SECTION 4 - YOU'RE THE ONE

When the cold wind blows
And the rain keeps tumbling down
And there's no one there
And the morning light shines on

You're the one to lend a hand
You're the one who understands
You're the one to comfort me
The keeper of my heart

(Clannad, Album - anam, Words and lyrics A. Brennan, Additional lyrics M. Brennan)




Chapter 4.11
Tuesday, May 14th, 2002

Buffy almost despaired of Marie's chances of getting Rosa to sleep. The little girl was so excited to have not only her Uncle Will, but also her "new" auntie to help her mother put her to bed. She was bouncing up and down on the bed with excitement when the couple arrived, having taken the presents up to Spike's apartment and then taken Wes's bike to a nearby filling station before switching to the DeSoto.

Apparently, for Marie and Spike this hyperactivity was simply accepted as the norm. "Come on, mite. You know the drill. No stories till you're under the covers," the vampire chided.

"And no getting under the covers until you've said your prayers." Her mother added her own instructions.

The little girl quickly scrambled off the bed to kneel by its side. Her childish voice intoning a popular children's prayer before she clambered under the covers.

"Okay, missy, what's it to be?" Spike took off his coat and draped it over the back of an armchair positioned in the corner of the room where the lamp next to it wouldn't cast its light directly on the bed.

"Mommy was reading this one to me." The girl picked up a well-worn paperback from her nightstand. Buffy recognised it by the cover illustration as a favourite from her own childhood. A bookmark showed where Marie had paused the night before.

"Okay, I guess we better see what Bilbo's up to then. That okay with you, pet?" Spike asked Buffy.

"Just what the doctor ordered."

Marie moved to tuck the covers in around the girl as Spike settled into the armchair. She gently kissed the girl's forehead as Spike pulled Buffy down to sit across his lap while he read, her legs hanging over one arm of the chair while the other supported her back.

"With or without?" Marie asked Spike with a nod in Buffy's direction.

"With," the vampire responded before he continued the tale of the hobbit that gave the book its title and his dwarven friends.

After twenty minutes the young girl was clearly straining to stay awake to hear more of the story but when he reached the chapter's end the vampire replaced the bookmark between the pages and Buffy stood so he could return the book to its place by Rosa's bedside. A cool hand stroked non-existent stray hairs from her brow before he bent to press his lips against her cheek. His eyes flicked to the baby-monitor next to the book to check it was switched on before he stepped back, gesturing with one hand for Buffy to take her turn. Buffy pressed a kiss to her brow. When she straightened back up Spike's arms wrapped around her waist from behind. His cheek brushed against Buffy's as he bid the girl goodnight.

"Now you go to sleep like a good girl because we'll be listening, and if you don't your mum'll say I make you too excited and I won't be able to read to you any more."

"I'll be good," a sleepy voice informed him.

The vampire picked up his coat and ushered Buffy to the door before he clicked out the lamp.

"Night, night, ladybug," he whispered as he left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

 

Somehow Buffy wasn't surprised to find Marie making her way into the flat's living room at the same time as she and Spike did. A tray with three steaming cups and a bowl stacked with sugar cubes indicated she'd just come from the kitchen.

"There's some sugar already in, but I didn't know whether you might like it sweeter." The brunette set the tray on a small, black lacquer coffee table in the centre of the pale green room before she passed one of the mugs to Spike.

"Just the same as Spike's is fine," Buffy replied, accepting a mug of marshmallow-topped hot chocolate. "I should have known he had an ulterior motive."

"You didn't think I would be going round reading bedtime stories out of the evilness of my heart, did you? Course I'm getting paid." He sipped deeply at his own mug before settling on the cream leather sofa. His right arm rested along the back of the couch, an open invitation that Buffy gladly accepted. Marie took her place in an armchair at right angles, sinking back into it with the look of someone who has reached the end of a long day.

Buffy's eyes roamed the room with its pale green walls, hung with a selection of watercolours in clip frames. An aquarium with small brightly coloured fish burbled softly to one side of the chimneybreast and on the other a bookcase was filled with books of all shapes and sizes. A small gate-leg table stood by the window with a laptop and the receiver for the baby monitor resting on it, but other than that the room was free of the sort of clutter Buffy expected from a family room. It had an air of tranquillity that Buffy envied.

"In little girl's kisses and hot-chocolate?" Marie teased the vampire.

"What can I say?" he rejoined. "I'm just easily pleased."

Buffy spoke before she really considered what she was saying. "Marie, would it be okay with you if we asked Rosa to be a flower girl at the wedding?"

"Pet?" Spike's question showed his surprise. Marie's eyes flicked back and forth between the pair as she waited for them to settle things between them.

