Look closer




Chapter Fifty-Eight




“You got my mail,” Buffy echoed slowly. An expression of utter and almost comical confusion replaced the look of token anger that had been there before, and Spike grinned, more than a little pleased with himself. He extended his arm, shoving the envelopes nearer to her.

“That so surprising to you? I was raised to be a proper English gentleman, after all, and that’s what proper gentlemen do. Fetch the mail, empty the rubbish bin, pay the—”

He stopped abruptly, silently cursing himself for almost giving it away. Luckily, Buffy didn’t even seem to be listening. She took the envelopes from him and tossed them onto the small table next to the door.

“You are very strange,” she told him. “And you look like utter hell.”

“Yeah?” Spike looked down at himself, but he couldn’t find anything particularly offensive about his appearance. Having removed the unusual accessories he’d donned for his trip to the bank, he was wearing his customary combination of black jeans and a black t-shirt with a collared shirt worn unbuttoned over it; however, this time, the color of the shirt was not the usual red, but very dark blue. He’d tossed his duster over the staircase balustrade; she wasn’t even looking at it, so that couldn’t be what bothered her.

Then, she gently touched his wounded cheekbone. “God, Spike. You’ve got dried blood all down the side of your face.”

Huh. Maybe that was why they looked at him so oddly at the bank. He’d known it couldn’t be the clothing. Humans wore that kind of odd-fish type shit all the time.

He shrugged. “Guess there are some drawbacks to not having a reflection after all.”

As casual as his reply was, Spike’s mind was hardly on the conversation at hand. His eyes slid to the table, the wrinkled letters on top of it. Briefly, he considered drawing her attention to them, telling her that she should open them because sometimes mail contained something important. But that would be too obvious and he wasn’t thick enough to actually attempt it. Instead, he just glared at the table, hoping to pull her gaze to it by the power of suggestion.

It didn’t work. Buffy’s eyes were on him, and it wasn’t long before her hands were as well, making trails of gooseflesh along his nape with her fingernails. She nibbled his jaw, carefully avoiding the flecks of blood that had dried there; she kissed his blackened, puffy eyelids. She made him forget all about his plan.

“Miss me did you?” The words came out low and a little strained; they made her smile.

“Are you surprised?” she asked, indirectly answering Spike’s question with her own.

“Little bit,” Spike confessed. He traced his fingers across her collarbone, following the neckline of her shirt. He added, “Was a time when you couldn’t wait to be rid of me.”

“Yeah, well. Once, there was a time when you couldn’t wait to kill me.”

He flinched a little at her words, although he knew she meant no harm by them. Buffy noticed and immediately became apologetic.

“I wasn’t trying to be hurtful or resentful or anything,” she said softly. “I tried to do the same thing to you. It was just instinct and we didn’t know any better. It’s what slayers and vampires do.”

He pulled away from her, leaning on the cracked support post at the foot of the stairs so that he didn’t have to put more weight on his still-injured hip than was necessary. “It’s different with me though,” he insisted. “You didn’t have any memory of London until a few weeks ago when you came back from it. But for me…I should have known…”

Buffy put a hand on his arm and her eyes were full of sympathy when she asked, “Why didn’t you know, Spike? Why didn’t you recognize me?”

“I did,” he answered hoarsely. “I did. It was just that I didn’t actually know; I kept thinking that I must have been imagining it all. I didn’t even consider the possibility of time travel. For a little while, I thought that you were a reincarnation of her, but I hated myself for thinking it. It seemed stupid and disloyal. I wanted to blot it out, so I…”

“Tried that much harder to kill me,” she finished. But Spike shook his head.

“Wanted to kill you that much more, I reckon, but every time I tried I found that I couldn’t follow through with it. Couldn’t muster up the desire to really do it. Had you more than once, remember? Had you by the throat with the gem of Amara; let you go. Set the Order of Turaka on you; called them off. Helped you save the bloody world…and even before all that…on that first Halloween night I—” He stopped short.

Buffy cocked her head.

“What about Halloween night?” she asked. Her own memories of that night—and all the nights before and since—had not been altered, and she couldn’t help but wonder what her Victorian adventure had done to change things between them. However, whatever it was, Spike wouldn’t say.

