TITLE: "Wagering History (2/4)"
BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings
E-MAIL: auralissa@aol.com
SUMMARY: A game of spades provides high stakes and reveals
everything. Buffy/Spike
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Post-"Intervention"
DISTRIBUTION: My site,
http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html, and wherever else
it is wanted, provided that permission is requested prior to
archival
DISCLAIMER: The characters of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Spike are
the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions. I don't
own them; I just make them have lots of sex. But I haven't heard
any complaints yet, so... ;-)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This piece is dedicated to the players of our own
never-ending game of Spades: Barbara and Megan. I will always
bring that bitch home. g Also, thanks to my beta-reading pal,
Heather. :)
*****
You know that old expression, "I would love to be a fly on *that*
wall?" It took me the longest time to figure it out. I've never
been good with old wives' sayings and metaphors. Believe me,
interpreting poetry in my English 101 class was absolute hell. I
think it was my mother who told me what it meant eventually, and
I've never forgotten it. There must be, like, ten thousand flies
out there trading stories about what they've heard on my walls.
But this had to be one of the best walls of all.
Spike was a damn good spades player. He had the strategy all
worked out, never overbidding, instinctively putting down the
right cards. And I have to admit, I was pretty good at it, too.
Together, we were completely kicking ass, and Willow and Xander
didn't look too happy about it. Too bad for them, because I was
thrilled about it. How could I not be?
The score thus far:
"The Sharks": 210 points, 6 bags
"The Mean People Who Do Not Get the Fun of Team Names": 450
points, 3 bags
"Rude Remarks Made By Spike": 19
I was starting to keep my own score. Spike had smoked thirteen
cigarettes and drunk two beers. I had downed three beers and had
considered bumming two cigarettes. Willow had told two stories
that involved her sixth grade sense of style (involving, oh yes,
a mullet). Xander had shared one embarrassing sexual escapade
with Anya, and Spike had been loudly revolted.
Actually, Spike had been pretty tolerable the whole evening, and
we'd gotten some pretty juicy stuff out of him. My personal
favorite had to be the time when he wrecked Giles's car. He had
never told us why the Gilesmobile was trashed, but hearing that
Spike didn't know how to drive stick really amused me. And it was
really strange to hear everyone joshing around and forgetting
history while we sort of, well, got along.
A high-pitched giggle dragged me back into reality, and Willow
covered her mouth with her hand as she tipped back her head and
laughed. "Oh my God, you *so* didn't have sex with Anya in
Giles's bathroom," she howled, and Xander turned thirty shades of
red, running his hand through his hair.
"Well, he was all out of town and it was my parents' anniversary,
which meant a marathon of fighting," he muttered, and Spike was
snickering while lighting what had to be his fourteenth
cigarette. "What else were we supposed to do?"
I leaned in, arching my eyebrows at him, trying to hold back my
own laughter. "Dude, you're supposed to, like, go in the car or
something," I said, feeling a little lightheaded. Oops, my beer
buzz must have wandered into drunk and was quickly approaching
wasted. "Xand, honestly - Giles's bathroom? The hell?"
Spike took another swig of his Sam Addams and snorted. "I have to
hand that one to you, boy," he said, a wicked grin on his face.
That same wicked grin he liked to flash at me. It's the one where
he looks like a contented feline, with the sly arrogance and the
blatant sexuality. That stupid smile always makes me shift in my
seat. "The place looks like a bleeding bordello. London-style
though, so it's stodgy."
I narrowed my eyes at him, watching him smoke his cigarette. "I
thought that you were *from* London," I said. Spike was anything
*but* stodgy. Raunchy, brash, crude, loud - these were much
better adjectives for a creature like Spike.
Spike nodded and picked up the deck of cards, the cigarette now
hanging yet again from his lower lip. There is no way to express
how much I hate when he does that. It makes his mouth look too
nice, too pretty, and those are *so* not good when associated
with Spike. He doesn't need to be vulnerable or appealing. He
needs to be disgusting. Maybe he could belch. Maybe that would
help. Maybe that would help me forget what his too nice, too
pretty, too swollen mouth tasted like.
