Friday, June 21st. 6:05pm-
Cordelia called her name as soon as she set foot on the elevator Friday afternoon. Buffy skidded to a stop, whirled back around, shoved her hand out in front of the elevator door to keep it from closing. Her boss was standing up at her desk, eyeing her from over the partition, eyes wide. She had her phone held up to her right ear, was frantically waving Buffy back over to their desks with her left hand.
About mid-way through the week before, once her new co-workers had realized they always had to call her name more than once to get her full attention on something, Buffy had been forced to concede that she just couldn't swing suddenly going by her full name. Elizabeth was a beautiful name, and Buffy loved it because her mother had named her after her own mother, but when push came to shove, there were no two ways about it. Buffy was a Buffy, not an Elizabeth. She'd worried, very briefly, that choosing to go by her nickname might throw some people off, or worse, make it harder for them to take her seriously as an editorial staff member. It turned out she needn't have worried.
"It's unique," Cordelia had assured her, nodding encouragingly. "If anything, it makes you stand out more."
"Added bonus," Xander had agreed, "It's also fun to say."
So by now, she was used to her co-workers calling her Buffy. What she wasn't used to was hearing her boss shout the name at the top of her lungs from clear across the office, at the end of the day, after she'd already told Buffy she could go home for the weekend. All with a panicked expression on her face.
Buffy hurried back out of the elevator, weaving her way through the people who were packing up for the weekend and back over to her cubicle bank, dropping her purse and notebook down. "What?" She asked, feeling equally panicked now. Had she forgotten to do something? Had she been careless and already made some giant, career ending mistake? "What's wrong?"
Cordelia held her finger up to silence her, mumbling "I'll send her in now" before hanging up the phone and sighing. "Mr. Pratt wants to see you in his office," She told her, leaning toward her and dropping her voice down low. "Now. He didn't say why."
Buffy's insides clenched.
Two weeks. She'd managed to lay low, to fly under Spike's radar for a whole two weeks. She hadn't seen him, hadn't heard from him. Hadn't even been sitting next to Cordelia when she'd taken a phone call from him. Two weeks had gone by, and nothing. She'd actually begun to think that maybe the whole thing would just blow over. That he'd find a way to ignore her. To follow her advice, or her request, or whatever it was their weird conversation that Friday afternoon had turned into and treat her the way he treated all of his editorial interns.
Now, as she gazed at Cordelia's wide brown eyes, the down turned set of her lips, Buffy knew. This was it. He'd found some decent enough, legitimate, reason to get rid of her, and it had only taken him these past two weeks to do it. She should have known this would happen eventually. After that disastrous first week she'd had, all the things she'd done, things she'd said to him. She should have guessed he wouldn't be able to just let it go. She'd all but invited him to fire her on more than one occasion. Besides that, she recognized the situation for what it was. It wasn't like he could just keep his dirty little secret here, working for him. Pretending like nothing had happened. Clearly, he was already paranoid if the first thing he'd thought when he'd seen her that day was that she was trying to blackmail him. Had she actually thought he'd trust her enough after just one night? Trust her to keep her mouth shut long enough for her to complete the six months?
The sun was already starting to sink low in Spike's large window when she stepped into his open office. From where he was standing at his desk, the golden light spilled into the room and glinted off the shiny mahogany of his desk, the platinum color of his hair. She noticed it wasn't perfectly gelled back today. It was mussed, tousled, the curls looking like he'd been running his hands through them repeatedly just before she'd showed up at his door. He hadn't seemed to notice her yet, so she cleared he throat a little awkwardly and stepped a little closer, her fingers clasped together in front of her waist.
His eyes snapped up to hers immediately, and Buffy reflexively pressed her hands into her stomach like she might be able to physically push away the knots tangling there if she tried hard enough. Two weeks. She hadn't seen him in two weeks, and somehow she'd managed to downplay him in her mind. The intensity of his gaze, the angles of his cheeks, the curve of his lips. More than just his looks, though, there was a draw to him. A niggling little pull she felt compelling her toward him, an invisible string. Magnetic. It had been a word she'd used to describe him on a few different occasions.
She didn't think she'd actually meant literally.
"You wanted to see me?" she asked him, trying to reestablish her equilibrium under his scrutiny.
Spike nodded, letting the top page of the stack of papers he'd been looking at fall into place as he straightened. "Shut the door, Miss Summers."
Without hesitating, she did as he'd asked, then turned back around to face him. He'd moved already, but he wasn't leaning against his desk like she'd half expected him to be. He was on the other side of the room, his back to her, one hand extended out toward a row of books on the shelf nearest him. She watched his fingers trail absently over the spines, saw him exhale.
"You asked me to make a decision," he began simply, seeming to find the book he'd been looking for, proceeding to pluck it off the shelf and down into his hand. "I thought I'd let you know that I've made one." He turned back around to face her, the book now lying open in his palm. He gestured with it toward the chair at the center of his office. "Have a seat."
