He had not returned by the time she came back with her things. The note she left on the kitchen table after she woke up was still there. Even though he had not said she could stay, she knew he wouldn’t turn her away. She had nowhere else to go. She knew no one here but him. She fought a wave of panic and told herself that he had promised to come back, that he wouldn’t leave her. And she knew him, the way he was. The night before the battle with Glory. That night in the empty house when he said he would always love her. He would be back. She saw the look in his eyes, how they seemed to tell her without words that he had missed her as much as she had missed him.

She looked around his place and started picking up his things. Occupied herself with the mechanics of recreating some order. Books and papers went back on the coffee table and she straightened some of the pictures that were hanging lopsided on the walls. She lingered when she reached his bedroom. The bed was large and covered in crisp white cotton sheets. Sheer mosquito netting was draped from the posters. She flushed when she noted the wrought iron headboard. Bad Buffy, try having a civilized conversation before thinking about jumping the guy’s bones. Folding and putting his clothes away she noticed how nothing he had was black. Apparently Spike had discovered earth tones and um, underwear. She felt her cheeks grow hot again as she saw several pairs of boxer shorts spilling out from the chest of drawers. His closet revealed dress shirts in white, blues, and soft greys and even a butter colored suede car coat that felt as soft as a kitten’s fur against her hand. In the very back there was a silvery grey suit shrouded in plastic. Since when did Spike wear a suit? And colors, for that matter? She suddenly had the frantic need to make sure she hadn’t wandered into an alternate universe where Spike had turned into James Bond.

An inspection of his desk yielded papers in Italian that she couldn’t read and books that were equally impenetrable with funny names like Augustine, Rimbaud, Rilke. Doesn’t he have anything in English? At the bottom drawer she found pictures. Of girls. Girls who were not her. A few dark-haired ones with sloe eyes and full lips. And one redhead wearing a yellow sundress and a sleepy smile. Lying on a blanket underneath a tree with her arm outstretched to whomever was taking the picture. She shoved the pictures back in the drawer and slammed it shut. The sudden surge of jealousy gave her a head rush. Maybe he hadn’t missed her at all. But then there had been no blondes in the pictures. She didn’t know what that meant but oddly, it gave her hope.

She wandered into the kitchen and started putting away the groceries she had picked up from the outdoor market. A look into his refrigerator made her feel better. At least he still ate like the Spike she knew. Plenty of alcohol, jars of olives and pickles and something called Nutella and a shriveled apple. Funny how she almost expected to see blood. But of course, there wasn’t any. She took out the box of hair color that she’d bought at the pharmacy around the corner, reminding herself that there were still things she had to do before he came back.

His bathroom was white with white and black checkered tiles and a big clawfoot tub. She looked into the vanity mirror. You look like death. Strangely, that had hurt almost more than anything else he’d said. She had let herself go a bit. Her hair was not as nice as before and she was thinner, the skin stretched tight over her collarbones, the veins standing out on her temples. She quickly looked away and busied herself with the preparations. He had always liked her blonde. Called her his Goldilocks. She used to hate that nickname. Now, she’d give anything to hear him call her that again. Eventually he would, she just had to show him that it could be good between them. That things were different now.

She had finished coloring her hair and fixing her makeup by six. She’d put on her new peach silk slipdress and pinned the white rose in her hair that the flower vendor had given her after calling her ‘bella.’ By eight she’d finished making the steak and sat waiting with a carton of Marlboro Reds and the icky bitter dark chocolates he liked on the coffee table as a peace offering. By nine, she couldn’t sit still so she wandered to his stereo system and cd stand. Well, he still had the same awful taste in music. Sex Pistols, The Stooges, The Clash, and some weird bands she’d never even heard of. She put on a cd of classical music and drew back the curtains to peer in the gathering darkness. Still no Spike. She was full-on pacing by ten-thirty and ready to go out and find him.

