A Spuffy: Momentos
Here's a little spuffy thing in four parts - three of which were posted on sb_fag_ends, and the last of which was not. I thought it'd be nice to put them all together, as they tell a single story.
Mementos
Season 5: Photographs
“What ever happened to just being enemies? Of all the things… and this was my only photo of my sweet sixteen! Not that that was a great day, but it’s the principle! Oh, I’ll kill him.”
Buffy knelt in the ruined remains of Spike’s disgusting shrine, carefully collecting her photos, smoothing them out, and tucking them gently into a manila envelope she’d liberated from Giles. “I’ll kill him extra this time.”
She'd gotten all the easily-accessible photos and reached far under the dinky little table where another gleamed wetly in the candlelight.
Picking it up, she frowned.
It wasn’t of her.
It was a Polaroid, sun-faded, with a spattering of amber burns marking some long-ago liquid splash. Drusilla’s face was washed white from the flash - or freaky vampire lifestyle - and all that could be seen behind her were some fuzzy lights like a carnival. She was sticking out her tongue and wearing something shapeless and paisley.
“I don’t even get my own stalker shrine?” Buffy asked the universe incredulously. She scooted forward, looking at the area where the Drusilla picture had lain. No, there was another of Buffy - folded over to hide her ex-boyfriend. And another of her, and… there was a cardboard box, flat like a shirt box but taller and squarer, pushed up against the rough stone wall. Hanging out of it was a strip of black and white photo booth pictures. Drusilla and Spike, hamming it for the camera and dressed like punk rockers, hair all exploded out with gel and safety pins everywhere.
Buffy frowned. This could have been taken any time between the invention of the punk safety-pin and last year. Vampires were weird.
Curiosity piqued, Buffy pulled the box toward her. It was filled to the very top with a messy pile of photographs and news clippings, all sizes and shapes. She pulled out the topmost clipping. An obituary. Now that was classic vampire. Ick. She flicked it aside and picked up a big photo with a cardboard backing.
Huh. It was one of those real old-timey photos, back before people invented color or the smile. A woman in a very uncomfortable-looking black dress that covered her tightly all the way up to her jaw was holding a bewildered-looking baby in a white dress.
Okay, new kind of weird. She fished out another and nearly fell onto her butt in shock. It was Angel! Angel with a scary evil smirk wearing an old-fashioned suit with unfashionable stripes and Drusilla on his knee, wearing nothing at all. She was looking over her bare back at the camera.
Not quite sure what she expected to find, she reached for another photo of the same size. “Oh. My. God.”
She did fall back on her butt.
This time it was Spike sitting on Angel’s knee, and he was not as turned away as Drusilla had been. He leaned out a bit, smirking at the camera, and Angel’s hand was splayed possessively over a narrow waist and defined abs, and woah… Angel's other hand was on the inside of Spike's thigh.
Spike. Of the naked. Did he look exactly the same now? I mean, the hair - way different. Softer. Better. But that body? Those chiseled muscles and that abdomen and that oh so tantalizing shadow where you almost felt like you could see more if you tilted your head back?
A loud noise startled her. She jumped to her feet, started toward the door, then meeped and ran back for her envelope of photos.
Spike leaned over the opening at the top of the ladder. “Come to gloat over my utter humiliation? Again? Get out!”
Buffy tucked her envelope under her arm. “Just taking what’s mine. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near your obsession-o-rama, otherwise. Which, by the way, I don’t mind repeating, is sick.”
Surreptitiously, she slipped the photo of Spike and Angel into her back pocket before hurrying past him.
Because that was so going to need another long, careful examination for reasons she didn’t entirely want to admit to herself.
But, seriously? WOWZA.
Season Six: Her Cross
He stares at her cross. She doesn’t wear it that often, these days. Having been dead and back - not big with either needing the protection nor the religious connotations, but sometimes it just goes with the outfit, and Buffy’s not so far gone that she doesn’t accessorize.
But when she wears it, Spike gives her these sidelong looks that are hard to read. And usually Spike-looks come in double bold typeface visible from across the street. You can see what he’s feeling, what he’s trying not to feel, what he thinks about that, and what he’s going to feel next.
Angel was the exact opposite. He had only one emotion or thought at a time - at least as far as Buffy could tell - and more often than not, it was the context of the situation that defined those emotions clearly to her, rather than anything on his face.
Funny that the one soulled vampire in the world path-of-redemption guy was less complex. Being the one chosen girl blah blah blah pretty much complexed Buffy up. Once upon a time, all she’d cared about was fashion and popularity.
Buffy realizes she’s wool-gathering, and fingering the cross, while Spike’s expression has gone from unreadable to “I see you see me staring and I’m afraid you’ll ask me why and I don’t want to tell you because something about that exposes too much of me”.
(Seriously. He could be a highway sign: Insecurity Next 500 Years) Buffy drops the cross and shifts her shoulders back. “Do you like it?” she asks.
She expects him to play it off casual, or use the excuse to compliment her. Instead he leans in and licks her chest, from the bottom point of her neckline right up and over the silver cross. There’s a quiet hiss, like water hitting a frying pan, as he passes over it, and then he’s nibbling her neck and her fingers are threading into his hair and she forgets what she was thinking about.
And he’s told her. Again, like he always tells her, every secret vulnerable thing in his heart, exposed and clear in the caress of his lips.
Season Seven: A Lock of Hair
Maybe there’d been a near miss in a sparing session. Or maybe he’d decided to neaten his coiffure for the final battle. Maybe it had been there a long time, dropped carelessly from a coat-sleeve after a regular haircut.
Or maybe he knew, and slipped it quietly into her duffel bag that morning, like a message in a bottle, flung without hope of reply.
She didn’t know. But a curl of bleached blonde hair, just turning brown on one end, tumbled out of her bag as she unpacked her nightgown in the motel in Fresno where they pulled in to regroup and rest after the battle.
She picked it up and brought it to her lips, feeling the texture, smelling the acrid hair-dye and cigarette smoke and that simple hair smell.
She crumpled to the floor, shaking a little with tears that didn’t quite come. A warm arm wrapped around her and pulled her back up onto the bed.
She was glad Dawn was there.
Post-series: A Locket
Angel gave her a cross, when they first met. It wasn’t a boyfriend gift, officially, since they weren’t even on a “hey I know your name” basis at the time, but for years she’d treasured it as one of the best things ever given her by a boy, though it was tainted by being a tool of her trade.
Maybe that’s why Spike felt he had to give her one, too. He could be such a boy sometimes. But it was sweet how he’d kicked the ground and scratched his neck and looked away while she opened the box. At first she was disappointed to see it, another cross? Another attempt at stupidly replicating Angel when she so didn’t want that?
But then he reached in and opened it. The pretty cloisonné top hinged back to show a photograph cut to fit the narrow space. Her mom was looking down, not aware of the photographer, her face centered on the crux of the cross, her hair expanding out along one arm, a sunny bit of park along the other, and Dawn was looking up at her from below. The photo fit perfectly, and Buffy wondered (not then, but later, when her emotions were under control) where he’d found it.
“I figure… they protect you,” Spike said, his cool hand cupping hers as he lifted the chain from the box.
He sounded unsure, afraid she’d think he was being too corny, maybe. The big dummy. It was perfect, and sweet, and everything she loved best about him. She threw her arms around his neck, but the only words she could manage were, “Thank you.”
Now she was flying away from him for the first time since the wedding. Big blow up in Cleveland, and Spike had his hands full with the baby, so no, she wouldn’t make Giles pony up for another ticket. But she had the locket. After the security people had opened it to make sure it wasn’t a bomb, anyway.
She absently ran her thumb over the enamel design, feeling the raised wires in the glass, knowing the pattern by heart, as she gazed out at the fluffy white clouds that hid England below.
He hadn’t put his own picture in it. He didn’t need to. Dawn, her mom, and Spike - they watch over her.
Mementos
Season 5: Photographs
“What ever happened to just being enemies? Of all the things… and this was my only photo of my sweet sixteen! Not that that was a great day, but it’s the principle! Oh, I’ll kill him.”
Buffy knelt in the ruined remains of Spike’s disgusting shrine, carefully collecting her photos, smoothing them out, and tucking them gently into a manila envelope she’d liberated from Giles. “I’ll kill him extra this time.”
She'd gotten all the easily-accessible photos and reached far under the dinky little table where another gleamed wetly in the candlelight.
Picking it up, she frowned.
It wasn’t of her.
It was a Polaroid, sun-faded, with a spattering of amber burns marking some long-ago liquid splash. Drusilla’s face was washed white from the flash - or freaky vampire lifestyle - and all that could be seen behind her were some fuzzy lights like a carnival. She was sticking out her tongue and wearing something shapeless and paisley.
“I don’t even get my own stalker shrine?” Buffy asked the universe incredulously. She scooted forward, looking at the area where the Drusilla picture had lain. No, there was another of Buffy - folded over to hide her ex-boyfriend. And another of her, and… there was a cardboard box, flat like a shirt box but taller and squarer, pushed up against the rough stone wall. Hanging out of it was a strip of black and white photo booth pictures. Drusilla and Spike, hamming it for the camera and dressed like punk rockers, hair all exploded out with gel and safety pins everywhere.
Buffy frowned. This could have been taken any time between the invention of the punk safety-pin and last year. Vampires were weird.
Curiosity piqued, Buffy pulled the box toward her. It was filled to the very top with a messy pile of photographs and news clippings, all sizes and shapes. She pulled out the topmost clipping. An obituary. Now that was classic vampire. Ick. She flicked it aside and picked up a big photo with a cardboard backing.
Huh. It was one of those real old-timey photos, back before people invented color or the smile. A woman in a very uncomfortable-looking black dress that covered her tightly all the way up to her jaw was holding a bewildered-looking baby in a white dress.
Okay, new kind of weird. She fished out another and nearly fell onto her butt in shock. It was Angel! Angel with a scary evil smirk wearing an old-fashioned suit with unfashionable stripes and Drusilla on his knee, wearing nothing at all. She was looking over her bare back at the camera.
Not quite sure what she expected to find, she reached for another photo of the same size. “Oh. My. God.”
She did fall back on her butt.
This time it was Spike sitting on Angel’s knee, and he was not as turned away as Drusilla had been. He leaned out a bit, smirking at the camera, and Angel’s hand was splayed possessively over a narrow waist and defined abs, and woah… Angel's other hand was on the inside of Spike's thigh.
Spike. Of the naked. Did he look exactly the same now? I mean, the hair - way different. Softer. Better. But that body? Those chiseled muscles and that abdomen and that oh so tantalizing shadow where you almost felt like you could see more if you tilted your head back?
A loud noise startled her. She jumped to her feet, started toward the door, then meeped and ran back for her envelope of photos.
Spike leaned over the opening at the top of the ladder. “Come to gloat over my utter humiliation? Again? Get out!”
Buffy tucked her envelope under her arm. “Just taking what’s mine. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near your obsession-o-rama, otherwise. Which, by the way, I don’t mind repeating, is sick.”
Surreptitiously, she slipped the photo of Spike and Angel into her back pocket before hurrying past him.
Because that was so going to need another long, careful examination for reasons she didn’t entirely want to admit to herself.
But, seriously? WOWZA.
Season Six: Her Cross
He stares at her cross. She doesn’t wear it that often, these days. Having been dead and back - not big with either needing the protection nor the religious connotations, but sometimes it just goes with the outfit, and Buffy’s not so far gone that she doesn’t accessorize.
