CHAPTER EIGHT
Spike looks down at the jumbled mess of tree lights on his lap, feeling like a three-toed sloth trying to make a cats in the cradle out of silly string.
"So, what possessed you to tie these lights into knots when you took them off the tree last year?" Spike asks grumpily, lifting the strands off his lap.
"We didn't." Dawn replies. "They just always end up that way somehow. It's like some tree light conspiracy. I think they miss being all lit up and shiny, so they take out their revenge by playing Twister between seasons."
Spike laughs a little as he tries again to pick apart one particularly difficult knot. "There was a time when people put real candles on real trees," he says glumly, looking over at the artificial Douglas Fur awaiting O Tannenbaum status.
"Yeah, and people's houses went up in smoke because they put real fire on real flammable trees."
"In those days, we cut our trees down ourselves. They didn't have a chance to shrivel up and die in a car park beside a trailer."
Dawn looks over at the tree, remembering combing the aisles in Target, looking for the perfect one. This was it, attractively priced at $89.95. And it would never die. Her mother was tired of her tears when their real trees got kicked to the curb after the holidays, so the artificial route seemed to be the way to go. Her mother burned greenery-scented candles to create the illusion of having a real tree in the house. All of Buffy's candles are called things like "mists of love" and "sensual splendor." Not exactly the stuff of sugarplum dreams.
"You all right, Bit?" Spike asks, seeing her far-away look.
"Yeah," she says, shaking off any more emerging memories of Christmases past. "Jeez! You still haven't gotten that knot untied?"
"No. And I'm about to rip this bloody thing apart," he says, taking the strands in his fists, pantomiming the threat without actually carrying through with it.
Seeing this subtle display of masculine pride, Dawn says teasingly, "I'll bet if Travis were here, he could get it undone. He's got such long, limber fingers."
"And I'll bet that's what first attracted you to him. 'Oh,'" he says, blanketing his baritone with a lilting alto to mimic Dawn's voice, "'He has such wonderfully long, slim fingers. He could undo a lot of gnarled tree lights.'"
Dawn giggles. "Actually, I liked the way his hair fell in his eyes all the time. Still do."
"I guess that does up his stakes in the good catch category. If he can't see you for all the hair in his eyes, then you don't have to fuss too much about your appearance."
"Oh, he sees me just fine." A frown slowly builds on her face and she drops her eyes. "But I don't know if he'll be seeing me anytime soon. His parents grounded him into oblivion because of the accident."
"Well, that doesn't seem fair."
"His parents are weird. I mean, you saw them. They freak out all the time about stupid shit. Like, one time Travis forgot to pick up the grass clippings after he mowed the lawn. His mother locked up his Playstation for a week. It's funny. Whenever I'm over at Travis' house, his mother is always super nice to me. She's always getting me stuff from the fridge and asking me about my classes and stuff. She asks me how Buffy's doing and all. But I get the feeling that it's all just a show. That she really doesn't like me and hates the fact that I'm going out with her son."
"Probably because she has it in that harridan head of hers that she should be the only woman in Travis' life. I've known mothers like that. Point of fact, I had a mother like that."
"I don't know. She makes me really uncomfortable sometime. The way she looks at me. Like she's thinking about killing me while she's serving me milk and cookies. And I know that look. I mean, I have grown up in Sunnyhell and I did have some Limited addict god wanting to express me to death." Dawn entwines her fingers in the web of green wires and darkened lights that appear as blood droplets on Spike's lap. "That's one thing about you. I mean, even in your Big Bad days, you never looked at me as though you wanted to kill me."
Spike eyes her and smiles. The monks probably supplied her many memories of sibling rivalry and bitter strife over just whom would be the worthy recipient of the prize in the cereal box. The first Dawn memory for him occurred on a darkened street. The Nibblet was outside her school, waiting for a parent pick-up. Her eyes were defined in deep black and her face was tanned from stage make-up. She shivered as Dru drizzled a command in Spike's ear in her spider web poetry. "That's the girl…the Slayer's sister. She makes shapes in the air that don't make life." He wondered then what she meant, but didn't ask her. He saw Dawn and it was as though a shield went up. He couldn't touch her. Whatever sweetness Angelus had seen in Dru and wanted to destroy, Spike saw ten fold in Dawn and wanted to maintain. He saw Dawn step up into the front seat of the SUV, into her mother's enthusiastic embrace. "I'm so proud of you, Dawn," the elder Summers said. He then saw the sign outside the school, all lit up. "Our Town. Presented by the Sunnydale Juniors. 8:00." Dawn only had a walk-on part, she explained to her mother. She didn't have any lines. Dru urged him again, "That's the girl. Her fire is of copper old." But by that time Dawn and her mother had driven away and Spike breathed a sigh of relief.
