Oblivious

Chapter Four – We Need to Talk

Spike stood motionless in the kitchen for a long time after Buffy left, blinking owlishly as his brain replayed what she'd just said to him over and over. 'She thinks I'm sexy? And lickable? Lickable!?' A sudden vision of Buffy licking a certain part of his anatomy like a lolly slammed into his brain and he had to grip the counter to keep from falling to the floor as his knees suddenly gave out. The part of his anatomy in question gave a sudden twitch of interest and Spike looked down in horror. "Bloody hell! Where'd that come from? She's my mate!"

He leaned back against the counter and scrubbed his hands over his face as more visions of Buffy careened through his mind. They wouldn't stop, no matter how hard he tried to shut them down. He kept seeing Buffy in her – he finally realized – new girly clothes, all tight, and small, and clingy in all the right places, and his eyes widened in shock as his big brain finally caught up with his little brain. "Oh balls… she's a girl!"

He started pacing around the kitchen, gesturing wildly as he muttered to himself. "Well, yeah… course she's a girl, you nit, she's always been a girl, guess I just never noticed that she's recently come over all… girly." He stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen as another picture flashed in his mind – Buffy sitting on her bed wrapped in a towel, brushing her wet hair as a drop of water slowly tracked down her neck toward the valley between her breasts. He shivered as he wondered what that drop would've looked like as it traveled over her stomach to her… He jerked like he'd just been electrocuted and shouted, "She's sexy! Buffy is a hot, beautiful, sexy girl! How did I never notice that? God, am I completely blind?"

Well, to be fair, he hadn't noticed any girls, not since Cecily had ground his heart into a fine powder. He hurt, even now, but – and he'd just realized… again, apparently today was going to be full of epiphanies – the pain was less. Much less. He didn't think of Cecily several times every day anymore. As a matter of fact, he hadn't thought of her at all for a few weeks. He'd been too busy with work and school and his music, and Buffy had been there every step of the way, encouraging him whenever he started to doubt himself and his abilities, and praising him at every opportunity.

He'd always seen her as just a dear friend, but now that his brain had attached sexy girl to Buffy, he couldn't get it to stop and more pictures circled his mind. Buffy in a short skirt, her smooth tanned legs crossed demurely as her ankle bracelet twinkled. The flash of her belly button ring when she stretched to get something off a high shelf and her shirt rode up. The very top of her breasts peeking out of a tight shirt as her flat, toned stomach was displayed at the bottom. Her firm, perfectly shaped ass wrapped up in a pair of clingy yoga pants as she bent over to pick up his dirty socks.

He ground his fists into his eyes in an effort to wipe the images away, but it didn't work. They kept circling his brain as something twitched again and stirred to life somewhere a bit farther south. These thoughts were reawakening something in him that he'd pretty much forgotten about since Sunnydale. He hadn't even had one wank since they'd moved here… hadn't had the urge to, but now… His left hand drifted down over his belly and slid slowly over the rock hard bulge in his shorts, a wet spot already forming at the tip. He moaned low in his throat as he rubbed himself to images of Buffy in those yoga pants, picturing himself sliding them down oh so slowly as she bent over in front of him and then…

His eyes snapped open and he jerked his hand away from his crotch, his cheeks burning in shame. "God, she's my mate! Has been for years! I'm not supposed to think of her that way! She bloody well doesn't think of me that way!" He stopped and his eyes widened in shock again as he whispered to the empty room, "Does she?"

Spike spent the rest of the morning thinking. He paced around the apartment trying to will his erection away with absolutely no luck, and finally jumped into a cold shower, hoping to quell the lust raging through him. The ice cold water sluicing over him didn't help a bit and he ended up pulling one off to images of Buffy, shouting her name as he climaxed. After he dried off and dressed, he moved out to the living room to sit on the sofa, but his whirling thoughts had him up and pacing before he'd even warmed the cushion. He went back over their entire relationship in his mind, trying to pick out when Buffy's feelings might have changed from being just friends to being more… friendly.

He'd dated, she'd dated – and they'd always supported each other in their partner choices – sort of. He'd never had a problem with any of the blokes she'd gone out with, aside from feeling like none of them were good enough for her, but that was his prerogative as her best mate, wasn't it? He was supposed to feel like that, wasn't he?

