CHAPTER TWO
The escalator moves jerkily to the second tier of the mall. Buffy shifts her packages restlessly, wishing that she could just run up ahead of everyone else. But presently a frowning woman with two unruly children is blocking her way. In the thirty seconds Buffy has been on the escalator, the woman has threatened the children with bodily harm at least twenty times, but apparently, "I swear to God! I'm going to whip you both until Christmas day if you don't behave!" isn't much of a warning for them.
Buffy has her own unruly child to contend with. Spike stands beside her, drumming his fingers on the railing as it glides beneath his hand. He jostles the Williams-Sonoma shopping bag, nearly banging it into the backside of one of the children in front of them.
"Honey, I know you're bored," Buffy says softly as she touches his hand. "I just have two more shops to go to and then we can go home, OK?"
"You said that sixteen shop ago, Buffy," Spike says with a dramatic sigh.
"Well, you can blame the sluggish economy for all the 50% sales going on. Anyway, I told you that you didn't have to come with me."
"Yeah, but that's only because we haven't been spending a lot of time together lately. Between your 72-hour work week at the Bronze and your moonlighting in the cemetery."
She knows this is true. When she gets home from the Bronze, it's almost always 3:00 in the morning. If she goes on Patrol afterward, sometimes that puts her arrival time at 5:00. Here lately she has been coming in just as the sun is cresting on the horizon. It's been almost a week since they have made love and that is unusual for them. But Buffy knows it's too soon to start singing "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" just yet. Once Christmas is over, things will get back to normal, she has promised him.
All this extra work for one day out of the calendar year seems ludicrous to him. He has begged and pleaded with her to not buy him anything at all. When she keeps on about it, he will suggest something frivolous like a Chia pet or a Clapper. The other night he was watching a show about Hugh Hefner and mentioned something about wanting a silk smoking jacket and he briefly caught the snap of a lightbulb going on over Buffy's head. He just hopes that she has also purchased a pipe so that he can complete the look.
Big Bad is spending Christmas with his two little bunnies, he thinks with a smile that turns into a laugh when he really reflects of the absurdity of what he has just though.
"What? What's so funny?" Buffy asks.
"Oh, nothing." Then his thoughts turn naughty as he imagines Buffy in a bunny outfit, doing the "dip" while she serves him a drink from a platter. "Will there be anything else, sir?" she asks huskily. "Just this," he answers. And suddenly she's not wearing the bunny outfit anymore. And he's finding uses for that powder puff tail that tease and delight her… "Mmmm…" he says aloud.
Buffy looks at him quizzically, but says nothing. Where ever he is, he seems to be enjoying himself.
They have finally finished the climb to the second floor and Buffy pulls out the list from her purse one more time. "OK, we got Xander and Anya covered down at Williams-Sonoma. Now Willow and Tara…I'm thinking…something a little Stevie Nicksish?"
"Fine. Let's look for a shop called the Edge of the Seventeen-Year-Old White Winged Dove then."
"I don't think we're going to find it here," she says with a smile, taking his hand.
"24-Hour Wicca World?"
"No."
"Lesbian Toys R Us?"
"Will you stop it!" she says, jabbing at him playfully.
"Let's have a look at the Mall Guide over here. Oh! Men's Wear! We're bound to find something for Willow there."
"Look, are you going to help me or are you just going to keep making jokes?"
"Can I do both?"
Buffy sighs and sets down her packages as she peruses the mall guide. There is a fair-haired girl rocking a stroller blocking her view and she politely excuses herself. When she is finally able to get a good look at the second floor map, the girl studies her.
"Buffy? Buffy Summers?" the girl asks incredulously.
Buffy stares at the girl, drawing a complete blank. "Yes?"
"Oh, my God! I can't believe it! I haven't seen you for ages!"
"Yeah, it's been a while…hasn't it?" Buffy says, a disingenuous smile lighting her face as she girl dives in for a hug. Over her shoulder, a baffled Spike mouths, "Who the hell…?" and Buffy pantomimes a "no fucking clue" look.
"God, it seems like yesterday that we were in Mr. Bronstein's French class, laughing at him reading Candide with that ridiculous Bronx accent," the girl continues.
"Yeah, that was a scream," Buffy says.
"I'll never forget the night I was coming out of the Bronze and that guy attacked me from behind. You came out of nowhere and threw the guy off me like he was nothing and he just…disappeared in a pile of cardboard boxes. I thought to myself then, 'Candyce Phelps, you're one lucky girl to know someone like Buffy Summers.' You so deserved that Class Protector award."