Buffy stood her ground, pressed her hands one last time into her twisting stomach. Then she dropped them down to her sides and breathed out. "No."
"No?" He was looking up at her now, attention diverted from the book in his hands. Too-blue eyes widening, lashes fluttering. He looked almost amused.
Which did pretty much nothing except irritate Buffy. Which was good. Being annoyed was better than being nervous. Annoyance was righteous indignation's younger, just slightly less intimidating cousin. She kept her eyes on his and shook her head, reiterating her spoken word.
"I don't need to 'have a seat'," she told him flatly. Spike looked surprised, eyebrows raising as he eyed her from the short distance between them. Buffy sighed. "Look, if you're gonna do it, just do it, okay? Don't," she waved her hand at him, at the dusty book in his hand, demonstratively, "stand on some sort of weird, patronizing ceremony or whatever on my account. I'm a big girl." And she straightened as if to prove her point, rolling her shoulders back. "I can take it."
His expression shifted slightly then. Growing more amused, his lips quirking up appreciatively. He snapped the book in his hands shut and tossed it down onto his desk. Leaned toward her, lowering his voice. "I'm very aware of that," he all but purred, eyes smoldering.
She got that unfair little tingling jolt down her spine again, fought the urge to physically shiver beneath his gaze. Did the only thing she could think of to cover in the moment.
Act disgusted.
She frowned at him, wrinkling her nose up. She'd been pushing William Pratt's envelope since the moment she'd first set foot in his office. It seemed only fair now to give it one last, final shove. "You know, those innuendoes might have been cute in bed, but weirdly enough they just aren't doing it for me here."
"Is that right?" he asked her, unfazed, still smirking. He looked smug, not insulted. Which only rankled Buffy further. It wasn't fair. He was able to ruffle her feathers at the drop of a hat, without even trying, and here she was not even able to tweak a damn tail feather. Infuriating. Another word she'd used to describe him.
"Double entendres aren't exactly work appropriate," she told him frostily.
But Spike only nodded thoughtfully, turning around to brace his hands against the edge of his desk, leaning back into it. "I believe we're currently after hours."
Another involuntary shiver, his words coasting over her skin like silk. Frustrated, any shred of the calm, cool exterior she'd had when she'd stepped inside his office fluttering out the window, she groaned and threw her arms up. "God, Spike, will you just fire me and get it over with."
He laughed at her then. Another one of those real laughs, the kind that split his face in a wide smile and showed off his dimples. Buffy felt a little like he was patting her on the head, like any second he was going to look at her and say something like 'You're adorable' or 'How charmingly naïve', or some other asinine comment that would only confirm for her just how much better off Buffy'd probably be without him in her life, just before he told her to pack up her desk and get out.
But as usual, Spike didn't do what she expected him to.
"Don't want to fire you, pet," he told her once he'd stopped laughing, pushing off the edge of his desk and back up to his feet. "I want to invest in you."
Buffy froze. Hands on her hips, lips forming a little "O". She squinted at him, feeling like there was no way she could have heard him right.Be kind, rewind. "What?"
Absently, he started to pace. "I took a read through the manuscript I had Cordelia give you last week. The one that had the quick turn-around. Poncy plot, author had some Nancy boy name." He glanced sideways at her to ask, "You remember it?"
She remembered it. Cordelia had set it on her desk just after lunch on Thursday afternoon and told her she needed it back by the end of the day. Something about needing to push it through before the end of the week. Buffy hadn't known at the time the order had come from Spike, of course. She probably should have guessed, but for whatever reason it hadn't occurred to her.
"What about it?" Buffy asked now, still feeling too thrown to keep a check on her facial expression.
He wasn't looking at her as she spoke, stepping back toward the shelf he'd plucked the book from earlier and scanning the spines. "We took that on as a favor to my father. I had Cordelia give a copy to you, and I worked on one myself." His eyes shifted sideways to her. "Call it…a test."
None of this was sitting very well with Buffy. If she'd ever met a man as singularly, maddeningly mind boggling as William Pratt, she must have blocked it out.
"A test," she repeated, still trying to put two and two together.
Spike was pacing again now, weaving a slow path, a little semi-circle around the right side of his desk, down the wall to the end of the book shelf, then back again. He nodded, reaching back around him to clasp his hands behind his back. "After those…conversations we had a few weeks ago, I'll admit I was curious. About your work," he drawled, clarifying when he saw the wide-eyed expression on her face. Turning his back on her once more, he continued. "I looked at your notes on that manuscript, compared them to mine. You're smart." He chuckled, shaking his head. "Not that your resume doesn't do a fine job of paintin' you as such, but I needed to see, practically speaking." He stopped pacing then, unclasping his hands and reaching one out to brace against the edge of his desk as he looked at Buffy, eyeing her through his lashes. "You have an eye for the written word that a lot of people don't. Made a lot of decent suggestions, and you made 'em fast. I gave you, what…" he trailed off, turning his eyes up to the ceiling as he appeared to be counting in his head. "Three hours?"