"I am from London," he said. "But I haven't lost in a while, so
I'm not going any further." WIth that, he started to shuffle the
deck.
Wow.
His hands were... So fast. There was nothing but a flurry of
white skin and black nail polish as Spike shuffled the cards,
flying back and forth, never missing a step. How did his hands
get so fast? I had never seen anything like it before. The speed,
the precision, the careless grace. It was almost beautiful to
watch, and I was mesmerized, eyes glazed over and watching only
his fingers.
Nimbly, he cut the cards and dealt them, and I realized that
Spike actually had very nice hands for a guy. Riley had very
large hands to go along with his very large body, and they
sometimes suffocated me. I used to lay awake in bed after we made
love, thinking of how he buried me when he made love to me. Spike
couldn't do that to me. He was too slender, and his fingers were
very long and elegant. Nail polish was a good look for him. Most
guys couldn't pull it off, but on him, it just made... Sense.
Okay, so maybe I was more drunk than I thought I was.
A little dry-mouthed and a lot flustered, I picked up my cards
and lit up like a Christmas tree. Both jokers, three aces, one of
which being the ace of spades, two kings, and the face cards in
spades. "Ooo, I have a *great* hand," I said, and Spike raised
his eyebrows over his cards.
"Do you really?" he asked, a sour twist to his mouth. "Because
mine is a steaming pile of shit."
Dainty little Willow wrinkled her nose in distaste and amusement,
and Xander quirked his mouth. "Always so colorful," he said
wryly. "Unlike my hand. It's boring. No personality to it
whatsoever."
"Like Riley?" Spike asked snidely, and I glowered at him with a
cold look on my face. That was uncalled for, and I could feel
Willow and Xander tense beside me.
"Not kosher, Spike," I said forcefully, and Spike actually looked
guilty and a little shame-faced. Like he'd lost points or
something. But I wasn't keeping score. Really, I wasn't. So I
didn't know that Spike had smoked thirteen cigarettes and was
working on his fourteenth, had now made twenty nasty remarks, and
had ten really extraordinary fingers.
Nope. I wasn't keeping score at all.
We ended up betting six books, since Spike was absolutely
pessimistic about his hand. Willow and Xander threw in seven, and
I really got worried. I had shared only three secrets so far, all
of them fairly pedestrian, but there was something really strange
starting. For starters, I was pretty sure that I was drunk
bordering on plastered, and when I'm drunk, pretty much
everything comes out. It's why I rarely drink. As if that wasn't
bad enough, I was also starting to think that Spike was somewhat
interesting. Again, bad. Very bad.
The hand played itself out badly. I did a good job, don't get me
wrong, but Spike's hand was... Well, it was awful. Like, it
sucked big time. He had almost all the hearts in the deck, and so
it was pretty much up to me to win. But I could only do so much
when Willow was kicking ass left and right, and when it was all
over, we had five books and they had eight.
I never knew that Willow could be such a bitchy winner. I guess
it's the educational competitive drive in her, but she was
bobbing her head left and right as she ticked off the score. "Uh-
oh, looks like we get more Spike and Buffy theatre," she sang in
a cheery little tone.
Spike leaned in close, so close that I could smell the cigarettes
on his breath. "If I strangle her, will I get kicked out of the
game?" he asked, and I saw a smile blossoming on his mouth. The
spark in his eye. Wow, I never realized that Spike had blue eyes
before. Blue like rivers. And the smile...
I couldn't help it; his grin was infectious. I leaned in and
smiled back at him, shaking my head and never letting my eyes
leave his. I don't think I could have looked away if I tried, and
so I didn't even bother. "After that display, strangling her
would be welcomed," I said, and there was a moment of silence
there, with the two of us smiling at each other like big dumb
idiots. I think I might have glowed at him.