"I could never kill you," Spike says.
"Yeah. Because you knew my sister was the Slayer and she would kick your ass," Dawn says, pursing her lips in a certain victory as she pulls a knot free on the string of lights.
He looks at her now, her little girl features falling away to the natural nips and tucks of early adulthood. There is something about this girl that eternally bemuses his heart and makes it warm. He secretly loved the times when she came to his crypt. When Buffy placed her mother and Dawn in his care, and Dawn didn't like Passions, he found something that they did like. Judge Judy. He remembers how they both rooted for the plaintive, whose lawn had been continuously used as a toilet by a Rottweiler whose owners didn't give a shit. He remembers Joyce's sudden headache and Dawn's concern. "Mom, are you all right?" she said. And he was concerned as well. Up until that point he didn't know he cared. More importantly, he showed Dawn he could care.
"Yeah. That's it," Spike finally answers.
Buffy enters the room carrying a large pitcher of thick, yellow liquid and a stack of red Solo cups she swiped from the Bronze before it closed for the Holidays.
"Who wants eggnog?" she asks cheerily, setting the pitcher down on the coffee table.
Both Dawn and Spike spring up from their seats to join Buffy over by the coffee table. They each take a cup while Buffy swirls the traditional Christmas grog around with a ladle.
"Now, you guys can have all you want. I won't be partaking," Buffy says, putting a hand to her stomach.
"Why? Did you make it?" Spike asks warily.
Buffy gives him a leveling glare. "No! It's just that I'm still a little queasy from last night's telethon with Ben and Jerry's kids."
Spike lifts his tumbler for a ladle full. After it's filled to the rim, he takes a sip. "Hmmm…this is missing something."
"Really? I sprinkled some nutmeg in it for flavor."
"I'm sensing that this is a whole lot more egg than it is nog, Buffy," he says, smacking his lips together.
"You want nog, go get your flask. With two underagers in the house, I left the bourbon out."
"And I suppose we're doing without the traditional Christmas crackers as well?"
"Crackers?" Buffy asks. "We have some saltines. Do they count?"
Spike takes his cup, grumbling about how Christmas has certainly changed since he was human.
The Christmas spirit is finally ignited when the lights are unstrung and hung on the branches of the scentless tree. Buffy does light some candles, some vanilla scented ones that almost smell like the eggnog they are drinking. She thinks the spell she is attempting to cast is working when Spike begins to hum The Christmas Song. Then he begins to sing:
"Chester roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost ripping off your nose. You'll find Carol being hung by a pyre and vamps as white as Eskimos."
"Very good, Spike," Dawn says as she fixes a glass ball ornament to the tree.
"You think?"
"Oh, yes. Instant classic," Buffy says, adjusting her ornament on the tree. "Somewhere up in heaven, Bing Crosby is kicking himself for wasting his time in the studio recording that White Christmas crap."
Dawn is standing over the shoebox of ornaments, one hand on her hip as she ruts through the jumble of shiny glass balls and ceramic figurines. "Buffy, I thought we had more ornaments than this."
"We did. A lot of them were broken in the move."
"Hey!" Dawn says, pointing a finger at her sister, "What ever happened to that snowman we used to have? You know. The one that lit up?"
"I don't know. I found him all smashed up in the basement shortly after Spike roomed with him," Buffy says wisely, gazing at her nonchalant lover who is piercing a limb with a Barbie collectible ornament. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, sweetheart?"
"Not at all," Spike says, continuing to busy himself with the ornament's placement on the tree.
"Where's that snow baby ornament we got last year?" Dawn asks. "Ah. Here it is." She strides back over to the tree, leaving her sister to dig around for her next selection.
"Buffy, since I'm not too particular about what I'm putting on the tree, you want to hand me another ornament?" Spike asks.
There is silence from her.
"Buffy, could you---
But then he sees her.
He sees the angel in one hand. The star in the other. The angel, favored, in the right hand. And she looks at longingly.
And he sees enough.
