A Serendipitous Beginning Interlude I:
by
Lisa Y. Drexel
Chapter One
~~~~~
Opening up Ain't as Easy as it Sounds
~~~~~
Mike glanced at the backpack sitting on the floor and then looked over at the closed bedroom door.
It was finally happening.
Her stomach turned slowly, leaving a terrible acidic taste in her mouth.
She walked over to the dresser and leaned over, placing her hands on the wood and stared at her reflection. Sometimes, her mind would play tricks with her. For a fleeting second, she would see herself as she should look and not as she did now—a middle-age woman with tendrils of gray mixed in with her blond locks, a few more lines in her skin—the ones at the side of her mouth more pronounced than they were. Crows feet at her eyes...
That's how she should look.
Instead, she was 39 years old, stuck in a body 30-year-old body with a 25-year-old physique.
What did she ever do to deserve this?
Sighing, she pushed herself up into a standing position and grabbed her braid, tugging off the tie and began unbraiding her hair. Seven years of flying as a passenger in a vampire's arms had taught her to put up her hair or she would be spending hours trying to de-tangle it.
As she ran her fingers through her hair, she heard the quiet bustle of everyone getting settled in for the night—or was that day—and silently wondered what everyone thought of her. Not even a day had passed and she was already warming Buffy's side of the bed. When looking at it that way, she felt dirty.
But when she sat back and looked at all the facts and felt Spike's moods evening out, she knew she was doing the right thing. Vampires were different creatures than humans—their emotional needs changed just as their eating habits did. What did that make her, though? She was an Immortal: neither human nor vampire. Kinda stuck in the middle, carrying traits of both races
Digging out her comb from the backpack, she fell down on the bed, pulling her feet up and crossing them Indian style and began the arduous task of combing her hair as she thought about that question.
Bloodlinks.
It was that—more than her metamorphous into an Immortal—which changed her. She could barely remember what it was like to make love to Methos and be so separate from him. Her link to Spike changed her in ways that she was only now beginning to understand. Even those years with Vachon were more intimate than her time with the Old Man.
And she loved Methos.
When she saw Spike earlier that night for the first time in all those years apart, she realized something that she hadn't given much thought to—never again was she going to spend that much time apart from him. It was horrible. She felt like she had lost a limb and not her mate. It was only when she saw him on the roof, that she felt whole again—after six years of emptiness.
Nine months.
All they had together was nine measly months and yet it nearly killed her when she left him. Looking back, she wondered where she had gotten the courage to go back to St. Louis alone. If she knew then what she knew now, she doubted if she would ever have left.
Slayer—Buffy—love—all of it—be damned.
It just took too much out of her.
Restless and in need of a nicotine, she stood up and grabbed her lighter and cigarettes and headed out of her old bedroom.
Once in the kitchen, she saw the back door and opened it, stepping outside into the post-dawn morning. She sat down on the edge of the concrete patio, lit a cigarette and brought her legs up and rested her chin on her knees.
It was there that Spike found her.
Spike opened the bedroom door and nearly cursed outloud at its emptiness. He was so sure she'd be in there, waiting for him that for a moment he just stared at the empty room in shock.
Use the link, you bloody fool, his little voice taunted him.
He ignored it.
He wasn't ready yet.
And obviously, she realized it as well. Since their last discussion about sleeping arrangements, she had pulled back—leaving only a tendril of herself in his mind. Enough to calm him. Enough for him to tweak the link if needed, but not nearly as intimate as they were used to.
Taking an unneeded breath, he opened his senses and instantly pinpointed her heartbeat.
Grinning to himself, he patted his shirt pocket for his cigarettes and once he felt them, he decided to join her. Hell, it was where he was planning on going to next—only with her.
I'll bet she forgot about the spell, he thought to himself. If she knows anything about it to begin with...
Barely able to keep the smirk off his face, he quietly tiptoed to the back door and opened it, slipping outside in the early morning dawn. Still amazed that he hadn't gone up in a blaze of smoke, he walked slowly into the sunlight.
He instantly spotted her, sitting on the edge of the concrete patio, with her legs out in front of her and leaning back on her hands, a burning cigarette stuck in between her fingers, as she stared up into the sky.
She was so beautiful.
Even after all this time, she could take nearly make his dead heart beat.
Shaking his head, he walked quietly over to her and slipped his hands over her eyes.
"Surprise, love," he whispered into her ear.
Her reaction was indeed as priceless as he had imagined it to be.
He could feel her heart take off as she whipped around, nearly burning him with her cigarette as she tried scrambling to her feet to grab him.
Chuckling softly, he plucked the cigarette out of her hands—tossing it to the side and wrapped is arms around her, stilling her. He then pulled her into his lap and kissed her softly on her neck.
Opening the link, he could hear the smatterings of thoughts flying through her mind as she tried wrapping it around the miracle of him being outside with her. Beginning with her suicidal lover and finally ending at the truth...
Willow's spell.
Once he felt her body begin to relax, he leaned over and picked up her still burning cigarette and handed it to her and then wrapped his arms back around her arms and rested his chin on her shoulder.
After nearly three minutes, her heartbeat finally settled into a healthy rhythm and he knew it was safe to speak.
"Okay, now pet?"
She nodded silently, took one last drag off the cigarette and flicked it into a flowerpot that he had been using for the last five years as a butt depository. She then sighed and leaned her head back so their cheeks were touching.
"I forgot. So many of your memories and thoughts are just these floating sentences—"
"—Without any meaning until something happens," he finished for her, knowing even without the link, exactly how she felt.
He felt the same.
It was like knowing she smoked. It wasn't until he sought her presence and found it, did he realize that she had gone out there to smoke. And then from there, he realized that he now knew she had been smoking on and off since she left him.
It had been her security blanket.
A part of him that she could take with her.
He felt her eyes on him and at the same time a rush of awe and wonder fill him. He smiled as he opened his eyes, and squeezed her arms gently while opening his heart to her.
"Thank you," she whispered as her eyes shut. Even though she turned back around, he saw the tears in her eyes and couldn't help but wonder at them.
Even though they were ones of joy—it was a bittersweet joy that he was all too familiar with. He could feel a rush of emotions fill her—ranging from happiness to self-incrimination.
All he could do is sigh.
His feelings were nearly a mirror of hers.
He suddenly felt the need to lighten the conversation and smiled as a memory of her came to mind. "I don't think I ever told you this—when I really realized I loved you. It was before the change—still my demon self and you were asleep. Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are when you sleep?"
Smiling, Mike shook my head. "Can't say as they have."
"Well, you are Mike. You face—so young and relaxed—so free that it hit me that somehow, without me even realizing it, you had become the most important person in my life—ever. That I couldn't see a future without your smile or the way you bite your bottom lip when you concentrate on something—or your laugh, that fills a room—making everything seem a bit less daunting than it did before.
"And it floored me."
"What day was it?"
"The day you told me you were getting a job. You were going to quit trying to live off of his money and begin doing something with your life. Even though you didn't say it, I could feel the conflicting emotions inside of you." He shook his head and smirked. "Your burgeoning feelings for me verses your steadfast love for the Old Man—the ironies, Mike, don't they just bloody blow you away?"
He felt her silent chuckle as her shoulders shook. "That's one of the reasons why I felt it wasn't fair if I stayed." She paused and lifted her head, looking up into the sky. "You always accepted that Adam would be in my life—one way or another—because he was my baggage. Well, in a sense Buffy was your baggage. You were in love with her before you even met me. Granted, it wasn't a 'realized' love, but it was there. And once she felt the same...what else could I do?"
He shook his head. "Nothing other than stay—but I knew you couldn't." He could feel his chest tighten as he thought of his burning flame...his lioness. His head fell back down on her shoulder, hiding his silent tears. "She felt you, you know. Especially after those Quickenings. Even though after the third one, I had managed to block most of your opponents thoughts and feelings, I never could block you too well."
Her heard her sniffle as she nodded in acknowledgement. "Yeah, I know. I worked on it as well, but it wasn't until I met Cassandra that I even knew that I had some sort of empathic abilities to begin with. This link just intensified them. That's why I can read Quickenings," she paused. "I felt her too. I was still feeling bits of her tonight—just random Buffy-thoughts." She pulled away enough to lift her hair up off her shoulders and expose the back of her neck.
She was sporting a large and ugly fading bruise on the back of her neck, a little over to the left side of her neck.
It was in the same place where he swore Buffy's own neck hit the wall. He lifted his fingers up and caressed it, cursing under his breath. "Bloody hell, I did this to you—"
She shook her head as she dropped her hair, covering his hand. "No, you didn't. Who left whom? Who told whom that if he didn't get with her, she was going to stake him herself? Umm? Weren't those my words?" She turned to face him. Spike could see the determination in her eyes. "We just didn't know. There's no manual on how to deal with this bloodlink—this soul-link." She lifted her hand and wiped his face. "We're just winging it. So, now we know." A small smile curved her lips as she shrugged.
"Yeah love, now we know," he said softly as she turned back to face the back of the yard. He buried his head in her hair and closed his eyes—inhaling her scent—taking in all that was Mike now.
It, like a lot of things about her, had changed.
How many other differences was he going to find?
He lifted his head and sighed airlessly.
"What?"
"You've changed," he whispered, unable and unwilling to hide his dismay.
He felt her body shake in his arms and could almost taste her anguish it was so sharp. "I know. You've changed too. It's the way of things."
Groaning, he dropped his forehead on her shoulder. "I'm learning that."
"You think I should've stayed."
He shook his head even as his mind was screaming yes.
Mike's laugh was nearly brittle in bitterness. "Now you know why I came out here for a cigarette." She pulled back far enough so she could see him. "I was in the bedroom, all ready to get undressed and suddenly the walls felt like they were closing in on me. My bedroom—our bedroom—yours and Buffy's bedroom. Jesus Christ, Spike—we've got to stop this before we let all this remorse and sadness eat us up alive."
He pulled out underneath her, barely catching her surprised body before she fell back hard onto the concrete. As soon as she was steady, he was on his feet, prowling behind her. "You think I don't know that? But I can't stop it!"
He growled as each emotion pounded into him like a sledgehammer. Loss, love, anger, abandonment, hatred, rage, fury, joy, happiness...
And so much pain.
He didn't know where it began or ended. Seeing her after all these years was not only soothing him, it was also bringing up all those feelings he had when she left him years before.
Even while he loved Buffy and gave her everything he could, Mike was still there in his heart, his mind and even his dreams. Sometimes, he would dream of her at Wolf's Bane, working and laughing—other times he would dream of her and Vachon making love. He even sat with her while she was attending one of her classes.
It wasn't until Willow let some Mike fact slip out did he even realize that while he was asleep, he had been actively seeking Mike out.
He even got a taste of her nightmares...
He ran his fingers through his hair and stared down at her.
That's what hurt the most. To know that even while he was happily in love and in a relationship with Buffy, that he sought her out and yet, Mike hadn't done the same.
It hurt.
It hurt that she managed to keep away while he couldn't.
It hurt because he felt like he spent the last six years betraying Buffy by seeking Mike out.
It just plain hurt.
"I couldn't do it," she whispered, sensing his feelings. "It hurt too much for me to see. Don't you get it, Spike? I was fighting for my life—for your life—our life—our future and every time I caught a flash of you being happy, it sucked at my will to live. Jav—he helped—but he wasn't you or even the Old Man. Fucking hell—" her voice rose as she scrambled to her feet and faced him—her gray eyes flashing as her body stood rigid with tension. "What the fuck do you want from me? I gave you my soul, my heart and left it with you when I left. For six years, I've learned the keen art of survival—existing—maybe even complacency, but never happiness—" She stopped, her eyes shut as tears rolled down her face. She took a deep breath and opened them. "Never happiness. So, was I wrong to leave? Tell me! Do you regret the last six years or can we just let it the fuck go!" She began pacing in front of him as waves of rage pounded into him.
Spike was stunned.
As he listened to her rising voice and watched her body flush with anger, all he could do was stare at her. She never got mad at him. Not like Buffy did, and yet, here she was tearing into him like a wild banshee.
Why?
What changed?
And then it hit him. She shut down her side again. All he was picking up was errant emotions. No thoughts or full-fledged feelings. And if it was dry on his side, he could bet it was on hers as well.
He took an unneeded breath, forcing himself to calm down as he thought of what to say to her. Once he was sure he could speak to her without yelling back, he began.
"Luv," he walked over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to remain still. "Open your side—"
"I can't!" she yelled, trying to pull herself out of his grasp. "You don't need this right now. You don't need my shit—"
"Mike, I do need it. I need you—all of you—not the bits and pieces you've been throwing me. All of it. Open up," he whispered as he drew her into his arms.
Her body shook as sobs racked her body. "But—"
"Mike, come on love," he urged, kissing her tears away. "Open up."
After nearly five minutes of silence, she did.
Wave after wave of thoughts and emotions filled him, making him realize that she did have much more control over this link that she had let him believe.
It was enough that he could keep them both standing as he was hit with the last six years of her life in excruciating detail. Most of it he knew of, but it still hurt. Especially all those years she spent with Vachon in her bed. And yet, he knew just as quickly why she had been doing it.
It anchored her. When she took a head, or even had a nightmare, raw, bloody sex with the Spaniard was the only thing she found that gave her stability.
She tried other things—drinking the highest on the list—but vampire sex ending in her death was the only thing that really worked.
So much pain to deal with—so much loneliness.
Barely keeping it together himself, he swept her in his arms, the beautiful sunlight forgotten and carried inside to their bedroom.
Not even bothering to take their clothes off, he held her while she clung to him—both trying to shoulder one another's heartaches—ease the burden of life from one another's shoulders—and barely managing to maintain control.
Even as he wondered if she might've been right to try and keep herself locked away from him, he knew in his heart, he was right. Neither of them could really help each other, until the past was put where it needed to be placed—in the past.
And that wasn't going to happen until they had full disclosure.
Spike's last thought before exhaustion finally claimed him was he wished he had been wrong—it might've been a bit less emotionally straining—on both of them.
to be continued in A Serendipitous Beginning - Chapter Seven