“How the bleeding hell can I expect you to forgive me for all the shit I put you through?” he asked instead. Then, he added accusingly, “All the shit you put me through. Why did you have to lie to me?”

“I was trying to protect you. You were so innocent and—and I didn’t want to change that. I thought that as long as it had been, Willow would have given up trying to bring me back, or at least found that she wasn’t able to do it. If I had known what would happen…”

“You should have told me anyway,” he insisted.

“Would it really have made a difference if you’d known?”

“Of course it would have. Jesus! If I’d known where you’d come from—if I’d known where—when—you’d go back to—I would have got myself vamped just to wait for you; I would’ve known you when I first saw you as a slayer. I wouldn’t have tricked myself into believing—”

“You’re telling me that you would have waited all that time, alone, and kept yourself from doing all the things a vampire wants to do? You wouldn’t have hunted for food—or for fun—you wouldn’t have killed two slayers—”

“Damn right I wouldn’t have!” he snapped. “Hundred years of misery isn’t such a long stretch when you’ve got something to look forward to at the end of it. If I’d known I would see you at the end of it, I wouldn’t have done anything to cock it up. Dru could have gone to hell for all I care.”

The tirade ended as abruptly as it had begun, and it was followed by a long, uneasy silence. Spike shifted against the newel post and then grimaced. He had walked too far that morning and it was starting to catch up with him. Or, at least with his hip.

Buffy was watching him carefully. “Spike, are you okay?”

“Just a little sore.” He laughed shortly. “Bastard got me good.”

“Your leg?”

Spike shook his head and motioned to his left hip. When Buffy touched it a moment later, he yelped.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, yanking her hand away. “Is it broken?”

“Don’t think so…maybe cracked a little. I don’t know. It’ll mend.”

“Can you walk?”

He rolled his eyes and Buffy laughed at her mistake.

“Yeah, that was a stupid question; you walked here. Can you make it down the hallway?”

While not exactly thrilled at the prospect, Spike nodded.

Buffy moved closer and gently tugged his fist from the post.

“C’mon then,” she said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




He had almost forgotten what it felt like to be petted, to have someone take care of him. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt.

He followed Buffy down the hallway to the bathroom. She said that she wished she could take him to the one upstairs. It was larger and had a tub; the one downstairs just had a shower cubical. If she had taken him to the master bath, he could have had a soak in warm water. But he was in no condition to climb the stairs and she didn’t want to risk making his injuries even worse. It didn’t bother Spike. Bubble baths didn’t really interest him anyway; too poncy.

Buffy sat him down on the lid of a sturdy wicker clothes hamper, directing him to prop his feet on the toilet seat across from it in order to take some of the pressure off his injured hip. He submitted to her orders without complaint, his eyes following her as she grabbed a pack of cotton balls and a small bottle from the medicine cabinet above the sink. Her hair fell across his face when she leaned over him and she brushed it back impatiently, tucking it behind her ear. She smelled so good it made him shiver.

When she pressed a wet cotton ball to the side of his face, he let out a yelp.

“What the hell, Slayer? That fucking hurts!”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she told him, clearly amused. “I once dumped a pipe organ on your head and left you to burn to death in a fiery church; you can totally deal with a little antiseptic wash.”

He grinned a little at that and then sat quietly as she cleaned his wounds, which were still packed with grime and fluid because he didn’t believe in tending to injuries.

“Should I put ointment on it, do you think?” she asked when she was finished. “Or, gauze and tape?”

The question made him snort. “You do understand that I’m a vampire now, right? If I had a little blood in me, most of this would clear up by the afternoon. When I go home tonight, I’ll—”

“That reminds me!” Buffy exclaimed as she shoved the supplies back into the cabinet. “I have blood.”

He scowled at her. “I’m not biting you; I’m not going to take your blood. The other night was—”

“Don’t be stupid,” she interrupted. “Not my blood. Duck’s blood. I went to the butcher this morning and he sells it for some kind of nasty soup people make. It might taste better than pig’s.”

“Probably more expensive, too. You shouldn’t have spent your money on me, pet.”

The corners of her mouth quirked up. “Actually, I didn’t. Willow keeps an emergency twenty-dollar bill in a box with her spell supplies. I, uh, borrowed it.”

