1) it must have bubblewrap (because 27 Jan 03 is National Bubblewrap Day)
2) it must be posted by the 27th for the party, on the smutty side (of "The Barge" posting group, at
www.arborwood.com/forums/barge)
3) it must be something about BtVS or/and Angel
4) the words : poofter, bloody hell, and oh spike should be in it
Okay, so as challenges go, it didn't demand a lot from me - but it's nice to break away from the epics and write something short again.
This story could be considered to occur about a week or so after my other story "A Christmas Gift", but it isn't necessary to read that one first. Not that I'd complain if you did, mind. And then maybe there'd even be a little feedback in it...
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When Spike opened his eyes, she was there. At least, it looked like her. He got to his feet, since he refused to meet his visitor lying down. She didn't say a word as she moved across the floor, and he tensed. Chains from his wrists to the wall restricted his movement, but he straightened and stood ready for whatever would come.
Buffy brought one hand up to cradle his cheek, and only then did he relax and let himself believe that she was real. His eyes closed and he simply leaned into the warmth of her hand.
"I'm sorry I have to keep you chained here while I'm at work," she said, not for the first time.
"I told you already, love - you don't have to apologize for it," he said, keeping his face pressed into her palm for as long as she was willing to hold it there. I know that I can't be trusted while the First might still try to mess around in my head, and you can't be here to watch me every minute."
Buffy reached into the pocket of her slacks and brought out the key to the shackles. "The least I can do is let you out as soon as I get home." She suited action to words, and set him free. Spike rubbed his wrists, though they were unmarked. The chafing was purely mental, it seemed.
"There. You're free until I have to go to bed, at least," she said. Buffy crossed to the storage shelves on the opposite wall of the basement and began rummaging amongst the packing supplies there. "It seems like everyone has plans for tonight: Giles has the girls out doing training runs, or something; Willow's got homework at the library; and Dawn's got some new club at school, so we're on our own here for a while. So I thought I'd finally get around to packing up some of my mom's collectibles so they don't get broken in all the craziness." She smiled sadly. "So no more of them get broken," she amended. "I'm actually quite surprised that there are any left at this point."
"I'd like to help, if I may," Spike offered, from right behind her.
Buffy drew a sudden breath; she had forgotten just how silently Spike could move when he wanted to. Turning around, she saw in his downcast expression that he was already rebuking himself for startling her. "I'd appreciate that," she said softly. "But I have to warn you - there may be excessive teariness involved. I've been putting off doing this for some time, because looking at her stuff is sure to make me cry."
"I'll never tell," he promised, with a small smile of his own.
*********
"We should have wooden crates and excelsior," he complained.
"Gesundheit."
"Excelsior's made of wood shavings for padding the crates. That's what you need for proper packing," he insisted. "Not this... plastic stuff."
"That's perfectly good bubblewrap," Buffy replied. "And bonus - stress relief. Look." She took the wrap between her thumb and fingers, and squeezed. A bubble popped with a satisfying snap. She handed him a piece. "You try it."
He looked sceptical, but accepted the material from her hand. After the first few pops, she saw that some of the hard lines on his face seemed to have been smoothed away. He never had those lines... before. She watched, oddly pleased, as he surrendered to the seductive tactile pleasure of the bubblewrap.
While he was occupied, Buffy taped up the bottoms of a number of small cardboard boxes and set them out across the floor, ready to be filled. When Spike finally looked up from his depleted wrap, he found her sitting across from him, just waiting and smiling. "So, change your mind about how useful bubblewrap is?"
"I suppose it has certain advantages," he admitted, with a grudging smile.
"We should probably start with--" The phone's shrill ring cut her off in mid sentence. Buffy sighed and got to her feet, handing him the scissors. "Here. You get started with the stuff on this shelf, and I'll be right back." She crossed the room and passed out of his sight into the kitchen in order to answer the call.
Spike used the scissors to cut several good-sized strips of bubblewrap from the roll, manfully resisting the urge to just sit and give in to the soporific effect of popping the bubbles. Tucking the scissors into his back pocket, he stood to examine the shelves that housed Joyce's collection of small figurines. Most of them seemed to be exotic woodcarvings that she must have collected over the years she had worked in the gallery, but one or two were unmistakably gifts from young girls that she had displayed equally proudly, despite their kitschy nature.
He tensed. More damn angels - staring at him, accusing him. His hand tightened involuntarily on the shelf. At some point, perhaps even in the last few crazy weeks, one of the pegs supporting the shelf had been knocked loose and had gone missing. The shelf wobbled at his sudden clutch, and several of the figures began a precipitous slide. He grabbed for them desperately and managed to stop them. All but one - a delicate china figure of a figure skater captured in the instant of a spin, her arms outstretched above her and her skirt flaring about her slender legs.
