History Repeats (4/?: Memories and Metaphors the Second)
Angelus
See first chapter for disclaimer, etc.

~*~

She can't remember the last time she did housecleaning. With all the chaos in her life she rarely gets the chance, but her shift's not 'till late tonight, Dawn's at school, Xander's at the construction site, Anya's at the Magic Box and forbids distractions while she works, lest it lead to a missed sale and lost money, all leaving her here alone. Again. She needs something to do; some sort of busywork to keep her mind off of sexy, peroxided British vampires that she shouldn't be fantasizing about.

The garage took the longest. Xander had pulled the car she still did not know how to drive out into the driveway and she has scrubbed the concrete walls and floor as if her life depended on it. And it did, in a way; the more she's thinking about housework, the less she's thinking about the affair that could potentially destroy the life she's worked so hard to build for herself, even if only by default.

The kitchen is clean, as is the attic, the basement, the living room, and the bathroom. Dawn and Willow's rooms she'll let them clean themselves. Now she only has her own bedroom left to do.

At first it's routine; take the bed linens to the laundry room, vacuum the floor, straighten the shelves. Then she goes into the drawers and she gets herself into trouble.

She takes a deep, cleansing breath before opening the drawer on the bottom left-hand side of her dresser. She pulls it all the way out, and carries it back to her bed before she actually begins looking through it.

When she was in fifth grade, she started building her "boy box". Even at the time it had sounded like a stupid idea, but Kim did it, and Kim was popular, so therefore she longed to be like Kim. It had started simple: notes she and her crush, Robert, had passed back and forth; a bracelet from her eighth-grade boyfriend, Chris; the paper flower Pike had given her that she'd salvaged from the wreckage that was at one time the Hemery High School Gymnasium. And then came those things that had happened all too recently.

She still has the bouquet of roses he sent her on Valentine's day, note in his angled, Spartan handwriting and all. Just looking at the dried arrangement sends shivers down her spine. Below are happier memories: the cross he gave her when they first ran into one another; the diary that she thought he had read, chronicling their meeting; the corsage he bought her for prom; and, of course, the Claddagh ring.

Next come the post-graduation items: letters with his return address in Los Angeles; a necklace that he had sent her for this past Christmas that she still couldn't bring herself to wear; one of his business cards; a pilfered menu from the restaurant they'd eaten at all four times she'd been there; and the deep purple rose he had had delivered to her house on her twenty-first birthday.

That's where the memories of Angel stop. She has very few of Riley; the book she dropped on his head, a daisy he'd tucked behind her ear on their picnic, and a few Initiative memorabilia. Only a Slayer, she realizes, would have a boy box that included a mini taser gun. She still has a poster taken from the wall of the Bronze of Bif Naked, the band that was playing the night she made the mistake of sleeping with Parker, to remind her what happens when she ignores her better judgement.

She hasn't added to the box until just recently, and the items she's been adding are greatly disturbing: Spike's handcuffs; the flowers he left on her front porch in memory of her mother; a candle and one of his shirts taken from his crypt when she was invisible; the "wedding ring" he'd given her under Willow's spell.

She sifts through the items once more, her gaze resting on the small silver Claddagh. The ring itself is gorgeous. She's always liked the design, even before Angel explained its symbolism to her. Which way would she turn it now, she muses thoughtfully, if she were to put it on her finger? What was Spike to her - friend? Boyfriend? Lover? Enemy?

How did you identify a boyfriend as opposed to a friend or a lover? Or an enemy, even, in her case? He's everything this ring represents; he loves her, he's loyal, and he's a friend.

If she really thinks about it, he's her best friend, in fact. She's able to tell him things that Xander and Willow and Giles would back at. But he remains calm, unflappable, and supportive. No matter what happens in this world, she always has Spike to fall back on.

He's loyal almost to a fault, really. Sometimes she doesn't think she can go another minute without his sarcastic wit to right whatever's wrong in the world. But there are those times where she feels like he's suffocating her. Then she yells at him, and he blends back into the scenery until she has to seek him out.

Is this love? She wonders. She has no doubt of the fact that he loves her; there's no doubt about it. But what does she feel? Does she want the man - vampire - that knows exactly when to be around and when to back off; the one who makes her whole body tingle in anticipation with one feather-light touch; the one who doesn't kiss her, but worships her with his mouth?

Does she want the Billy Idol hairdo, the clothing that was bought in the eighties and probably hasn't been washed since? The taste and smell of blood and cigarettes and alcohol and peroxide and musty leather lingering all around him? The uncountable complications that come with being a Slayer and falling in love with a vampire?

Her mind made up, she slips the ring on her finger, tip of the heart pointing towards her own.