Buffy felt her own lips twitch. "Two and a half."
He dropped his gaze back down to hers and grinned. "You want to be an editor, yeah? That's why you're here. You have the right instincts. An eye for this, but you're green. Any entry level editorial position at any publishing house in this whole sodding country." Spike gestured around him with a sweep of his hand, then dropped it back down to his desk with a smack. "Nobody's gonna hire you unless you have at least a year's worth of experience."
She frowned at him now. He wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know, nothing she hadn't been told repeatedly all through school. She'd known coming into this internship that the six month term was only a fraction of what she'd need before getting a real entry-level position anywhere. "What's your point?"
"My point is that you need practical experience. Good practical experience. And I can give it to you." He paused then, turning his eyes down to the ground and leaning his hip back against his desk casually. His voice was light, airy. "I want you to work for me."
Okay, now he really had lost her.
Buffy raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I already work for you."
"No, Buffy." He shook his head, looking at her with that condescending expression again, like he thought it was kind of adorable that she didn't understand what he was saying. "Work for me. Not work for someone else who works for me. Be my intern, not just an intern."
She blinked, frowning. "What, like a personal assistant?" This was sounding more and more to her like a bad idea. Maybe not Darkness and Shadow bad.
But close.
Spike regarded her with the slightest tilt of his head, eyes gleaming in the setting sunlight. "More like a protégé."
Buffy didn't know what to say. A month ago, she would have given anything to be standing in William Pratt's office, having him say these exact words to her. If someone would have told her this would be happening when she'd first applied, she wouldn't even have believed them. And yet, here she was. Here she was, and there he was, and he was standing there looking at her and saying he wanted to mentor her and all Buffy could think about was what it had felt like to have his hands in her hair, the weight of his body over hers.
She tamped her traitorous thoughts down hurriedly, forcing herself to stay present, to only think about what he was saying to her now. Because it wasn't adding up. He'd ignored her for weeks. Or at least, he'd let her think that he'd been ignoring her for weeks, when in reality he'd been having Cordelia give her little top secret assignments and "testing" her? It was all sounding a little Big Brotherish to her. "So you're just…investing in me now?" She said pointedly, using his own creepy, corporate sounding word, resisting the childish urge to throw it up in air quotes. "After two weeks of blissfully acting like I don't exist, you've just up and decided I'm suddenly worth your time?"
Spike stood up straight and put both his hands out in front of himself, palms up in a stopping motion. The expression on his face, the slight twist of his lips, let her know she'd given him a little more information with that last outburst than she'd meant to. She'd been totally relieved when he'd stopped hounding her, buzzing her into his office every day. Glad, even. She definitely hadn't missed him.
That was for sure.
"Look, the decision is ultimately yours," he told her after a moment, cocking a brow before crossing his arms. "Stay on and finish out your internship under Cordelia if you like. Wade through all that unsolicited shite people attempt to pass off as the next overnight success, muck around with useless clerical tasks. No harm, no foul." Buffy watched as he leaned toward her, lowering his voice meaningfully. "But I'm offerin' you something I never offer. Six months working directly with me's as good as a year anywhere else." He shifted back again and shrugged. "Up to you."
Buffy sucked some air in, bit down on the inside of her cheek and stared at him for a minute. He didn't look like he was up to anything. His face was open as he held her gaze. Earnest, impassive. His eyes were a little deeper blue than she'd remembered them being, but that might have just been because of the lighting. Or the way they were sparking at her now.
That was it, she realized. It wasn't his face or his tone of voice or even his words that were making her cautious. It was his eyes. That wicked little glint she could see there in the blue.
She rocked back on her heels, planted her hands on her hips and asked, "What's the catch?"
In response, Spike chuckled. He crossed toward the leather chair that sat in the center of his office, pulled it out and angled it around so it was facing her. Dropping casually into it, smoothing his blue silk tie down as he did, his eyes sparked again. "Why are you so suspicious?"
It was true, he hadn't actually given her any real reason to be suspicious of his intentions. It wasn't like he was making moves on her or anything. Wasn't like he was asking for anything in return for offering her a position under him…beneath…working for him.
God.
No, she was definitely the perv here. Not him.
Still, she drummed her fingers against her hips and shrugged, perking a brow as a falsely saccharine smile stretched across her lips. "Call it cautious."
"I just told you," he said simply, leaning forward, bracing his forearms over his thighs and linking his fingers together. His voice was a little rougher now, and low. "You have talent for this. Spend some time learnin' the more..." he shifted his eyes toward her, the right corner of his mouth curving, "cynical ins and outs and you'll be able to land a job anywhere you'd like." His lips turned back down into a line, expression suddenly growing serious. "Make no mistake, luv, this likely won't be all daffodils and teddy bears for you."