Buffy walks into their bedroom as she normally does, yawning, stretching, clothed in her pilled, flannel pajamas for this time of year. Little snowmen sled down the snowy landscape of her sleepwear. But tonight is mild. Tonight is less than Christmasy. Tonight is balmy and warm. Buffy smoothes lotion onto her forearms right before climbing into bed. Spike is already there, up to his abs in blankets, remembering still. "Well, I can tell it's Christmas," she says, pulling back the covers and sliding in beside him. "I'm completely exhausted and have lost the will to go on." She yawns again and plumps up her pillow. "Look, for Christmas dinner tomorrow, I've decided to go the non-fussy route. We're just having a regular meal, OK? No goose, no stuffing, no cranberry sauce. Just some hamburgers and mac and cheese. I'm not even going to attempt being traditional just to have you and Dawn make faces at each other across the table."
Spike says nothing, wondering how in the world she can be so complacent while beside her, a storm rages.
She giggles a little and draws sleepily against his forearm. "Dawn's going to be so excited when she sees that laptop. I want that to be the first thing she opens. No! I want it to be the last thing. Make her wait for it. Make her think she's not getting it."
Her sister is the one who's not getting it, he thinks darkly, shifting his body until he lies against her in a comma, his face pressed against his pillow.
"I just can't believe it was that cheap. I mean, I've looked at all the catalogs and have gone to all the office supply stores for months and months and I've never even seen one priced that low. That was some sweet deal. Are you sure you didn't pull a Winona?"
A blast of Spike's heated exhalation tunnels through his pillow. "Look. I got Dawn the sodding lap top. I showed you the bleeding receipt. What, do you want me to tell the sales clerk to show up on Christmas morning for verification? His name was Chip. Ironically enough." He closes his eyes. "If I were Angel, you'd just assume I had done something noble and right to get Dawnie's laptop."
"What the hell brought that on?"
He frowns. "You were thinking about him tonight."
"When?"
"Oh, come on!"
"No, when was I thinking about him?"
"When you were holding the bloody star and the angel, that's when!"
"The star and the angel? The toppers for the tree? Oh, honey---
"I know you were thinking about him."
"I was thinking about how Mom used to ask us if we wanted the angel or star on top."
"I can only guess which one got your vote," he snorts.
"Oh, Spike. Don't be like this."
"Funny you should say that because if I weren't like this, you wouldn't even walk down from your ivory tower to chuck me on the chin."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He swivels about to face her, sending the covers into wild torrents of waves. "Like this. Cold. Dead. Without a pulse."
"Spike---
"Tell me that my touch doesn't remind you of him!"
Her eyebrows knit a warning flare. "Shh! Quiet! You'll wake---
"Tell me that you don't think of him when you're in my arms!"
"---Dawn."
"Tell me he's not on your mind the whole fucking time when I'm inside of you!"
"That's enough!" she shouts, equaling the tenor of his rants. A vein on her neck emerges like a slow, slithering eel under her skin. He sees her green eyes flash and for a minute sees nothing but pure demon blazing on the inside.
The room is quelled by an abrupt hush that entombs the two of them in a bitter silence. Buffy's body is tense next to him and she flits at the sleeves of her worn pajamas with a jittery hand. He knows she is thinking about ways to undo this, to wrap everything up in a neat little bundle and make it all pretty and perfect. But what they are is never pretty, certainly never perfect. They are nature's anomaly, a projectile of fisted rebellion against the order of things. He looks down at the sheets that are knotted in his calloused hands. Floral, combed cotton, textured in their togetherness. Their mingling scents waft up from the fabric and he nearly succumbs to the ether of her sweet vanilla and his own aroma of old oak and soil. This is the bed where he first made love to her, where he first came to the realization that she was fire and sunlight and all the elements that could kill him. They sink into this cocoon of warmth and softness every night, spooning, kissing, nibbling, touching, loving. But at times like these, even as he lies beside her, he realizes he's closer to being that desperate creature, chaining up his love in the catacombs of his crypt, begging her for some confirmation that the something that has been between them since their first encounter is what he has been seeking all his life.
He turns slowly towards her. He feels her inch away. He has invited something into their bed this evening, something that has always had a place under the covers, but until now has been banished. What is it in her eyes now? A comparison, a mental note taking of everything he is in relation to everything she wants? She is loved by a demon, a soulless creature that shares her bed, shares her life. He sees the questions in her eyes and wants nothing more than to kiss them away, but that's not what she needs. The specter of Angel looms heavily over their bed. He can almost see his grandsire's boyish face in the eyes of the girl whose inquiring gaze is nearly pulverizing him with fear.
