Spinning the Wheel 24 - Morning After

Buffy awoke when the sun fell through the slits in the curtains onto her face. She crunched her face, trying to shut the annoying rays out but it was too late. She was already too awake to find sleep again.

Reluctantly she opened her eyes and tried to remember where she was. Yeah, right.. Spike's place. They had slept on the couch. She had a nightmare and the last thing she could remember was him holding her in his arms.
Slowly she blinked her way back to reality and raised her head carefully. She lay on her side again and Spike seemed sound asleep beside her. He had his back turned towards her, so she couldn't see his face.

With a little sigh she turned on her back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. She could still feel the heat of his body against hers, his hand on her shoulder and how his fingers had rubbed nonsense patterns on her arm. Usually it was hard to sleep again after the nightmare but this time she had felt more relaxed than ever. To be held, to know that there was somebody right beside her, had given her the strength to sleep again.

Buffy heard him shift beside her and watched how he turned onto the other side, facing her. He had one arm curled under his head and the other hand clutched the blanket tightly. A smile drifted across her face. He had probably never looked any sweeter than now. His hair was a rumpled mass of platinum curls that fell slightly onto his forehead and he looked almost peaceful, something she didn't see very often.

But the picture was ruined when his face twisted into something different. She couldn't quite fathom what it looked like but it disturbed the peace. The muscles in his face were twitching and he clutched the blanket even tighter.

"No..that's not.. no." he mumbles almost inaudible.

Was he having nightmares now? Buffy watched him with some sort of horrid fascination. She didn't want to wake him although she probably should. But something inside her urged her not to.

Ever so slowly, she rose from the couch. He stirred when she got to her feet and turned on his back, his face now relaxed again. Maybe just a bad moment, nothing serious.

Trying hard to make no sound she padded into the hall and in the bathroom. When she was done and washed her hands she watched herself in the mirror for a moment. What was going on here? Between them? Images of last night came back, the way he looked when she'd changed the bandages or when they had settled down for the night. The concern on his face when she had told him about her nightmare, the slightly startled looked when she'd asked him to hold her and they way his body felt beside hers.

She couldn't fathom what it was that they had. It was so.. twisted and there were still some things he wasn't telling her.

Now that he was sleeping.. maybe she could get into the bedroom. She'd watched him yesterday, how he'd retrieved the key from the kitchen. She knew too well that it was impolite to almost break into this room but when she wanted answers she had to get them somehow. And he wasn't telling her anything, no matter how hard she pushed.

With a resolved look, she padded back into the kitchen, watching him for almost a minute to make sure he was still asleep. Then she began rummaging through the drawers as quietly as possible.
There were just two drawers. One with silverware which turned out nothing more than the aforementioned, and one with odds and ends that had piled up over time, some silverware that didn't fit in the other drawer and a whole lot more stuff.

After roaming through the contents a little, Buffy found a small ring with a single key attached to it. A key for a door. If it was the right key she would find out soon enough.

The key fit the look and Buffy twisted it until she heard the little 'click' of the lock being opened. She turned the knob and pushed the door open, careful enough to avoid any possible creak or groan of the wood.

The room was dim, the curtains on the opposite wall were drawn closed. Slowly she padded into the room, you never knew what stuff lay around on the floor in other people's room. And on her first glance she saw that Spike had lied to her, the room wasn't too small. It was almost as big as the living-room minus the kitchen. There was plenty of room from the door to the bed and around the bed.

The bed was broad and seemed almost wider than a usual double bed and it was covered with a deep red comforter, the pillows matching the color. The carpet was also done in a dark color, maybe red or even black. Buffy couldn't make it out in the lack of light.

Opposite the bed was the closet, almost nine feet long with a top to bottom mirror in the middle. Neat, and a little kinky. But what drew her eyes even more was the coat that dangled from the closet door. A long black leather duster. Buffy remembered it from one of the pictures she'd seen of Spike on stage.

Buffy stepped a little closer. A thin layer of dust covered the leather as if the coat hadn't been moved for quite some time. Of course, Spike wouldn't be able to wear it anymore. It must have been one of the remnants of his.. of his past life, locked away so nobody could see it.

Carefully she ran her fingers over the worn material. A faint smell of leather, stale cigarette smoke and something else drifted towards her. She almost felt like she was in a museum, in one of those rooms where you weren't allowed to touch stuff but you did anyway. Probably one of those 'Alice in Wonderland' effects - it says 'eat me' and you just have to take a bite.

Buffy turned around towards the bed. Beside the small lamp on one of the nightstands stood a framed picture. She went over to pick it up and turned her back towards the window to the let the dim light shine on the picture. It was similar to those she'd seen in Spike's office - him and the beautiful young woman - Drusilla, if she remembered correctly.

This had been their bedroom. Buffy had already assumed that earlier but now she knew for sure. She sank down on the bed and stared down at the picture. It almost hurt her to see the happy couple but what hurt even more was that he had locked all this away. He had secured his past, maybe to try to forget it or to keep it as a memory. Either was horrible. Why didn't he tell her this when she'd asked last night?

A little tear formed in the corner of her eye and made its way down her cheek. She didn't exactly know why she was crying, it just came to her. There was a mixture of disappointment, jealousy and.. something else. She'd never been confronted with such a thing and she didn't know how to handle it now.

"Can you tell me exactly what you are doing here?"

Buffy's head snapped up and she stared at the door. She hadn't heard how Spike had pushed it further open and now he stared at her, his eyes furious.