Uncomfortably, Willow cleared her throat and looked pointedly at
me, and for some strange reason, that irritated me. She's not my
mother. She doesn't have any control over me, and sometimes, she
thinks that she is the high moral authority on everything. When
she looks at me with that highbrow attitude and that little
disapproving look on her face, it makes me feel about ten inches
tall and brings out the rebel in me.
It brought out the rebel in me until I realized that she was
right. I *was* smiling a little too brightly. What if the smile
said too much? What if it let them know what I had been enjoying
Spike's company a little too much lately, that I had let my mouth
slide across his and that I wanted to do it again?
For the benefit of Willow and Xander, I let the smile fade a
little bit, but if Spike looked hard enough, he could have found
it still lingering on my lips. I didn't erase it completely, and
that was probably not a smart thing to do. I would probably
regret that later. But not at the moment. In that instant, all
that I wanted to do was smile at him and feel a little hot under
the collar.
"So, Buff, reveal a deep, dark secret to us," Xander said, and I
swallowed a little. Oh, God. A secret to tell. I had so many of
them, ranging from the ridiculous to the heartbreaking. But there
was a look on Spike's face, a sort of invitation to be completely
open, and for some reason, I trusted him. What a stupid thing to
do, I know, but I just did. I just wanted to confess.
"I never loved Riley," I said in a hushed voice, and everyone
stared. It was late; there were not many people in the Bronze and
an old Grant Lee Buffalo album was playing throughout the club. I
could be quiet and still be honest. Nervously, I shrugged my
shoulder a little and gave a soft half-smile. "No, I did love
him, but I wasn't in love with him. I cared about him. Part of me
still does, but there was no... Passion. No spark, you know?"
Xander had turned away from me, and I knew that it hurt to hear
that. He had liked Riley, had suffered from his absence, and I
think it was the testosterone factor. Riley was someone that he
admired, that he looked up to as a role model, and I think that a
part of him still blames me for his addiction to vampires and for
driving him away from Sunnydale. Like I broke his sacred idol and
never bothered to fix it.
But Riley never gave me a chance.
Uncomfortably, I continued. "He's a good man, don't get me wrong.
And he was good to me, but he wasn't what I needed. Wasn't what I
wanted. I don't know what I want, really. And when we were in bed
together..." Spike blanched a little at that, and it made me feel
even more weird. It was strange to see Spike so openly jealous
over me. We hated each other. Now... I don't know. I just don't.
I swallowed again and went on. "When we were in bed together, I
felt like he was trying to suffocate me. Like he wanted to drown
out what I was so that I could be his. It made me afraid. And,
well, that's it. That's my secret."
I wanted a cigarette. One of his cigarettes. The kind that was
hanging from his lower lip. Instead, I just took a long gulp of
my beer, and it was gone. I didn't need anymore anyway. The
others just looked away, except for Spike, who was staring right
at me, like I said something that made him think.
"My turn," he said in a quiet, honeyed voice. He really did have
a nice voice when he wasn't using it to be a jackass. "To
backtrack for those who weren't there for our lovely night of
buffalo wings and storytelling, before I was a vampire, I was a
poet."
I'd never seen a spit-take done live and in person, but that's
just what Xander did. He sprayed his beer all over Willow's
pretty little pink Abercrombie & Fitch top, and she was too
shocked to notice. Her jaw was practically on the floor.
"What?" Xander asked incredulously. "I repeat, what? You were a
poet?"
Spike glared at Xander. "Yes, and I was also a prissy little
wanker who lived with his mum," he said. "Even got the
photographic evidence to prove it." With that, he pulled out a
stained and beaten leather wallet from his stained and beaten
leather coat, and procured a small yellow tintype from it.
Eagerly, I snatched it from his fingers. I had been dying to see
a picture of pre-vamp Spike ever since the night he told me about
it.
And he was wrong. Well, not about the prissiness. But he wasn't
nothing. The picture showed a young man with a mop of floppy,
unmanageable blonde hair and even a little pair of glasses
perched on his nose. He had a dumb smile on his face, like he
hated being photographed and was nervous about it. But he
looked... Well, he looked kind of like Giles. Spike was once
Giles and Giles was once Spike. That's so damn weird.
