell sort of way and turned.
He hadn’t even gotten a foot away, and Xander hadn’t finished drawing out, “Spike…”, when Spike pivoted again. His heart was clenching in his chest. Not for the first time he inwardly railed at the unfairness of how much an unbeating organ could still hurt. The idea of Buffy being in half as much pain as it would take to get Xander to be conciliatory was intolerable.
“And…tell her the answer is yes. The answer is always yes.”
Spike retreated to the stairs before Xander could speak and waited to swipe his eyes until he was two flights up.
June 29
His fantasies didn’t change much in the next month, only now he thought there was actually a tiny, maybe 5% chance of them coming true. He hoped that his admission of love, presumably passed on by Xander, would be a wake-up call. Maybe if he hadn’t been so stubbornly reticent on the subject the last time he and Buffy had spoken, the night would have ended differently.
Spike wasn’t displeased then when it was she who answered his knock a little before midnight. Wary, yes. But also foolishly, woefully hopeful.
“Hey,” she said softly, with a small, uncertain smile, as she climbed out the window.
Spike found himself nodding cordially, as though he were back in a nineteenth century drawing room. “Buffy.”
He had spent far too much of the past hour trying to decide what to call her. Most of his pet names would sound fake, “Slayer” sounded too formal, and ‘love’ was just inconceivable.
He should have spent that time figuring out what he would say after he greeted her.
Luckily, she opened her mouth before the tension threatened to overwhelm him and he said something careless.
“How have you been?”
Spike stared at her and didn’t try to hide his incredulity. That was really the first thing she asked?
At least she was being polite.
“Busy,” he said, more brusquely than he had intended. “A little run-down. Tired of drinking the same old pig’s blood every day. Getting sick of living on a ship.”
Okay, maybe he could work on being polite back. Not sound quite so resentful.
“How about you?”
Buffy bit her lip. “I’m okay. I’ve been working more hours at Pick Me Up. Trying to save some extra money before fall.”
Spike arched a brow. “Before…”
Her eyes lit up. “I didn’t tell you! I got into college. I’m starting in August.”
Briefly, her news distracted him from his petulance and he felt himself smile. He remembered her telling him in early January that she had applied. “That’s great, love.”
Buffy’s cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink, and she beamed, and he realized what he had said.
No, this was not all right. Buffy had rejected his love.
“I’m actually kind of excited. Dawn keeps telling me about all her courses. She wants me to take a psychology class that she’s in this semester and loves, and I keep telling her that Buffy and psychology are non-mixy things.”
So this was her strategy then? She was just going to pretend their fight had never happened? Now that she had assurances of his love, she would use that love when it suited her and never mind about the long run.
“And I’m saving money to get an apartment of my own. I’m finally going to move out-”
“Buffy.”
She stopped, her eyes flying to his.
“I’m happy for you about college and moving and everything,” he said. “And I want to know more. Honestly. But is that really what we should be talking about right now?”
For a split second her face fell. Then it turned resolute, and Spike knew, without any doubt, that nothing had changed, except now she had had time to dress up her excuses in pretty words.
Her tone was conciliatory. “Spike, I’m sorry about what happ-”
“I changed my mind. We shouldn’t talk about that,” he interrupted. “Because if what you’re about to say includes the words ‘can’t’ or more ‘sorry’s, I don’t want to hear it.”
Buffy stared at him for five long seconds before her eyes moved slowly down his face. She didn’t speak. A twisting motion at her wrist that she seemed to be doing unconsciously drew Spike’s attention. She was fiddling with the bracelet he’d given her. The fact that she still wore it, the possibility that maybe she never took it off, the way he hadn’t taken off her ring until March, made his heart ache. He wondered if she had noticed his bare hand.
“I think I should tell you my information and then leave.”
Her eyes snapped back to his.
“Nothing new on the Meltzer front,” said Spike. “But there’s a new group of vampires in town you should keep an eye out for. The leader is a thug called Lynch who’s been around since the twenties. If he’s survived this long he’s bound to be strong, tricky, or both. I don’t know if he came cause he likes to fight slayers or cause he likes the Bay Area. Either way, he’ll try to make a name for himself.”
A serious look had replaced her lost one, and Spike knew she was committing the name to memory. “Lynch. Got it.”
Her brow furrowed in concentration as she probably planned her hunt, and Spike took the reprieve to think on the way her eyes had flickered on “likes to fight slayers.” He knew she had been thinking of him, returning to Sunnydale time after time to bag himself his third slayer. What Spike didn’t know was how she felt about the matter. He wondered if Buffy ever wished she had just staked him way back when, before everything got so complicated. Life had been a hell of a lot simpler when they just wanted to kill each other.
“I’m going to keep an eye out for him, too, obviously,” Spike added, trying to distract himself from that line of thought.
“Right. Do you want to-” Buffy hesitated, and he knew that she had been about to ask if he wanted to search for Lynch together. Like old times.
She didn’t finish. Spike took that as his cue not to pursue the matter either.
“Think I should go,” he said, and that lost look returned.
“You- you don’t have to.”
“Got stuff to do,” he said evasively. He could hear the lie in his words and knew she could as well. As she looked away, blinking, he felt a stab of self-loathing that hadn’t been present during their argument. He could be kinder about this. But then, so could she.
“I’ll be back when I know more,” he relented.
Buffy gave a short, jerky nod, and Spike left, unable to decide if he was looking forward to next time or dreading it.
July 23
Spike hated the twinge of relief he felt when Dawn answered the window. Would interacting with Buffy ever become less stressful? He may love soap operas, but he didn’t want to bloody live one.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Though she now looked horrified as she leaned over the sill, Dawn had been smiling as she approached. Spike still didn’t understand why Buffy hadn’t turned her against him.
He smirked at her expression. “Just swung by to tell you that Lynch is dead.”
Dawn’s eyebrows shot up. “Lynch? The big bad vampire in town?”
Spike nodded. “The very one.”
Her eyes swept him up and down. “And I take it that you’re the one who saw to his untimely demise.”
“That would be correct.”
After finding yet another of Meltzer’s hidey-holes to hold nothing but beer bottles and empty Marlboro packs, the third one this month, Spike had gone to demon bar after demon bar until he found a patron who was scared enough to give up Lynch’s whereabouts. His fury had carried him halfway across the city to an abandoned warehouse, where he found Lynch and his cronies feasting on a gaggle of college students. One of the glazed-eyed girls had hair the exact same shade as Dawn’s, and before he knew what he was doing, before considering the wisdom of taking on Lynch’s gang all on his lonesome, Spike had attacked.
Now he had a broken nose, at least one cracked rib, and more than a few gashes here and there, but Lynch was dead and those teenagers were safe at home. Or possibly gibbering in a hospital. Either way, Spike called it a win.
It was a win for himself as well. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so invigorated. All the research and false trails and dead ends made it easy to become depressed, forget what good he could still do with just his fists and fangs. Just because he was the ear-to-the-ground guy now didn’t mean he couldn’t fight the physical battles too.
And it had felt good. Oh, it had felt good to beat Lynch to a pulp and know that he was keeping the scumbag from ever going after Buffy. His victory, though relatively small, made him feel less like the wanker he’d thought he was becoming as a year came to an end and Meltzer and Allie were still alive.
Spike grinned widely, even though it hurt his nose. This evening had been worth a dozen broken ribs and any number of gashes.
“Good for you,” said Dawn. Though she looked pleased and sounded sincere, her expression was slowly turning into a smirk. “Buffy’s gonna be pissed.”
“What?”
“You know she doesn’t like when anyone fights her battles for her.” Dawn’s eyes twinkled.
“I wasn’t fighting it for her,” Spike scoffed. “It was my battle too. I just beat her to it.”
Dawn snickered. “That’ll go down well.”
Spike shrugged. “She can add it to her list of my current offenses.”
Dawn’s amusement faded, and she looked at him solemnly. He wondered if he had bollixed it up with her now, too, but before he had time to decide if he regretted his words, she said quietly, “Do you want to come in? You can put ice on that. We’ve got cream and bandages and everything.”
For a moment Spike thought that he’d sustained greater damage to his head than he’d realized and was hallucinating. But no, Dawn’s brow was knit with worry, and she had stepped back a pace to give him room to climb inside. He looked at her and felt something trembling inside of him. It wasn’t his heart breaking again or tears threatening to spill or anything so melodramatic.
It was his guard, he realized with some surprise, and ignored the voice in the back of his head that said this was melodramatic too.
How easy it would be to accept Dawn’s invitation and step inside. With entrance to the Summers abode, he could find new ways to slip into Buffy’s life, new cracks in her armor that he could pry apart, slowly and resolutely. And someday, surely, she would open to him, acknowledge his love for what it was: something purer and more evolved than Angel’s destructive obsession.
As surely as he could imagine that, Spike could picture the bitterness that would come with it. She would feel forced by it all, forced to acknowledge him because he simply wouldn’t go away. And yes, she might eventually return his kisses, but it wouldn’t be love.
“No thanks,” said Spike, and realized he meant it, with as much conviction as when he’d said, ‘Tell her the answer is yes.’ If Buffy ever did love him, it wasn’t going to be because she had tired of him chasing her.
Besides, he felt petty, vindictive satisfaction in rejecting the invitation that had so long been denied to him.
Dawn’s eyes were wide. “Are you sure?”
Spike nodded, smiling faintly. He understood her disbelief. He could quite easily remember the feeling of wanting an invitation.
“Um, okay.” Dawn looked stymied for a moment. Spike repressed another smirk. It had been a while since he’d stymied Dawn.
“Let me get you some ice anyway.”
“That’s all ri-”
“Shut up, Spike! Don’t think you get to come straight to my apartment after a fight and act like a noble ninny about it. You’re not going to bleed all over my balcony.”
Spike didn’t repress the smirk this time. She reminded him so much of her sister sometimes. And her mum.
“Yes, ma’am.” He almost saluted, but her glare stopped him.
When she came back to the window ten seconds later with an ice pack wrapped in an old dishtowel, he began, “Is B-”
“I really don’t get this martyr shtick you’re pulling,” said Dawn as she handed him the ice. “What’s wrong with my apartment?”
He couldn’t hold back a short glare as he held the ice gingerly to his nose. “Nothing. But keeping me locked out for a year doesn’t exactly make me jump at the prospect now.”
To his slight disappointment, Dawn didn’t look embarrassed. “I told Buffy months ago she could invite you in,” she replied, with a roll of her eyes. “She said she liked the balcony better. Said it was quiet. I think she meant cozy.” Dawn winked.
Spike stared at her. He…really didn’t know what to make of that.
So Buffy had liked their time on the balcony together. Perfect. More bloody mixed signals.
Dawn leaned against the window frame. “Do you want anything to drink? We don’t have blood, but Xander has beer.”
“No, thanks.” The jarring idea of his nibblet offering him beer almost overwhelmed his confusion that she was offering him creature comforts in the first place. What she was up to? Was she supposed to butter him up for Buffy?
“Is Buffy-”
“She’s not here,” said Dawn. “She’s sleeping over at Willow’s tonight. They’re having a girls’ night.”
“Oh.” He considered her words and felt himself squint in confusion. She had invited him in when Buffy wasn’t home? Dawn wanted him for company? The giddiness he had felt when Lynch turned into dust returned in a rush.
“Dawn? What’s going- oh.”
Bloody Xander, always ruining everything.
Xander was a few steps out of the bedroom when he saw Spike and paused. The boy wore sweats and an old tee and had clearly been asleep, judging from his sticking-up hair and the way he rubbed his eye.
“Spike’s just checking in,” said Dawn.
Xander seemed nonplussed but not irritated. He glanced at Spike again, taking in the bruises. “What happened to you?”
“Killed some vampires.”
“Is letting them use your face for a punching bag first part of your new strategy?”
Spike stared at him. One side of Xander’s mouth twitched.
“Want to come next time and find out?”
“Can I fight on the other side?”
“Course, your face is ugly enough that it won’t matter.”
“Deadboy.”
“Monkeybutt.”
They scowled at each other. Xander’s face screwed up in deep, probably painful thought.
“If the best you can do is name calling, I think this has run its course,” said Dawn, sounding amused. “Hon, I’ll be there in a minute, okay?”
Xander understood the dismissal for what it was and retreated to the bedroom, giving Spike one last, not terribly antagonistic stink-eye. Dawn hopped off the window and grabbed a messenger bag sitting on the floor nearby. She rummaged in it and pulled out a small plastic bag.
“I got something for you.”
She had what? Spike tried not to let his bewilderment or anticipation show as she returned and pulled something out of the bag. He stared at the objects, fully aware of what they were but not quite able to grasp what they had to do with him.
“This is pay-as-you-go phone,” said Dawn. “It has five hundred minutes on it. All our numbers are programmed in it already.”
She stretched her arm out. A little reluctantly, Spike took the phone. He flipped it over, remembering the last time someone had given him one of these. Fred had requisitioned one for him after he became corporeal: “You need it now that you’re really part of the team. It has my number and Gunn’s and Angel’s and Wes’s, and Lorne’s. Cell phones and office numbers.” Remembering her affectionate beam, the way she immediately assumed he was worthy of her friendship, made him tremble. It never failed to surprise him how deeply her loss still hurt, considering how short a time he had known her.
Spike pushed away the memories, focusing on the beautiful girl who was in front of him now. “Is this so that I don’t have to come over anymore? You want me to call instead?” He tried not to sound bitter.
Dawn’s eyes narrowed. “No. It’s so that Buffy can call you when she feels like it instead of waiting for you to decide your wounded ego can handle visiting again.”
Her words hit him like a slap, much harder than anything Lynch’s gang had thrown at him.
Spike swallowed. “Dawn…”
She glanced away quickly and folded her arms. When she looked back, her mouth was still tight, but her gaze was softer. Sad.
“For what it’s worth, I think you were in the right,” she said. “But it’s still not fair that Buffy has no way of contacting you.”
Dawn held out the second object, the phone’s charger. Spike took it and slipped both into his duster pocket.
“Thanks,” he said, a little hoarsely, and Dawn nodded.
No, it wasn’t fair that Buffy only saw him when he felt like it. It had been all right at first, but after their fight…he should have realized what kind of a dangerous power imbalance that was. After all, he had been on the other end of it before.
Spike looked at Dawn, grateful, slightly ashamed, but also defiant. He wasn’t going to start showing up outside Buffy’s window on a regular basis just because she could now keep tabs on him too. It wasn’t only his ego he had to keep in mind.
Despite his somewhat mutinous thoughts, he was relieved- and more than a little surprised to realize- that someone else was looking out for Buffy, in ways that he couldn’t. As he met Dawn’s gaze, and thought not for the first time that sometimes it was as plain as day that she was no ordinary girl, he gave a slight nod to show he understood.
He looked out for Buffy physically.
She looked out for Buffy emotionally.
“I better get going,” said Spike. “Need some blood. Thanks for everything and, er, sorry…” He grimaced as he realized that the dishtowel he had started to hand back was sticky with blood.
“How about you keep that,” said Dawn, and he stuffed it in his pocket as well and handed her the ice pack. “Are you going to be around in the fall?”
Spike tilted his head. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”
“Good. Cause I’m signed up for a history of Victorian Britain class, and I’ll probably need your help.”
She sounded so much like her sassy, demanding, supremely-confident-that-Spike-would-bend-over-backward-for-her 15-year-old self that Spike found himself smiling instinctively.
For appearance’s sake, he tried to put on wounded expression instead. “So that’s all I am to you. A walking Google.”
“Nah. Google’s faster than you are.” Dawn smirked as he gaped. “You’re more like an old, dusty textbook.”
“You cheeky little-”
“Night, Spike!”
With a grin she began to slide the window down. He waved as she sashayed back to the bedroom, and she fluttered her fingers in reply.
As he went to the stairs, Spike pulled out the phone and scrolled through the contact list. Sure enough, there was the apartment number, as well as Buffy and Dawn’s cell phone numbers. She had also, for some reason, given him Willow’s.
And Xander’s.
Spike repressed a sigh, too full of conflicting emotions to decide how he felt about all this.
Fine time to start treating him as part of the Scooby family.
July 24
The balcony was not really large enough to pace, but Buffy did so anyway, insomuch as three steps one way and three steps back could be called pacing. When she heard a soft creak from above she stopped short, glared briefly upward at the vampire she couldn’t yet see, and leaned against the wall.
When Spike swung around the stair railing to face her, she couldn’t keep from gasping. Dawn had mentioned he’d been injured, but Buffy hadn’t visualized what that actually meant. It had been so long since she’d seen him bloodied and bruised, and now his eye was purple and his nose was swollen. It jolted her to remember that others could do that to him; it used to be just her.
No, she was angry. Angry, angry, angry, and so not dwelling on the past.
“You rang?” said Spike, and somehow managed to inflect the two words with enough weariness and impatience for a whole speech.
Suddenly, it was quite easy to glare at him again. “I was going to kill Lynch!”
Dawn hadn’t told her as soon as she got back from Willow’s in late morning. Instead, Dawn had waited until after lunch, when Buffy was at her most relaxed, indulging in coffee and a slightly stale chocolate-iced scone from Pick Me Up. “By the way,” Dawn had said, in her most casual voice. “Spike stopped by last night…”
Buffy had called him fifteen minutes later and when he was done growling about how it was the middle of the day and shouldn’t a veteran vampire slayer realize he would be sleeping blah blah blah, told him to come after dark. Then she’d thrown the paper with Spike’s number on the table at Dawn and stormed out of the apartment. Her dramatic exit may have had more flair if she hadn’t stormed back in five minutes later to snatch back the paper so she could program his number into her cell.
Buffy had decided not to analyze yet whether Dawn had ulterior motives for getting Spike a phone.
“Didn’t see a ‘Property of Buffy Summers’ sticker on him.”
His blitheness made her fingers curl. “Don’t fight my battles for me. I’m not a damsel in distress, and you’re not my white knight!”
“First off, if I were a knight, I’d be black. Second, I wasn’t fighting your battle!”
“Really? Let’s see, Lynch was a vampire, and I’m the vampire slayer¬-”
“Should I have let him eat the little bird then?”
Buffy paused. There really wasn’t an argument against that. She tried a different tactic. “It’d be different if you ran into him by accident. But you went looking for him. I know you did.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I checked around in some demon bars today.”
Spike’s caught expression amused her for an instant; it was so like Xander’s always was when they caught him in an embarrassing spot, like when they once found him perusing the adult magazines in a bookstore; it was so male and normal.
Then he scowled and ruined it. “So you’re spying on me.”
“Only today,” said Buffy defensively. “Since you staked my target.”
She figured they could do this forever, sniping at each other, but to her surprise Spike sighed, with what she thought was genuine weariness. “Pet, are you really mad at me for staking a vamp that was looking to make Frisco it’s playground? Because if you are, that’s just silly. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m not up to par, so if that’s all-”
“That’s not all!” Buffy opened her mouth, hesitated.
It was kind of all.
“If I had ‘Property of’ stickers,’ they would say ‘Buffy Summers comma Slayer comma the,’” she muttered at last.
For a moment Spike stared at her as though he could see the marbles rolling from her ear. Then a smile tugged at his lips, the kind he wore when she was a little tipsy and not so much with the sense-making, when she always knew, despite the alcohol-induced buzz, that he was smiling just because he liked her. Buffy. The girl and the Slayer all mixed together.
His eyes were softening, their corners crinkling, and Buffy felt her heart beat faster. This felt so right. Her quips, his smiles, them being happy.
And just like that her anger melted away. Strange how he could do that. But also fitting, maybe, since he used to inspire the worst of it.
“I’m sorry,” said Buffy, and found she meant it. “How are you feeling?” She stepped forward.
Spike glanced at her, surprised, and she winced inwardly again at his face. “Better than I look. Don’t worry. I’ll live.”
“Do you want to come in?”
The words fell from her before she had considered them, but she didn’t care. They were the right words.
He looked at her with one of those very rare Spike expressions that she couldn’t fathom. His head tilted, and she knew he was about to say yes-
“No thanks.”
“What?”
“I’m good out here.”
Buffy could feel her jaw hanging in an unflattering way and closed it. “No, let’s go inside. I’ll make hot chocolate again, and there’s ice cream-”
“Those might spoil each other, what with the ‘hot’ and the ‘ice.’”
“Fine, then just cocoa.” She put her hand on the window sash. “Come on, let’s-”
“Thanks, I get it, I’m invited. But actually, Dawn invited me in last time, and I’d really rather just stay out here.”
Buffy stopped moving. The window was cold under her fingertips. She wanted to move her hand, but the gesture would feel awkward now. Slowly, she let her fingers slide down the glass and creep behind her back. She took a deep breath. Then a second.
The question popped out. “Why?”
Spike stared at her. He lifted one shoulder in a pitiful attempt at nonchalance. “Just don’t feel like it.”
Buffy tried to choose her next words carefully. She knew Spike wouldn’t want to hear them, but she was so sick and tired of his attitude. She had messed up, but she had also apologized, and why couldn’t he just accept that things were the way they were for a reason?
“But…why, Buffy? If you…care about him and he…cares about you, I don’t understand why you can’t, you know. Tell him you care. I mean, I’m not saying I would throw a party if you hooked up with another vampire, but it’s Spike. I think…I think he’s all right.”
Dawn’s words from the night Buffy had broken down and told her about their argument echoed in her mind. Buffy tried to shove them away. Dawn hadn’t known what she was talking about. Buffy couldn’t afford to “care about” anyone. It was…it was far too messy. Complicated. Apocalyptically. Any happiness she and Spike found together couldn’t last before the universe decided to screw it up.
Right?
“Spike, I know I made a mistake.”
She saw the glower start to form between his eyebrows, but she barreled onward.
“But it’s not fair of you to keep punishing me. You’re acting like we’re not even friends.”
“That’s because we’re not friends.”
Suddenly Buffy was remembering another conversation, from much longer ago, in full Technicolor, as though someone had recorded that evening in the wrecked magic shop and started playing the tape in her head.
“You’re not friends. You’ll never be friends. You’ll be in love till it kills you both. You’ll fight, and you’ll shag, and you’ll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you’ll never be friends.”
Buffy felt a flicker of panic; because all those years ago he had said that about Angel, and she had loved Angel, and if she was thinking this now about Spike, then that meant-
Was he remembering his words, too?
Damn his poker face! He would never have lost at kitten poker so much if he had had this good of one in Sunnydale.
“I tried to be your friend,” said Spike. “Even though I love you.”
Buffy started. There it was. She had gotten his message from a very confused Xander and understood it, but oh, there it was.
“But you can’t be just a friend, and you’re not willing to love me. So I think we should stop pretending otherwise.”
Buffy was so focused on replaying his words (‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ he still loves me) that it took a moment for his suggestion to sink in.
“No!”
He arched his scarred brow.
“I can be your friend,” said Buffy hotly. She could go back to square one. Well, more like square two or four or ten since square one had really been them trying to kill each other.
Did she want to go back to square ten?
“I don’t think-” began Spike.
“Give me a chance!” Buffy raised her chin and fixed him with her best steely-eyed gaze. “I deserve another chance.”
She didn’t add what she was thinking, which was that she had given him enough of his own.
Buffy guessed that he didn’t need reminding, though, because Spike lowered his head for a moment and when he looked at her, with eyes that seemed slightly unfocused, slightly shiny, he said in his most tired voice yet, “All right.”
Buffy felt like a balloon that had just popped. She deflated, releasing tension instead of air.
“So, do you want to come in?”
Spike hesitated. “No. Really, Buffy.”
“But-”
“How about you tell me about your classes? You said you’re going to college.”
Baby steps, Buffy. He was taking them, and so could she.
“Yes. It starts in exactly a month, actually. I’m scheduled to take French, chemistry, a Shakespeare class, and the probably evil psychology class that Dawn took. I’m doing mostly area requirements this semester. Hence the chemistry and French…”
“Sounds like it will be quite the workload.”
“Ugh, don’t say it like that. How about, ‘sounds like it will be fun’?”
“Sounds like it will be fun.”
“I know, right? On the glass half empty side, how about that workload, eh?”
Did she really just say eh?
Spike gave a small smile at her lame joke, but it seemed forced.
While Buffy scrambled to think of what to say next to fill the silence (and remembered with fond nostalgia the days when she had most wanted him to just shut up), Spike cleared his throat.
“I need to go. Not because- not because of…” He pursed his lips and cocked his head, as though that were euphemism enough. “I’m sore from last night, and I’d like to get some kip and blood.”
“O-of course. I hope you feel better.” Buffy forced herself to smile, too. “I’m sorry for waking you earlier.”
“Don’t fret about it. You can always call whenever you need to.”
Spike looked almost as surprised to make the offer as she was to hear it.
Buffy felt her cheeks crinkle in a real smile. She raised her hand in farewell as Spike disappeared up the stairs and told herself that this was good- this was progress.
Baby steps.
Part IV
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Joss Whedon, and I am making no money, etc., etc.
Summary: Buffy used to worry that she couldn’t love. After Twilight, she's afraid to love. But can she and Spike just be friends? Buffy, Spike, and their balcony, with a side of Dawn and Xander. Part III is 5,700 words (the whole fic is 21,000 words and it is finished; updates every day or two). Part II. Part I.
Part III
May 18
Spike put off seeing her as long as he could. The lack of progress in his investigation helped. Before she might have cared to hear about his failed attempts at finding Meltzer and Allie, who seemed to have moved on to a new hideout every time he reached the last one. He no longer cared enough to tell her.
There was no way to pretend that his new picture of Allie wasn’t important, though. So Spike landed his ship on the apartment building as soon as dark fell, much earlier than he had ever come before, and hoped, as keenly as he had hoped for the opposite last time, that maybe she just wouldn’t be home.
As he strode slowly down the stairs, he couldn’t keep wistful thoughts from crowding his head. It had occurred to him shortly after their fight that Buffy had no way to contact him. What if she changed her mind? What if his words got through to her and she decided she did want to make a go of it? He had fantasized about Buffy trying and failing to reach him, hoping he would come back, and planning speeches of remorse and love for when he did. She would run to him, and Spike would sweep her into her arms, tell her that of course he loved her, and not stop kissing her until she was blue in the face.
His fantasy popped like a burst balloon as he reached her balcony. He had to force himself to tread the last few steps to her window.
As Spike rapped lightly and then made himself rap again so someone actually stood a chance of hearing, he found himself hoping that Dawn would answer, even though she would probably be angry at him on her sister’s behalf.
Xander poked his head out from the kitchen.
Xander would do.
As the boy approached, Spike was not a little unsettled to see that Xander’s usual dislike had been replaced by something almost like…sympathy.
Just what had Buffy told him and Dawn about their argument?
Xander slid the window up and nodded. “Spike.”
“Xander.”
They stared at each other. Spike kept waiting for the boy’s façade to crack, for him to say something cruel or demeaning.
Finally, Xander took a breath. “Do you want me to get Buffy?”
Spike blinked. Xander was giving him a choice?
“She’s in the shower. She just got home from work. I’ll go tell her you’re here if you want to wa-”
“No.”
Xander paused a step away from the window. He looked almost as surprised as Spike felt.
“Ta,” said Spike. “But if you could just give her a message from me, I’d appreciate it.”
Xander hesitated. “I think I should-”
“Give her this.” Spike whipped the photo of Allie out of his pocket and held it out. “Tell her it’s a picture of Allie. She’ll know what I’m talking about.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Xander shuffled closer and took the picture. He stared at the Caucasian man with curly dark hair and boyish features and said, “This is the demon that wants to poison Buffy?”
“One of them,” said Spike. He nodded in a perfunctory, farewell sort of way and turned.
He hadn’t even gotten a foot away, and Xander hadn’t finished drawing out, “Spike…”, when Spike pivoted again. His heart was clenching in his chest. Not for the first time he inwardly railed at the unfairness of how much an unbeating organ could still hurt. The idea of Buffy being in half as much pain as it would take to get Xander to be conciliatory was intolerable.
“And…tell her the answer is yes. The answer is always yes.”
Spike retreated to the stairs before Xander could speak and waited to swipe his eyes until he was two flights up.
June 29
His fantasies didn’t change much in the next month, only now he thought there was actually a tiny, maybe 5% chance of them coming true. He hoped that his admission of love, presumably passed on by Xander, would be a wake-up call. Maybe if he hadn’t been so stubbornly reticent on the subject the last time he and Buffy had spoken, the night would have ended differently.
Spike wasn’t displeased then when it was she who answered his knock a little before midnight. Wary, yes. But also foolishly, woefully hopeful.
“Hey,” she said softly, with a small, uncertain smile, as she climbed out the window.
Spike found himself nodding cordially, as though he were back in a nineteenth century drawing room. “Buffy.”
He had spent far too much of the past hour trying to decide what to call her. Most of his pet names would sound fake, “Slayer” sounded too formal, and ‘love’ was just inconceivable.
He should have spent that time figuring out what he would say after he greeted her.
Luckily, she opened her mouth before the tension threatened to overwhelm him and he said something careless.
“How have you been?”
Spike stared at her and didn’t try to hide his incredulity. That was really the first thing she asked?
At least she was being polite.
“Busy,” he said, more brusquely than he had intended. “A little run-down. Tired of drinking the same old pig’s blood every day. Getting sick of living on a ship.”
Okay, maybe he could work on being polite back. Not sound quite so resentful.
“How about you?”
Buffy bit her lip. “I’m okay. I’ve been working more hours at Pick Me Up. Trying to save some extra money before fall.”
Spike arched a brow. “Before…”
Her eyes lit up. “I didn’t tell you! I got into college. I’m starting in August.”
Briefly, her news distracted him from his petulance and he felt himself smile. He remembered her telling him in early January that she had applied. “That’s great, love.”
Buffy’s cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink, and she beamed, and he realized what he had said.
No, this was not all right. Buffy had rejected his love.
“I’m actually kind of excited. Dawn keeps telling me about all her courses. She wants me to take a psychology class that she’s in this semester and loves, and I keep telling her that Buffy and psychology are non-mixy things.”
So this was her strategy then? She was just going to pretend their fight had never happened? Now that she had assurances of his love, she would use that love when it suited her and never mind about the long run.
“And I’m saving money to get an apartment of my own. I’m finally going to move out-”
“Buffy.”
She stopped, her eyes flying to his.
“I’m happy for you about college and moving and everything,” he said. “And I want to know more. Honestly. But is that really what we should be talking about right now?”
For a split second her face fell. Then it turned resolute, and Spike knew, without any doubt, that nothing had changed, except now she had had time to dress up her excuses in pretty words.
Her tone was conciliatory. “Spike, I’m sorry about what happ-”
“I changed my mind. We shouldn’t talk about that,” he interrupted. “Because if what you’re about to say includes the words ‘can’t’ or more ‘sorry’s, I don’t want to hear it.”
Buffy stared at him for five long seconds before her eyes moved slowly down his face. She didn’t speak. A twisting motion at her wrist that she seemed to be doing unconsciously drew Spike’s attention. She was fiddling with the bracelet he’d given her. The fact that she still wore it, the possibility that maybe she never took it off, the way he hadn’t taken off her ring until March, made his heart ache. He wondered if she had noticed his bare hand.
“I think I should tell you my information and then leave.”
Her eyes snapped back to his.
“Nothing new on the Meltzer front,” said Spike. “But there’s a new group of vampires in town you should keep an eye out for. The leader is a thug called Lynch who’s been around since the twenties. If he’s survived this long he’s bound to be strong, tricky, or both. I don’t know if he came cause he likes to fight slayers or cause he likes the Bay Area. Either way, he’ll try to make a name for himself.”
A serious look had replaced her lost one, and Spike knew she was committing the name to memory. “Lynch. Got it.”
Her brow furrowed in concentration as she probably planned her hunt, and Spike took the reprieve to think on the way her eyes had flickered on “likes to fight slayers.” He knew she had been thinking of him, returning to Sunnydale time after time to bag himself his third slayer. What Spike didn’t know was how she felt about the matter. He wondered if Buffy ever wished she had just staked him way back when, before everything got so complicated. Life had been a hell of a lot simpler when they just wanted to kill each other.
“I’m going to keep an eye out for him, too, obviously,” Spike added, trying to distract himself from that line of thought.
“Right. Do you want to-” Buffy hesitated, and he knew that she had been about to ask if he wanted to search for Lynch together. Like old times.
She didn’t finish. Spike took that as his cue not to pursue the matter either.
“Think I should go,” he said, and that lost look returned.
“You- you don’t have to.”
“Got stuff to do,” he said evasively. He could hear the lie in his words and knew she could as well. As she looked away, blinking, he felt a stab of self-loathing that hadn’t been present during their argument. He could be kinder about this. But then, so could she.
“I’ll be back when I know more,” he relented.
Buffy gave a short, jerky nod, and Spike left, unable to decide if he was looking forward to next time or dreading it.
July 23
Spike hated the twinge of relief he felt when Dawn answered the window. Would interacting with Buffy ever become less stressful? He may love soap operas, but he didn’t want to bloody live one.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” Though she now looked horrified as she leaned over the sill, Dawn had been smiling as she approached. Spike still didn’t understand why Buffy hadn’t turned her against him.
He smirked at her expression. “Just swung by to tell you that Lynch is dead.”
Dawn’s eyebrows shot up. “Lynch? The big bad vampire in town?”
Spike nodded. “The very one.”
Her eyes swept him up and down. “And I take it that you’re the one who saw to his untimely demise.”
“That would be correct.”
After finding yet another of Meltzer’s hidey-holes to hold nothing but beer bottles and empty Marlboro packs, the third one this month, Spike had gone to demon bar after demon bar until he found a patron who was scared enough to give up Lynch’s whereabouts. His fury had carried him halfway across the city to an abandoned warehouse, where he found Lynch and his cronies feasting on a gaggle of college students. One of the glazed-eyed girls had hair the exact same shade as Dawn’s, and before he knew what he was doing, before considering the wisdom of taking on Lynch’s gang all on his lonesome, Spike had attacked.
Now he had a broken nose, at least one cracked rib, and more than a few gashes here and there, but Lynch was dead and those teenagers were safe at home. Or possibly gibbering in a hospital. Either way, Spike called it a win.
It was a win for himself as well. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so invigorated. All the research and false trails and dead ends made it easy to become depressed, forget what good he could still do with just his fists and fangs. Just because he was the ear-to-the-ground guy now didn’t mean he couldn’t fight the physical battles too.
And it had felt good. Oh, it had felt good to beat Lynch to a pulp and know that he was keeping the scumbag from ever going after Buffy. His victory, though relatively small, made him feel less like the wanker he’d thought he was becoming as a year came to an end and Meltzer and Allie were still alive.
Spike grinned widely, even though it hurt his nose. This evening had been worth a dozen broken ribs and any number of gashes.
“Good for you,” said Dawn. Though she looked pleased and sounded sincere, her expression was slowly turning into a smirk. “Buffy’s gonna be pissed.”
“What?”
“You know she doesn’t like when anyone fights her battles for her.” Dawn’s eyes twinkled.
“I wasn’t fighting it for her,” Spike scoffed. “It was my battle too. I just beat her to it.”
Dawn snickered. “That’ll go down well.”
Spike shrugged. “She can add it to her list of my current offenses.”
Dawn’s amusement faded, and she looked at him solemnly. He wondered if he had bollixed it up with her now, too, but before he had time to decide if he regretted his words, she said quietly, “Do you want to come in? You can put ice on that. We’ve got cream and bandages and everything.”
For a moment Spike thought that he’d sustained greater damage to his head than he’d realized and was hallucinating. But no, Dawn’s brow was knit with worry, and she had stepped back a pace to give him room to climb inside. He looked at her and felt something trembling inside of him. It wasn’t his heart breaking again or tears threatening to spill or anything so melodramatic.
It was his guard, he realized with some surprise, and ignored the voice in the back of his head that said this was melodramatic too.
How easy it would be to accept Dawn’s invitation and step inside. With entrance to the Summers abode, he could find new ways to slip into Buffy’s life, new cracks in her armor that he could pry apart, slowly and resolutely. And someday, surely, she would open to him, acknowledge his love for what it was: something purer and more evolved than Angel’s destructive obsession.
As surely as he could imagine that, Spike could picture the bitterness that would come with it. She would feel forced by it all, forced to acknowledge him because he simply wouldn’t go away. And yes, she might eventually return his kisses, but it wouldn’t be love.
“No thanks,” said Spike, and realized he meant it, with as much conviction as when he’d said, ‘Tell her the answer is yes.’ If Buffy ever did love him, it wasn’t going to be because she had tired of him chasing her.
Besides, he felt petty, vindictive satisfaction in rejecting the invitation that had so long been denied to him.
Dawn’s eyes were wide. “Are you sure?”
Spike nodded, smiling faintly. He understood her disbelief. He could quite easily remember the feeling of wanting an invitation.
“Um, okay.” Dawn looked stymied for a moment. Spike repressed another smirk. It had been a while since he’d stymied Dawn.
“Let me get you some ice anyway.”
“That’s all ri-”
“Shut up, Spike! Don’t think you get to come straight to my apartment after a fight and act like a noble ninny about it. You’re not going to bleed all over my balcony.”
Spike didn’t repress the smirk this time. She reminded him so much of her sister sometimes. And her mum.
“Yes, ma’am.” He almost saluted, but her glare stopped him.
When she came back to the window ten seconds later with an ice pack wrapped in an old dishtowel, he began, “Is B-”
“I really don’t get this martyr shtick you’re pulling,” said Dawn as she handed him the ice. “What’s wrong with my apartment?”
He couldn’t hold back a short glare as he held the ice gingerly to his nose. “Nothing. But keeping me locked out for a year doesn’t exactly make me jump at the prospect now.”
To his slight disappointment, Dawn didn’t look embarrassed. “I told Buffy months ago she could invite you in,” she replied, with a roll of her eyes. “She said she liked the balcony better. Said it was quiet. I think she meant cozy.” Dawn winked.
Spike stared at her. He…really didn’t know what to make of that.
So Buffy had liked their time on the balcony together. Perfect. More bloody mixed signals.
Dawn leaned against the window frame. “Do you want anything to drink? We don’t have blood, but Xander has beer.”
“No, thanks.” The jarring idea of his nibblet offering him beer almost overwhelmed his confusion that she was offering him creature comforts in the first place. What she was up to? Was she supposed to butter him up for Buffy?
“Is Buffy-”
“She’s not here,” said Dawn. “She’s sleeping over at Willow’s tonight. They’re having a girls’ night.”
“Oh.” He considered her words and felt himself squint in confusion. She had invited him in when Buffy wasn’t home? Dawn wanted him for company? The giddiness he had felt when Lynch turned into dust returned in a rush.
“Dawn? What’s going- oh.”
Bloody Xander, always ruining everything.
Xander was a few steps out of the bedroom when he saw Spike and paused. The boy wore sweats and an old tee and had clearly been asleep, judging from his sticking-up hair and the way he rubbed his eye.
“Spike’s just checking in,” said Dawn.
Xander seemed nonplussed but not irritated. He glanced at Spike again, taking in the bruises. “What happened to you?”
“Killed some vampires.”
“Is letting them use your face for a punching bag first part of your new strategy?”
Spike stared at him. One side of Xander’s mouth twitched.
“Want to come next time and find out?”
“Can I fight on the other side?”
“Course, your face is ugly enough that it won’t matter.”
“Deadboy.”
“Monkeybutt.”
They scowled at each other. Xander’s face screwed up in deep, probably painful thought.
“If the best you can do is name calling, I think this has run its course,” said Dawn, sounding amused. “Hon, I’ll be there in a minute, okay?”
Xander understood the dismissal for what it was and retreated to the bedroom, giving Spike one last, not terribly antagonistic stink-eye. Dawn hopped off the window and grabbed a messenger bag sitting on the floor nearby. She rummaged in it and pulled out a small plastic bag.
“I got something for you.”
She had what? Spike tried not to let his bewilderment or anticipation show as she returned and pulled something out of the bag. He stared at the objects, fully aware of what they were but not quite able to grasp what they had to do with him.
“This is pay-as-you-go phone,” said Dawn. “It has five hundred minutes on it. All our numbers are programmed in it already.”
She stretched her arm out. A little reluctantly, Spike took the phone. He flipped it over, remembering the last time someone had given him one of these. Fred had requisitioned one for him after he became corporeal: “You need it now that you’re really part of the team. It has my number and Gunn’s and Angel’s and Wes’s, and Lorne’s. Cell phones and office numbers.” Remembering her affectionate beam, the way she immediately assumed he was worthy of her friendship, made him tremble. It never failed to surprise him how deeply her loss still hurt, considering how short a time he had known her.
Spike pushed away the memories, focusing on the beautiful girl who was in front of him now. “Is this so that I don’t have to come over anymore? You want me to call instead?” He tried not to sound bitter.
Dawn’s eyes narrowed. “No. It’s so that Buffy can call you when she feels like it instead of waiting for you to decide your wounded ego can handle visiting again.”
Her words hit him like a slap, much harder than anything Lynch’s gang had thrown at him.
Spike swallowed. “Dawn…”
She glanced away quickly and folded her arms. When she looked back, her mouth was still tight, but her gaze was softer. Sad.
“For what it’s worth, I think you were in the right,” she said. “But it’s still not fair that Buffy has no way of contacting you.”
Dawn held out the second object, the phone’s charger. Spike took it and slipped both into his duster pocket.
“Thanks,” he said, a little hoarsely, and Dawn nodded.
No, it wasn’t fair that Buffy only saw him when he felt like it. It had been all right at first, but after their fight…he should have realized what kind of a dangerous power imbalance that was. After all, he had been on the other end of it before.
Spike looked at Dawn, grateful, slightly ashamed, but also defiant. He wasn’t going to start showing up outside Buffy’s window on a regular basis just because she could now keep tabs on him too. It wasn’t only his ego he had to keep in mind.
Despite his somewhat mutinous thoughts, he was relieved- and more than a little surprised to realize- that someone else was looking out for Buffy, in ways that he couldn’t. As he met Dawn’s gaze, and thought not for the first time that sometimes it was as plain as day that she was no ordinary girl, he gave a slight nod to show he understood.
He looked out for Buffy physically.
She looked out for Buffy emotionally.
“I better get going,” said Spike. “Need some blood. Thanks for everything and, er, sorry…” He grimaced as he realized that the dishtowel he had started to hand back was sticky with blood.
“How about you keep that,” said Dawn, and he stuffed it in his pocket as well and handed her the ice pack. “Are you going to be around in the fall?”
Spike tilted his head. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”
“Good. Cause I’m signed up for a history of Victorian Britain class, and I’ll probably need your help.”
She sounded so much like her sassy, demanding, supremely-confident-that-Spike-would-bend-over-backward-for-her 15-year-old self that Spike found himself smiling instinctively.
For appearance’s sake, he tried to put on wounded expression instead. “So that’s all I am to you. A walking Google.”
“Nah. Google’s faster than you are.” Dawn smirked as he gaped. “You’re more like an old, dusty textbook.”
“You cheeky little-”
“Night, Spike!”
With a grin she began to slide the window down. He waved as she sashayed back to the bedroom, and she fluttered her fingers in reply.
As he went to the stairs, Spike pulled out the phone and scrolled through the contact list. Sure enough, there was the apartment number, as well as Buffy and Dawn’s cell phone numbers. She had also, for some reason, given him Willow’s.
And Xander’s.
Spike repressed a sigh, too full of conflicting emotions to decide how he felt about all this.
Fine time to start treating him as part of the Scooby family.
July 24
The balcony was not really large enough to pace, but Buffy did so anyway, insomuch as three steps one way and three steps back could be called pacing. When she heard a soft creak from above she stopped short, glared briefly upward at the vampire she couldn’t yet see, and leaned against the wall.
When Spike swung around the stair railing to face her, she couldn’t keep from gasping. Dawn had mentioned he’d been injured, but Buffy hadn’t visualized what that actually meant. It had been so long since she’d seen him bloodied and bruised, and now his eye was purple and his nose was swollen. It jolted her to remember that others could do that to him; it used to be just her.
No, she was angry. Angry, angry, angry, and so not dwelling on the past.
“You rang?” said Spike, and somehow managed to inflect the two words with enough weariness and impatience for a whole speech.
Suddenly, it was quite easy to glare at him again. “I was going to kill Lynch!”
Dawn hadn’t told her as soon as she got back from Willow’s in late morning. Instead, Dawn had waited until after lunch, when Buffy was at her most relaxed, indulging in coffee and a slightly stale chocolate-iced scone from Pick Me Up. “By the way,” Dawn had said, in her most casual voice. “Spike stopped by last night…”
Buffy had called him fifteen minutes later and when he was done growling about how it was the middle of the day and shouldn’t a veteran vampire slayer realize he would be sleeping blah blah blah, told him to come after dark. Then she’d thrown the paper with Spike’s number on the table at Dawn and stormed out of the apartment. Her dramatic exit may have had more flair if she hadn’t stormed back in five minutes later to snatch back the paper so she could program his number into her cell.
Buffy had decided not to analyze yet whether Dawn had ulterior motives for getting Spike a phone.
“Didn’t see a ‘Property of Buffy Summers’ sticker on him.”
His blitheness made her fingers curl. “Don’t fight my battles for me. I’m not a damsel in distress, and you’re not my white knight!”
“First off, if I were a knight, I’d be black. Second, I wasn’t fighting your battle!”
“Really? Let’s see, Lynch was a vampire, and I’m the vampire slayer¬-”
“Should I have let him eat the little bird then?”
Buffy paused. There really wasn’t an argument against that. She tried a different tactic. “It’d be different if you ran into him by accident. But you went looking for him. I know you did.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I checked around in some demon bars today.”
Spike’s caught expression amused her for an instant; it was so like Xander’s always was when they caught him in an embarrassing spot, like when they once found him perusing the adult magazines in a bookstore; it was so male and normal.