Buffy was looking down at him with slightly widened eyes, pursed lips. She shifted from one foot to the other, tapping her heeled toe on his rug. "Is this the part where you tell me all about how you expect the best from your people?"
He shook his head, putting his hands on the armrests of his chair to leverage himself back up to his feet. Forcing Buffy to tip her chin back in order to maintain eye contact. She immediately felt smaller, less in control of the conversation with him above her. Which, she was sure, was exactly what he'd been intending.
"I don't expect the best," he told her breezily, his tone light. But his eyes were all business. "I demand it. There's a difference."
He wasn't even trying to give her a shiver this time. He was being serious, and she knew it.
But he managed to anyway.
Stepping backward, needing a little extra space between them, Buffy straightened again. "So this…offer. This has nothing to do with…?" She purposefully let the sentence trail off, unable to form the words. She leaned toward him slightly, tilting her chin down and raising her eyebrows. Spike just frowned at her, shaking his head. Brow furrowed deeply like he wasn't understanding. Frustrated, Buffy sighed, keeping her eyes wide. She pulled a hand off her hip and gestured evocatively between the two of them.
She watched as he dropped his eyes to the movements of her hand, then back up to hers, finally getting it. He took a step back and arched a cool brow.
"Don't insult me, Buffy. If I wanted that from you I wouldn't have to give you a promotion to get it." He clicked his tongue reproachfully, and his lashes fanned down her body and swept back up as he began to turn away from her. "This has absolutely nothing to do with your talent in that particular arena."
She gasped. Actually gasped, like some feeble, affronted woman in one of those black and white movies her mom used to watch all the time. "My God, does this place even have an HR department?" she asked, her eyes blazing as they followed his path back around to his desk.
Fed up, Spike stopped walking and turned back around to meet Buffy's gaze. He leaned forward and placed his palms flat on the desk top, his eyes wide and open, expression the most guileless Buffy thought she'd ever seen it as he said, "You asked me to forget about that night. It's forgotten." He paused, sucked in a deep breath. "Do you want to learn this industry from me, or not?"
She swallowed whatever words she'd been about to say and stared at him.
The short answer? A resounding yes. The long answer? The seventy-five thousand different reasons Buffy could think of, just off the top of her head, why this was fifteen metric tons of bad…followed by a resounding yes. This is exactly what she'd wanted, what she'd been not so secretly hoping for since she'd finally decided to apply for the internship at Pratt all those months ago. This moment, right here. William Pratt standing in his office, looking at her, offering her a chance to basically be mentored by him. It's what she'd wanted, what she never actually thought she'd get. And he said it was based off her skill, her editing skill, and nothing else. Said he'd taken her advice and made with the one night stand amnesia. So why shouldn't she believe him? He wanted to teach her about the industry. He wanted to be her mentor. This felt an awful lot like one of those gift horses people were always talking about and she wasn't about to play dentist.
So she finally nodded and said, "I do."
"Right then." Spike pushed off the mahogany wood with a nod and moved around toward his own wing back chair, dropping down into it and scooting himself up toward the edge of his desk. He glanced back up at Buffy, lips pursed like he was about to say something, and then groaned. "Christ, don't look so bloody suspicious. This is just smart business." His lashes fluttered as he gazed at her, then turned his attention down to the paperwork he was filling out now. "If you're goin' to be my competition someday I'd best learn all your weaknesses now, yeah?"
Buffy gave him a sardonic look, but she could feel her own lips starting to curve up at the edges. "Trying to make me less suspicious?"
"Your workload'll increase," Spike was saying now, acting like he was ignoring her but glancing up at her with twinkling eyes just once to show he'd acknowledged her compliance. "And you'll take phone calls and assignments directly from me, rather than going through Cordelia. You might be expected to make appearances in some of my meetings," She watched as his pen jumped to the bottom of the paper in front of him, finishing it off with his wildly scribbled signature and a flourish, "Or possibly attend editorial and oubliahing boards. Nothin' else will change too much." He scanned the document once over quickly, then took it in his hand and extended it out to her. "Do you have any questions?"
Frowning, Buffy reached out and took it from him. It had ATTN: Cordelia Chase typed at the top, and a bunch of smaller text dotted with edits and mark outs made by Spike's pen throughout. She scanned over the bolder texts quickly. It was paperwork regarding her official internship parameters, transferring her directly under him for the remainder of her six month term at Pratt Publishing.
She glanced back up at him, wondering why she suddenly felt like she'd just signed a deal with the Devil. "No, I…no." She cleared her throat. "Thank you, Mr. Pratt."