She didn’t even realize she had fallen asleep until the door banged open and he came in, drenched, his shirt open half-way down his chest. She got up from the couch and touched her hair self-consciously. He barely looked at her and instead stared at the candles and the meal drying up on the table. She could smell the alcohol fumes wafting off him. Had expected it really. He always got piss-drunk when he was angry or upset. She didn’t mind. He had come back. He advanced on her, that oh so familiar panthery slink which used to disturb her and now made her weak in the knees.

“Well, isn’t this nice. I come home to a candlelight meal and the little woman all ready and waiting. A bloke could get used to this.”

He ghosted his hand down the side of her face, along her neck, and came to a stop over her breast, not touching but hovering right over the nipple which tightened under the silk. She shivered and he laughed softly as he noted her reaction. She was so entranced by his closeness, the almost contact between their bodies, she’d not seen the dark-haired girl leaning in the doorway behind him until the girl spoke.

“Who’s this William?”

Spike turned away from her and went to put his arm around the girl. The girl’s petulant expression melted when his lips crushed down on hers. He and the girl turned to look at her after what seemed like hours and he pointed.

“This Cara, is nothing.”

She was paralyzed with humiliation as she heard them talking rapidly in Italian through the buzzing in her ears. Then the anger rushed through her like a tidal wave. That mind-numbing anger that allowed her to fight, to kill, to be the Slayer. She walked over to them and slapped the girl hard across her face. If she had still been the Slayer, the slap would have snapped the girl’s neck. The girl fell backwards into the doorway. A sharp kick to her thigh pushed her out into the hallway. She slammed the door on the girl’s screams and wails and locked it. He watched her, his eyes hooded, his face impassive.

When she spoke, she was surprised at how calm her voice sounded. “Did you think that this would drive me off? That bringing her here would shock me enough to send me running back to Sunnydale, tail between my legs? Or, were you just trying to prove to yourself that you don’t want me anymore?”

“That’s just it. I don’t want you anymore Slayer. This…” he fingered a strand of her newly dyed hair, “doesn’t move me. And this…” his hand came up and crushed the white rose she’d put in her hair, “is a joke.”

“Liar. You’re lying! You brought that girl here because of me. You still do things because of me.”

He shook his head and laughed harshly, “you’re delusional. You are not a part of my life. Get it through your thick skull, Slayer.”

Her hand smashed across his mouth. He staggered slightly from the impact and wiped his bloody lips still laughing. She grabbed the left strap of her dress and tore it down, exposing herself.

“You don’t want this anymore, ‘William’?” She saw his eyes go dark with anger and, underneath that, a current of hunger.

Before he could say anything, she had turned and grabbed the steak knife from the table and slashed it across her wrist.

“Or this?”

The blood spurted and she realized that she had cut too deep and hit an artery. She started to sway and fell to the floor. The last thing she saw before the darkness slid over her was his eyes, wide and terrified.

***

Sky the color of heaven, of her mother’s nightgown. The square suffused with light. She could see the shimmer of heat in the air. Pigeons pecking at stray crumbs on the stones spread their wings and rushed into the air like a storm. Like inkblots seeping into blue paper. And all around her, the sharp smell of lemons. She had forgotten to put the sugar in the lemonade again. She always forgot the sugar and then no one wanted to drink it. Red on white, written in a slanting hand. Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility. Lovely words, written by an unsteady hand to someone else. The whites of his eyes. The red on her lips. Red on white, coppery and bitter like blood.

He sat next to her bed watching the flickering of her eyelids. A brush of his hand over her forehead, her skin pale and translucent as rice paper. Tried to chase her off, tried to be that deathly, deadly monster to push her away. She was so small in the bed, her form barely taking any of its space. Just a slip of a girl. A girl who says she loves him. A girl he once knew better than he knows himself now. Seeing her like this made him feel like he was that other. The demon who loved her so desperately, who would have rejoiced to have her heart. To have been her choice. But the man, the man he has become, shrinks from it. Everything she said was true. She had given him all of herself. She had fought for him, killed to keep him with her. Did things that no one had ever done. Things the demon wanted but the man could not.

