The skies cleared temporarily, but the two of them stayed within the house.
At some point Spike had dug out the crinkled napkin from his pocket and he
sat at a desk in the darkened corner of the living room and studied it. His
jacket was tossed haphazardly over the chair, and the sleeves of his blue
shirt were rolled up so that they bunched up around his elbows. He was
lightly tapping the table top with a pencil as he mulled over the message
he had copied over from the napkin.
Buffy walked over and leaned over Spike's shoulder, "Getting anywhere?"
Spike shook his head mutely. Then he turned around and looked up at Buffy, "What are you doing here in this remote cottage anyways? I thought you'd be working with the others."
"I've been exiled." Buffy said dryly as she leaned into the back of Spike's chair.
"Exiled? Like kicked out?"
"No... like forced vacation. I was falling asleep everywhere."
"You weren't kidding when you said you were driving yourself into the ground."
Buffy shrugged, waving it off. She felt exposed in the daylight and the wave of dreariness had dissipated with Spike's presence. She quickly changed the topic. "So... what have you been doing lately?"
Spike held up the paper and smirked as he waved it in Buffy's face.
"No, I mean, after you came back to life."
"Ah. Well, there was that period of me being non-corporeal and then I was back to normal thanks to some unknown force. And after that I fought the good ol' fight."
"What I still don't really get is the whole Wolfram and Harte deal. If the investigator wasn't you, if it had been someone else that Wolfram and Harte sent, I wouldn't have trusted them one bit."
"Actually. I don't know why Angel made a deal with the devil, it's complicated. That's what he tells me. But you know me, I'm never satisfied with what someone just tells me. I went digging a little, and found a few demons that couldn't be mentally affected. In Andrew-speak I think it's along the lines of "They had a Jedi mind block". I talked to a few of these demons and they mentioned a boy..."
"A boy?"
"Promise me you won't kill me for this?"
"... I'll try not to?"
"They said Angel had a son, but no one remembers. Something happened to his son, became a killer of sorts and there was this whole mess with an apocalypse. I'm not sure exactly what happened. But the demons said Wolfram and Harte 'fixed it' and Angel had to deal with the cards they gave him. And he was willing to make the deal so that he could undo his son becoming a killer."
"You're sounding awfully cryptic."
"Still figuring out a bit of it myself. You should be thankful, I'm giving you a translated version of it."
Buffy snorted, "Okay then, back to you."
"Wait... a question for a question. It's only fair."
"Fine... So shoot."
"How'd you find out I was alive? You didn't seem as 'in shock' as I expected."
"Andrew."
"I told that bloody moron not to say anything!"
"And you believed he could hold it in?" Buffy asked skeptically as she folded her arms.
Spike sighed. "Well... no....I guess not...I'll beat him into a-"
"He didn't directly tell me" Buffy said, cutting Spike off, "One of the girls brought up after seeing you, they were supposed to tail Andrew to make sure he didn't get into too much trouble. But once they saw that you were keeping him safe, they held off for a bit."
"That's nice to know..." Spike muttered. "Where were they when Dana was cutting my arms off?"
"You got your arms cut off?!" Buffy asked, horrified.
"Oops."
"How?! She...Oh god!" Buffy said while staring at Spike's uncovered arms, and in the dim light she made out the faint scar line circling each arm.
Spike quickly unraveled his bunched up sleeves and smoothed them down to his wrists, "Nothing to get worked up over. Anyways, the evil docs put me back together. I'm fine."
"I didn't know."
"No one knew. Andrew was semi-knocked out when Dana kidnapped me. And no one saw me get dragged into the ambulance."
"Anything else you'd like to tell me about?"
"Well you know the Illyria stuff. But I'm sure the wotcher told you already."
Buffy was silent, she was chewing on her lower lip, "No, he didn't tell me."
"But we called him. We asked for Red's help..."
Buffy sighed, "I've been kept out of the loop...a lot of loops. I'm sort of like the figurehead, pencil pusher. I try to tackle cases and stuff, but... I know deep down that they don't hand me anything big. They're afraid I'll go into boss mode again."
"But Angel told me that Andrew got his order from you to take Dana."
"That was Giles."
"He lied?"
"I don't know... Maybe not, I mean, I'm guessing he got sent a bunch of papers with my forged signature or something telling him to go to L.A. and bring back the psycho slayer. I didn't even know about the mission until after he dragged her back."
"I'm going to have a serious talk with Rupert."
"You and me both..." Buffy said quietly as her shoulders slumped.
