Chapter 17 – All of the Above



She slipped her hand into his and they walked for a mile in companionable silence. Buffy loved these moments with Spike, when they were walking home after midnight, usually after a good fight with some vamps or demons. There was no need to talk. They could just be together, enjoying each other’s company without saying a word.

At a small brick apartment building, not far from the university, Spike stopped and pulled some keys out of his coat pocket and opened the door. Buffy followed him up a flight of stairs where he opened another door to an apartment and reached in and flipped on a light.

Spike’s green stuffed chair and his television were sitting in the living room. A stack of beat-up books sat on the floor next to the chair. Some book called Oliver Twist sat on top.

Spike busied himself with the apartment keys and searching for his cigarettes, which were plainly inside his coat pocket and taking a drink of booze and anything else he could think of to avoid her gaze.

She walked around the apartment. There was a tiny kitchen area, with black and white ceramic tiles and a bar where you could sit and eat a Pop Tart for breakfast. Spike’s microwave was sitting on the counter. Figuring Spike’s invitation included snooping rights, Buffy opened the cabinets – a box of Weetabix – yuck - a plate, two glasses and two mugs.

Hmmm, Spike doesn’t need a plate.

Next, she went into the bedroom. Spike’s big, comfy bed was there, made up with lots of pillows. A red satin nightgown was lying on top of the bed. She checked the closet. Spike’s red shirts – so he did own more than one – and a shirt and some new pants in her size and the powder-blue angora sweater he stole from her on one of his raids on her bedroom, hung in the closet.

The bathroom had older style white porcelain fixtures and a huge tub where you could take a bubble bath and a sink you could sit on while you did your makeup. She recognized a few towels, which once belonged to her mother, hanging on the racks.

There was another, smaller bedroom. It was furnished with an old-fashioned wooden crib and a chest of drawers decorated with dancing lambs and kittens and baby ducks. A mobile of butterflies hung over the crib and made tinkling sounds when Buffy touched it with her hand.

Buffy felt a lump in her throat. No man had ever gone to so much trouble for her.

Serious Like was not sufficient for what she felt about Spike at the moment. Did she love him? She hadn’t felt this way when she’d been in stupid mode over Angel. It wasn’t like that at all. Her feelings for Spike were quiet and strong, like when they walked together tonight.

She went back to the living room where Spike was standing with his hands in the pockets of his coat and gnawing on his lower lip.

“It’s perfect, Spike. I love … it.” Okay, she was a coward. She wanted him to say the L word first.

Buffy put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest.

“Buffy, would you… Damn it, woman, would you come and live with me?”

Buffy tipped her head back so she could look in his eyes. He had a pained expression like he’d been enduring a stomachache from drinking vampire blood. She should take advantage of Spike’s current miserable state. It was only right after all the times he’d annoyed her about Riley.

“We could go to Las Vegas and get married,” she said.

She’d never seen Spike look so frightened.

Spike swallowed hard and stalled while he tried to think up some way to weasel out of getting married. How had this subject come up again? Every time he turned around, somebody wanted him to get married – first Joyce, then Clem and now Goldilocks. Didn’t anyone understand that vampires had a code? Yeah, that’s what it was. The Vampire Code for Wicked Behavior.

He couldn’t just be going around doing the right thing, even if he wanted to. He had to do something, well, Evil, preferably. If he couldn’t do something evil, like say kidnap Buffy and drag her off to his secret lair for ravishing, the least he could expect of himself was to shack up with her and annoy her mother and friends.

“Unless you don’t want to marry me?” She stuck her lip out in a pout.

She was not playing fair, pulling a pout like that. She knew he couldn’t hold up against that kind of trick. He blurted out the first excuse he could think of.

“I want to marry you, pet. It’s just, being a vamp so long and all, I don’t exactly exist, you know, on paper. I don’t see how we can get married what with me being dead.”

There. She wouldn’t be able to get around that, would she? He was dead and there was nothing she could do about it.

“I could see how that could be a problem, you not being able to remember your last name.” She bit her lip to keep from laughing. “I’ll take a bath while you think it over.”

***

“Will, can you hear me?” Buffy whispered into her cell phone. She turned up the water splashing into the bathtub so Spike wouldn’t overhear her conversation and dribbled in some bubble bath. Her favorite kind.

Willow, awakened from a deep sleep, answered. “Buffy? Why are you calling at three in the morning? Is there an apocalypse I should know about?”

“No, way more wiggins than that.”

“Would it still be as wiggins tomorrow at ten o’clock in the morning? I’m not operating on Slayer Standard Time.”

“I’m sorry, but I need your advice post hasty. Spike got an apartment for us and he wants me to move in with him.”

“You’re right. It’s way too wiggins, Buffy. I have to sleep on it for two or three days. What’s your Mom gonna say? Didn’t she say it was time for you two to cut the big white cake?”

Buffy skipped right over the part where Spike choked up when she mentioned getting married and fast forwarded to the ridiculous excuse he made up to try to squirm out of tying the knot.

“Yeah, but Spike doesn’t have any i.d. I think we need some papers to get married, with his picture and stuff.”

“I guess I could fix up something. Tomorrow.”

“Thanks, but I didn’t call about that.”

“What did you call me about?”

“Will, I don’t know if I want to get married because I’m a girl and girls always want to get married or if I want to get married because it’s Spike and I want to get married to him or maybe I want to get married so Baby Spike can have a daddy or maybe all of the above. Also, it’s a cute apartment. Comfy.”

“I’ll pretend I understood that. Did you get on board the Love Train, yet?”

Buffy took a deep breath. Had she? Did she really love Spike? Or was it sex or hormones or the cute apartment or the throws of impending Momhood? She liked being with him and laughing with him and talking with him and having him around when she was fighting. Was this love? And, if this was love, what was that angsty, panting, face-sucking, crying, moping, guiltapalooza stuff she went through with Angel? It was all so confusing.

“I don’t know. Sort of?”

“I’ll take a five or six hour nap while you figure it out. Take two talismans and call me in the afternoon.”

After she hung up her phone, Buffy stripped and stepped into the tub. She slid all the way under the steaming hot water, until the bubbles were tickling her nose.

She was going to like it here.