He had only wanted her love before, to be with her always. Then he became. And the man that had arisen from the ashes did not want to live for love but to live. To be free to live at peace. As much as the monster wanted to live for her then, the man wanted to live for himself now. He choked back a sob at his selfish, traitorous heart. He owed her everything. His body, his soul, his life. She had been everything once, how could he now forsake her?

When she awoke, he was kneeling at her bedside, his head resting next to her thigh. She lifted her hand to touch his hair. So different now. Soft and yielding to her touch, dark gold against the white of her fingers.

“Don’t try to move. You’re weak.”

His head lifted and he looked into her eyes. For the first time since she had come to him, he looked directly in her eyes.

“Spike, am I in the hospital?”

“Yeah. You lost a bit of blood.”

She looked down at his gory shirt. Her blood and rain staining it a dark pink. His face drained of color by the harsh lights and was it fear? For her?

She tried to sit up only to be pushed back against the pillows by his hand. His hand over her heart. “I’m sorry…”

“What for?”

She cleared her throat nervously. “Well…you know. I just…I was so angry.”

“Never hurt yourself again. Hit me when I’m a bastard but do not do that again.”

She touched his cheek tentatively. This time he didn’t jerk away. “I don’t want to hit you, Spike. I don’t want us to be like that.”

He said nothing but leaned into her hand. She didn’t want to push but she had to know.

“The others have forgiven me. Can you try to too?”

didn’t answer for so long that she felt her throat close up in despair. She turned her head away on the pillow, afraid she would cry in front of him again.

He took her bandaged wrist and touched it to his lips. Forgive me for not loving you enough. The way I did before.

“Yeah, Slayer. I can.”

“Spike?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t call me Slayer. That’s not me anymore.”

He looked down and stroked her wrist. She still didn’t understand. She would always be the Slayer. It was in her the way the demon was still in him. No matter how much she tried to just be a girl and he tried to just be a man.

“What should I call you then?”

“Pet, love, Goldilocks, Buffy.”

He touched her hair gently. “You looked lovely tonight, Buffy. Your hair is beautiful like this.”

She was so relieved and pleased. God, she had been so angry and distraught before. Thinking that he really didn’t love her anymore.

“You said once that you loved my hair this color.”

He smiled but she caught a fleeting glimpse of something almost like sadness. Suddenly she felt very cold and hollow. She pushed back her dread when he kissed her bandaged wrist again and spoke.

“Yes, I did. Thank you.”

She draped her arms around him and whispered because suddenly it became very tiring to speak.

“Spike. I don’t want to be in here any longer. Take me back with you.”

“Alright, love. We’ll go home.”

***

He waited until he heard the shower running before picking up the phone. Dialed the number he had committed to memory but had never used. Until now. Desperate times. Never imagined that he would be at such a loss. How could he go on after being shocked out of contentment? How could he not? He listened to her phone ring. One ring, two, three. Pick up, pick up. I don’t know how to do this.

“Hello? Mistress Willow’s house of pain. How many whippings do you need?”

“Red.”

“S—Spike? Oh my god.”

He made a sound approaching laughter despite himself. “Never had a girl call me her god just because of a phone call.”

“Spike! Do you realize it’s four in the morning here?”

“Red. Something’s happened.”

“What? Like apocalypsy something?”

“She’s here.”

“What?”

He was starting to lose his temper. This was why he hated the bloody phone. “She’s here. She found me. How did that happen?”

“I didn’t tell her.”

“You were the only one who knew.” His voice was accusatory but he couldn’t care. It was just all too much.

“If she wants to find you, she will.”

“So, you didn’t know.”

Her voice sounded rueful and sad over the line. “We’re not as close anymore. I saw her at Christmas and she didn’t say anything. She seemed fine.”

“Yeah? Well, she’s not. She…she tried to hurt herself.” He could barely get the words out. And it was my fault. I pushed her to it. I hurt her and I wanted to hurt her. God, help me. I can’t be with her. I can’t send her away.