He stared at her in surprise. Buffy had always been so disgustingly good. Could it be that he was having a positive influence on her? Pleased by the idea, he asked her playfully, “Aww, honey…you stole for me?”

“Let’s just say I grabbed a little rent money,” she answered.

“Twenty dollars for eight months? You must be running a sodding ghetto.”

“Pretty much.”

She led him to the living room, but he didn’t want to sit. He wanted to be with her, to touch her. She pushed him down onto the couch, trying very hard not to disturb his various injuries in the process. Which didn’t exactly work, of course, but he appreciated the effort.

Ignoring the quick dart of pain that shot through his leg when his weight dropped against the cushions, Spike stubbornly tried to pull Buffy onto his lap. He only got her down far enough for him to nuzzle her temple, and then she pulled away.

“Food now, that kind of thing later,” she told him and disappeared into the kitchen.

When she came back, she had an icepack as well as the blood, and although Spike rolled his eyes, she stubbornly insisted that he use it.

He downed the blood in one swallow.

“There’s no point in the ice, Buffy. You shouldn’t even have bothered. The blood will take care of it all.”

“The blood isn’t going to make the swelling immediately go away,” she argued. “And since you can’t use a mirror, I feel obligated to tell you that you look like the elephant man’s uglier cousin right now. Here—” Buffy dropped down beside him “—I’ll even hold it on for you. Now, you don’t have a single excuse.”

Nestling into the corner of the couch, Buffy angled her body toward him so that he could stretch out, her knees on either side of his torso and his back against her chest.

Predictably, he chose that very moment to decide the ice was not such a bad idea after all. He dropped his head back to rest the base of his skull in the hollow of her shoulder. The soft skin of her forearm brushed the side of his face as she settled the ice against his cheek, and he leaned into it even though it hurt. He wanted to kiss her; he wanted to roll over and push her into the sofa cushions. He wanted to undress her, to have her right there on the sofa in the afternoon so that God and everybody (most importantly her roommates) could see them. But something told him it was useless even to try.

“Remember the last time I played nurse for you?” Buffy asked suddenly. “In the parlor the night you got back from Wiltshire? You made me stop when I touched you like this.” And she placed the palm of her free hand flat on his chest, gently rubbing over the unbeating heart

Actually, what Spike remembered was stopping her not because she touched him, but because the mere proximity and position of her body had made him fantasize about having her fellate him, and he’d nearly come in his trousers right in front of her. But there was no reason to burden her with details.

After it became clear that he wasn’t going to say anything, Buffy spoke again.

“Tell me what it was like when I disappeared…when you were turned. Tell me what happened.”

“I tried to before and you didn’t want any part of it,” he answered mutinously.

“Just one of the many dumb things I’ve done when it comes to you,” she told him disarmingly. “But I don’t want to be dumb anymore; I want to understand how you went from that…to this.” She shrugged. “I guess what I’m really saying is that I want to know you as well as you know me.”

Did he know her? She had lied to him in London, lied about her past and her future, lied about her calling, lied about everything. Yet, at the same time, she’d opened up to him in a way he knew she never had anyone else. Angel was a ponce and had treated her like a child, never encouraging any real emotional intimacy; Riley had been too busy competing with her to worry about what made her tick. As for himself—

He knew everything she wouldn’t confide to the others.

Because of that, Spike told her. He told her everything, all the things that had warped him and all the things that hadn't. He finally managed to explain about his mother, about Dru and the servants, and about letting Matthew go. He told her about leaving Yorkshire in search of the Slayer and he told her about Emiliana, how pretty she was and how young. He had wanted to kill her because he thought she deserved to be killed by someone who admired her so much, someone who would celebrate the death of a slayer but still mourn the loss of a worthy opponent.

But he didn’t tell her about Angelus.

He considered it, of course. In a way, it would have been a relief to rage about it and make her hate Angel as much as he did. Then, he thought about her relationship with his grandsire, how she’d been so young and he had been her first love. Spike understood first love, how it wasn’t really love but an infatuation that mimicked it. Even if she now realized how hollow those feelings had been, Spike knew she still harbored a wistful fondness for them. He wasn’t jealous of the memories, not anymore, and he didn’t want to take them away from her. He didn’t want her to be hurt any more than she already had been. So, he kept his mouth shut about it, didn’t tell her that Angelus had taken him up against the wall and laughed about it afterwards; he didn’t mention Angelus at all.