Xander took the picture from me and just started laughing
hysterically. Willow took it and smiled. I could tell that she
saw what I saw in it. She saw that Spike had once been shy, had
been doubtful and insecure, and that he was sort of cute. "I
think you were cute," she said in a timid little voice and passed
it back to Spike, who seemed oddly reassured by her. Good for
Willow.
"Thanks," he said, pocketing the wallet and the tintype, and then
he glared at Xander, who was still laughing like a heyena in the
corner. "You know, not as funny as you think it is. I don't laugh
at you and you look as stupid as I did. So shut your gob and quit
your bloody laughing."
Wheezing through the last fit of laughter, Xander started to calm
himself down, red in the face. "Oh, God, I hope that we win this
game," he sighed, "because that would be the best story in the
world to tell Giles." I had to snicker a little at that, because
he was right. Giles would howl if he heard that the big bad had
once been a namby-pampy little poet. With glasses.
Spike flipped Xander the British version of the bird, and Xander
didn't get it. I didn't bother to explain. "Anyway, that's not
the rest of the story," he said, and I was intrigued. Another
hole in Spike's history to fill in. "I was in love with a woman
back then. Cecily. She was a high-society bird, drop-dead
beautiful and I was a loser. She told me that I was nothing to
her, and that night, Dru made me." He was succinct with this,
like he didn't care if Willow and Xander heard the same version
that he told me. "But after I was turned, I came back to London
to have my revenge."
A light sparked in his eye, and I was glad that it did, because
it reminded of me of what Spike was. He was a killer, and he
loved being a killer. "Cor, those were some good times," he
reminisced. "Angel and I were just ruthless, and Dru was so
thrilled. Darla was mostly bored, but the stupid bint mostly
wanted to go shopping and be pretentious." I bit down on a
chuckle at that. "Anyway, I saw her. I saw Cecily, and I wanted
to kill her. Wanted to shag her. I didn't know what I wanted. She
had fucked me up good."
He looked only at me. The rest of the world faded away. It was
just Spike and me, surrounding each other, as he held my eyes and
looked at me. "I didn't kill her," he murmured. "Couldn't. I let
her go, and three days later, Angel beheaded her and left her
head on my doorstep."
I did not know. I never knew. But it left me breathless, left me
hurt and confused, like the rug had been taken from under my
feet. I felt like I was falling and would never surface. I didn't
know what to say to him. He had never killed Cecily, and it had
been my lover, my sweet Angel, who had done such a cruel thing.
What did this mean? I didn't know what to think.
And I was lost in his eyes. Hopelessly lost. All I could do was
swim in the blue around his pupils, drown in them. All that I
could see was Spike, the vampire who had once hurt me and now
made me somehow... Sad. It was sad what had happened to him.
"It's three a.m.," Willow said in a hushed voice. "I hate to
forfeit and all, but it's late and Tara will worry." Quietly, she
looked at the score sheet. "You guys won, so, um,
congratulations." She fidgeted with her fingers for a minute, and
then she did something that really shocked the hell out of me.
She stood up and ruffled Spike's hair. Like, she actually touched
him. "See you around, Spike."
Xander yawned and stretched, and then looked at Spike and me
awkwardly. "So, um, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't tell
Giles that I had sex with Anya in his bathroom," he said, and I
just smiled broadly while Spike crossed his fingers over his
heart.
"Oh, your secret's safe with me," he said with a sneer. Man,
Giles was going to be super-pissed.
The losing team walked out of the Bronze, and I looked across
from me at Spike. "So, um, I should get going, too," I said, my
fingers fidgeting with each other in my lap. "Dawn's at home with
Giles, and I know that he probably wants to get home, and I have
to take her to school in the morning and..."
"Do you want to play gin?" he asked, and I sighed.
"Yes."
I was doomed.
