Secret Journey
Spike's been drinking for hours, but isn't drunk enough for his tastes.
He knows that he shouldn't get too sloshed, what with the First back in the mix, so he leaves Clem at Willy's happily launching himself into another boring argument about the realism of Beverly Hills 90210.
Spike couldn't bring himself to comment on that tripe. He knows exactly what is in that zip code: lots and lots of soddin silicone. He spits in disgust as he remembered biting down into some juicy model only to find out she wasn't naturally juicy.
"Bleedin' Barbie doll," he mutters, recalling the bleached blonde with the plastic body parts.
Wasn't even a real blonde. Well…right…neither am I.
He walks, no, strides back to Revello drive with a new mission in mind. He is going to show Buffy what she claimed she wanted: the Big Bad...back for the party. "Yeah," he says, pounding his fist on his chest as he rounds the corner to the back of her house. He doesn't realize it, but he's practicing his smirk. He catches himself, and starts to laugh, when he sees her in the window of her room. He comes to an abrupt halt, as he stares up at her.
So bloody beautiful.
She is looking out the window just as he approaches. She sees him stop and their eyes lock through the darkness. The air stirs with palpable electricity, as a moment passes between them. Spike walks over towards the back porch and soon Buffy emerges from the back door. The kitchen is full of SITs and she has to answer a few house-related questions before slipping out. She obviously doesn't want them to see whom she is meeting, Spike snorts to himself.
"Hey," she says, thinking how lame that sounds, as she closes the door behind her.
"Hey yourself," he responds, trying hard to put as much disinterest in his voice as possible.
"So..." she sits down on the step.
"What." He leans against the tree and takes out a cigarette. Buffy can't remember the last time she'd seen him smoke one.
"Where'd you go?" she asks. Innocent enough question.
"Out." His short answer should have been expected, but she feels slightly annoyed.
"O...k" she wants to find a way to break the defensive barrier he's wearing around him like a shield. She looks up at him and then over to the area where the SITs had been training earlier. Make-shift weapons lie scattered about the browning grass. So much for being all discipline-y and cleaning up after yourselves.
"What...you want specifics?" he looks up at her, taking a long, slow drag from the cigarette before exhaling just a slowly, twisting his lips to allow the smoke to curl about his head like a crown. She turns her head back towards him and shakes it.
Spike puts his disinterested smirk into practice. Not much to tell, really. Killed something for you. Saved your ass again. Got pissed.
"No...I was just...um...curious," she looks away again, suddenly uncomfortable being the object of his disaffection. She brings her arms up around herself, noticing a bite in the night air. Instinctively, Spike steps away from the tree, puts the cigarette between his lips, and slips out of the duster, offering it to her.
"Thought maybe you and, er, Principal Demon Hunter had gone patrolling." Bloody wanker staring ME down.
Buffy stares at him for a moment, her temper trigger itching. That's what this is about, geez!
It takes her a moment to realize that he's offering the coat to her because of the cold. She reaches out and takes it, smiling thinly and nodding her head to thank him.
"Nope. Tired." She is telling the truth. She's beyond tired.
When the coat leaves his fingers, Spike feels his resolve soften. He watches the slayer pull it around her shoulders. She looks so small and fragile, he wants nothing more than to hold her and...
"Spike...I was thinking," she begins. He's grateful for the interruption. He'd promised himself that he would never hope for that again.
"Yeah?," he replies a little too brightly.
"Yeah," she says, almost inaudibly. "It's not right. It hasn't been right in a long...well...ever, really." Buffy laughs a dry, bitter laugh.
Spike's determination to be obstinate with her dissipates as he tries to understand what she means. He looks down at the cigarette in his white fingers and drops it to a patch of dirt, grinding it out. He approaches the slayer and sits beside her, at a safe distance. He stares out into the same space she'd been boring a hole through.
"What are you on about?" The words come out more gentle than he'd wanted them to, but there is no use for pretense. It's quite obvious that she wants to tell him something. The need for it hangs about her like the coat draped around her shoulders.
Buffy either doesn't notice his attempt at detachment, or just doesn't acknowledge it.
"Buffy?" He turns toward her a bit. "Luv?"
"I-I'm sorry, Spike." Buffy says it to the air, but he hears her.
"For?" He cocks his head and lets the word hang there for her to make the choice. She can tell him what she is sorry for, or she can back down. He'll let her have her way again.