"Don't go there." Spike said quietly as he reached around and rubbed her lower back.
"Go where?"
"You're thinking of a million ways of how worthless you are and why they would keep you out of something so important. It's not you love. It's them."
She was silent, but the darkening shadow on her face said everything and all Spike could do was sit there, with her, and comfort her in his own way.
~~~
The clouds covered the patches of the sunset sky and the clouds turned a warm pinkish purple cotton candy, Spike was leaning on the frame in the back porch now, watching the skies with fascination that he never got rid of even after living for over a hundred years. Cloudy sunsets and sunrises were the closest he could even get to truly seeing the sun, veiled behind a lace of clouds.
The back porch creaked quietly and Spike glanced back, seeing Buffy holding the door open and watching him. They watched each other for a while, until Spike's eyes shuttered an he straightened up, "Are you hungry?"
"I guess. There really isn't much food in the 'fridge'."
"We should buy some then."
"Uh... now?"
"Yeah. Sun has set. I'm not going to be extra crispy and I know you're just itching to get out."
Buffy nodded slowly, "Well... just a bit."
Spike held out a hand, "Let me change first and I'll be back, I don't think I can stand to wear this shirt and these slacks any longer."
He disappeared into the living room for a bit and came out wearing his usual all black attire complete with his black duster. Buffy smiled, it was nice to see him back to being comfortable, but she also liked how he looked in normal and less unapproachable clothes.
Spike stopped in front of her and looked at himself, "What did I forget to zip up?"
"No... it's not that."
Spike gave her a questioning look and she shrugged.
But as the two of them got into the car, Buffy said briefly, "I kind of like you in lighter colored clothes is all."
Then she started to car and drove towards town.
~~~ They never made it to the supermarket until nearly two am. They had made a detour to a restaurant to have dinner and it just happened that the shops were open a littler later for some sort of town festival. So they looked from store to store and there were come novelty stores just for tourists that had toys. And the two of them had played like children until the store owner started to shoot them dirty looks. So eventually Spike bought a small wooden carved castle.
As the two of them made their way back to the car, he held up the castle, "It's Edinburgh Castle, we should go one of these days, really nice and it's near the Scott Monument, Palace of Holyroodhouse, and a bunch of other things. We'll look in the newspaper and look for a cloudy day and we can spend the day being stupid tourists 'ooing' and 'awwing' at everything..."
Buffy grinned brightly as he told her of their plans; it had been a while since she had so much fun with someone else. When she and Dawn first moved to Rome, they had spent only a day looking around, but Dawn had met a cute boy while visiting the ruins and after that they didn't really hang out much anymore. Then Buffy had to commute over to England so much that in the end she started to consider moving there because the constant flying was exhaustive. But Dawn had thrown her usual tantrum (despite her age) about Buffy being selfish and trying to uproot her again. So Buffy endured...
Spike's hand wrapping around hers, snapped her out of her quiet brooding, "Why don't you keep the castle luv."
"Really?"
"Yeah, you know, a souvenir."
Buffy looked closely at the intricate carvings and looked back at Spike, "I'll keep it on my desk at work."
~~~
When they finally reached the twenty four hour supermarket, neither of them were very tired. So they fooled around, spending too much time in the snack sections and grabbing random things. Spike got his hot sauce, ranch dressing, and chicken wings for his favorite Buffalo wings. Buffy splurged and got chocolate bars, chocolate syrup, and chocolate ice cream.
At some point Spike forlornly passed by the meat section and muttered, "I wish this were an Asian supermarket."
Surprised at the comment, Buffy turned to him, "Why is that?"
"Well, Asians tend to be... more exotic in what they eat. I once somehow stumbled into one of them Ranch 99s –huge place- and I found out that they sell curdled animal blood."
Buffy made a face, "You're telling me that Asian people eat blood?"
"Yeah. They usually cook it though, it becomes this sort of black tofu looking thing and they dip it into a bunch of sauces. Bloody good, even got the poof askin' me were I got the stuff. And I really do like the curdled ducks blood, tastes like pudding..." Spike ended with an almost blissful look on his face.
"That's just... gross..."
"Hey, don't go makin' jabs till you've tried it."
"Spike, I'm not going to try to eat curdled blood."
"Oh come on Slayer. Where's your sense of adventure."
"It disappeared along with my title of 'Slayer'."