*****
(end part two)
*****
BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings
E-MAIL: auralissa@aol.com
SUMMARY: A game of spades provides high stakes and reveals
everything. Buffy/Spike
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Post-"Intervention"
DISTRIBUTION: My site,
http://geocities.com/anniesjennings/index.html, and wherever else
it is wanted, provided that permission is requested prior to
archival
DISCLAIMER: The characters of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Spike are
the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions. I don't
own them; I just make them have lots of sex. But I haven't heard
any complaints yet, so... ;-)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This piece is dedicated to the players of our own
never-ending game of Spades: Barbara and Megan. I will always
bring that bitch home. g Also, thanks to my beta-reading pal,
Heather. :)
*****
You know that old expression, "I would love to be a fly on *that*
wall?" It took me the longest time to figure it out. I've never
been good with old wives' sayings and metaphors. Believe me,
interpreting poetry in my English 101 class was absolute hell. I
think it was my mother who told me what it meant eventually, and
I've never forgotten it. There must be, like, ten thousand flies
out there trading stories about what they've heard on my walls.
But this had to be one of the best walls of all.
Spike was a damn good spades player. He had the strategy all
worked out, never overbidding, instinctively putting down the
right cards. And I have to admit, I was pretty good at it, too.
Together, we were completely kicking ass, and Willow and Xander
didn't look too happy about it. Too bad for them, because I was
thrilled about it. How could I not be?
The score thus far:
"The Sharks": 210 points, 6 bags
"The Mean People Who Do Not Get the Fun of Team Names": 450
points, 3 bags
"Rude Remarks Made By Spike": 19
I was starting to keep my own score. Spike had smoked thirteen
cigarettes and drunk two beers. I had downed three beers and had
considered bumming two cigarettes. Willow had told two stories
that involved her sixth grade sense of style (involving, oh yes,
a mullet). Xander had shared one embarrassing sexual escapade
with Anya, and Spike had been loudly revolted.
Actually, Spike had been pretty tolerable the whole evening, and
we'd gotten some pretty juicy stuff out of him. My personal
favorite had to be the time when he wrecked Giles's car. He had
never told us why the Gilesmobile was trashed, but hearing that
Spike didn't know how to drive stick really amused me. And it was
really strange to hear everyone joshing around and forgetting
history while we sort of, well, got along.
A high-pitched giggle dragged me back into reality, and Willow
covered her mouth with her hand as she tipped back her head and
laughed. "Oh my God, you *so* didn't have sex with Anya in
Giles's bathroom," she howled, and Xander turned thirty shades of
red, running his hand through his hair.
"Well, he was all out of town and it was my parents' anniversary,
which meant a marathon of fighting," he muttered, and Spike was
snickering while lighting what had to be his fourteenth
cigarette. "What else were we supposed to do?"
I leaned in, arching my eyebrows at him, trying to hold back my
own laughter. "Dude, you're supposed to, like, go in the car or
something," I said, feeling a little lightheaded. Oops, my beer
buzz must have wandered into drunk and was quickly approaching
wasted. "Xand, honestly - Giles's bathroom? The hell?"
Spike took another swig of his Sam Addams and snorted. "I have to
hand that one to you, boy," he said, a wicked grin on his face.
That same wicked grin he liked to flash at me. It's the one where
he looks like a contented feline, with the sly arrogance and the
blatant sexuality. That stupid smile always makes me shift in my
seat. "The place looks like a bleeding bordello. London-style
though, so it's stodgy."
I narrowed my eyes at him, watching him smoke his cigarette. "I
thought that you were *from* London," I said. Spike was anything
*but* stodgy. Raunchy, brash, crude, loud - these were much
better adjectives for a creature like Spike.
Spike nodded and picked up the deck of cards, the cigarette now
hanging yet again from his lower lip. There is no way to express
how much I hate when he does that. It makes his mouth look too
nice, too pretty, and those are *so* not good when associated
with Spike. He doesn't need to be vulnerable or appealing. He
needs to be disgusting. Maybe he could belch. Maybe that would
help. Maybe that would help me forget what his too nice, too
pretty, too swollen mouth tasted like.