"Oh…thank you, Candyce," Buffy asks, grateful for the name-drop while simultaneously flipping through a yearbook in her mind. Nothing about this girl jars a single memory. There were a lot of students at Sunnydale High. Were Xander, Willow, Oz and Cordy the only ones she ever bothered to learn the names of?
"So, what about you? What have you been doing? Is this your husband?" Candyce asks, nodding to Spike.
"What? No! We're not married yet. This is my boyfriend, Spike," Buffy says, thinking it peculiar that she because Candyce has excellerated her maturity that Buffy must have done also.
"Oh, hello, Spike. Nice to meet you," Candyce says with scrutiny in her gaze. "Did you go to Sunnydale High, too?"
"Me? No. I went to school…abroad," he answers.
"Oh, then how did you two meet? At work?"
Buffy and Spike do a slow turn towards each other, knowing that if they answer yes, it would still be sort of true.
"We used to work for rival companies and they…merged at the beginning of the year." Spike explains slowly. "Now we work together."
"Oh really? What do you do?"
Buffy and Spike share another wary look. Spike is the cooler bullshitter, so she allows him to proceed.
"We take care of…pests. We're in the business of pest removal. Earwigs, mice, cockroaches, that sort of thing."
In the aftermath of Spike's explanation, Buffy is a little miffed at herself for passing the baton on this one.
"So…you're…exterminators?"
Spike puffs his cheeks out. "If you want to give it a name, yes."
"Then maybe you can help me out with the black widow spider problem I have in my basement. They're very poisonous, you know."
"We don't do spiders," Spike and Buffy reply in unison.
"Oh…" Candyce says. "Well, it's very interesting that you do that. I've never had a real job, unless you count the after school thing I did at Baskin Robbins my senior year. I got married right out of high school. And then about six months ago, this little one happened to me," Candyce says, bending to extract the blissfully sleeping bundle of joy from its stroller. She coos to the little one as it appears that he is waking and not wanting to, little fists pounding against its surfacing consciousness. "Shh…it's OK, Matthew. There's someone here that I want to meet. See the pretty blond girl? That's Buffy Summers. She saved Mommy's life one time."
The child whimpers a little and claws at his face, blue eyes blinking, tiny lips smacking together. Buffy takes one little hand in hers and gives it a shake. "Hello, Matthew."
"Would you like to hold him? I mean, if you think about it, if it weren't for you, he wouldn't be here because I wouldn't be here."
Buffy cannot remember the last time she held a baby. She thinks it might have been when her parents came home from the hospital with Dawn. But that hadn't really happened at all…Suddenly the squirming child is in her arms and she is compelled to create a cradle in the crook of her elbow for him. The baby looks up at her with wonder in his eyes. There is actually something just to the left of Buffy's head that is registering fascination in the infant. And in a flash, he grabs for one of Buffy's oversized silver hoops and tugs with all the might of a pro wrestler.
"Oh, owee, owee, owee," Buffy says, gently trying to remove the tight fist from her jewelry.
"Oh, I've put all my hoops away until Matthew is at least fourteen at this point. They're all like crows at that age. They just love the shiny stuff. Come on, Matthew, honey. Let Buffy's earring go."
"That's OK, I got it," Buffy says after the little one's hand has been fully disengaged from the hoop. "Whew! Little Bam Bam here."
"Yeah, he's a tough one. I just started him on solids, and I think he's about ready to move onto steak and potatoes."
"Honey, I found the juicer. It was 45% off, so I went ahead and got the coffee maker your mother wanted," a masculine voice says as its owner approaches.
Buffy turns to see a tall, thin young man in a baseball cap and a beige barncoat swinging an over-stuffed shopping bag at his side.
"Oh, great! And did you find the George Foreman grill too?" Candyce asks.
"Got that too," the man beams.
"Wonderful! Stuart, this is an old friend of mine from high school. Buffy Summers. And this is her boyfriend, Spike."
"Oh. Good to meet you both! Are you out shopping today?" he asks brightly.
No, we're building to scale miniatures of early Ford motor cars, you window licker, Spike growls to himself.
"Oh, yes. Shopping. Gotta do the shopping thing. Necessary evil this time of year," Buffy natters on.