"You can call me Spike if it's easier." He leaned back in his chair, giving her a small, encouraging nod when she raised her eyebrows in question. "'S fine. You won't be the only person here doin' it anyway."
Oh.
Well, Buffy guessed that made it a little less weird then. She bit down on her lip and nodded, agreeing. Thought about it. Then, "Only if you're done with that wiggy Miss Summers crap."
Spike was pleased by this. "Doesn't take much to get under that skin of yours, does it, pet?"
She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, shaking her head before she levelled him with narrowed green eyes. "Don't look so smug. It bothered me because other people noticed. Cordelia, Xander." She frowned thinking about stupid elevator lady, Harmony, wrinkling her nose. "That witch over in marketing."
Either Spike knew exactly who she was referring to, or he was patronizing her, because he nodded and said, "I see." But it sounded like he really didn't. "Lesson the first, luv. The opinions of other people don't matter."
She tilted her head to the side and gave him a dry look.Right. "Says the man who makes his living off of other people's opinions."
"Opinions of the books I work to publish, Buffy." He shook his head, looking like he was fighting to keep a smile off his face. "Not of me."
Buffy was having a hard time keeping a smile off her own lips as the two of them bantered back and forth good-naturedly. For once. Or, for twice, she guessed, if they were counting that first night. Which they weren't. Of course they weren't. Because they were both squarely in the business of forgetting about torrid one night affairs.
She shoved those thoughts aside and asked, "So you don't care what other people think of you?"
And with a casual tilt of his chin, a flash of that infuriatingly cocky grin, he managed to make her believe that he really didn't. Then, just like he'd read her mind, he said, "If I did, I'd have picked a less aggressive industry to excel in."
"And so modest," Buffy mumbled under her breath, just loud enough that she knew he could heard her.
Ignoring her attempted jibe, Spike turned down to pull open the drawer tucked into the right side of his desk. "We start Monday."
Buffy blinked at him, feeling like they'd just gone zero to sixty. All business, all the time. "Start with…?"
"These," he said, hefting a massive stack of papers up onto his desk and sliding them toward her, a wicked little smile on his lips. Buffy stared at the stack of papers, blinking rapidly. There had to have been three, maybe four manuscripts sitting on his desk in front of her. She looked back up and gaped at him, any momentary camaraderie she'd felt with him vanishing like someone had just snapped their fingers.
Spike just grinned and sat back, propping his elbow up on an armrest and leaning his head down into his hand. "Hope you didn't have big plans this weekend."
-Saturday, June 22nd. 6:45pm-
Buffy sat on the floor in front of the glass coffee table, her legs comfortably criss-crossed beneath her, page after page of text spread out around her in a little half circle. The pages she'd finished going through were flecked with red ink, little multi-colored tabs sticking out along the edges wherever she'd made more detailed notes. The pages she'd yet to get to were already starting to blur together.
She'd been at it for hours. Started at the kitchen table but moved when she realized she needed more space. She'd set up camp at the coffee table after that, seated on the sofa. Which had worked fine for a little while, until all the hunching over she'd been forced to do had made her spine make some lovely little cracking sounds. Finally, she'd made the shift to the floor. Plenty of room, and a place to press her back into.
"How many cups of coffee is that?" Faith asked from behind her. Buffy paused in her writing, turning back around to glance over her shoulder as her roommate walked out of her bedroom and into the main living space. She raised a brow as she finished doing up her crisp white button down. "29?"
Buffy smiled at the brunette, dropping her pen down onto her pages with a smack and reaching up to pull her glasses off. "Something like that," she agreed, picking her mug off the coffee table and sipping at it, realizing it was freezing cold and making a face. "Ugh. I think I've reached the point of stomach lining erosion."
Faith laughed, finished buttoning her top, adjusted the folds of her black mini skirt and dropped down onto the sofa's armrest in a movement that was equal parts graceful and showy. "Come on, B," she said, pressing her hand into the nearby cushion and leaning into it. "Just come with me to the restaurant."
It was the fourth time in the last hour her roommate had made the same suggestion, and even though Buffy was glad for the short reprieve each micro interruption from Faith had brought her, she was getting a little tired of the back and forth.
"And do what?" she asked again, looking down at the hand that held her glasses, using the grip of her thumb and forefinger to spin them around in a circle.
"Not be stuck in our apartment by yourself on a Saturday night." She paused for dramatic effect, but Buffy could practically say the word with her by now. "Again."
It was true, she hadn't been much for going out. Not since the infamous night. She'd seen just how good going out in Boston was for her, and she hadn't been in a huge rush to just dive right back in after her first attempt had landed so firmly on the side of failing miserably. Faith had invited her places, as had Xander and even Cordelia on a couple occasions. She'd always found an excuse not to go, work, usually, being her go to.
Now though, it was true. "I have work to do, Faith."
