American Girls
by Sweetprincipale
Set in an alternate late season six. Spike can't believe he's this happy. He can't believe he's changed, she's changed, and that together they have this little bubble that hasn't burst yet. In over a century of looking for the real meaning of happiness and true love, he's found it in the most unlikely of places. It must be these American girls that have won his heart and his loyalty.
Author's Note: For the Elysian Fields Artistic Anniversary Challenge, a story that had a positive family dynamic between Spike, Buffy, and Dawn. Here it is, a story told in Spike's perspective as he reflects on the unlikely pair that have changed his unlife in the best of ways.
Author's Second Note: The music of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers provided the lyrics for multiple sections, they get all the credit. May I suggest "You Got Lucky" for your listening enjoyment as you read?
Part IV
I come home, carrying groceries, just odds and sods grabbed from the corner market by the gas station, milk, smokes, iced tea, orange juice and grapefruit juice. In fact, I'm very bloody proud of myself, 'cause Buffy's peculiar (yes, yes, I'm a vampire dating a Slayer, I'm an odd duck, too) and has this cravin' for a mix of orange and grapefruit juice in the same glass, which means we gotta buy both and that takes up a lot of room on the top shelf of the fridge and lo, and behold- "Slayer! Some genius over at Golden State Growers has put your bevvy in one bottle! It says right on the label, two-thirds orange juice and one-third ruby red grapefruit. Color is a bit-"
I stop talking. Buffy is sitting in the dining room, head on the table, sobbing into her folded arms, salt thick in the air and piles of used tissues round her messy ponytail as it slides over her face. "Buffy! What's -"
She sobs louder and points to the kitchen with a frantic noise, something like a cat caught in a sliding door.
"Oh, Pet. Dinner? It's just you an' me tonight, in't it? I'll have some blood, we'll get you take away on the way back from-."
"It's not my cooking!" She looks up, piqued, then her eyes latch onto mine and hers starts leaking again.
After so many months- must be comin' up on eight? I should watch remarks like that. Still, I sidle into the kitchen carefully. I've been attacked in this kitchen by demonic larvae, Angel, an explodin' pressure cooker, and even Niblet (though it was more friendly fire, to be honest) and this house has to do me a few more favors before I trust it. For all I know, now the damn toaster is possessed.
"Come on, Beastie… show yourself." But I know it's not a beastie, or my girl would've dispatched it. It's gotta be mechanical or electric or- the radio?
We got somethin' we both know it
We don't talk too much about it
I fiddle the volume. I change the station. "The knobs seemed to -"
"Put that back! Put that back!" Buffy is a blonde bullet, smacking my hand off and spinning the dial back to whatever semi-upbeat rock this is. "I - I-" She flings herself at me and sobs.
"Oh. This."
What the bloody hell is it about women and certain songs, cheerful songs, even? Turns 'em into sobbing lunatics? I remember walking in on Red and Tara one night after patrol. The song was some aggressively electronic number from the eighties, but Red was bawling.
I thought Dru was just batty sometimes, but now it looks like it may be a normal thing. Which means I have to learn about it, 'cause I like my ladies to have their bit of normal.
"What is it?" I ask softly, holding onto her as her fingers dig in and set up shop in my shoulders.
"Listen!" she bawls on my shoulder.
I listen. Nice voice, this bloke. Good guitar. I'm not bad at it myself, you know. I haven't told her that yet. We've barely got past the part where I tell her I can sing and write poetry. "I'm listening."
We got somethin' we both know it
We don't talk too much about it
Yeah it ain't no real big secret all the same
Somehow we get around it
It's not even a sad song. Not sappy.
"I'm so glad, Spike."
Oh. Happy tears. Coulda fooled me. I kiss 'em away as she looks up at me. "I'm glad, too, Luv."
The eyes, so pretty and sparkly and innocent, makes me wanna bundle her up and carry her to some high tower where nothing in this world can get at her- those eyes narrow suspiciously.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, right?"