"I am from London," he said. "But I haven't lost in a while, so
I'm not going any further." WIth that, he started to shuffle the
deck.
Wow.
His hands were... So fast. There was nothing but a flurry of
white skin and black nail polish as Spike shuffled the cards,
flying back and forth, never missing a step. How did his hands
get so fast? I had never seen anything like it before. The speed,
the precision, the careless grace. It was almost beautiful to
watch, and I was mesmerized, eyes glazed over and watching only
his fingers.
Nimbly, he cut the cards and dealt them, and I realized that
Spike actually had very nice hands for a guy. Riley had very
large hands to go along with his very large body, and they
sometimes suffocated me. I used to lay awake in bed after we made
love, thinking of how he buried me when he made love to me. Spike
couldn't do that to me. He was too slender, and his fingers were
very long and elegant. Nail polish was a good look for him. Most
guys couldn't pull it off, but on him, it just made... Sense.
Okay, so maybe I was more drunk than I thought I was.
A little dry-mouthed and a lot flustered, I picked up my cards
and lit up like a Christmas tree. Both jokers, three aces, one of
which being the ace of spades, two kings, and the face cards in
spades. "Ooo, I have a *great* hand," I said, and Spike raised
his eyebrows over his cards.
"Do you really?" he asked, a sour twist to his mouth. "Because
mine is a steaming pile of shit."
Dainty little Willow wrinkled her nose in distaste and amusement,
and Xander quirked his mouth. "Always so colorful," he said
wryly. "Unlike my hand. It's boring. No personality to it
whatsoever."
"Like Riley?" Spike asked snidely, and I glowered at him with a
cold look on my face. That was uncalled for, and I could feel
Willow and Xander tense beside me.
"Not kosher, Spike," I said forcefully, and Spike actually looked
guilty and a little shame-faced. Like he'd lost points or
something. But I wasn't keeping score. Really, I wasn't. So I
didn't know that Spike had smoked thirteen cigarettes and was
working on his fourteenth, had now made twenty nasty remarks, and
had ten really extraordinary fingers.
Nope. I wasn't keeping score at all.
We ended up betting six books, since Spike was absolutely
pessimistic about his hand. Willow and Xander threw in seven, and
I really got worried. I had shared only three secrets so far, all
of them fairly pedestrian, but there was something really strange
starting. For starters, I was pretty sure that I was drunk
bordering on plastered, and when I'm drunk, pretty much
everything comes out. It's why I rarely drink. As if that wasn't
bad enough, I was also starting to think that Spike was somewhat
interesting. Again, bad. Very bad.
The hand played itself out badly. I did a good job, don't get me
wrong, but Spike's hand was... Well, it was awful. Like, it
sucked big time. He had almost all the hearts in the deck, and so
it was pretty much up to me to win. But I could only do so much
when Willow was kicking ass left and right, and when it was all
over, we had five books and they had eight.
I never knew that Willow could be such a bitchy winner. I guess
it's the educational competitive drive in her, but she was
bobbing her head left and right as she ticked off the score. "Uh-
oh, looks like we get more Spike and Buffy theatre," she sang in
a cheery little tone.
Spike leaned in close, so close that I could smell the cigarettes
on his breath. "If I strangle her, will I get kicked out of the
game?" he asked, and I saw a smile blossoming on his mouth. The
spark in his eye. Wow, I never realized that Spike had blue eyes
before. Blue like rivers. And the smile...
I couldn't help it; his grin was infectious. I leaned in and
smiled back at him, shaking my head and never letting my eyes
leave his. I don't think I could have looked away if I tried, and
so I didn't even bother. "After that display, strangling her
would be welcomed," I said, and there was a moment of silence
there, with the two of us smiling at each other like big dumb
idiots. I think I might have glowed at him.