“Oh my god. Is she okay?”

“Yeah. I…Willow, I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, did she say why she came?”

“Why do you bloody think? She says she wants to start over.”

“Oh. And…you don’t want to?”

The silence was so deep, he swore he could hear his heart beating. Beating out its betrayal.

When he spoke, his whisper was so weightless, it sounded like a breath.

“No.”

“Shit.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I can’t turn her away. She’s…she wants us to be together and…”

“What do you want, William?”

He almost dropped the phone. She had only called him William that one time before. Before he left. They’d argued and he never thought she knew such words.

“I don’t want to go back to how it was before. Living only for someone else. I just…I just want to be left alone. I know it’s wrong and I should want her here, to be with her.” His throat squeezed tight.

“But you don’t.”

“No.”

He could hear her breathing. Hear her trying to make sense of what he could not. “I still love her.”

She sighed. “And that’s always been the problem.”

“I don’t know how to do this. How to be what she wants.”

“She wants you. In a way, she always has. Try…try to be there for her, as best you can. I have some exams to wrap up before I can leave here. I can be there in two or three days.”

“She might not…be happy to see you.”

“I know. But I’m still her friend.”

“Do you need me to pick you up at the airport?”

“No. I’ll take a taxi to your place. I still have the address. Spike?”

“Yeah?”

“Just try…please. For her. She’s been through so much. With Angel and the Angelus thing and then Faith and Giles. And you leaving was just…I’ve never seen her that way.”

“I know. I…”

He broke off as he saw her coming out of the bathroom in her robe. Hand still wrapped in a plastic bag to keep the water out. He was drowning. In her beauty, her strength, her need. Her melody.

“I have to go.” He hung up the phone.

“Spike? Um, who were you talking to?”

“Just work, love. Nothing important.”

She smiled. “You work?”

“Well, yeah. Can’t be stealing everything I need now, can I?”

“What do you do?”

“Boring things, mostly. Editing manuscripts and such for a publishing house.”

“Really? Like books? Maybe I could help you or something?”

“Well, most of them are in Italian.”

She deflated. “Oh. Right.”

“And you shouldn’t be bored like that. I’m going to make your trip nice and fun. Show you things, take you on the town.”

“Oh. Sounds great.” She tried to be enthusiastic but her mind was stuck on the word ‘trip.’ She had thought…she had thought he would want her to stay for good. She hadn’t even bought a round-trip ticket. She felt like such an idiot.

“What’s wrong pet?”

She averted her eyes so he couldn’t see her hurt and longing.

“Nothing. I’m good.”

He reached for her hand and carefully removed the plastic baggie. He turned her towards the bedroom door and gave her a gentle push.

“Then go on in and get dressed. We’ll go out for some breakfast.”

***

She watched the cream infiltrate the blackness of her coffee. Like a flower unfurling. Turning a pale tan as she stirred it with a spoon. Her fingers collided with his as they both reached for the sugar. An almost simultaneous retreat of hands. She stared down at her fingers and winced at her ragged cuticles. So need a manicure. Contemplated putting her hands in her lap so he couldn’t see.

Like he hasn’t seen worse. He’s seen everything. The raised mole on her chin she hates and tries to cover with concealer. The constellation of freckles on her right shoulder. His lips tracing the pattern. You have Orion on your shoulder. She remembered he said that so many years ago. Right before she’d pushed him away and scrambled for her clothes. Her eyes moved from her nails to the bandage on her wrist.

“How is it?”

She jolted at the sound of his voice. He hadn’t said anything since pulling her chair out and ordering coffee and pastries.

“Huh?”

He gestured towards her wrist with his coffee spoon.

“Itchy.”

“Well don’t scratch it.”

She bristled slightly at his mom-ism. She was just about to start scratching. She watched his forearm as he pushed the sugar towards her. Stared at the corded muscles flexing and shifting underneath skin. Tanned except for a pale strip where his watch usually was. He forgot to put on his watch. Some cheesy song lyric floated in her head. Time doesn’t matter when we’re together. One of those hippie songs her mom used to listen to. Before her father went away.