"You always have work to do," Faith grumbled, and Buffy watched as her roommate rolled her eyes and got back to her feet, crossing the small apartment to grab her purse and her keys off the top of a barstool. "You've been holed up inside all day. Don't you want to get out?"
"What am I going to do at the restaurant?" Buffy asked her, pushing her glasses back on and picking up her red pen again. "Watch you wait tables? Sounds thrilling."
"We have a bar, you know." She stepped closer to Buffy and made a show of tapping her stack of papers with her toe. "You could bring all this junk with you and set up shop there."
Buffy shifted her manuscripts away from Faith's stockinged foot and glanced up at her, giving her a sarcastic smile. "Because my boss wouldn't frown on me drinking on the job."
Faith laughed at that. A low, infectious kind of chuckle that had her voice taking on a slightly rasping quality when she spoke again. "Hey, I didn't say anything about drinking." Then she frowned, shaking her head and gesturing toward the pile of papers spread out in the floor again, this time with her hand. "What kind of grade A asshole hands out homework assignments, anyway?"
Buffy looked out at her roommate from behind the lenses of her glasses and smirked at her. For initially not being so sure about the other girl, she'd found that she really liked her. Yes, she actually was a little on the crazy side. But Buffy also had found that she was fun, and loyal, and her intentions were almost always well meaning.
She'd jumped right on the Spike-bashing train as soon as Buffy'd told her about the special kind of hell he'd put her through with that awful manuscript her first day and hadn't looked back since. Not that Faith knew, not that anybody knew, that Buffy's boss was also her mystery man from her first night out in Boston. From the way Buffy spoke about them, no one would ever guess they could possibly be the same person.
She still had a little trouble reconciling that herself.
What kind of Grade A asshole? Her kind, apparently.
"The kind I work for," she said out loud, wedging the bottom of her pen into her mouth so she could pull her hair back into a ponytail. "Look, I'm really fine." She pulled her hair tight and grabbed the pen again. "I want to get through all this so I don't have to spend all day tomorrow doing it, too." When Faith hesitated with her hand on the door, Buffy sighed and glanced back up, mock glaring at her. She shooed her with her left hand. "Go. Work. Make money so we can pay rent." That last part a little under her breath as she heard the deadbolt being thrown, the tell-tale squeaking of the door on its hinges when it was pulled open. Then she remembered. "Oh, Faith—"
The brunette was halfway out the door already, not bothering to turn around as she let the door close behind her and shouted, "I'll bring you back a slice of cheesecake."
Buffy laughed lightly and turned back down at her work.
-Sunday, June 23rd. 1:23am-
It was the rattle of a key, followed by the familiar sound of the deadbolt sliding out of place that had Buffy jolting back awake. Blinking, a little dazed, her bleary vision came into focus just in time to see Faith sauntering back into their apartment, one hand carrying a little brown doggy bag and the other, her swanky-restaurant-required black patent leather pumps.
She kicked the door shut behind her with one stockinged foot and let the heels clatter unceremoniously to the floor, eyeing Buffy, her brow furrowed. "You still awake?"
Buffy nodded. "Still awake," she affirmed, her voice still a little fuzzy with sleep. She reached a hand up to stifle a yawn, shaking her head to clear it. "Barely."
She wasn't sure exactly when she'd nodded off, though the trailing red line her pen had left directly down the middle of page 205 of a particularly misguided attempt at a reimagined sci-fi version of Hamlet was her indication of why. If there was ever a time when the word excruciating applied to the act of reading, she was sure it was only within the context of reading that. Even just glancing back down at the manuscript now was enough to make her want to slump over into the fetal position and call the whole thing off, potential mentorship with William H. Pratt be damned.
Faith gave her a knowing smirk before turning around and securing the deadbolt on the front door. "God," she said laughingly, "I kinda thought you'd be passed out face down in that mountain of paper by now."
"There've been a couple close calls," Buffy agreed, reaching blindly for the glass table and her abandoned mug, the cell phone she'd left resting face down beside it. She glanced at the glowing digital clock reflected back at her, noted she had no missed calls or messages, then raised her cold coffee in salute to her roommate. "Enter, caffeine."
She took too big of a swig and winced, forcing the bitter black liquid down before she could add coffee stain to the list of horrors her poor manuscripts had been forced to endure over the weekend. Then again, they had seen pretty fit to torture her, so maybe they deserved it.
Red pen, pizza sauce, cracker crumbs, and one artful baby pink nail polish stain Buffy'd left on the smutty romance novel she'd actually found herself gettingway too into on Friday night. She never would have guessed the name Reginald could be so steamy.
"You're a damn mess, B. Here," Faith said, leaning around the sofa to set the brown paper bag she'd been carrying on the coffee table, moving for the far end of the apartment. "Sustenance. The kind that won't erode your stomach lining." She tossed Buffy a Cheshire grin over her shoulder as she disappeared into her bedroom. "Probably."