"Not the foggiest, Pet."
Somewhere, somehow somebody
Must have kicked you around some
Tell me why you want to lay there
And revel in your abandon
"I'm glad we're out."
"Out." We're in. Specifically in. We planned for a night in. I got the flamin' orange juice for breakfast in bed the next morning.
"Out-out. Do you remember when we used to meet up, secretly, a couple hours here and there? And I wouldn't let you-"
The words die off and our eyes have a guilty tango before our lips meet and absolve those old trespasses.
That sentence can end a thousand ways. Wouldn't let you in. Wouldn't let you hold me. Wouldn't admit you were more than a hard fuck. Wouldn't let you love me.
My sentence could go just the same way. I wouldn't let you have the time. I wouldn't let you see I was in it for you as a friend, not when I wanted you underneath me. I wouldn't let you see the truth, that you were still good, so good, had to lie to make myself think I had a chance with you.
We almost wrecked it all, two people in lots of pain, trying to dig it out of each other with all the wrong tools.
Listen, it don't make no difference to me, baby
Everybody's had to fight to be free
Everyone knows we're "out.".Willow and Tara, Giles, Niblet, even Xander and his missus know and act pretty damn happy about it. Clem, Willy, and a handful of non-violent demons know. I don't care if the rest of the world doesn't realize it, because all the people who matter in our world know it.
"We're out-out. Properly out, and I won't make those mistakes again, all right, Luv?
"Me, either." She looks up at me, swallows a couple of times.
God, those lips. Those eyes. I start apologizing, for everything, for anything. "I'm sorry that I-"
"I'm sorry that I didn't give you a chance."
What? "What?"
"You were different when I came back. Me, too."
"I know." I rub her arms. Thank God she's here, she's solid. I inhale her scent, sweet and warm, worried that I'll wake up some night without it next to me or thick on the pillow beside mine, and I'll have dreamed all of this, this love, this home with her, the half-child-half-fireball we're raisin' together.
"You were different and I was different, but I didn't give you a chance. I don't think I was much in a chance giving, rational mood. Sometimes, I worry I'm still not." She looks around bewildered for a second. I see her taking it all in- the leather duster slung over a chair with her purse on the floor next to it, big thick boots next to Dawn's flats and her heels, and most of all- me. The vampire she's supposed to kill, standing here, holding her.
"I worry, too. I worry about you, 'bout losin' you," I confess in a whisper. I wonder how many years it'll be before the fear totally leaves?
"I worry about losing you. That you'll leave."
"Leave?! No, I can't, I never- Buffy, you and Dawn mean home to me. I'm here as long as you'll have me."
She has the power. She always has the power, and I like that in my girl. But… this is one thing I wish I had a little leverage in.
Her lips are shaking, spasming suddenly, smiles, kisses, tears.
You see you don't have to live like a refugee
Now baby, you don't have to live like a refugee
"Spike? How - how do vampires get paperwork and stuff?"
The word of the day... "What?"
"Dywnalivehereoshly?"
"God, Luv, I don't know what's wrong with my brain." Nothing is making sense.
I don't think we can have strokes, us undead types.
She slows down, but her heart speeds up. "Do you want to live here officially? Do you want to be put on the mortgage? The insurance and everything? Dawn's papers at school, as her guardian?"
WHAT? There's a roar, some sounds of joyful incomprehensibility. Her words make me gibber and jump and God knows what, I don't remember what, just remember kissing her, falling onto the ground, her legs wrapping up over mine and the chairs toppling, the nice red and cream Persian rug bunching up as she spreads under me, rolls on top of me.
"Yes?" she pants later.
"Yes. If you want."
"I love you. This is our home, you know that. But you need papers to get on the forms, right?"
"Forms for forms for forms," I mutter, setting chairs up and helping her up, too. "I could get something faked up good enough.
