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Lessons in Love by Spikez_tart
 
Haven't Seen You
 
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Chapter 4 – Haven’t Seen You


Three days later…

Spike lit a cigarette off the butt of the one he’d finished smoking. His cigarette consumption had doubled since Cordelia had taken over his entire unlife. He didn’t know if he smoked more to relieve the irritation of being around Cordelia, or whether being Buffy-deprived caused sexual tension to build to unmanageable proportions.

He leaned against the building that housed the Eternally Yours Bridal Shoppe, which was about the last place in this hell dimension he ever wanted to catch himself. If you allowed yourself to hang around places like this, you only had yourself to blame when you got caught and marched down an aisle. Not that it worried him much when Red put that sodding spell on him and Buffy.

Cordelia had been staring at a wedding dress in the shop window for the past ten minutes and asking Spike stupid female questions that no man in his right mind would ever answer.

“Don’t you think I’d look fabulous in this dress, Spike?”

“Yeah, positively vestal.”

“Was that an insult? Let’s go in.”

“Let’s not. Hanging out on the street like a pussy-whipped bridegroom is not part of the plan, either. Speaking of which, when can I see some results? I haven’t seen the Slayer in three bloody days.”

He hadn’t seen Buffy for more than a few minutes in days. He wanted to see her and kiss her until she gasped for breath and tell her he loved her until she melted into his arms. He wanted to stalk her, stand under her tree smoking cigarettes all night, steal her panties, leave chocolates (that somehow always got mashed up in his pocket) on her pillow and take her to the dog races. Not to mention, he wanted to drown her with more sexual pleasure than any normal human woman could hope to stand.

That was the way to make Buffy love him. Instead, Cordelia ran him all over town and put on a show that hadn’t accomplished anything other than to make Buffy madder than a wet ryzark demon.

***

Cordelia ducked down to see what kind of shoes the mannequin was wearing. Cream silk peu-de-soi with white-seed pearls. The shoes were attractive, but low heels were not flattering to the calves.

Spike was about to renew his question, when she answered.

“You’ve seen Buffy all over town and she’s ready to explode from jealousy. What more do you want in three days?”

On the other hand, who would see your calves in a floor-length dress? Fortunately, there was plenty of time to think about all these details.

“I would like to point out,” she said, tearing herself away from the shop window, “that you have not cooperated. I’ve had to do all the work. I arranged for us to show up wherever Buffy was expected and I handled all the details for setting up tomorrow night’s event at the Bronze.”

Spike snorted.

“I’ve had to explain to you once an hour that making Buffy jealous and limiting the amount of time you’re in her vicinity is necessary to the success of our project. And, I’ve had to constantly remind you to put your arms around me and kiss me and look happy.”

Not that he ever looked happy. He must be in love with Buffy, the way he’d moped around for the past three days.

“Frankly, I’m sick of hearing Buffy’s name. This is deja vu all over again. What is with the men in this town? Buffy this. Buffy that. Buffy. Buffy. Buffy.”

“I want to see Buffy for more than three seconds. I miss her,” he said.

Cordelia looked away from the display in the bridal shop window long enough to see a flash of blonde hair. That blonde hair belonged to Buffy, so she kissed Spike and stuck her tongue in his mouth. She watched as Buffy ran down the street in the direction of the Magic Box.

“You’re going to see her in ten minutes,” Cordelia said and walked off.

Spike wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and followed her meekly into a nearby print shop, where she picked up a bundle of rose-pink flyers.

***

When Spike and Cordelia walked into the Magic Box together holding hands, Buffy stuck her nose in a thick, dusty Giles-book and pretended to be interested. Mating Habits of Seneschal Carnivorous Demons. Fascinating. She had no hope of fooling Spike that she was reading this dumb book. He knew very well she was not all Book-Reading Girl and never studied anything Giles recommended, but she couldn’t stand looking at the two of them any more.

She’d seen them all over town – the Bronze – the Crispy Creamy Donut Shop – the mall. Every time she saw the two of them, Cordelia was laughing, talking, gushing, and teasing Spike and Spike was looking all sheepish and pleased that she was paying attention to him.

Barf.

Cordelia greeted Anya and came over to talk to Buffy, who was sitting at the reading table. Spike stood in the middle of the shop floor and shuffled his feet.

“Buffy, hi! We saw you through the window and thought we’d say hello.”

“Hi,” Buffy said without looking up. She was not going to let Cordelia see she hated her more than any other female, human or demon, on the planet. She was so not going to let Spike know she was Jealous Girl, which she was.

Buffy blazed with jealousy after she saw the two of them standing outside the Eternally Yours Bridal Shoppe on Main Street, earlier that evening. It was the same bridal shop where she’d once admired a gown for her own wedding with Spike.

The Spike wedding gown had been designed by Kevona Reveza. It was constructed of white satin, with a scalloped neckline, tight-fitting bodice of Bemburg lace, three-quarter length sleeves and a poofy skirt. She wondered if the shop still carried it.

She wished Willow had never reversed that spell, at least the Spike-marrying part. Things were a lot simpler when she loved Spike.

Tonight, Cordelia had been standing in front of the Eternally Yours’ display window, cooing over some outrageously expensive wedding dress, and Spike had been smoking a cigarette and ignoring the cooing. He stopped ignoring Cordelia and grinned when she kissed him and whispered something in his ear.

Buffy should be the one kissing Spike and whispering in his ear.

It didn’t matter if she was jealous. Being jealous was not the same as being in love. Jealousy was some evil emotion thing, no relation to love at all. Spike could date whoever he wanted. It wasn’t as if Buffy loved him, which was of the good, because Spike was Evil Dead and a Big Liar. He couldn’t possibly love her. He forgot all about her when Cordelia blew into town.

“Anya, you don’t mind if I leave these flyers here, do you?” Cordelia waved a bunch of pink flyers with big hearts printed on them at Anya.

“I don’t know,” Anya said. She paused in her hourly cash register money count. “This event you’re advertising won’t interfere with the shop making money, will it?”

“No, it’s for a charity project at the Bronze tomorrow tonight.”

Cordelia dropped the flyers on the table facing away from Buffy. Buffy peeked at the flyer from the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t read it upside down. She was burning with curiosity, but she kept her nose buried in her book.

“I think this charity project is going to make people leave the shop early,” Anya said. “Besides, people who give away their money won’t have any money to spend in the shop tomorrow.”

Buffy watched Cordelia in the security mirror Anya hung up to deter shoplifters, like Buffy’s sister. Although Buffy couldn’t see Spike, Cordelia and Spike were enjoying a bout of Public Display of Affection. In the mirror, