AN: Welcome back, y'all!
This is an almost direct continuation from Under The Rubble, but hopefully will be readable for any of you coming straight in at the second. Amazing, huge, heartfelt thanks to all my supporters and beta's RavenLove12, Doublemeat Palace, CD85, SpikeLover4Ever, and Em_Kayelle! The multitude of winds beneath my wings xx
Monday mornings were a chore.
A coffee-scented, muffin-filled chore, and one that Buffy was obliged to complete weekly to keep a line of communication open with Anya—hopefully preventing her from spiraling back into old vengeance-enacting habits—as she vented her abandonment by Xander after his abrupt disappearance.
"...And then he left!" she cried, gesturing dramatically as the choke came into her voice.
For the twenty-seventh time and counting, Buffy huffed internally as Anya's retelling of the previous year's events came to its scripted climax.
"Mmhmm," she mumbled, and patted Anya's shoulder awkwardly, not bothering to feel embarrassed by the outburst since this was a regular occurrence, one the entire staff of the Espresso Pump was familiar with. The baristas at this point knew when to deliver the second batch of chocolate muffins as Anya's indignation reached its shrill crescendo.
"He just left!"
"There there," Buffy said, picking a chocolate chip out of the muffin's crust.
"Just drove off with the ex-rat without a care or a look back over his shoulder!" Her face tightened dangerously into fury. "I swear I'm this close to—"
"But you're not," Buffy said, lowering Anya's hand from her face and squashing whatever threat she was about to make. "You're vengeance-free since '93, right?"
"'98," Anya corrected with a grumble but tore apart her muffin in acceptance.
"And there's still no news?" Buffy asked cautiously, sipping on her cappuccino as Anya popped a muffin chunk into her mouth and stirred sugar into her latte.
She let out a bitter sigh through her nose as she swallowed. "Nothing," she confirmed. "Nothing since he went on the lam with Amy. It's been months. He could be dead."
Buffy nodded with faux sympathy. "You still miss him, huh?" she asked in a momentary lapse of judgment.
"Unfortunately," Anya replied, pouting. "He was funny, and nicely shaped, and good in bed."
And that's why we don't ask, Buffy reminded herself, rolling her eyes as Anya let out a groan. "It sucks! I'm all alone! And I want sex! Xander-sex! He knew what to do with his tongue and—"
"And we're in public!" Buffy cut in, pushing another muffin towards Anya in an attempt to silence her.
"And his dick had this really great bend at the—"
"Anya! Not again!" Buffy whisper-shouted.
"It's alright for you," she griped at a louder than strictly necessary volume. "You're having sex. Regularly."
"Oh my God!" Buffy hissed, blinkering her face behind her hands as cafe patrons started to fix their eyes on their coffee cups with tight-lipped smirking smiles.
Anya let out a miserable sigh, her shoulders slumping. "It's so unfair."
"I'm sure," Buffy groaned, pleading heavenward for the end of the conversation to arrive.
"I don't envy you the history, though," Anya muttered as she picked at her muffin. "It turns out I'm actually a very resentful person—"
"Shocking."
"—And one ex and a one-night-stand is more than enough to contend with. Whereas Spike must've—"
"Anya, I'm begging here," Buffy begged, watching Anya tear another chunk off her muffin, and wishing to swap places with it. "I really, really don't want to think about what Spike and Drusilla, or Spike and Harmony, got up to."
"Or Spike and Angel," Anya mused distractedly just as Buffy was preparing to take a steadying sip of her cappuccino. "Or Spike and Angel and Drusilla, or Spike and Angel and Drusilla and Dar—"
Buffy narrowly avoided spit-taking on her coffee. "No, no way," she sputtered, waving her hand dismissively. "He was all… all fresh out of Victorian London when he was turned," she said, remembering fondly William's innocent eyes, the look of pure rapture in the brief moments she'd had with him before he'd dipped back beneath Spike's outward appearance.
There's no way that he would've…
No, there's no way…
"And they were all with the sexual repression," she continued with an air of authority on the matter. "The whole… the can't-look-at-table-legs thing, and stockings on pianos he told me about, so…," she trailed off like the rest of the point would make itself, but Anya was raising an eyebrow in a way that foretold doom.