Uncomfortably, Willow cleared her throat and looked pointedly at
me, and for some strange reason, that irritated me. She's not my
mother. She doesn't have any control over me, and sometimes, she
thinks that she is the high moral authority on everything. When
she looks at me with that highbrow attitude and that little
disapproving look on her face, it makes me feel about ten inches
tall and brings out the rebel in me.
It brought out the rebel in me until I realized that she was
right. I *was* smiling a little too brightly. What if the smile
said too much? What if it let them know what I had been enjoying
Spike's company a little too much lately, that I had let my mouth
slide across his and that I wanted to do it again?
For the benefit of Willow and Xander, I let the smile fade a
little bit, but if Spike looked hard enough, he could have found
it still lingering on my lips. I didn't erase it completely, and
that was probably not a smart thing to do. I would probably
regret that later. But not at the moment. In that instant, all
that I wanted to do was smile at him and feel a little hot under
the collar.
"So, Buff, reveal a deep, dark secret to us," Xander said, and I
swallowed a little. Oh, God. A secret to tell. I had so many of
them, ranging from the ridiculous to the heartbreaking. But there
was a look on Spike's face, a sort of invitation to be completely
open, and for some reason, I trusted him. What a stupid thing to
do, I know, but I just did. I just wanted to confess.
"I never loved Riley," I said in a hushed voice, and everyone
stared. It was late; there were not many people in the Bronze and
an old Grant Lee Buffalo album was playing throughout the club. I
could be quiet and still be honest. Nervously, I shrugged my
shoulder a little and gave a soft half-smile. "No, I did love
him, but I wasn't in love with him. I cared about him. Part of me
still does, but there was no... Passion. No spark, you know?"
Xander had turned away from me, and I knew that it hurt to hear
that. He had liked Riley, had suffered from his absence, and I
think it was the testosterone factor. Riley was someone that he
admired, that he looked up to as a role model, and I think that a
part of him still blames me for his addiction to vampires and for
driving him away from Sunnydale. Like I broke his sacred idol and
never bothered to fix it.
But Riley never gave me a chance.
Uncomfortably, I continued. "He's a good man, don't get me wrong.
And he was good to me, but he wasn't what I needed. Wasn't what I
wanted. I don't know what I want, really. And when we were in bed
together..." Spike blanched a little at that, and it made me feel
even more weird. It was strange to see Spike so openly jealous
over me. We hated each other. Now... I don't know. I just don't.
I swallowed again and went on. "When we were in bed together, I
felt like he was trying to suffocate me. Like he wanted to drown
out what I was so that I could be his. It made me afraid. And,
well, that's it. That's my secret."
I wanted a cigarette. One of his cigarettes. The kind that was
hanging from his lower lip. Instead, I just took a long gulp of
my beer, and it was gone. I didn't need anymore anyway. The
others just looked away, except for Spike, who was staring right
at me, like I said something that made him think.
"My turn," he said in a quiet, honeyed voice. He really did have
a nice voice when he wasn't using it to be a jackass. "To
backtrack for those who weren't there for our lovely night of
buffalo wings and storytelling, before I was a vampire, I was a
poet."
I'd never seen a spit-take done live and in person, but that's
just what Xander did. He sprayed his beer all over Willow's
pretty little pink Abercrombie & Fitch top, and she was too
shocked to notice. Her jaw was practically on the floor.
"What?" Xander asked incredulously. "I repeat, what? You were a
poet?"
Spike glared at Xander. "Yes, and I was also a prissy little
wanker who lived with his mum," he said. "Even got the
photographic evidence to prove it." With that, he pulled out a
stained and beaten leather wallet from his stained and beaten
leather coat, and procured a small yellow tintype from it.
Eagerly, I snatched it from his fingers. I had been dying to see
a picture of pre-vamp Spike ever since the night he told me about
it.
And he was wrong. Well, not about the prissiness. But he wasn't
nothing. The picture showed a young man with a mop of floppy,
unmanageable blonde hair and even a little pair of glasses
perched on his nose. He had a dumb smile on his face, like he
hated being photographed and was nervous about it. But he
looked... Well, he looked kind of like Giles. Spike was once
Giles and Giles was once Spike. That's so damn weird.