She caught his eyebrow quirking up as he saw her pour half the contents of the sugar dispenser into her cup. Then he burrowed his head back behind his newspaper. God, this was awkward. Last night in the hospital was…well, it was wonderful, except for the loss of blood thing. She knew she had scared him with that stupid stunt. But he had…he had been wonderful, taking her home, his arms around her in the taxi while she dozed. Practically carrying her to his apartment when she was too wiped from the drugs to walk. Tucked her into his bed, smoothing the sheets around her so she was wrapped up like a caterpillar in a cocoon. She’d drifted off and woke to the sound of the ceiling fan whirring lazily, stirring the mosquito netting. Touched the empty side of the bed, feeling the crispness of the sheets rustle under her fingertips. He’d not slept with her. She had felt an unaccountable loss even though it had been years since they’d shared a bed.

“Shit.”

She started again. Self-conscious and skittish around him now. Maybe because he had become so assured and quiet. When had Spike grown so still?

“What?”

“Man U lost.”

At her blank look, he closed his paper and carefully set it aside. He was so careful and precise these days.

“You know, footie?”

“What? Some man lost his foot? That’s terrible.”

She felt her face grow hot at his bark of laughter. Sometimes she really didn’t understand him.

“Never mind, pet. Have some fruit.”

She speared a sliver of peach, nibbling around the edges and sneaking glances at him. He brought his cup slowly to his lips and sipped, eyes distant and murky. Her gaze traveled down. A starched cornflower blue shirt, a shade lighter than those eyes. Sleeves rolled up exposing his forearms. Unbuttoned at the neck revealing his long neck and tender throat. The curved notch between his collarbones. She wanted to touch her tongue there, in that shaded place. Taste the salty tang of his sweat.

He looked like a young professor. One that would be crushed on by nineteen year old coeds dreaming to be in his bed. With him whispering poetry against their breast. The mid-morning sun glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses. Giles-ish. Suddenly her appetite was gone.

Giles’ glasses, lying on the ground. Broken. The whites of his eyes, rolled up to the heavens unseeing. One eye marred with blood and ocular fluid from the piece of glass embedded in it. They had shoved a piece of the lens there. Angelus’ voice, soft and sing-songy. The Watcher’s watching now.

Her stomach roiled, the pastries and fruit she'd consumed oily and heavy in her gut. Her hand shook and she knocked over her cup. Stared in horror at the brown fluid eating up the white of the tablecloth.

“I’m…I’m sorry!” She frantically started rubbing at the stain with her napkin. Only succeeded in making it spread further . He started out of his chair and took her futile hands in his.

“It’s going to be alright, love. Here, have mine.” He poured more sugar in his cup and gave it to her.

Watched her glassy eyes grow soft and liquid. And felt something inside of himself unclench. Her lips parted, pearlescent and pink as the inside of a conch shell. He tore his gaze away and resettled himself in his chair. Removed a cigarette from the pack on the table with an unsteady hand. Reached for his silver lighter only to be stilled by her hand over his. She flicked it open and lit his cigarette, their eyes meeting, holding over the orange gold of the flame.

***

They ended up going to the art museum. He pushed her hands away as she fumbled for ticket money in her purse. She felt a tightness in her chest as she watched him buy their tickets. Talking to the young girl at the ticket stand, his voice low and soft as a prayer. Was this love? This unbound desire, this enthrallment with everything that was him? This longing to hold every atom that split and formed to make something so beautiful, so unique. Every part from the gentle curve of his back to the delicate tapering of his long fingers made her burn at the right temperature. The right temperature to be his. She wanted to tell him as he walked back to stand at her side, how beautiful he was to her. All the ways he broke her heart and remade it. But the words tripped on her tongue and died away. She could never do the big declarations. She wished he would let her show him everything she could not say.