Spike had felt her getting up from the couch. To use the bathroom probably. But it had seeped into his mind that she was taking too long. Somewhere in his subconscious he knew it, something was wrong. So he had gotten up and had made his way into the hall. He'd seen it almost immediately, the door to the bedroom was open ajar. No no no. She had seen him getting the key yesterday and she was in there. But she wasn't supposed to be there. She wasn't supposed to see it.

"Spike, I…" Buffy rose, the picture clutched in her hands. She felt the heat rising in her face and she stared at him like a deer in the headlights.

"What. Are. You. Doing. Here." he spat every word at her like a curse and moved a little further into the room.

"Spike.. I.. I can explain." she stumbled. She knew with every single fibre of her body that this had been a mistake. She might have caused less damage if she'd just asked him.

"Yeah, why don't you do that?" his voice was hard, thick threads of anger woven through it.

"I.. when you were at the hospital, I wanted to get you some clothes but… the door was locked and.."

"You decided that it would be fun to have a look? There are reasons why doors are locked."

"I know but…" suddenly her confusion and embarrassment changed into anger. "It's not like you would tell me, right?"

"What?" he spat, glowering at her.

"I opened the door cause you wouldn't tell me anyway. You don't tell me anything. Not about those painkillers you take, not about Harmony. Why? Why don't you tell me what's on your mind? Why don't you tell me that your girlfriend died in the accident? Hell, I bet you wouldn't tell about the nightmare you were having just then."

By the time she said the words, Buffy could feel and almost hear the thin threads of carefully built-up trust snap in two. Like one of those ropes you see in cartoons - when a knife is edged against it and the fibres tear apart one by one. In the comics it was always funny. But this was real. And it wasn't funny. She knew that she'd said too much but it was too late now. Far to late.

"How?" Spike stared at her, his face suddenly blank. She couldn't read his expression, she could only see the muscles of his jaw work under his skin. "How did you know?"

"Spike. .I'm.. I'm sorry.. I.."

"You looked me up." he cut her off. He remembered that she had read one of his poem. She hadn't been out for some stuff for college. She had looked him up. "Why?" His voice wasn't more than a whisper. His mind reeled at the sudden revelation.

"Because.. I just.. I just wanted to know something about you. You're not telling me anything, not even when I ask." Buffy sounded pleading, almost desperate. "Why don't you trust me with this?"

"I did." he replied simply and she could see a stray tear in the corner of his eye. But then, he suddenly barked out a harsh laugh, a hysterical sound but not at all invoked by fun. "God, I'm such an idiot. And I thought you were different." He shook his head, lowering his gaze onto his knees.

"Spike, what… what do you mean? I.. I told you I was sorry… I.."

"I thought you didn't care about all this. I thought we could just.. be friends. I guess I was wrong."

It almost seemed as if he was talking to himself, he didn't look at her. If he did, she would probably see that his eyes were brimming with tears. He fought hard to keep them out of his voice.

"God, Spike. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to…" she broke off, she didn't know how to explain. Everything had gone wrong, horribly wrong. And she knew she had screwed it up.

"Get out." he pressed through gritted teeth, his hands clenching around the armrests of the wheelchair.

"But, please.. let me explain, I wasn't.."

"I said. Get. Out." he cut her off, his voice hard and cold as ice. "Take your things and go. I don't want to see you again."

Buffy stared at him for a long minute as if she was waiting for more. But it was all he said. And she knew that he had every right in the world to say it, to throw her out. It was all her fault. She had done something she shouldn't have, she had risked all the trust he had put in her by such a simple thing like looking him up on the internet. She should have known. Willow had warned her but she had been so stupid to insist on the research. And there she was, standing over the pieces that had been their relationship or whatever it was they had.

She dropped the picture on the bed, lowered her head guiltily and walked past him, slipped into her clothes and left the apartment. She knew that he meant every word he'd said.

Spike sat there in an almost trance-like position. He stared ahead blindly, feeling even more empty than ever.

Tears ran down his cheeks and his hands were quivering. He had to bite down in his lip to keep his chin from shaking, too. He didn't know whether to be furious, sad or disappointed. Probably a mixture of all three.

One the one hand, he hated Buffy for what she'd done. He had trusted her more than anybody else in the past few years. He had told her more than anybody else and he had more feelings for her than for anybody else. But he couldn't forgive her for pushing this trust to its limits.

But on the other hand, he also knew that it was kind of his fault, too. If he had told her something, even if it wasn't everything, she wouldn't have done that. And she wouldn't be gone now.

But he couldn't. He couldn't tell anybody. It was just too much.

Slowly he moved towards the bed and picked up the picture of him and Dru. It hurt to see it again. When he'd been in the room last night, he had made it quick so he didn't have time to think about it. But now she was smiling back at him, this sensual smile that promised things, that was so intoxicating that it left you awake all night until you saw it again.

He felt his heart clenching into a painful, unpleasant little ball inside his chest and he gripped the picture so hard that his thumbs cracked the glass into a spiderweb pattern of razorsharp shards. He fought hard not to sob but his tears fell onto the glass, blurring the picture.

What was he supposed to do now?

He wanted to be alone now and to have time to think stuff through. How he'd gotten himself into this mess. Well, actually Buffy had gotten him into this mess.

And for the first time, he really wished that she'd either never hit him with her car or that she had killed him right on the spot. Both would have saved him from a lot of pain.

He had adjusted to his life before; everything had been fine as far as he was concerned. But then she came, smashing into his life like a cannonball. She turned everything upside down, digging up things he had refused to think and talk about. She had altered his life in a way he would have never considered before. She had made him socialize with other people, made him smile and even laugh. She made him feel something other than all the pain and guilt that woke him almost every night for three years now.

And he was missing her already.