"Luv, in my eyes, you'll always be 'the one' whether or not you still have the powers of a Slayer. You represent everything a Slayer can hope to be. Don't feel bad about the nickname, because no matter how much you deny, it's vital part of you." Spike finished, softly.
Then he pretended to glance over and cried out in triumph, "Ah! There's the bloody Wheatabix!"
Buffy stood there for a second, frozen in her spot, but as Spike's words settled in, it felt like another weight gently floated off of her shoulders. She gave a soft laugh and then chased him down the aisles with the shopping cart.
In the end the two of them were forced to make their purchases after an employee went and tried to report that they were racing each other with shopping carts through the store.
~~~
They couldn't sleep that night, and luckily they didn't buy anything that would go bad too soon, so they made their way to a park near a quiet, sleepy suburban neighborhood.
They sat on the swings for a while and tried to touch the stars with their feet as they competed to see who could swing the highest.
Then under the illuminating moon, they build a small family of sand turtles under the dome shaped jungle gym.
The seesaw creaked with old age and threatened to give away as they stood in the middle of it and tried to balance it out, but both of them ended up toppling backwards and falling into the sand.
They laughed themselves sick on the tire swing as they spun themselves while leaning backwards and whooped at the moon.
And finally they settled at the bottom of the slide and made up random names for the constellations. Buffy wished she had a camera so that she could take a picture of the one Spike named 'Mr. Gordo'.
They left the playground as a touch of cyan breached the ends of the night's sky and reached the cottage just as the sun crept over the hills and the rays touched the clear sky.
With the windows drawn, they ended up lying in Buffy's bed talking. Buffy laid sideways with her hands tucked under her pillow and her legs curled up so that her toes touched Spike's knees. Spike was on his back with his left hand thrown over his stomach and his right hand on Buffy's foot.
They spoke in whispers although no one was there to hear their conversation.
"Do you know how long you're staying?"
"I guess until I solve the case." Spike murmured sleepily.
"Are you in a hurry to get back?"
"Not particularly."
"Hmm... me neither." Then Buffy giggled quietly, "I can't believe we did all those things tonight. The two of us, a twenty three year old ex-Slayer and a one hundred and thirty or so vampire acting like children."
"Did you have fun?"
"Yeah. Most I've had in a long time." Buffy said and ended with a yawn.
"Well there you go."
The two of them were silent for a bit and it seemed like they were about to fall asleep when Buffy mumbled, "I think I like you."
"Yeah, 'm pretty fond of you too pet." Spike replied and the two of them drifted off as the sun rose into the sky.
Buffy walked over and leaned over Spike's shoulder, "Getting anywhere?"
Spike shook his head mutely. Then he turned around and looked up at Buffy, "What are you doing here in this remote cottage anyways? I thought you'd be working with the others."
"I've been exiled." Buffy said dryly as she leaned into the back of Spike's chair.
"Exiled? Like kicked out?"
"No... like forced vacation. I was falling asleep everywhere."
"You weren't kidding when you said you were driving yourself into the ground."
Buffy shrugged, waving it off. She felt exposed in the daylight and the wave of dreariness had dissipated with Spike's presence. She quickly changed the topic. "So... what have you been doing lately?"
Spike held up the paper and smirked as he waved it in Buffy's face.
"No, I mean, after you came back to life."
"Ah. Well, there was that period of me being non-corporeal and then I was back to normal thanks to some unknown force. And after that I fought the good ol' fight."
"What I still don't really get is the whole Wolfram and Harte deal. If the investigator wasn't you, if it had been someone else that Wolfram and Harte sent, I wouldn't have trusted them one bit."
"Actually. I don't know why Angel made a deal with the devil, it's complicated. That's what he tells me. But you know me, I'm never satisfied with what someone just tells me. I went digging a little, and found a few demons that couldn't be mentally affected. In Andrew-speak I think it's along the lines of "They had a Jedi mind block". I talked to a few of these demons and they mentioned a boy..."
"A boy?"
"Promise me you won't kill me for this?"
"... I'll try not to?"
"They said Angel had a son, but no one remembers. Something happened to his son, became a killer of sorts and there was this whole mess with an apocalypse. I'm not sure exactly what happened. But the demons said Wolfram and Harte 'fixed it' and Angel had to deal with the cards they gave him. And he was willing to make the deal so that he could undo his son becoming a killer."
"You're sounding awfully cryptic."
"Still figuring out a bit of it myself. You should be thankful, I'm giving you a translated version of it."
Buffy snorted, "Okay then, back to you."
"Wait... a question for a question. It's only fair."