“Ready pet?”

He was taken aback at the light in her eyes as she turned her face up to his. It was so much, it blinded him. He feared he was not equal to that look in her eyes. He could deal with her hardness, her strength. It was her softness and fragility that scared him beyond all measure.

“Thank you.” Her lips trembling over everything those two words meant. Thank you for being by my side all those years. Thank you for letting me be by yours now.

“You’re welcome…but they’re just tickets.”

“They’re everything.”

He said nothing more but brushed the back of her hand with his as they walked down the hall.

Wandering through the displays and rooms, she let him point out paintings and tell her things, translate the information placards for her benefit. She didn’t care about the art. He was her painting. She could look at him forever. She saw other couples strolling around them, hand in hand. Oh, how his hand would fit in hers. The way it did during that spell. The sense memory of his cool palm curving around hers, made her shiver. How would it feel now? When his skin was warmed with sunlight and rushing blood? He was right there, she could just reach out and take it. So close and yet still so far away. He turned to look at another sculpture. She followed him and looked too, wanting to see what he saw.

“Isn’t this amazing?” He breathed, his eyes fixed on the concave flexes of steel.

“Yes.” Her eyes fixed only on him.

“This is my favorite piece.”

“Why?”

“Because at first glance, it just looks like a heap of metal. But then if you look at what is not there instead of what is, there is so much potential.”

He pointed out the shapes the twisted metal molded around the air. She wasn’t sure she understood but she knew she had to remember this. She took out her camera and began to take a picture. The old man sitting in a chair behind the sculpture got up and began yelling and gesturing at them. She wasn’t sure what he was saying but she could tell it wasn’t nice. The man reached to grab her arm and she felt a swish of cloth as Spike stepped between them. His hand upraised to ward the man off. They spoke heatedly, the Italian sounding like a rushing stream to her ears. Then Spike turned his head towards her and winked. She knew instantly what he wanted. She whipped her camera up and snapped the shot. The man lunged towards her and Spike pushed him back. He grabbed her hand and they took off running towards the entrance, laughing like naughty schoolchildren.

They were still laughing between gasps for air as they skidded to a stop and leaned against the wall of a building.

He plucked a strand of hair off her lips, smoothing it back behind her ear. “Now that was fun.”

She raised her eyebrows and tried to look severe but failed utterly. Her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest at his touch on her face, his other hand resting in hers.

“Oh come on! You can’t tell me that wasn’t fun.”

“We’re probably banned from there for life, you know. You’re so bad.”

He waggled his brows at her. “Well, we’ll just have to think up some suitable punishment then.”

She blushed, shock and desire rocketing the blood to her face. God Buffy, could you be a little more seventeen?

“Um…like what?” She cringed at the shakiness in her voice.

“Gelato.”

“Gel-whatto?”

But he had already dragged her across the square and herded her into a small shop. Ten minutes later they were back outside slurping on two identical waffle cones. She had learned that this gelato thing was infinitely superior to that ‘bloody watery excuse you Yanks call ice cream’ and pistachio gelato was not gross but the food of the gods. Or so he lectured after she wanted to go with the more traditional strawberry. Well, she got that too, layered under a scoop of the pistachio.

They sat on the edge of a fountain in the square and enjoyed, basking in the setting sun and people-watching. She snuck a glance at him over her gelato, watching as he crunched on his cone, the crumbs falling on his shirtfront. She brushed them off carefully and felt her heart lift when their hands twined together again. This was what she always wanted but never thought she could. Not with him.

He fished a coin from his pocket and placed it in her palm.

“Make a wish.”

She flipped it into the fountain and watched as it sank to the bottom, sparkling up through the water.

“Don’t say what you wished or it won’t come true.”

She smiled at him and polished off the last of her cone. I wished for you. It already came true.

“So love, what do you want to do now?”

She squeezed his hand and her stomach fluttered when he squeezed back.

“I want to get drunk with you. Like we used to.”

Next Part

Site Index