Was she married?

Were they married?

Surely that would have come up. Even if they were engaged, surely that would have come up. Someone would have said ‘fiancé’ instead of ‘lived with.’ Maybe they were secretly engaged? Which would be, well, weird.

But there was one way to find out. Buffy hopped off the bed. It looked like she was going to have the big talk about her life right now.

She walked into the living room where Spike was watching TV. Though he looked like he wasn’t really paying attention to it. For some reason, Buffy found herself taking the ring off her hand and holding it up between her fingers.

“Are we engaged?” she asked, when his head turned in her direction.

“Oh,” he said. “Er, sort of.”

“Sort of? How can you be ‘sort of’ engaged?”

Spike was silent for more seconds than she was entirely comfortable with. Like he was trying to put together the correct answer.

“We decided that actually getting married didn’t matter,” he finally said.

“Didn’t matter,” Buffy repeated. “So we’re like against marriage because it’s just a piece of paper?”

“Not—exactly.”

“Am I religious? Because I also found my jewelry box and there were a bunch of crosses.”

“No. You just like crosses.”

“Uh-huh.” She shifted her weight to her other foot. “But so… Our relationship isn’t really that serious.”

“It is.”

“But we’re not committing to marriage.” Had she managed to get engaged to one of those guys who proposed and then never went through with it?

He looked up at her. “Buffy, we’re committed. We’re serious.”

Buffy bit her lip. There was something he wasn’t telling her, she could feel it. “You’re like an illegal immigrant, aren’t you?” she blurted. “You don’t exist or something.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. “If I was an illegal immigrant, I would want to marry you, don’t you think?”

“Oh, so it is you that doesn’t want to get married.”

“No,” he said, sighing. “Both of us, together, decided that a wedding wasn’t important, and that actually being married didn’t matter to us.”

She still thought there was something he was leaving out, but she didn’t have any idea what it was, or even if it was a bad thing. Lots of people didn’t get married these days, she supposed.

“So what’s with the ring?” she asked.

“It’s a symbol,” he said, with a shrug that completely failed at being casual. Spike was silent for a moment. “I gave it to you, and asked if you would spend the rest of your life with me. You said yes. And it was actually you who said later that we didn’t need to complicate things with hu—with ceremonies.”

“Oh, so you wanted to get married and I’m the one who shot you down. Great.” Buffy threw up her hands.

“Buffy, no.” Spike stood. “It’s not like that, all right? Believe me. Look, it’s always been about us, and getting married wouldn’t add anything for us.”

Buffy looked down, glancing at the ring again. “And we’re…serious. Like ‘spend the rest of our lives together’ serious.”

“Yes.”

He looked uncertainly at her, like he was waiting for her to freak out or something.

“Okay,” she said. There were worse things to wake up to than a committed relationship and a guy who gave you a huge diamond ring even though you weren’t married.

Again, sort of shallow, but she was trying to find all the positives she could.

“Well,” Buffy said, “Then I think I should know your last name.”

He looked surprised, but smiled. “Pratt. But you’re still Summers, obviously.”

“And your first name?”

His brow crinkled. “You know my name.”

“Somehow, I don’t think ‘Spike’ is your real name,” she said challengingly.

“William,” he ground out.

“Oh. I like that.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said, glaring slightly.

“Okay, okay.”

And suddenly, it was back to awkward. Buffy wandered toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I think I’m hungry.”

“I’m fine.”

Spike sank down on the couch, but he didn’t look back at the TV.

“I don’t know what I like to eat,” Buffy said, more to herself than anything. She opened a cabinet, only to find that it contained plates. She opened the next cabinet, finding boxes and cans. “I guess I like most of this, right? Except the stuff that’s yours.”

“Yeah,” Spike said, something odd in his tone.

Buffy looked over the different packages. “I think I want waffles. Waffles sound good.”

“You remember how to make waffles?”

“I can read the box. And I feel like doing something.”

He just nodded.

She banged around in the kitchen, finding a bowl and the waffle maker. Then she opened the refrigerator for an egg.

“Oh my God.”

“What?” Spike asked, sounding slightly panicked. “What?”

Buffy just stared at all the alcohol in the fridge. There was half a shelf of it—beer and other sorts of bottles that she couldn’t immediately recognize. She pulled out what was probably vodka. “Is all this ours?” Pointless question, since it was their apartment, but she had to say it.

