Title: Hung Up
Author:
Rating: PG-13 for language
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and 20th Century Fox own these characters. I'm just using them as subjects in writing experiments which will bring me no fame, no glory, and most importantly, no money, but rather the likelihood of abject humiliation and embarrassment if I screw this up. Feel pity for me and don't sue me.
Distribution: In the unlikely event someone wants this little vignette, please just let me know.
Summary: This was a challenge issued by Heidi that needed to contain the following elements: Buffy finding the engagement ring Spike had given her in "Something Blue," an Apple computer, someone – preferably Spike – riding a skateboard and doing it well, the song "Love Stinks" by J. Geils Band, and a turtle in honor of Heidi's late and beloved Stoney. It was preferred to be funny and romantic and under 1000 words. All I can say is, I tried. ;-)
Notes: **'s denote character thoughts. When I wrote this, I assumed everyone survived the events of The Gift. Since things were slightly different than planned ::cough cough::, we're just going to assume You-Know-Who will be back before September and life is starting to get back to normal. Special thanks to my beta readers Larissa and Wendy who encouraged me to try this, my very first fan fic, and made me remove many redundant commas and overly complex phrases. ;-)
The damn thing had hung. She wiggled the mouse and thunked the space bar, but still nothing moved on the computer, a woeful spreadsheet with a dismal budget staring back at her as unblinking as the now immovable cursor.
"Fuck!"
Buffy looked for a way to restart the ancient Apple computer, but what were you supposed to do without a control-alt-delete set of keys to combine? As she peered in frustration at keyboard, some one hit wonder from the 80s drifted up to her window from the driveway below. It must be from that '80s music station Dawn had taken to listening to. More Spike emulation, Buffy thought a bit sullenly as she fumbled for her cordless phone to call Willow and beg for help. ** I guess I should be grateful she's just listening to the music and isn't going punk with her hair. At least, not yet.**
While Buffy and Spike had come to an agreement about his usefulness in patrolling with her, she was still a bit on edge about his relationship with Dawn. Not that she didn't trust him to take good care of Dawn. On the contrary, he had proved his genuine affection for and loyalty to her sister in the battle with Glory earlier that summer. But Spike as a role model? Buffy winced. So long as musical tastes were the only Spike-like habits Dawn picked up, things might be okay, but she sometimes worried about what else Dawn might learn by hanging out with Spike. Hot-wiring cars? Lock-picking using credit cards?
It wasn't so much that Buffy didn't trust Spike – she did, utterly – as that she didn't trust Dawn. Who knew what kind of trouble Dawn could lead Spike into, using his affection for her? Dawn had the bleached blond vampire wrapped ingenuously around her adolescent finger, and although Buffy didn't think she did it consciously, she often took advantage of that fact.
As she listened to the distant ring of Willow's phone with one ear, the other caught a rough whir from beneath her window, followed by a thunk and a sharp curse word.
"Jesus, Niblet, watch the language. Big Sis hears you talking like that, she's going to think I'm a bad influence on you."
Spike's voice carried faintly up to the window as Buffy leaned towards her windowsill to see what was going on. Just as Willow picked up the phone, she spied her sister Dawn pushing herself up from the ground and wiping her hands on her backside, an overturned skateboard at her feet.
"Hello?"
As Buffy explained her computer problem to Willow, she watched as her newly arrived patrolling partner flipped the skateboard over deftly with a boot and then toyed with the end of it, popping it rhythmically up and down as he and Dawn chatted too quietly for Buffy to hear. He was gesturing emphatically at her sister and had just dropped his duster onto the ground and gotten onto the skateboard himself when her attention was caught by what Willow was telling her to do to fix the problem.
"A paper clip? In WHERE? Huh?" With the light from the garage throwing everything into shadows in the early evening dusk, she could see Spike, boots and all, scoot the board up the driveway while Dawn stood, arms crossed, looking skeptical. As the chorus of J. Geils' "Love Stinks" throbbed from Dawn's radio, Spike picked up speed and then suddenly, with a quick shift in balance, popped the skateboard over, leaping up and landing it on it with a solid thump. Dawn's squeal and Spike's shouted, "Yeah! I still got it, baby!" echoed on the warm late-summer air, and Buffy turned back towards her desk, where she began to rifle through the drawers, looking for a paper clip.
As Willow muttered dark and ominous things about computer designers who were too arrogant about their product to design it with an easy reset option – "It will never need to be rebooted because it will never hang! Presumptuous much?" – Buffy's searching fingers found a cold, hard nugget of metal in the back of the top right-hand drawer. Not a paper clip, obviously, but not an object her fingertips recognized by shape alone. Working it out of its dark recess with absent-minded curiosity, she nearly dropped it when she pulled it into the light. It was the ring that Spike had given her on that day a year and a half ago when he had proposed to her on his knees like the Victorian gentleman he must have once been before he was turned into a vampire.
Skittishly plopping it on her desk beside a small stuffed turtle with a shimmering green lamé shell, she finally located a paper clip and, following Willow's instructions, popped open the side of the computer and stuck the tip of the paper clip into the tiny hole without electrocuting herself. With a high-toned hum, the computer rebooted itself, and Buffy, thanking a pleased-to-have-helped-out Willow, went back to work on the family budget. Unfortunately, most of the data she had entered had disappeared in the crash, and it was with a frustrated sigh that Buffy gave up for the night and opted to prepare for her nightly patrol.
"Evening, Slayer! Kid sis is going to be quite the whiz on the skateboard with a bit of practice. Girl just needs to learn to control her balance again after all that growin' she's been doing. Still in that filly stage where she's adjusting to her new height, throws her right off when she tries anything fancy." Spike appeared in the doorway of her bedroom, completely at ease after the last few weeks of nightly patrol with Buffy since her 'return.' "You ready to go kill some nasties?"
Dawn's radio had fallen silent outside, and Buffy heard her sister making noises in her own bedroom across the hall.
"Sure, Spike, let me grab my stakes. I was just working on the family budget. Killing things sounds like a good response to how I feel about THAT." Buffy grumbled as she reached under her bed for her weapons bag, ignoring Spike as he glanced at the computer where she'd been working. She was still hauling out pointy sticks to pack away in her pockets when she saw him out of the corner of her eye pick up something off her desk.
"Slayer."
She flushed but kept her eyes on her weapons, knowing with a sudden tingle of certainty what he held in his hand.
"Didn't know you'd kept this. I kinda figured you had pitched it somewhere dark and nasty." Spike spoke softly, almost tenderly.
She hesitated before answering. "No." She casually stuck a stake in her back pocket. "But I did just toss in a drawer and forgot it was there. Just came across it. So, you ready to go kill things?" She raised her chin, daring him to say more about the ring.
He carefully set it back down beside the turtle on her desk, then stuck his hands in his pockets and turned on his heel. "Right then! Let's get to it. After you." He gestured towards the door and cocked his eyebrow with exaggerated politeness.
Flustered, Buffy strode out past him and missed the slow, lopsided smile that spread across his face as he took one more glance at the ring lying on the desk beside the turtle that stood guard and began to hum to himself jauntily.
The End