She knew the story of how he’d killed Nikki in New York, so he ended it there. The things that happened once he had met her again were impossible to put into words, and he refused even to try. His memories of that time were sharp but confusing, and there were quite a bit of them he wanted to keep secret.

Buffy let him talk. She listened to all the evil things he had done and all the good things he hadn’t been able to stop himself from doing, even when he wanted to. During it all, she never said a single word and he realized that, for the first time, she truly understood.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Whatever Dawn was expecting to see when she walked into her house that afternoon, it certainly wasn’t this.

Actually, she was just relieved to find that Buffy was not in the kitchen. Not that she hadn’t appreciated the effort at breakfast, but it all was fruitless anyway and the smell of burned pancake clung to her clothes for the rest of the day. Maybe if Buffy had put her housewifely ambitions aside, they could order a pizza.

Once she discovered just what her sister was up to, Dawn knew she was in the clear.

Because, there was her emotionally underdeveloped sister sitting in the living room, watching a rerun of E! True Hollywood Story while the big, bad William the Bloody stretched across the sofa with his head on her lap. Although her attention seemed focused on the television, Buffy’s hands were idly playing in Spike’s hair, stroking it back from his forehead and twining his gel-stiffened curls around her fingers. For his part, Spike looked half-asleep, his eyes glazed and nearly shut, his gaze trained on nothing at all. If he were a cat, Dawn was sure he would have been purring.

“Wow, did I just fall through a rabbit hole or what?” she asked cheerfully.

Spike barely even turned his head as Dawn walked into the room, and his drowsy expression didn’t change at all but for a languid smile that appeared at the corners of his bruised and swollen mouth. Buffy, however, suddenly looked shy. She carefully slid out from underneath Spike, one hand lingering on his head for a moment afterward, as if to apologize for disturbing him.

“You—you’re home early,” she said awkwardly. “Was it a nice day?”

“It’s after four o’clock,” Dawn answered, trying not to giggle. “And since you asked, it was a school day; when are they ever nice?”

“Regular little Rhodes Scholar, ain’t she?” Spike asked no one in particular as he slowly pulled himself into a sitting position.

“I’ll bet you were only one because they beat you if you didn’t make the grade,” Dawn retorted. “We read about the Victorians in my history class and they were totally messed up people.”

“Totally,” Spike replied, mimicking her childish tone even as he agreed with her.

“I guess you’re hungry,” Buffy said resentfully, looking at Dawn. “What’ll I fix for dinner?”

“Not pancakes,” Dawn said quickly. Spike snorted from the sofa. “Actually, I was thinking about pizza. Dominos is running a really good deal…”

“We don’t have money for—” Buffy began. Then, Spike dug into his pocket and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. He wadded it into a ball and chucked it at Dawn’s head.

“Get whatever you want, Bit.”

Dawn looked at Buffy questioningly; she was staring at Spike with something akin to embarrassment.

“We can’t take your money, Spike.”

His temper flared at that. “For Christ’s sake, Buffy. It’s fifty dollars I got from playing poker; it isn’t like I had to mow lawns to get it. Bet you let Mr. White Bread pay for dinner once in a while, but God forbid I should do it.”

Buffy stared at him, clearly stunned, and Dawn braced herself for an argument. Instead, she saw her sister brush a hand along Spike’s shoulder—a gesture so full of affection it was almost uncomfortable to witness.

“We have a menu around here somewhere,” she said. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

The moment Buffy was out of earshot, Dawn pounced on Spike.

“What the heck happened to you?” she hissed. “You look like you’ve been through a meat grinder.”

“It’s nothing,” he answered gruffly. “First night’s always the hardest, that’s all.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re not going to go back?”

“Unless you’ve found another way to make money, I sure as hell am. Do you want to see her taking tickets in a rundown theater or working as a waitress at some filthy diner? She’s too good for that, and I’m going to see to it that she never has to do it.” He softened. “Anyway, it won’t be so bad tonight. No fisticuffs; no real chance of injury. And the blood your sis gave me has helped plenty; I’ll be fine by the time I leave here.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think…” Dawn began. Spike immediately cut her off.