Buffy hands the baby back to his rightful owner, having to disintangle the baby's fist from a lock of her golden hair. She laughs it off as the baby settles back into his mother's arms.
"I know a lot of people think I'm too young to have a baby," Candyce says with a certain sadness in her voice. "But two years ago, Stu was diagnosed with leukemia. We didn't even think we'd be able to have a child with all the radiation treatments he had to undergo. So, during his last remission, we took a chance. And we got our little miracle."
Her husband purses his lips and stares uncomfortably at the floor, scuffing a black tile with the toe of his Timberland.
"We don't know how much time we have together," Candyce continues. "So we figured we might as well go for it while we had the chance. Stu's been in remission for over a year now, but we're careful not to use words like cured just yet. Right now we just call ourselves blessed."
Stuart begins to sniffle a little and for a moment, Buffy thinks he is about to burst into tears. But then he says, "Oh, honey, right now I think we're being blessed with an early Christmas present from our boy. We should probably find a changing room."
Buffy didn't want to be rude, but she thought she smelled something when she was holding Matthew, and not just the grilled knockwurst/chow mein/pizza combo wafting up from the food court below.
"That's our little pooter!" Candyce says with apology in her eyes. "On that note, I think I'll make my way over to the ladies room. It was so nice to see you again, Buffy. We should get together sometime."
"Yes, we should," Buffy says, the full awkwardness of the situation hitting her with full-force.
The couple make a swift departure, heading over to the restrooms between the Foot Locker and the Wicks and Things. Buffy continues to stand there for a few minutes, watching the pair, being obviously such a pair. She imagines when they sit down for meals at restaurants, the waiter always asks politely, "And what will your wife be having tonight?" She thinks about their mailbox, crammed with Christmas cards, all addressed to Mr. and Mrs., with cheery return address labels in the corner. She thinks about how they think their time together will be short and fingers the watch around her neck. The ticking now throbs in her ears like her own heartbeat.
"What was that?" Spike says to her when they are alone.
"What do you mean?" she asks, her voice a ghost. They have begun to walk now and are making their way past the glass storefront of a boutique whose mannequins all look like S & M aficionados.
He takes her free hand and gives it a squeeze. "What you said to them."
"What I said to them?"
"Will you stop answering my questions with more questions.?"
"I will when I know what it is that I said to them."
"Sweetheart! 'We're not married…yet.' That's what you said."
"Oh. I did say that, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did."
"Well, it's true. We're not married yet."
"As though to imply one day…we may be?"
She didn't think about it that way when she said it. Or maybe she just wasn't thinking about what she was saying at all. It just popped out of her mouth. But now she is seeing that her words carried some resonance, some promise for him. She cannot say that she hasn't thought about it. While leafing through Anya's bridal magazines she will sometimes pause over the picture of a radiant bride all decked out in a white meringue of a dress and imagine her pert and dewy face under the tulle veil. When she wakes up next to him in the morning, or sometimes crawls into bed with him in the morning as it has been in the previous week, she knows that this is how she always wants it to be. Just the eight to ten hours she spends at work away from him are too long some days and when she comes home to him, she knows she really is home. If there is another person out there in the world for whom she is meant, she sometimes hopes that fate will reveal the identity of that man before she allows herself to fall more in love.
Now they are in front of a jewelry store. Some cruel, odd machination of circumstance has chosen this place for this particular part of their conversation and Buffy's heart surges again with that all too familiar roller coaster climb. Willingly, she allows Spike to lead her over to the window where an array of emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and diamond rings peek out from their velvet box shells. Her face pressed against the glass, she is dazzled by the display while thoughts of sunshine and happiness sing in her head. She feels her lover at her side, knows his presence before he even touches her, always. He is a shadow in his black ensemble, the scent of leather a lash against her senses. He is standing behind her, his arms folded tightly around her torso, his head on her shoulder. His lips touch the rim of her ear, dragging sensually as he breathes into the sensitive canal.
"Pick the one that strikes your fancy, love. I'll run in and buy it straight away," he whispers, kissing the side of her face.
She is as an infant, infatuated with shiny things. She reaches for the ring…
All at once she looks at the mirror behind the display. She sees herself, but she does not see him. She can see the indentions his hands are making on her camel coat and the impression of his chin on her shoulder, but not him. She catches a glimpse of two familiar figures, just behind her, walking slowly by. She sees their smiles, just briefly, and hears the wheels of the stroller skitter across the uneven faux brick surface of the walkway. She turns her head to see them, loaded down with packages, some tucked into the bottom of their child's vehicle along with a diaper bag and a teddy bear.