"What?"

"I thought you were all sorted with Bit and Red."

"They're bridesmaids, not flower girls and if I'd known earlier that you had another of your girls hidden away over here I'd have asked before now."

"You're sure, pet?"

"She's special to you. That'd earn her a posh frock, even if I wasn't already half way wound round that little finger with you. That is so long as her mom approves?"

"If you're sure there won't be a problem with the padre over it. It'd break her heart if you asked her and then it fell through." Marie replied with a wistful tone that Buffy was at a loss to understand.

"I can double-check if you want. I'm seeing him day after tomorrow. We can leave it till after that to ask her if you want, but if he's okay on the vampire issue I can't see it being a problem."

"It'll be fine, luv." Spike reassured the older woman. "You just happened to get stuck with a right wanker. They're not all the same."

"In that case, I'm sure she'll be thrilled, but I think maybe it would be best to wait to tell her, just in case."

 

---

 

"You mean to say that Riley had the house bugged even back when you were dating?" Anya asked.

"There are other possibilities. I mean, maybe when Sam went to the toilet the last time she was here, she could have hidden it then. Or maybe, Forrest or Maggie Walsh or someone could have tampered with it when it was in Riley's room, say if they knew he'd bought it to give to me. It doesn't necessarily mean he knew about it or that it's always been there. It could even have been Warren. There could be-."

"Don't they teach Occam's Razor in schools these days?" Spike asked, obviously irritated by Buffy's attempt at Devil's advocate.

"What's shaving got to do with it?" Buffy asked, before she realised that in Xander's absence she seemed to be the only one who failed to understand Spike's question. "And I guess from the look on everyone else's faces the answer is yes, but I was obviously too busy killing something that day, so colour me Rainman."

Wesley explained in his understated way. "Occam's Razor is just a name given to a theorem which says the simplest explanation is the most likely one, or vice versa. It cuts both ways, you see, hence the name." He gave Buffy an apologetic glance before he continued, "and based on the evidence alone, without knowing the young man in question I'd have to agree with Spike."

"The young man in question is a trained liar. We already know for a fact that he was prepared to lie to Buffy by omission, if nothing else. He's also a hypocrite, a racist, a bully, a sexist, a cheat and an insecure manipulative bastard, and those are his better points," Spike informed the other Englishman.

"Woo, someone obviously touched a nerve," Lori commented.

Willow stepped in when she saw Buffy struggling for words.

"Riley seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Maybe misguided at times and kinda gung ho, but at the time we all thought his heart was in the right place. Then things with Buffy ended kinda badly and its only in hindsight that anybody other than Spike started to wonder how much of what we thought we knew was just for show."

"Aw, puh-lease," the vampire protested. "Nobody's been that "Aw shucks, ma'am," since the days of Tom Sawyer, and I'm highly doubtful anyone with an IQ in double figures ever was, even back then."

"This Doctor?" Lily asked. "Is possible it was Holliday? If he mean to buy Axis, he need money."

"Bloody hell, Lil. It never even crossed my mind." The vampire cursed himself for not connecting the old man's nickname to the dealer before now.

Buffy looked over at Wes. "I guess that makes going through the old guy's stuff a bit more of a priority. If he was making substantial deposits round about February time, then we have our real Doctor. Otherwise it's back to the Sam hypothesis."

"I can look for bank statements when I go to LA if you want," Anya offered.

"That'd be good. Thanks," somehow Buffy felt as if she'd viewed Anya as an adjunct to Xander for so long that she'd never really appreciated the other girl's efforts. The fact that she was here now while Xander was AWOL had made the slayer reconsider her attitude to the former demon.

"Look, this is all well and good, but are we any further with finding any bugs or stuff? 'Cause I don't really want to replace every ornament and bit of furniture in the house. We need to know where they are, and if there's anywhere in the house that's actually safe for us to talk openly."

"There are some spells in some of the books we got from LA that might help, " Tara said. "But we haven't had much chance to research since we got back, and we're kinda figuring on having to use the public library, what with not knowing where they might have cameras and stuff in the house and on campus and at the shop."

"Okay, so we're still working on that one. What about working out whether we're talking about Riley on his own or Riley and Sam, or the whole Initiative, or what? We don't even know who we're up against. Or who if any of them are here in Sunnydale."

Spike gave a menacing smile. "But we know who to ask."

Dawn snorted. "And Riley's just going to fly back from Nepal, wearing a big sign that says 'Spike, beat me till your chip goes off so bad that your ears bleed'?"

"He will if we send him the right invitation. It's what used to be called throwing down the gauntlet."

Buffy looked at her fiancé warily. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that I've got a hankering for a good old fashioned bachelor party..."