"You think The Whirlwind tore through Europe and Asia, murdering and pillaging and giving in to every dark urge, but were completely vanilla in the sack?" she asked rhetorically, a look of incredulity washing away the misery that had previously suffused her features. "That's naive, even for you."
"Spike is straight," Buffy responded. Anya scoffed, and Buffy faltered further in her confidence.
Maybe those sorts of definitions aren't as rigid for the people clocking up time in the triple digits, she thought to herself. She cast a look over Anya. Orquadruple digits.
"He wouldn't sleep with Angel," she added, which seemed like an argument built on more solid foundations. "And besides he said he could count the number of women he slept with on his hand. Without all the fingers."
Anya took a long, pointed sip of her coffee. "The number of women," she repeated back.
Buffy paled, before shaking her head out of that particular black hole of thought, letting the air in her lungs out in a bewildered giggle. "Nuh uh, Spike hates Angel, Angel hates Spike," she said, officially at the end of the debate since it was entirely ridiculous. Completely absurd. "They hate each other. Like, the feeling is very mutual."
"So? Most of the time that makes it more interesting," Anya replied as she checked her watch. "I've got to get back to the Magic Box. Next Monday, okay?" she added and Buffy just about managed to mutter a dark uh-huh, as she watched the ex-demon flounce out of the cafe.
The air felt an ounce more breathable after her departure, though the back of Buffy's neck was still hot with half-caught glances as the people around her sipped their coffee in a silence heavy with giggling conversations to be had as soon as she left.
She decided to finish at least one of the muffins so her departure from the Espresso Pump didn't seem like fleeing the scene.
There's no way, she reiterated to herself. But the thought was stuck tight.
They hate each other. Sworn nemesiseses… ses?
She bit her lip.
…But we were too, once…
She took a moment and probed with careful fingers the emotion she wasn't sure she could name yet. That strange fluttering feeling in the pit of her stomach and around her chest.
It wasn't jealousy. Or resentment, as Anya put it. That wasn't it. Confusion was maybe more the word. Apprehension too, of being led into thoughts that might consume her as she tried to unpick the idea of… of Spike and Drusilla… And Angel and Darla…the four of them—
A hard shake of her head—No, no, no,better not go there—but she'd already arrived at the mental destination as her heart somersaulted from the shock. She slipped off her stool and out into the over-bright late afternoon sunshine, the light dazzling her eyes the way her thoughts were dazzling her mind…
Does he still want that? Does he miss… stuff like that? She mulled as downtown Sunnydale passed her by, morphing into the residential streets leading to Revello Drive in a blur.
Her house came into view, the big tree in the front yard casting a wide shadow over the pavement, and Buffy caught her heart rate tripping upward at the memories of stolen moments together beneath it.
What if I'm only a quarter of what he wants?
Okay so that thought was a bit too close to jealousy, and she pulled herself up short. I'm spiraling out about things that might not even have happened because I let Anya The Mega-Perv get in my head.
She couldn't let it go, though. Her brain had latched onto the thought like a salivating dog and wouldn't drop it no matter how hard she tugged. She needed an answer.
Just ask him. Honesty is the best policy and whatever. He'd want me to ask… he'd want me to…
She took a breath in as she let herself in through the front door.
"Hey," she called out to the prone figure of Spike stretched across the sofa, shrugging out of her coat and hanging it up next to his leather duster.
"Alright?" he replied in greeting without taking his eyes off the TV but still reaching out a hand for her to take. "How's the grieving widow?"
"Still grieving," Buffy replied with zero empathy, slipping her fingers between his as he tugged her down over him, "still being all loud with widowhood, if Xander's even dead, which I doubt," she added as she wriggled into the gap made by his thighs, his leg framing her and supporting her back.
Spike let out a dark chuckle. "One can hope though."
Buffy shot him an unenthusiastic glare as she leaned her head on his knee, folding her arms around his jean-clad thigh as she summoned the courage to open her mouth.