Then he scowled and ruined it. “So you’re spying on me.”
“Only today,” said Buffy defensively. “Since you staked my target.”
She figured they could do this forever, sniping at each other, but to her surprise Spike sighed, with what she thought was genuine weariness. “Pet, are you really mad at me for staking a vamp that was looking to make Frisco it’s playground? Because if you are, that’s just silly. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m not up to par, so if that’s all-”
“That’s not all!” Buffy opened her mouth, hesitated.
It was kind of all.
“If I had ‘Property of’ stickers,’ they would say ‘Buffy Summers comma Slayer comma the,’” she muttered at last.
For a moment Spike stared at her as though he could see the marbles rolling from her ear. Then a smile tugged at his lips, the kind he wore when she was a little tipsy and not so much with the sense-making, when she always knew, despite the alcohol-induced buzz, that he was smiling just because he liked her. Buffy. The girl and the Slayer all mixed together.
His eyes were softening, their corners crinkling, and Buffy felt her heart beat faster. This felt so right. Her quips, his smiles, them being happy.
And just like that her anger melted away. Strange how he could do that. But also fitting, maybe, since he used to inspire the worst of it.
“I’m sorry,” said Buffy, and found she meant it. “How are you feeling?” She stepped forward.
Spike glanced at her, surprised, and she winced inwardly again at his face. “Better than I look. Don’t worry. I’ll live.”
“Do you want to come in?”
The words fell from her before she had considered them, but she didn’t care. They were the right words.
He looked at her with one of those very rare Spike expressions that she couldn’t fathom. His head tilted, and she knew he was about to say yes-
“No thanks.”
“What?”
“I’m good out here.”
Buffy could feel her jaw hanging in an unflattering way and closed it. “No, let’s go inside. I’ll make hot chocolate again, and there’s ice cream-”
“Those might spoil each other, what with the ‘hot’ and the ‘ice.’”
“Fine, then just cocoa.” She put her hand on the window sash. “Come on, let’s-”
“Thanks, I get it, I’m invited. But actually, Dawn invited me in last time, and I’d really rather just stay out here.”
Buffy stopped moving. The window was cold under her fingertips. She wanted to move her hand, but the gesture would feel awkward now. Slowly, she let her fingers slide down the glass and creep behind her back. She took a deep breath. Then a second.
The question popped out. “Why?”
Spike stared at her. He lifted one shoulder in a pitiful attempt at nonchalance. “Just don’t feel like it.”
Buffy tried to choose her next words carefully. She knew Spike wouldn’t want to hear them, but she was so sick and tired of his attitude. She had messed up, but she had also apologized, and why couldn’t he just accept that things were the way they were for a reason?
“But…why, Buffy? If you…care about him and he…cares about you, I don’t understand why you can’t, you know. Tell him you care. I mean, I’m not saying I would throw a party if you hooked up with another vampire, but it’s Spike. I think…I think he’s all right.”
Dawn’s words from the night Buffy had broken down and told her about their argument echoed in her mind. Buffy tried to shove them away. Dawn hadn’t known what she was talking about. Buffy couldn’t afford to “care about” anyone. It was…it was far too messy. Complicated. Apocalyptically. Any happiness she and Spike found together couldn’t last before the universe decided to screw it up.
Right?
“Spike, I know I made a mistake.”
She saw the glower start to form between his eyebrows, but she barreled onward.
“But it’s not fair of you to keep punishing me. You’re acting like we’re not even friends.”
“That’s because we’re not friends.”
Suddenly Buffy was remembering another conversation, from much longer ago, in full Technicolor, as though someone had recorded that evening in the wrecked magic shop and started playing the tape in her head.
“You’re not friends. You’ll never be friends. You’ll be in love till it kills you both. You’ll fight, and you’ll shag, and you’ll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you’ll never be friends.”
Buffy felt a flicker of panic; because all those years ago he had said that about Angel, and she had loved Angel, and if she was thinking this now about Spike, then that meant-
Was he remembering his words, too?
Damn his poker face! He would never have lost at kitten poker so much if he had had this good of one in Sunnydale.
“I tried to be your friend,” said Spike. “Even though I love you.”
Buffy started. There it was. She had gotten his message from a very confused Xander and understood it, but oh, there it was.
“But you can’t be just a friend, and you’re not willing to love me. So I think we should stop pretending otherwise.”
Buffy was so focused on replaying his words (‘I love you’ ‘I love you’ he still loves me) that it took a moment for his suggestion to sink in.
“No!”
He arched his scarred brow.
“I can be your friend,” said Buffy hotly. She could go back to square one. Well, more like square two or four or ten since square one had really been them trying to kill each other.
Did she want to go back to square ten?
“I don’t think-” began Spike.
“Give me a chance!” Buffy raised her chin and fixed him with her best steely-eyed gaze. “I deserve another chance.”
She didn’t add what she was thinking, which was that she had given him enough of his own.
Buffy guessed that he didn’t need reminding, though, because Spike lowered his head for a moment and when he looked at her, with eyes that seemed slightly unfocused, slightly shiny, he said in his most tired voice yet, “All right.”
Buffy felt like a balloon that had just popped. She deflated, releasing tension instead of air.
“So, do you want to come in?”
Spike hesitated. “No. Really, Buffy.”
“But-”
“How about you tell me about your classes? You said you’re going to college.”
Baby steps, Buffy. He was taking them, and so could she.
“Yes. It starts in exactly a month, actually. I’m scheduled to take French, chemistry, a Shakespeare class, and the probably evil psychology class that Dawn took. I’m doing mostly area requirements this semester. Hence the chemistry and French…”
“Sounds like it will be quite the workload.”
“Ugh, don’t say it like that. How about, ‘sounds like it will be fun’?”
“Sounds like it will be fun.”
“I know, right? On the glass half empty side, how about that workload, eh?”
Did she really just say eh?
Spike gave a small smile at her lame joke, but it seemed forced.
While Buffy scrambled to think of what to say next to fill the silence (and remembered with fond nostalgia the days when she had most wanted him to just shut up), Spike cleared his throat.
“I need to go. Not because- not because of…” He pursed his lips and cocked his head, as though that were euphemism enough. “I’m sore from last night, and I’d like to get some kip and blood.”
“O-of course. I hope you feel better.” Buffy forced herself to smile, too. “I’m sorry for waking you earlier.”
“Don’t fret about it. You can always call whenever you need to.”
Spike looked almost as surprised to make the offer as she was to hear it.
Buffy felt her cheeks crinkle in a real smile. She raised her hand in farewell as Spike disappeared up the stairs and told herself that this was good- this was progress.
Baby steps.
Part IV