"I do still think about him," she says quietly, dropping her eyes to her hands, at once hoping he hasn't heard her and hoping he has heard her clearly. She hears a catch in his throat, but cannot yet look at him. "But never when we're together."
"Why…HOW could you still have thoughts of him?"
"I'm sorry. I just do. He was my first love. Not so easy to forget. It's not like you wake up one day and the three years you loved someone don't matter anymore. I wish sometimes that that were possible. But part of me doesn't want to forget that time. Because I can look back and see how much I have changed, how much I have grown. How much I have gotten away from that person I was. I really was a different person then, Spike. I was a baby. I looked to Angel as someone who could protect me, who could teach me about what I was and what I was about. But I know who I am now. I don't need someone to define me anymore. I just need someone to love me, to be with me, to care for me and the things that are important in my life." She reaches for him, terrified that her touch will propel him further away. She pulls his face to hers, pressing her forehead against his, until all she can see are those two giant orbs of blue pooling into one. "You're everything to me. You're…my partner. You're my lover. You're the person I always turn to because I know I can and you'll be there for me, no matter what. I don't even feel like a whole person when you're not with me. It's like I'm always looking around for what's missing. And I find it when I'm in your arms again."
A thought occurs to him, one that formed in his mind the first night he slept with her and awoke at three in the morning to find her bathed in moonlight, her arms spanning the width of his chest and her breath falling softly on his skin. "You lie very sweetly, love."
When he says this, she is glad for him that she isn't the person she once was. A remark like that would have sent him the way of dusty death just a year ago. She is not a liar. She had told him the truth. She does think about Angel. Only because she can't not think about him. But not when Spike is close. When he is close she only thinks about him because he drains her of all rational thought until she is babbling incoherently in her mind, "I love this man…I love this man…"
The Buffy she was a year ago wouldn't even attempt to do what she is about to initiate.
She loosens her hands from his head and drops them to the first button on her pajamas. Like a proud mare, she tosses her fallen hair away from her eyes so that she can look at him while she undresses. He is watching her, holding that awe-filled stare he had the first night she allowed him to kiss her and hold her. She tosses the pajama top aside, and then brings her attention to the elastic waistband of the bottoms. She slides them off, slowly, and sends them onto the floor. Naked now, she straddles him, taking his face in her hands again and kissing his mouth.
Against his lips, she breathes, "Spike, I love you. I love you so much." She fuses her lips with his scarred eyebrow, tracing the trenches with the point of her tongue. "I love everything about you," she continues, licking down his face, down to his neck. She tries to find the scar that Drusilla left years ago in the fetid alleyway when he asked for rebirth. Time has healed that wound. There's nothing left but smooth, silvery skin. She kisses him there and then hooks her lips around the projection of his collarbone. She latches onto his left nipple and fondles the right. "Let me make love to you, Spike," she shudders in a whisper. Her mouth now is taking on the landscape of the quilted flesh of his abs. She licks the outline of each precious square and notes with pleasure that his member is rising slowly to meet her gaze. "Let me make love to you."
She doesn't wait for a response. Fully in control, she squares her hips with his and lowers herself onto him, bit by bit. She allows him to feel that sensation of being cloaked in her warmth before rocking against him, slowly. The lamplight reveals everything. He looks down and can see where they are joining, becoming one. He looks up at her face and sees the power there and feels it all around him as her inner muscles clamp around him and he sees heaven and hell combined in a surreal portrait of his own life and death.
He fills his hands with the soft contours of her backside and rams his head against his pillow as her pilfering of his being becomes more insistent and more demanding.
"Deeper," she murmurs, bowing her body until her torso lies between his legs.
He rises from his prone position and takes command, drilling into her now, moving with the swiftness of fire. She drapes her legs over his shoulders and he drives into her so deeply she has to cup a hand over her mouth to stave off a scream. He couldn't stop moving, even if she did produce a stake at this point and drive it through his poor, lost heart.
There is one last thrust. Every muscle in his body jumps in her embrace. She too is aware that her body is moving involuntarily. When he starts to slip away from her heated walls, she grabs him in objection.
"No!" she warns.
He is snared by the panic in her eyes and the urgency in her grasp. Sudden understanding floods him and he soothes her by stroking her hair and kissing her softly.
"I'm not ever going to leave you, Buffy," he says against her cheek.
"Promise?"
"Angel left you. I left you once and it almost killed me."