Buffy rolled her eyes but grabbed up the brown paper bag greedily, waking up a little more as she pealed it open and reached inside. As promised, as she promised Buffy every Saturday night, she'd brought her home a piece of her pastry chef's "world famous" cheesecake. This week, it was chocolate chip.
"Come to mama," Buffy murmured, digging the plastic fork Sergio had placed inside the bag beside her plastic container of nirvana, popping it open and scooping herself up some. She placed the bite in her mouth and moaned a little, letting her eyes fall shut again. A zillion calories, and worth every bite.
She was nearly halfway finished with her cake by the time Faith emerged from her bedroom, flannel pajama pants and a ripped up band t-shirt replacing the done up skirt and blouse.
"So," Buffy began absently around another forkful of chocolate chip goodness, "how was work?"
Dropping onto the sofa, sprawling out, one hand braced behind her head, Faith shrugged. "Interesting."
"Mmm, oh," Buffy put the fork down and swallowed her last bite, shoving the plastic container away from her and somehow managing to smear cheesecake on the bottom of page 206. "Like, made a crap ton in tips to help cover Buffy's half of the rent interesting, or met a rich investment banker to help cover Buffy's half of the rent type interesting?" Not that she needed that much help to cover her half. Or any, she guessed now. According to the paper Spike had given her detailing his little pseudo promotion, she was actually set to start making just slightly more working as his personal intern than she had before. She hadn't told anyone except for Faith and Dawn that she'd been a little concerned about being able to make her first month, but she was thinking now it wouldn't be an issue.
"Way more interesting than either of those," came the vague response from her roommate now. Buffy was starting to feel the effects of sitting in the same position all day, starting to feel sleepy all over again now that her little cake-shaped reward was gone, and she wasn't really in the mod to play twenty questions, anyway.
"It's way too late for you to be playing crypto girl," she grumbled at the brunette, twisting her body around so she could brace her shoulder against the bottom of the sofa, seated with her knees tucked against her chest on the floor. "What was so interesting?"
Turning her heavily lined eyes down to her hand, making a show of checking out the shiny black lacquer she seemed to have permanently painted on, she said, "I met your grade A asshole."
Every muscle in her body jolted, her eyes going comically wide as she sat up, ram rod straight. "Spike?"
Faith's eyes widened, too. "Spike?"
"I mean…" Oh, boy. "Yeah, it's just some…goofy nickname." Buffy forced a casual laugh but it came out sounding way too high. Faith fixed her with a thin raised brow. "Just jokes around the office. Cause, ya know, he's such a…" she trailed off and cleared her throat, letting the bright small fall. "You met Mr. Pratt?"
Whether her roommate was buying her stammered excuse or not, Buffy couldn't tell. But if she wasn't, she didn't press the issue. Just nodded and reclined back against the sofa again. "Yeah, I waited on him. Which brings me right back around to the interesting." She rolled over onto her side, striking a faux seductive pose and propping her chin up on her hand. "When exactly were you planning on telling me that your boss is smokin' hot."
Buffy wrinkled her nose up and whined. "Faith."
"No, seriously," she insisted, unfazed. "Like, silver fox hot. What is he, like forty?"
Buffy rankled a little at her roommate's estimation of Spike's age, but managed to keep her indignation to herself.
"He's thirty-seven," she corrected her placidly, still making a slightly disgusted face. A completely, totally, one hundred percent put-upon disgusted face, because on the inside she was dying a little. Practically bursting at the seams to spill her Spike-flavored beans all over the floor. "Call me crazy, but I don't spend a whole lot of time at work thinking about how 'smoking hot' my boss may or may not be."
Which totally wasn't a lie, even with her being on the teetering edge of bean spillage. Buffy hadn't spent much time thinking about it. Not lately, at least. Not over the past two weeks. In fact, she actively hadn't thought about how "smoking hot" some people might consider Spike to be at all, hadn't even let it cross her mind.
Until yesterday afternoon.
And Faith had caught her anyway, sitting bolt upright on the sofa and jabbing a knowing finger at her. "So you have noticed."
Dying. Dying, dying, dying.
"Were his looks the only thing about him you noticed?" Buffy asked her meaningfully, more just to turn the conversation into less shark infested waters than because she really cared or wanted to hear about whichever side of Spike/William Faith had been subjected to tonight. Although if she was honest with herself, she did kind of want to know that. If he spent the night being charming and funny, sneakily flirting with her roommate, all the while not knowing who she was or that she'd come running home to fill Buffy in on all the juicy details.
"No." Seeming pleased to have more than just Spike's silver fox status to report on, Faith's posture relaxed back into the cushions. "Also noticed he isn't nearly as big of a jerk as you made him out to be. Bought a bottle of Dom, gave me this wicked huge tip." She paused, glancing absently down at her finger nails and bringing one up to her mouth, biting down on it. "His wife kinda sucks, though."