"Can I ask you something?" she managed as an ad-break interrupted whatever daytime TV Spike had been engrossed in.
"If it's about what Dawn did to your suede skirt I wasn't involved and I plead the fifth."
"No, I… wait, what did Dawn do to my suede skirt?"
"Nothing," he lied abruptly with a shrug.
Buffy narrowed her eyes. "Okay, we're circling back to that later." Her heart did another triple-beat at the approaching conversation and she knew he heard it when his eyes swung to hers, a questioning look on his face. "Did you and Angel…" she started hesitantly. "Were you… did you ever… did you and he—
"There's a lot of possible endings to that sentence, luv, I'm gonna need you to pick one," he said with an amused smirk.
She answered his raised eyebrow with an awkward chuckle, amazed that she could still possibly be embarrassed around him after everything that had passed.
"Anya kind of implied that you… and Angel… uh, and Drusilla and Darla might've been kind of… together," she finished with difficulty, feeling like getting the words out was as labor intensive as trudging through mud. Spike's brow darkened in incomprehension. "Sort of… together-together," Buffy added.
"Ohhh," he let out in a long drawl, her stuttering, blushing, bashfulness suddenly making sense.
"Were you?" she asked as he shifted up onto his elbows into more of a sitting position.
"Well… yeah," he answered and Buffy's stomach lurched upwards. "Sort of goes with the territory, you know?" he continued with an uncomfortable grimace, taking her shocked silence for intrigue on the matter. "I mean, Dru was mine, but in the heat of the moment—well, Dru in particular, she liked it when Angel and I—"
"Whoa, ah-ah! Don't need the details! 'Dru liked it when' is honestly graphic enough," Buffy interrupted before Spike could make the images in her head a technicolor reality. She bit her lip, worrying at the next question. "Do you miss it? The whole… very-not-vanilla scene?"
The extremely offended look on his face was oddly comforting. "You think what we do is vanilla?"
"That's obviously not what I meant."
"After what we went through last year, it bloody better not be."
"Do you, though?" she persisted, turning into him further so his legs were around her hips. "Miss… stuff like that?"
"No," he answered with a light laugh as though the question was patently ridiculous. "I'm a monogamous sort of bloke, Buffy, always have been."
She smiled, and as he carded his hand through her hair she leaned into his palm, relief making the little bit of contact feel heavenly.
"And territorial, but I hide it well," he added with a grin.
"So well," she said, offering him an ironic smile.
"Why?" he asked, cocking his head. "Are you interested in stuff like that?
"No! No-no, oceans of no," Buffy burbled out in a rush, the back of her neck suddenly hot. He stared at her, his cool blue eyes igniting wickedly like they were reaching past the shroud of denials to the kernel of truth beneath. "I mean…" she swallowed, and offered a small shrug. "Physically, in a sensations-only aspect, yeah, it's sort of intriguing, but I'm all… I'm all about monogamy too, you know? Dark wood only."
His face crinkled in a held-down burst of laughter, lips tightening, and she shut her eyes at the appalling choice of wordplay.
"That was potentially the worst thing anyone has ever said in this context," she acknowledged.
"You do have a way with words, sweetheart, no argument there," he said, and gently tugged her down until she was lying on top of him, catching her lips in a slow kiss. He let out a chuckle as she angled to widen it, and lightly ground his hips upwards into her, the bulge beneath his denim pressing against her stomach. "Not sure this counts as dark wood," he mocked.
Buffy rolled her eyes and pressed closer to him. "Shut up."
"Ugh—can't you two get a room?" Dawn sneered as she came in through the front door, closing it behind her with a clack and heading up the stairs.
"Dawn!" Buffy shouted, suddenly out of Spike's arms and marching after her sister. "Hey! Brat-attack! Where's my suede skirt?!"
"Oh, waitta go, blabbermouth!" Dawn called down to Spike as she pounded the rest of the stairs away from the impending corporal punishment.
"Dawn!" Buffy growled, following on her heels, leaving Spike smiling as he resettled himself on the sofa… twirling his rings in thought.