But when she wears it, Spike gives her these sidelong looks that are hard to read. And usually Spike-looks come in double bold typeface visible from across the street. You can see what he’s feeling, what he’s trying not to feel, what he thinks about that, and what he’s going to feel next.
Angel was the exact opposite. He had only one emotion or thought at a time - at least as far as Buffy could tell - and more often than not, it was the context of the situation that defined those emotions clearly to her, rather than anything on his face.
Funny that the one soulled vampire in the world path-of-redemption guy was less complex. Being the one chosen girl blah blah blah pretty much complexed Buffy up. Once upon a time, all she’d cared about was fashion and popularity.
Buffy realizes she’s wool-gathering, and fingering the cross, while Spike’s expression has gone from unreadable to “I see you see me staring and I’m afraid you’ll ask me why and I don’t want to tell you because something about that exposes too much of me”.
(Seriously. He could be a highway sign: Insecurity Next 500 Years) Buffy drops the cross and shifts her shoulders back. “Do you like it?” she asks.
She expects him to play it off casual, or use the excuse to compliment her. Instead he leans in and licks her chest, from the bottom point of her neckline right up and over the silver cross. There’s a quiet hiss, like water hitting a frying pan, as he passes over it, and then he’s nibbling her neck and her fingers are threading into his hair and she forgets what she was thinking about.
And he’s told her. Again, like he always tells her, every secret vulnerable thing in his heart, exposed and clear in the caress of his lips.
Season Seven: A Lock of Hair
Maybe there’d been a near miss in a sparing session. Or maybe he’d decided to neaten his coiffure for the final battle. Maybe it had been there a long time, dropped carelessly from a coat-sleeve after a regular haircut.
Or maybe he knew, and slipped it quietly into her duffel bag that morning, like a message in a bottle, flung without hope of reply.
She didn’t know. But a curl of bleached blonde hair, just turning brown on one end, tumbled out of her bag as she unpacked her nightgown in the motel in Fresno where they pulled in to regroup and rest after the battle.
She picked it up and brought it to her lips, feeling the texture, smelling the acrid hair-dye and cigarette smoke and that simple hair smell.
She crumpled to the floor, shaking a little with tears that didn’t quite come. A warm arm wrapped around her and pulled her back up onto the bed.
She was glad Dawn was there.
Post-series: A Locket
Angel gave her a cross, when they first met. It wasn’t a boyfriend gift, officially, since they weren’t even on a “hey I know your name” basis at the time, but for years she’d treasured it as one of the best things ever given her by a boy, though it was tainted by being a tool of her trade.
Maybe that’s why Spike felt he had to give her one, too. He could be such a boy sometimes. But it was sweet how he’d kicked the ground and scratched his neck and looked away while she opened the box. At first she was disappointed to see it, another cross? Another attempt at stupidly replicating Angel when she so didn’t want that?
But then he reached in and opened it. The pretty cloisonné top hinged back to show a photograph cut to fit the narrow space. Her mom was looking down, not aware of the photographer, her face centered on the crux of the cross, her hair expanding out along one arm, a sunny bit of park along the other, and Dawn was looking up at her from below. The photo fit perfectly, and Buffy wondered (not then, but later, when her emotions were under control) where he’d found it.
“I figure… they protect you,” Spike said, his cool hand cupping hers as he lifted the chain from the box.
He sounded unsure, afraid she’d think he was being too corny, maybe. The big dummy. It was perfect, and sweet, and everything she loved best about him. She threw her arms around his neck, but the only words she could manage were, “Thank you.”
Now she was flying away from him for the first time since the wedding. Big blow up in Cleveland, and Spike had his hands full with the baby, so no, she wouldn’t make Giles pony up for another ticket. But she had the locket. After the security people had opened it to make sure it wasn’t a bomb, anyway.
She absently ran her thumb over the enamel design, feeling the raised wires in the glass, knowing the pattern by heart, as she gazed out at the fluffy white clouds that hid England below.
He hadn’t put his own picture in it. He didn’t need to. Dawn, her mom, and Spike - they watch over her.