Buffy coughed, loudly. Choked on the air she'd just inhaled through her nose and sort of sputtered, caught off guard.
Faith eyed her cautiously, frowning. "You okay?"
"Fine," Buffy mumbled, coughing again, reaching a hand up to press against her chest. "Wrong tube for air flow." She forced herself to relax again, letting her shoulder sink casually against the sofa, voice light. "You met his wife?"
"Yeah," Faith said simply, bringing her hand back down to her lap and shrugging. "Well, not so much met as endured." Then she laughed humorlessly, shaking her head. "Talk about your frigid bitch…"
And she was still talking, Buffy knew she was still talking, but she had already begun to tune her out. Blinking, staring straight ahead at her friend but not really seeing her. Of all the possible juicy details scenarios she'd been mentally preparing for, that was one she hadn't counted on. She wasn't sure why. She probably should have figured that if Spike was out at Faith's restaurant for dinner on a Saturday night that he wouldn't have been there alone, she just hadn't quite let herself put the pieces of the puzzle together. Of course he'd been there with his wife. Out at a romantic dinner with his wife. On a date with his wife. Sure, Buffy knew she should have expected that. That Spike should be going out with the woman he was married to, that that was normal. Right. The thing that had happened between them? Very not right. She also knew she had zero reason, less than zero reason, to be feeling the way she was now. The gnawing, churning feeling in the pit of her stomach that was making its way up into her chest even now. She didn't want to call it jealousy. Really,really didn't.
And the words were out before she realized she was even speaking again. "Was she pretty?"
Her question had interrupted Faith mid-tirade. She stopped talking abruptly and glanced back down toward Buffy. "Huh?"
"His wife," Buffy clarified, still going for a sort of casual disinterest. "Was she pretty?"
Looking just a little suspicious now, Faith arched a brow. "If you're into that whole obvious beauty thing." A beat. "Why?"
No, that twisting, churning feeling was definitely jealousy. Stupid, aching, irrational jealousy. That Buffy immediately tried to stifle, shoving it down deep into the box labeled Wrong at the back of her mind as she managed a shrug. "Just kind of curious what kind of woman he'd be married to," she lied, surprised at how easily she was able to pull the words out of thin air. Maybe because they were only a half-lie. There was a part of her that was genuinely curious about his wife. Mrs. Pratt. What she looks like…that was just a tiny piece of what she wanted to know. "It's pretty much all work with him. Employees don't normally get a peek behind the curtain."
"Oh." Faith blinked once, and then the suspicious expression melted off her face. "Well, yeah. She was pretty. He was pretty. They made a very pretty couple. Didn't seem to have much to say to each other, though." She yawned then, reaching her arms up over her head and stretching like a cat before swinging her legs back over the sofa and standing up. "At least not while I was around."
The knot in her stomach loosened a little and a new feeling, one she was tempted to call relief, started to spread its way through her chest as the brunette's words registered. Still, very much in the bad, wrong category…but felt somehow a little less bad, wrong than the jealousy had. Which was something that was probably a red flag in and of itself, but it was late and Buffy was tired and properly controlling her increasingly haywire emotions just didn't seem like it was in the cards at the moment.
Buffy watched from her perch on the floor as her roommate turned and started padding softly, barefoot back out of the living room and toward her bedroom.
"Hey, Faith?" she asked.
The other girl paused at her bedroom door, both hands braced against the doorjamb as she turned to glance back over her shoulder. "Yeah?"
"Were they just there having dinner, or-?"
Faith shook her head. "They were celebrating their anniversary."
The words hit her like ice water, freezing her where she sat, staring over the top of the sofa as Faith said goodnight and her door clicked shut.
Buffy slowly turned around, criss-crossing her legs beneath her again. Numbly, she reached for her red pen again. She still had roughly fifty pages left to go in the Shakespearean science fiction, and she'd planned on finishing it tonight. Trying to focus, trying to force any and every thought about Spike and his obviously beautiful wife and their wedding anniversary out of her head, she shook her head. Read through a few paragraphs. Made a few half-hearted notes. But it wasn't working, and she was still feeling a little sick to her stomach, so she gave up and sighed. Dropping her pen and shoving her manuscripts out of the way, Buffy grabbed for her cell phone.
She unlocked the screen and moved to her contact list, sliding down until she'd found the name and number she hadn't quite realized she'd been looking for. Sucking in a deep breath, her fingers flying furiously across the keypad, she hardly even realized what she was doing until she was already in the middle of doing it.
Sorry. Things have been crazy here. Job is great.
She paused a moment, thinking about it briefly before she sighed, shook her head and typed out the final three words.
Miss you, too.
She hit send, then she shut her phone off and headed for her own room, leaving the mess of papers scattered across the floor.