“In fact, don’t let me forget and stay longer than twelve o’clock tonight. I’ve got to meet him at half past.”

“Him who?”

“Never mind that.” He paused. “Did you check the letter box?”

Proud of herself for remembering, Dawn dipped into her jacket pocket and showed him the envelopes.

“Good,” he said and waved toward the foyer table. “She dumped the other letters over there without even looking at them, so you can add those to the stack.”

“Other letters?”

“Well, on my way out of the post office, I saw a big bank of boxes…the rental boxes, you know? It wasn’t too hard to jack a couple of letters from them.”

“You stole mail?”

“Well, I had to do something, didn’t I? Couldn’t just hand her the one letter and expect her to buy it. Anyway, don’t go all self-righteous on me; I only took the junk about home loans and pre-approved credit cards...the ones addressed to ‘occupant.’ Did find a couple of promising-looking birthday cards; they might easily have gotten us a bit of extra pocket money. But I figured you wouldn’t like that.”

“What would you have done if Willow or Tara had checked the mailbox before me?” Dawn asked. “They would have realized that the mail hadn’t actually been delivered this morning; they would have known you lied.”

He shrugged, completely unconcerned with what-ifs.

“She didn’t think it was weird that the mailman came by this morning instead of lunchtime like he usually does?”

“Bit, she didn’t give a damn. No one pays attention to that shit except for anal-compulsive lay-abouts who’ve got nothing else to do. Now, go and do what I said before she gets back.”

Obediently, Dawn went out to the foyer and put the new mail at the bottom of the stack. She was just turning around when Buffy appeared behind her.

“Looking through the mail?”

“Uh…yeah…” Dawn thought on her feet. “I sent away for a picture of Johnny Depp, like, months ago and I haven’t heard back yet. I thought they’d send me my money back at least.”

“That’s what you get for ordering things out of the back of Tiger Beat,” Buffy answered. She picked up the letters and began rifling through them, asking as she did, “Did we get anything besides junk and bills?”

“Dunno. I was just interested in my photograph.” Dawn tried to feign disinterest but it was hard not to be nervous. Her stomach clenched as Buffy finally found the white envelope from Spike; behind her, she could hear him twisting around toward the back of the sofa so he could watch.

“Oh, my God.”

“What?” Dawn asked, breaking out into a sweat. She knew that if Buffy didn’t buy into this game then both she and Spike were in big trouble. She watched Buffy’s face carefully as she read the letter.

“Oh, my God. Dawn!”

Buffy’s voice was almost a shout and Dawn leapt backward as if to avoid a blow. “What?”

“He sent us money. He actually sent us money!”

“Who?”

Buffy waved the letter under her nose. “You know damn well who. He says you called up his secretary and screamed at her until you got his number at some resort. He said that”—she choked a little on the next words—“you demanded money from him. You threatened to sue him!”

Wow, Spike was creative. Dawn glanced over her shoulder at him and saw that he was smiling at her. Clearly, he had enjoyed casting her in the role of a temperamental brat. She turned back to Buffy and tried hard not to laugh as she said with a shrug, “Well, we need the money, don’t we?”

“He sent us five thousand dollars.” Buffy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He put it straight into our checking account; I’ve got the deposit receipt right here. Can you believe that? All that money. We can pay the mortgage; we can make sure the utilities get caught up. I don’t have to keep w—worrying—” Her words ended in a single, strangled sob.

Like a shot, Spike was off the sofa. He crossed to the foyer so quickly that it was amazing he didn’t trip over himself. Dawn could see from his limp that he might not be quite as healed as he claimed, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. When he reached them, he pushed her out of the way so he that could put his arms around Buffy.

“Love, don’t—it’s good news, isn’t it? Don’t be upset.”

“It’s good news,” she echoed, suddenly dry-eyed. Then, she dropped her head against his chest and sighed, “It fixes everything.”

Spike pressed a kiss into Buffy’s hair, murmured in a gentle voice that Dawn knew she wasn’t meant to hear, “I know, pet. I know.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~