“You don’t really drink.”

“So it’s yours?”

“Yeah…”

Buffy raised an eyebrow. “It’s a lot. Like, a lot a lot.”

“It’s not like there’s a problem,” he said. “I don’t get drunk.”

“Uh-huh.” It was beyond her how anyone could drink like that and not get drunk. And you didn’t keep that much alcohol unless you did drink like that. How could this not be a problem?

She didn’t know what else to say, so she made her food in silence.

-----

Buffy spent most of the day cleaning. She wanted to be doing something—anything—and cleaning had the useful benefit of allowing her to go through things while actually accomplishing something.

She had started in the kitchen, putting away the things she had cooked with and washing the dishes. Although, she found that the kitchen was clean. There weren’t any dirty dishes, there was nothing on the countertops, and the floor didn’t need sweeping.

Buffy had asked which one of them did the cleaning, even though she suspected it was her.

“You do,” he said.

“Do you help at all?” Not that she was getting judgmental about gender roles, but she was trying to figure out what sort of relationship dynamic they had.

“Not so much with the cleanin’.”

She’d frowned. “What does that mean?”

“I pick up after myself. Put things to place when I’m done. I vacuum sometimes. Do most of my laundry—” he smirked “—it’s all black. I offered to throw a load of your stuff in the washer once, and you said, ‘Are you insane?’”

Buffy considered. “Well, my stuff does look expensive. It’s probably all hand wash or something.”

She had ended up in the spare bedroom, dusting shelves as she studied their contents. It had passed the afternoon, at least.

There was a rap on the door behind her. Spike was standing there.

“Thought you might like to go out for dinner.”

“I guess.” Buffy shrugged.

She looked back at the bookshelves. “So, I’m guessing I’m not in classes right now because it’s summer. But what’s my major?”

Spike paused. Which she was learning was a sign that he was about to say something she wasn’t going to like.

“You don’t have one. You just finished two years.”

So she was a dropout. Wonderful. “Because…?”

“Because you decided that it wasn’t somethin’ you wanted to do.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to finish college? Do I even have a job?”

“You have a part time job at one of the college offices. But your mum called and explained to them, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“So I quit college—”

“There’s a difference between ‘quit’ and ‘not choosing’.”

“So I’m not choosing college, even though I’ve got nothing better going than a part time job.” Buffy waved a hand. “What’s wrong with me? How am I supposed to get a real job?”

Spike crossed his arms. “You don’t need a real job.”

“How are we even living here? This place looks really nice, and it’s filled with really nice stuff. What do you do?”

There was that pause again.

“Nothin’. At the moment.”

“Please tell me this whole thing is not leading up to you being in the mafia.”

He actually laughed. “I was workin’ for your father.”

“The gambler,” she clarified.

“Right.”

“Doing...?”

“Security.”

“Security,” Buffy echoed. “You exactly don’t look like the law enforcement type.”

“More like private security.”

“So my family has money?”

“Had.”

“Right,” she said. “Because of the gambling?”

“It was a bit more involved than that.”

Spike was clearly hoping she’d let it go. Buffy just stared him down.

“He lost all his money tryin’ to pay back someone he shouldn’t have borrowed money from,” he said.

She put a hand to her head. “Oh, God, we are talking about the mafia.”

He glared. “I’m not in the mafia.”

Buffy sighed. “Is that how we met, then? You were working for him?”

“Yeah. We spent time together.”

“And how long have we been together?”

“Almost two years.”

“Okay.”

There was a long pause.

“What?” he asked.

“I just—feel like there’s this piece missing. Which sounds ridiculous, I know, because everything’s missing. But I just keep thinking that if I find this one thing, then it will all click into place and make sense.”

“Things’ll make sense.”

Buffy eyed him. “It’s not encouraging that you agree that things don’t make sense.”

“I meant that you’ll remember.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Look, you still want to go eat?”

“Sure. Why not? Food is good. Getting out is good.”

Being in the apartment was frustrating her. She’d been in and out of rooms, waiting for something to snap into place in her brain. Maybe a change of scenery would be nice.

She needed something good. Because she was starting to get the nagging feeling that something in her life was bad.