After The Fall
PART TWO CHAPTER TEN:
The waitress was holding a powder shaker over two mugs and wearing a wide and fake smile. "Sprinkles?" She sung and Spike took a step back from the manic stare in her eyes.
"Uh, no. It's good."
"Spike, I want chocolate sprinkles!" Dawn whined; bouncing in anticipation of the sugar rush the cocoa would give her.
"OK, just on one." He signalled to the waitress with his index finger and she shook for all she was worth. The result was not a light dusting of powder but an avalanche that flattened the peak off the foamed cream into something that resembled a cocoa erupting volcano. Spike stepped in a saved the cup before she could do more damage. "Uh, thanks." He nodded, quickly pulling away from the serving bar to find a table.
"Wow!" Dawn's eyes eclipsed the circumference of the mug as she surveyed her drink.
"Yeah, you'll be buzzing about all night."
She only smiled to confirm his prophecy before delving into the foamy cream with her spoon.
Several minutes later and the cream-berg had been cleared, revealing the rich dark hot chocolate underneath. There was always a moment of seemingly deep contemplation as Dawn stared into her cup before she decided to add another sachet of sugar for good measure. The packet crinkled once, twice, and thrice, as shook the sugar loose before tearing it in half and pouring the contents into her cup at an excruciating, meticulous fine rate.
"Dawn Summers: performance artist drinks cocoa."
There was no response and, come to think of it, she had been unnaturally quiet that night. Uh-oh. This didn't bode well.
"Spike?" She finally asks, slowly and quietly. Didn't bode well at all.
"Yeah?" He replied simply, gritting his teeth against inevitability.
"Where did you go?"
He stumbled from the house gasping for air he did not need to stopper the anger writhing in his solar plexus. Feet stumbling vaguely in any direction that would take him away from the scene when all he wanted to do was go back in there and rip their throats out. Sanctimonious little brats with their doleful, soulful eyes pouring with grief one moment but could only reserve pure loathing when they looked upon him. He should tear their eyeballs right out of their sockets and stamp on their hearts.
Their big, fat, juicy warm hearts that full of love and humanity whilst his lay dormant, lifeless and shrivelled somewhere in the empty cavity of his lurching corpse. But there was something there. Turning, yearning, burning...
He collapsed into his car, panting against the stifling smell. Crunching forwards against the sensation in his gut. Hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white against the pressure. It was then he yielded and shook in a sob of surrender. For it was not anger he was feeling... but agony.
"Uh... you'll have to be a tad more specific Bit. Been a fair few places in my un-life." He was stalling and she knew it. He made a show of feeling around for his wallet and once he had located the corresponding shape in his inner pocket he patted it for good measure.
"When you left... after... when the others wouldn't let you see me. Where'd you go to?"
Where to go? Where to go? There was nowhere... no one. That was it, she was it. Buffy and the Little Bit and their ludicrous semblance of a family and how he'd swallowed it. How he'd dared to believe they could ever live like that, that he could ever be enough...that she could ever...
He forced a deep intake of stale air. Released his hands against the cramping pressure and the fog lifted slightly. There was somewhere, a mirage forming in his mind, a half-recollected memory. Just swarms of colour and a vague outline of a demon's face. Slowly the audio crept in with snippets of drunken conversation over chicken wings and the flap of the demon's saggy skin as he placed his hand of cards on the green felt of a poker table.
"Yeah my cousin had quite a calamity a few years back... but he knew someone who knew someone."
"And this guy... this Shaman. Sorts him right out. Comes back right as rain... or better, rather. Know what I mean?"
He knew and he knew what he had to do. One word formed in his mind. A destination with no thought on how to get there.
"Africa."
"Africa?" Dawn was understandably puzzled. Her cocoa spoon lay forgotten on a bright red coaster.
"Yeah, I went to Africa."
There's no point stalling any longer. Perhaps he'd been waiting for her to ask him all this time because he found it impossible to summon up any resistance. When the inevitable "What for?" came he drew his elbows onto the table and hunched forward with a sigh.