A silence. "I'd like them to be really good ones. Not hacked. Not faked. No spells."
"That leaves Red out."
Her flushed skin is rapidly covered up and the radio is hastily switched off. "I don't know why sometimes- weird things get to me."
"It's okay." Was this one of those weird things? I know it's odd, but it ain't over.
"Spike… I don't talk to Angel anymore. It's hard."
Well, there goes the appetite and the afterglow. "Me, too. Hard to make nice with a person who rap-"
She whips about so fast that her hair spins out like some bloody cartoon princess. I shut up. I never tell her 'bout the things Angelus did to anyone in his way in a rage, anything to cause pain and he knew what hurt most.
"What did you say?" Her voice is an airless gasp.
But she knew. She knows, because he hurt in different ways, broke and sullied different pieces of her.
We're past it. "He hurt a lot of people. Me, too. Vamps do that. Some vamps do that- no- he did that. Point is, I'm pleased as punch if you never speak to him again."
"I think I - I think I want to."
I wait. She doesn't play games. So I wait. There's absolutely no reason for my chest to hurt and growl to be stirring around in my guts, waiting to surge out.
"He has dealings with a law firm now, right? A law firm that works with demons, Wesley told Giles."
"Wolfram and Hart. They're not a secret. Only the demons hellbent on blendin' in mix with 'em, though. Or who need them to manage their dirty dealings. I blend in okay and my dealings are pretty clean these days."
"I want you to have a 'real' birth certificate, license, social security card, all of it. I want you to have all of those things. I-if you want them."
I wait for a minute, the wheels spinning along. To be Dawn's legal guardian- that's not a concern for much longer, a few years 'til she's of age. A home that I own- well, that's a turn up in any vampire's book. I don't need this.
But I want it. I want it in particular, for one reason that Buffy would run a mile from.
I guess it might be good to tell her now, let her know what she's in for, because once you start me on a trail, I don't give up until the quarry is caught. "You need those pieces of paper for a marriage license." I calmly straighten the table and kick the curled up rug back into place.
A noise like a trodden on mouse escapes her. "Spike!"
"Well, I thought you should be warned."
"But… vampires-"
"Don't have social security cards, bein' dead and all. Nor names on mortgages. I wanna be in your life, you want me in it. Just telling you I think about other things I can do with those blasted forms, if we go to the trouble of getting them."
I go to the kitchen and she trails me.
No one talks.
Her voice is low when it finally creeps out. "What if I say no?"
My heart doesn't beat.
Somehow it still bursts.
"I'll love you and be on the bloody homeowner's policy anyway," I say as cheerfully as I can manage.
Her hand on my arm, head on my back, pressing into me and holding me close. All the pain evaporates.
"What if I say 'Not yet'?"
"I'll wait."
I turn and she smiles up at me, biting her lip nervously. "What if I said 'yes, but not now, not yet'?"
It bursts again, this time, like fireworks, like Guy Fakwes inside, the rain of sparks flooding me with heat, the shine reflected in my eyes. "Then I ask. Two things."
This wasn't supposed to happen, not like this, or ever, or not at all. I get down on one knee, holding both her hands in mine. Her face goes from happy to pure panic.
Yes, but not now, not yet, idiot. Maybe later. Maybe soon.
"Buffy Summers… will you do me the greatest honor - and let me call the Giant Forehead and ask for paperwork to be fixed up- and tell him why?"
Her laugh is my favorite poem. She nods gravely, relief spreading across her features. "My answer is yes."
She's busy at the stove and the phone is in my hand.
Her voice is a little brush as she gets the juice from the fridge. "My answer is yes- to everything."
To be continued…
Unrelated author's note: Come and celebrate with me! I just finished another book in the CrossRealms Universe, CrossRealms Encounters: Wicked Woods by S.C. Principale. If you're looking for darkly erotic smut with a sweet ending, this might be your cup of tea! Check it out for free with Kindle Unlimited. Thanks, friends!