Angel left me because he wanted me to have a chance at a normal life, Buffy thinks to herself. What she has with Spike will never be normal. It may never even be a life. But it is all theirs. She knows this when she feels his hand reaching for hers and she smells their collective scents rising from the ashes of their lovemaking, so soft and sweet. A garden of topsoil and flowers, given breath by a forbidden sun.
"My William…" she whispers, trailing a hand down his back as he settles against her breast.
"Always," is his sleepy answer.
Across town at St. Catherine's Chapel, the parishioners stand in pew after pew of soft candlelight. The hidden organist lays his hand on the keys and creates the melody they are all following in various pitches and tones. It is midnight now, Christmas, the holiest day of the Christian Calendar.
Travis Singleton stands between his mother and father, holding onto the hymnal, but not looking at its pages, nor does he sing with the rest. His eyes are watching faces of the faithful around him, their sullen expressions shadowed in the flickering of the candles they hold. Twice his mother nudges him, a silent entreaty for him to join in the song. He will sing for a couple stanzas, and then continue to peruse the neighboring pews, watching, trying to see if what is in their faces comes even close to what he's seeing in his mother's haunted expression.
His mother's face is shaded at once in dread and hope, something that becomes more apparent and more shocking in the defusing light on the candle in her hand. The tears began when her lips formed the words, "Mother and child" and they continue to fall in time with the wax. She alternately closes her eyes, then throws them open wide as though having a revelation in her head. At the moment she is staring ahead, the words on the hymn on her lips. On the last verse, she coaxes Travis to sing once more and he refreshes his memory by glancing at the first line.
By this time, he notices that his mother is not singing at all. He inclines his ear closer to her so that he can hear her words and when he does, he knows she's not thinking about anything related to the silent night of the song. There is another birth on her mind. One she has been talking about non-stop since they arrived in Sunnydale. One that was on her mind even when the movers broke some of her finest china and she had to remind herself once again that they were all there for a reason and even a petty annoyance like that would be worth it in time.
"The child will come, the child will come," his mother keeps whispering, her eyes now fixed on the altar and Christ's stricken form on the cross.
Midway through the last verse, many voices have abandoned the tune and are now whispering as well, a murmur that sounds like a low rumbling, as though the building itself is groaning inwardly. By the time the organist reaches the end, there are no more voices raised in song; there are only frantic whispers and a building hysteria that is making Travis shift in his shoes, feeling as though the floor might give way any minute and swallow them all whole. Put them all in their place, including him, for ever going along with their desires.
"The child will come, the child will come" resounds from floor to rafters until the minister takes the pulpit, raises his hand and snaps the congregation to collective attention.
"Merry Christmas to all. And to all a goodnight," he says.
With that, it seems whatever rapture had the parishioners by the throat loosens its hold and slowly smiles appear on their faces again. The candles are snuffed and smoke forms a dark, floating cloud that rises to the ceiling and billows over much hand shaking and deep embracing from parishioner to parishioner. Travis doesn't escape the fray as he is nearly tacked and man-handled by Mavis Gulch who brands him with a spittle-laden lipstick kiss and tells him how much he's grown in the last year. His mother is laughing now, talking excitedly with a woman in a light blue suit with an enormous Christmas tree brooch pinned to her lapel. His mother is complimenting her on it, saying she almost bought one just like it the other day. Travis squirms, knowing that once they get into the car, his mother's laughter will bray through many insults about not only the woman's choice of jewelry, but her mousy attire as well.
The five a.m. alarm sounds in the form of Spike's gasp as he wakes once more from the same dream that seems to be a permanent residence in his subconscious, rediscovered night after night, never changing, never straying from the same frightening narrative. And his reaction is just the same as ever, as though it is occurring for him the first time all over again.
But this time Buffy and he are facing each other, both wide eyed, both breathless.
"We're standing on a cliff together," Buffy begins slowly through labored breath. There's heat and fire all around. It looks like the whole world is in flames. We have to hold onto each other to keep from falling because the earth is crumbling under us. I'm crying because there's something that I want you to do. I don't even know what it is until I see your face change and your mouth comes close to my neck and you bite me." She winces at the word bite and strikes the curve of her balled fist against his heaving chest. Her eyes find his in the darkness. "Is that your dream?"
"Yes," he replies at length. "But how did you---
She brings her fingertips to his lips, tracing the gentle curves of the mouth that so vividly snarled in her dream as he bit down deep into her flesh. "I just had had it too."