"Fine... So shoot."
"How'd you find out I was alive? You didn't seem as 'in shock' as I expected."
"Andrew."
"I told that bloody moron not to say anything!"
"And you believed he could hold it in?" Buffy asked skeptically as she folded her arms.
Spike sighed. "Well... no....I guess not...I'll beat him into a-"
"He didn't directly tell me" Buffy said, cutting Spike off, "One of the girls brought up after seeing you, they were supposed to tail Andrew to make sure he didn't get into too much trouble. But once they saw that you were keeping him safe, they held off for a bit."
"That's nice to know..." Spike muttered. "Where were they when Dana was cutting my arms off?"
"You got your arms cut off?!" Buffy asked, horrified.
"Oops."
"How?! She...Oh god!" Buffy said while staring at Spike's uncovered arms, and in the dim light she made out the faint scar line circling each arm.
Spike quickly unraveled his bunched up sleeves and smoothed them down to his wrists, "Nothing to get worked up over. Anyways, the evil docs put me back together. I'm fine."
"I didn't know."
"No one knew. Andrew was semi-knocked out when Dana kidnapped me. And no one saw me get dragged into the ambulance."
"Anything else you'd like to tell me about?"
"Well you know the Illyria stuff. But I'm sure the wotcher told you already."
Buffy was silent, she was chewing on her lower lip, "No, he didn't tell me."
"But we called him. We asked for Red's help..."
Buffy sighed, "I've been kept out of the loop...a lot of loops. I'm sort of like the figurehead, pencil pusher. I try to tackle cases and stuff, but... I know deep down that they don't hand me anything big. They're afraid I'll go into boss mode again."
"But Angel told me that Andrew got his order from you to take Dana."
"That was Giles."
"He lied?"
"I don't know... Maybe not, I mean, I'm guessing he got sent a bunch of papers with my forged signature or something telling him to go to L.A. and bring back the psycho slayer. I didn't even know about the mission until after he dragged her back."
"I'm going to have a serious talk with Rupert."
"You and me both..." Buffy said quietly as her shoulders slumped.
"Don't go there." Spike said quietly as he reached around and rubbed her lower back.
"Go where?"
"You're thinking of a million ways of how worthless you are and why they would keep you out of something so important. It's not you love. It's them."
She was silent, but the darkening shadow on her face said everything and all Spike could do was sit there, with her, and comfort her in his own way.
~~~
The clouds covered the patches of the sunset sky and the clouds turned a warm pinkish purple cotton candy, Spike was leaning on the frame in the back porch now, watching the skies with fascination that he never got rid of even after living for over a hundred years. Cloudy sunsets and sunrises were the closest he could even get to truly seeing the sun, veiled behind a lace of clouds.
The back porch creaked quietly and Spike glanced back, seeing Buffy holding the door open and watching him. They watched each other for a while, until Spike's eyes shuttered an he straightened up, "Are you hungry?"
"I guess. There really isn't much food in the 'fridge'."
"We should buy some then."
"Uh... now?"
"Yeah. Sun has set. I'm not going to be extra crispy and I know you're just itching to get out."
Buffy nodded slowly, "Well... just a bit."
Spike held out a hand, "Let me change first and I'll be back, I don't think I can stand to wear this shirt and these slacks any longer."
He disappeared into the living room for a bit and came out wearing his usual all black attire complete with his black duster. Buffy smiled, it was nice to see him back to being comfortable, but she also liked how he looked in normal and less unapproachable clothes.
Spike stopped in front of her and looked at himself, "What did I forget to zip up?"
"No... it's not that."
Spike gave her a questioning look and she shrugged.
But as the two of them got into the car, Buffy said briefly, "I kind of like you in lighter colored clothes is all."
Then she started to car and drove towards town.
~~~ They never made it to the supermarket until nearly two am. They had made a detour to a restaurant to have dinner and it just happened that the shops were open a littler later for some sort of town festival. So they looked from store to store and there were come novelty stores just for tourists that had toys. And the two of them had played like children until the store owner started to shoot them dirty looks. So eventually Spike bought a small wooden carved castle.
As the two of them made their way back to the car, he held up the castle, "It's Edinburgh Castle, we should go one of these days, really nice and it's near the Scott Monument, Palace of Holyroodhouse, and a bunch of other things. We'll look in the newspaper and look for a cloudy day and we can spend the day being stupid tourists 'ooing' and 'awwing' at everything..."