Spike has separated himself from her, standing a part to watch her thoughts because they are becoming clearer and clearer as Candyce and Stuart and little Matthew disappear from view.
His heart has felt many things since he fell for Buffy. Searing pain when he was continuously denied her affections. Soaring love, when she finally accepted him. Absolute hopelessness when he thought he was going to lose her. Complete jubulation when she was restored to health. And every day he feels in his heart that this is right and this is what he wanted, even as poor romantic William so long ago. Now his heart feels a shadow brush against it, as though the end has been revealed to it, and not to the rest of him. This bond they have is like nothing he has ever had and he would fight to the death to keep it as is. It is something he had worked for, bled for, almost died for. His heart has been challenged, his very being has been challenged in their relationship. But she has known all along what he is.
He heard her say the words, "we're not married yet" and he saw her hold a child. And he saw everything. More than a mirror could ever reveal.
"Darling, I can go in and buy you a ring, but I can't give you everything," he says, utterly embarrassed at the choke in his voice.
She hears this and her own heart gives way to an ache that shoots rays of pain down to her shoes. Too much, too too much like the past. The ugly past. Her mind flashes to a conversation held years before in a moonlit graveyard. She is struck by an unsettling wave of déjà vu. She wants to find a brake pedal and put a stop to all thoughts of forever and love always because it just doesn't happen. Not to her, anyway.
She turns to him and sees his pained expression. He has that anxious stare of a tennis player waiting for a serve. She wants to hold him, cradle him, tell him everything will be all right. But at the same time, she wants the same for herself because she is quaking inside, wanting to dissolve into tears. But she can't. She has to be strong. She has to be this woman of steel or else all the barriers will come down and she will be vulnerable to attack.
"You're my forever man," she says, touching his temple before he captures her hand and slides it down to his lips.
"Am I?" he says with urgency in his voice.
"Always and forever," she says, drawing him close.
She means it for now, he tells himself. She doesn't realize what forever means. Forever literally means forever to a vampire because they have the gift of everlasting unlife. But she is not immortal. She will die one day and he will be alone. He would never turn her because she would not be who she is, the girl he loves, the lady whose warm body lies beside him at night and chirps about defeating the evil beasties in the world, but not him. He is sacred to her. He knows this when she opens her eyes in the morning and looks at him and smiles, brushing his cheek and saying, "hmmm…"
He needs her more than she needed him that night her defenses were exhausted and she invited him in. He needs her more than she needed him when she asked him to protect Dawn. He needs her more than she needed him when he was the only one who knew the formula to divest her of her fever. He needs her more than blood.
It's as though a trap door to his life without Buffy has opened now. He couldn't…he wouldn't be able to go on. He knew that when he saw her fading in the hospital months before. He ached to hold back the shadows that threatened to steal her. And now, in the cheery atmosphere of the Christmastime mall, with all its paper mache snowmen and animatronic carollers singing tidings of comfort and great joy, he is desperate.
Dawn…bitty Buffy…not so much. She will die too. Not as soon as her sister. How long do Slayers live? A score and five is all. Twenty five years. That's the record. Twenty is what she has now, twenty-one is what she will have in February. I have her birthday on the calendar for the next year already. There will be a cake and I will be there beside her, cutting into it…
Twenty-five years is all I've got. I will die. He won't. Not in my lifetime. I will never, ever let him die. He means too much to me. He has to stay and take care of…Dawn…She's like our child. I guess. Though most of the time I'm the disciplinarian and he's the innocent by-stander. He told me that he thought that Dawn was our daughter, but…
"Excuse me," someone says.
Both Slayer and vampire move away to allow a woman to pass by them with a dual stroller. Twins.
Buffy's gaze follows the woman and her stroller. Twins!
"Buffy, I only want to make you happy," Spike tells her. "But if you want something more…something more than I can give you---
She really wants to cry. She hates that she ever gave a thought to someone else out there, being a more desirable person. There is no one but him. She has known that since she first saw him, in the alleyway outside the Bronze. She wasn't afraid that he was going to kill her. She was afraid that he was going to love her.
And now, here she is.
She reaches for him, tears welling in her eyes until he is just a blur of black against the white of the mall. "I want you always. I don't care if always is tomorrow or five seconds from now. I want you always."