He watched it fall, helpless to stop it while he tried to save the rest of the figurines. Seconds stretched into hours as it tumbled, end over end, to the floor. The moment that it hit and splintered into pieces lasted a hundred years.
He wrestled the shelf back into position until he was reasonably certain it wouldn't collapse in the next few minutes, and knelt to gather the china fragments into his hands. His first hope - that he might somehow repair the figure - as dashed into as many pieces as it was when he knelt and saw the damage he had done. He gathered up as many of the shards as he could.
"That was just Willow. She should be home--" She froze at finding him on his knees amidst scattered packing materials. "Did something--?"
Spike's hands closed convulsively about the broken figure, breaking his skin and bringing droplets of dark blood to his palms. For a moment he considered trying to hide what he had done - but he knew if he couldn't be worthy of her trust in such a small thing, he'd be worth nothing at all. He got to his feet and held out the ruined skater before her.
"I'm so sorry, pet. If you've got some china cement, I can try to mend it, but..."
She took the broken pieces from his hand and cradled them in her palm. Huge, silent drops began to spill from her eyes and slip down her cheeks. "Mom bought it for my thirteenth birthday," she said, forcing words through a throat half-closed with tears. "That was the first year my dad wasn't able to take me to the Ice Capades because he had to travel on business." Buffy walked across the room and laid the pieces out carefully on the coffee table.
"I am a right ham-handed fool," he swore at himself viciously for having made her weep. "I should have bloody well stayed locked in the basement until it was time to kill something. At least that's something I know I can do well."
His regret was so tangible it seemed almost a third person in the room with them. He picked up some more bubblewrap and turned back to the shelf so he wouldn't have to look at her.
Buffy took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her eyes. His heart was already so heavily burdened with the things he had done that she suddenly couldn't bear to be the one to add something else, no matter how small, to that terrible, righteous load. When did guarding his heart become more important to me than protecting my own?
"Oh, Spike," she said softly, walking back to him. "It was just a thing. What's really important, the memories of that time... I'll always have those. That weekend, we rented 'Ice Castles', Dawn and I made humongous ice cream sundaes - I got to have a sparkler in mine - and we stayed home, just us girls. And I wouldn't trade those moments I had with my mom for anything.
"If our memories make us who we are, then I wouldn't trade any of mine - because I think I finally like the person I've become." She laid one hand along his cheek again, as she had before, and turned his head so he would have to meet her gaze - but he closed his eyes.
"Look at me, Spike," she said, gently but insistently, and then he had no choice. Blue eyes clouded with pain met green ones tender with forgiveness. "We're not the people we used to be, only six months ago - even though we haven't changed. There can be second chances for everyone."
"Not for me," he insisted. "I'll always be a vampire, a killer overlaid with only the thinnest veneer of humanity. I don't--"
She stopped his protest with a kiss.
They jumped apart at a sudden fusillade of crackling, popping noises. The piece of bubblewrap still in Spike's hand dangled limply in his fist, every last bubble broken and collapsed from the strength of his grip.
The mood abruptly broken, all Buffy could do was laugh. She collapsed against him, tears of loss replaced by tears of hilarity. He cradled her against himself as cautiously as though she were the porcelain figure, and that any wrong move would shatter her. For all that he had dreamed such a moment, he didn't dare believe that it could last. It wasn't right, that she should care for a thing such as him. But oh, in my dreams...
His body didn't care for right or wrong; it was reacting to her closeness as it always had, the scent and the warmth of her leaving him dizzy with desire. Spike brought his hands to her shoulders and held her away from him. He thought he might finally understand how Angel could have brought himself to leave her. The pain of being apart from her would be nothing like the torture of knowing she was near and having to control his need for her at every moment. So either I'm tougher than Grandsire Poofter, or I'm just more pigheaded. He snorted without mirth. I know which one he'd say.
Buffy looked up at him questioningly.
"Spike, when this business with the First is over..." she began.
"When it's over--" one, or the other, or both of us will likely be dead, and it won't matter any more-- "We can try to understand what's real," he said.
"You told me you loved me. Still love me. That's real, isn't it?" She looked down, and hoped she could match his eloquence, just this once. "I think... I might--"
A car door slammed outside, and it didn't take vampire hearing to discern Xander's and Anya's voices as they came up the walk.
"Bloody hell," he sighed, as Buffy stepped back from him. He could almost see her withdrawing back into herself, wrapping the woman's heart away and assuming the Slayer's mantle once more.
But then she turned back to face him and he was transfixed by her glance. "Don't ever leave me."
...I forget the legend,
I forget the pain;
The silvered edge-end
Is the same.
Then beauty beyond bearing,
On an instant of amaze;
All the goddess flaring
From your gaze...
~William Rose Benét