Buffy grinned brightly as he told her of their plans; it had been a while since she had so much fun with someone else. When she and Dawn first moved to Rome, they had spent only a day looking around, but Dawn had met a cute boy while visiting the ruins and after that they didn't really hang out much anymore. Then Buffy had to commute over to England so much that in the end she started to consider moving there because the constant flying was exhaustive. But Dawn had thrown her usual tantrum (despite her age) about Buffy being selfish and trying to uproot her again. So Buffy endured...
Spike's hand wrapping around hers, snapped her out of her quiet brooding, "Why don't you keep the castle luv."
"Really?"
"Yeah, you know, a souvenir."
Buffy looked closely at the intricate carvings and looked back at Spike, "I'll keep it on my desk at work."
~~~
When they finally reached the twenty four hour supermarket, neither of them were very tired. So they fooled around, spending too much time in the snack sections and grabbing random things. Spike got his hot sauce, ranch dressing, and chicken wings for his favorite Buffalo wings. Buffy splurged and got chocolate bars, chocolate syrup, and chocolate ice cream.
At some point Spike forlornly passed by the meat section and muttered, "I wish this were an Asian supermarket."
Surprised at the comment, Buffy turned to him, "Why is that?"
"Well, Asians tend to be... more exotic in what they eat. I once somehow stumbled into one of them Ranch 99s –huge place- and I found out that they sell curdled animal blood."
Buffy made a face, "You're telling me that Asian people eat blood?"
"Yeah. They usually cook it though, it becomes this sort of black tofu looking thing and they dip it into a bunch of sauces. Bloody good, even got the poof askin' me were I got the stuff. And I really do like the curdled ducks blood, tastes like pudding..." Spike ended with an almost blissful look on his face.
"That's just... gross..."
"Hey, don't go makin' jabs till you've tried it."
"Spike, I'm not going to try to eat curdled blood."
"Oh come on Slayer. Where's your sense of adventure."
"It disappeared along with my title of 'Slayer'."
"Luv, in my eyes, you'll always be 'the one' whether or not you still have the powers of a Slayer. You represent everything a Slayer can hope to be. Don't feel bad about the nickname, because no matter how much you deny, it's vital part of you." Spike finished, softly.
Then he pretended to glance over and cried out in triumph, "Ah! There's the bloody Wheatabix!"
Buffy stood there for a second, frozen in her spot, but as Spike's words settled in, it felt like another weight gently floated off of her shoulders. She gave a soft laugh and then chased him down the aisles with the shopping cart.
In the end the two of them were forced to make their purchases after an employee went and tried to report that they were racing each other with shopping carts through the store.
~~~
They couldn't sleep that night, and luckily they didn't buy anything that would go bad too soon, so they made their way to a park near a quiet, sleepy suburban neighborhood.
They sat on the swings for a while and tried to touch the stars with their feet as they competed to see who could swing the highest.
Then under the illuminating moon, they build a small family of sand turtles under the dome shaped jungle gym.
The seesaw creaked with old age and threatened to give away as they stood in the middle of it and tried to balance it out, but both of them ended up toppling backwards and falling into the sand.
They laughed themselves sick on the tire swing as they spun themselves while leaning backwards and whooped at the moon.
And finally they settled at the bottom of the slide and made up random names for the constellations. Buffy wished she had a camera so that she could take a picture of the one Spike named 'Mr. Gordo'.
They left the playground as a touch of cyan breached the ends of the night's sky and reached the cottage just as the sun crept over the hills and the rays touched the clear sky.
With the windows drawn, they ended up lying in Buffy's bed talking. Buffy laid sideways with her hands tucked under her pillow and her legs curled up so that her toes touched Spike's knees. Spike was on his back with his left hand thrown over his stomach and his right hand on Buffy's foot.
They spoke in whispers although no one was there to hear their conversation.
"Do you know how long you're staying?"
"I guess until I solve the case." Spike murmured sleepily.
"Are you in a hurry to get back?"
"Not particularly."
"Hmm... me neither." Then Buffy giggled quietly, "I can't believe we did all those things tonight. The two of us, a twenty three year old ex-Slayer and a one hundred and thirty or so vampire acting like children."
"Did you have fun?"
"Yeah. Most I've had in a long time." Buffy said and ended with a yawn.
"Well there you go."
The two of them were silent for a bit and it seemed like they were about to fall asleep when Buffy mumbled, "I think I like you."
"Yeah, 'm pretty fond of you too pet." Spike replied and the two of them drifted off as the sun rose into the sky.