He groaned as he remembered what she'd said when Dru had ditched him for that forehead-too-big-for-his-git-face poofter. She'd said that he was a great guy who was too good for a crazy girl like Dru. He'd gotten angry and he'd left, regretting it almost immediately, but he'd stayed away until he just couldn't stand it anymore. Being without Buffy for that long had been like trying to exist without breathing and he'd realized that he needed her just like he needed oxygen. So he'd dragged himself across the street, sure that she was going to slam the door in his face for being a complete plonker, but Buffy had forgiven him easily and had never again said anything bad about any of the girls he'd dated… even Harmony.

He realized that over the years Buffy hadn't talked about her blokes all that much, not like he'd talked about his birds… well, except for Harmony. He'd blathered on for hours about their beauty and wit and what all and she'd listened with a smile on her face, although in retrospect, those smiles now seemed a bit forced and they'd never reached her eyes. He remembered one instance in particular. They'd been laughing and joking around, talking about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives. Her eyes had been bright and her face had been lit up with happiness until he'd mentioned Dru. It was like he'd flicked a switch. The light had gone out of her eyes even though she'd still had a smile plastered on her face while he'd yammered on. He hadn't thought much about the change in her demeanor at the time, figuring it was because she hadn't really gotten on with Dru, but now that he was weighing it against all these new thoughts in his brain… He blurted out to the empty room, "She was jealous! Even back then!"

He tried to remember even one time when she'd talked about her boyfriends the way he'd talked about his girlfriends, again… except for Harmony. She'd talk about them, sure, but it was mostly just to convey information… we went here, we did this, and we did or didn't have fun. She never spoke of how she felt about them, and come to think about it, she'd always spent more time with him than she had with any of them.

He'd cried on her shoulder over a bird three times now, but she'd never once cried on his shoulder over any of her blokes. Sure, she'd cried over some mean girl drama a time or two, but not once had she even seemed upset when she'd broken up with a boyfriend. She'd just mentioned it in passing, usually in the same tone of voice she'd use to inform him what inedible glop the cafeteria was serving up that day. It was like she was just going through the motions – dating because that's what was expected, not because she'd actually wanted to. All the signs pointed to her saving herself for someone, and the realization of who that someone was hit him like a wrecking ball.

He scrubbed his hands over his face as he dropped down onto the couch in a boneless heap. "Bloody hell… I think the chit loves me."

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Buffy jumped when her cell phone rang, nearly knocking her coffee cup off the desk. She managed to catch it then fumbled it back into a safe spot before she snatched up her phone and peeked at the caller ID. Spike. Her stomach was suddenly full of dive-bombing, kamikaze butterflies as she pressed send and shakily put the phone up to her ear then stammered, "H..hello?"

"Hey, pet. You told me to ring the very second I left. I'm waitin' for the lift right now."

She smiled even though the butterflies were still dive-bombing, and she thought her voice sounded passably normal when she replied, "So, how'd it go? Are you a newly minted rock star? When's your first concert? Did they give you a limo yet? How many bodyguards have you been assigned and can you make sure they take their shoes off when you bring them home?"

He chuckled, the warm sound sending a shiver all through her that settled low in her belly and seemed to excite the butterflies into more frenzied antics. "Yeah, you could say that. They made Oz and me a hell of a deal, but we're gonna have an agent go over the contract 'fore we sign and it'll be a bit 'fore we do any shows or take any limo rides. Gotta record an album first. If it does well, then we'll get to tour. Once the agent gives the thumbs up, we'll sign and then start auditioning some other blokes to fill the empty spots. And no, we've not been assigned bodyguards yet so I guess you'll just have to help me fight off the throngs of non-existent fans for the time being."

Buffy squealed, making sure to move the phone away from her mouth so she wouldn't deafen Spike. When the squeal had run its course, she put the phone back up to her head. "That is so completely awesome! We should go out to celebrate! Does Oz want to go?"

Suddenly nervous, Spike gripped his phone hard enough to make the plastic creak under his fingers. "Uh… yeah, we could do that, I s'pose. Uh… Buffy… we need to talk."

Her stomach plummeted into the toes of her shoes and she slumped back in her chair, all her bones turned to rubber. It took a few tries to swallow the huge lump in her throat so she could croak out, "Oh… um… sure. I guess we do. Uh… I'm off in two hours. See you at home?"

"Sure. See you then. Bye."