"Everything." It is a simple statement, but he chooses to misunderstand it.
"You were right to say those things, pet," he says. Turning from her he looks down and picks a splinter from the step below him, toying with it. "We all need to get our act together. Sometimes you need the harsh words."
"No," she says quietly, looking up at the night sky. The stars were out. She remembers loving nights like this for patrol. She would hurry through the kills just so she'd have time to sit on a bench and look at the sky. There were fewer street lamps in the cemetery, less light pollution to cloud your view.
He turns to her, fully this time, staring at her trying to bring her back from wherever she is...trying to will the words out of her. He wants her to pour it all out there in the open, so that there would be no more delusion, no more false hope. Whenever she spoke half-truths, it left doubt. And where there was doubt, there was hope, and hope brought with it pain, and self-loathing.
Finally she turns to him, resting her head back against the railing. She looks into his eyes. She could still see the blue, even in the shadows.
"Cerulean," she thinks aloud.
"Pardon?" He'd expected her to say something, but this certainly wasn't it. Buffy smiles at the confused wrinkle in his brow. He really is a beautiful man.
A beautiful...Man.
"Your eyes," she says, sitting up and closer to him to see them better. "They're cerulean." Spike feels the smile on his lips before he can think to stop it.
"That's a big word, Buffy," he teases. She returns the smile and her eyes drift around his face, his hair. She looks down his body and reaches out to take one of his hands and study it. The skin is impossibly smooth in places, rough and calloused in others. She remarks, internally, on the appropriateness of that fact.
It's just like him.
Spike can't read this moment, doesn't know how to react to it. This isn't at all what he expected after tonight. This tenderness. This intimacy.
He watches her thoughts roll around in her head. She'll speak when she wants to, he thinks to himself. Whatever she has to say can wait. She's touching me, and sod it all, I am a slave when she does.
His body screams at him to reach out and touch her hair, but he doesn't feel he has the right. Still, his free hand moves of its own volition. Tentatively reaching out to give her time to protest.
When she doesn't, he reaches around and lifts the hair from her shoulder, letting it fall through his fingers; the silkiness sends a current through his limbs. His body, feeling the familiarity of her closeness, reacts naturally; much to his embarrassment.
She doesn't seem to notice. She continues to study his fingers. She steals a glance at him while he runs his fingers through her hair. Such rapture from such a small thing: the textbook definition of love.
She's never seen it before, pure love, at least not directed at her. She'd seen it between Willow and Tara. She knows that what she and Angel had was...is...was...amazing. Theirs was a love stronger than anything. Losing him felt like the end of her life, the end of the world. But she'd been very young, and he was her first.
And then there was Riley, whom she never really loved. She knows that now.
And here sits this man that has been through the absolute best and the absolute worst with her and for her and...he is still there. He's sitting here letting her hold his hand, letting her get this close, and not asking why, or for how long, or making any demands or protestations or threats. Buffy studies his unpolished nails, noting that she's never seen them in their natural state; gleaming like mother-of-pearl.
Spike watches her watching him. What is she doing? Is this her way of saying goodbye? Has she changed her mind and decided to accept my offer to leave town?
Of course, he would. He never went back on his word, but she had asked him to stay. Perhaps she'd found the closure she needed and was ready for him 'not to be there'.
His hand moves to her forehead and he brushes the hair out of her eyes. It's something he's done so many times before, but now...allowing him to be this close again...he wants to cry. He is utterly lost in her. She is his whole bloody world.
Bloody poofter. He smiles sadly.
She notices the smile. She looks up into his eyes again. Yeah, Cerulean...like twilight. Maybe a little of the poet in him has rubbed off on her. She smiles at the notion.
The look on his face is truly priceless. His other hand rests on top of hers and her smile fades. He must misunderstand her reaction, because his brow wrinkles again and he goes to move his hand, but she quickly covers it with her free one. She knows he is waiting, patiently, as always.
"I don't really know where to begin," she says truthfully, tears threatening to spill. Spike feels himself relax. She does have something to say, and he is ready to hear all of it, good or bad, and in her own time. No pushing.
"Well," he brushes the back of his fingers against her cheek and gazes with unabashed emotion into her hazel eyes. His smile is slow and warm and full of love.
"I hear the beginning is a good place."