Xander took the picture from me and just started laughing
hysterically. Willow took it and smiled. I could tell that she
saw what I saw in it. She saw that Spike had once been shy, had
been doubtful and insecure, and that he was sort of cute. "I
think you were cute," she said in a timid little voice and passed
it back to Spike, who seemed oddly reassured by her. Good for
Willow.
"Thanks," he said, pocketing the wallet and the tintype, and then
he glared at Xander, who was still laughing like a heyena in the
corner. "You know, not as funny as you think it is. I don't laugh
at you and you look as stupid as I did. So shut your gob and quit
your bloody laughing."
Wheezing through the last fit of laughter, Xander started to calm
himself down, red in the face. "Oh, God, I hope that we win this
game," he sighed, "because that would be the best story in the
world to tell Giles." I had to snicker a little at that, because
he was right. Giles would howl if he heard that the big bad had
once been a namby-pampy little poet. With glasses.
Spike flipped Xander the British version of the bird, and Xander
didn't get it. I didn't bother to explain. "Anyway, that's not
the rest of the story," he said, and I was intrigued. Another
hole in Spike's history to fill in. "I was in love with a woman
back then. Cecily. She was a high-society bird, drop-dead
beautiful and I was a loser. She told me that I was nothing to
her, and that night, Dru made me." He was succinct with this,
like he didn't care if Willow and Xander heard the same version
that he told me. "But after I was turned, I came back to London
to have my revenge."
A light sparked in his eye, and I was glad that it did, because
it reminded of me of what Spike was. He was a killer, and he
loved being a killer. "Cor, those were some good times," he
reminisced. "Angel and I were just ruthless, and Dru was so
thrilled. Darla was mostly bored, but the stupid bint mostly
wanted to go shopping and be pretentious." I bit down on a
chuckle at that. "Anyway, I saw her. I saw Cecily, and I wanted
to kill her. Wanted to shag her. I didn't know what I wanted. She
had fucked me up good."
He looked only at me. The rest of the world faded away. It was
just Spike and me, surrounding each other, as he held my eyes and
looked at me. "I didn't kill her," he murmured. "Couldn't. I let
her go, and three days later, Angel beheaded her and left her
head on my doorstep."
I did not know. I never knew. But it left me breathless, left me
hurt and confused, like the rug had been taken from under my
feet. I felt like I was falling and would never surface. I didn't
know what to say to him. He had never killed Cecily, and it had
been my lover, my sweet Angel, who had done such a cruel thing.
What did this mean? I didn't know what to think.
And I was lost in his eyes. Hopelessly lost. All I could do was
swim in the blue around his pupils, drown in them. All that I
could see was Spike, the vampire who had once hurt me and now
made me somehow... Sad. It was sad what had happened to him.
"It's three a.m.," Willow said in a hushed voice. "I hate to
forfeit and all, but it's late and Tara will worry." Quietly, she
looked at the score sheet. "You guys won, so, um,
congratulations." She fidgeted with her fingers for a minute, and
then she did something that really shocked the hell out of me.
She stood up and ruffled Spike's hair. Like, she actually touched
him. "See you around, Spike."
Xander yawned and stretched, and then looked at Spike and me
awkwardly. "So, um, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't tell
Giles that I had sex with Anya in his bathroom," he said, and I
just smiled broadly while Spike crossed his fingers over his
heart.
"Oh, your secret's safe with me," he said with a sneer. Man,
Giles was going to be super-pissed.
The losing team walked out of the Bronze, and I looked across
from me at Spike. "So, um, I should get going, too," I said, my
fingers fidgeting with each other in my lap. "Dawn's at home with
Giles, and I know that he probably wants to get home, and I have
to take her to school in the morning and..."
"Do you want to play gin?" he asked, and I sighed.
"Yes."
I was doomed.
*****
(end part two)
*****