"My soul."
Dawn's eyes once more eclipsed her cocoa mug.
"Oh my god!"
"Dawn--"
"Oh my god!"
"Look--"
"Oh my god!"
"See, the thing is--"
"Oh my god!" This one was accompanied by a strange giggle and an animated gesture of both hands fluttering at each side of her face. Another bounce or two and her mouth threatened to form another 'oh'.
"Dawn!" He finally had her attention and she stopped mid flow. "Right, now--"
"Oh my god, Buffy doesn't know, does she?"
He slid back in his seat and nodded. "And she's not going to find out."
"But why? It's not like it's a bad thing and you know what's she's like--if she finds out you've been keeping something from her she'll go nuts."
He emitted another sigh and sank back further, as if he didn't have the energy to draw breath that he needed to talk. "It'd just... complicate things."
"How? You know how Xander and Willow feel about you. Well, if they knew you had a soul then they'd have to accept you--you'd be just like..."
Yet another sigh and he was sickening himself with repetition. His fingernails picked at the edging of the veneer table, itching for a cigarette. "Yeah."
"Angel."
"I like this place."
He watches Buffy as she emerges from the bathroom and surveys her surroundings. As if sensing his attention she pauses and stands quiet for a moment. One hand combs through her hair and the other plays with the hem of the red shirt she is wearing. His shirt. He takes in the image: the half-light reflecting pale highlights onto her legs, the curve of her thighs, the shirt hem skimming her buttocks and revealing that she is otherwise naked. It's then she smiles and begins to near him, peeling through one shirt button at a time until it drapes open and wide and she is stood before him.
"You have fun with Dawn?" She asks, reaching out to touch her fingertips to his cheek. He leans into it and she cups one side of his face, then the other as she sinks down to straddle him.
"Ye--ah," is all he can bring himself to say and the sound is alien; husky and broken by the moment of contact as she settles her weight into him and rolls against him.
"I like it--" her hitches catches as she rocks, trembling from the friction of his jeans. "That you spend time with her." And she stills as if deciding what she has to say is better said without distraction. "I worry about her... about how she feels about me and my friends doing what we do... how she fits into that."
"She seems to cope with it fine. Got a good head on her shoulders--if you forget the teenage vacuity." He longs to touch her. There are inches of bare golden flesh within arm's reach but he knows he must wait. This importance, this is Buffy talking to him, opening up to him.
"That's just it. She's a teenager. She's fifteen. When I was her age I'd saved the world three times, I was hanging about with a middle-aged librarian, sneaking out at night to kill demons and mooning over someone old enough to be my great, great, great, et cetera, et cetera, grandfather. But that was my life. I didn't get any choice. I'm the Slayer."
He senses her point but feels the need to prompt her anyway. Since the miracle of her resurrection she just kept on surprising him. Now she was trying to make sense of her past by understanding Dawn's present.
"And Dawn didn't have any choice in being The Key. But otherwise she's just an ordinary teenage girl. She has a unique destiny too but I also want her to have a childhood. She's part of me, Spike--she's made from me--she's..." there are tears in her eyes, threatening to spill and something expands in his chest at the sight of her. "She's my daughter."
Buffy clings to him, not crying, just clutching at him. His hands slip round to her back and with palms against her bare flesh he simply helps to hold her in place. She says something into his shoulder but it's muffled beyond comprehension so she tries again, into the crook of his neck.
"Thank you for keeping her safe. I... I love her so much and, oh god..." she trails off into a whisper that makes him shiver with joy and dread. "I love you."
And this time she's pulling at his clothing, mewing in pangs of frustration at the way his stubborn T-shirt refuses to budge so he helps her out as she moves on to his jeans, quickly freeing him from the constraints of the zipper.
"Buffy?"
She stops in mid-action, hovering over him. Palms cup at his cheeks once more as she meets his eyes and nods to confirm her words. "Spike." His name is a mere breath on his face as her lips near his.
TBC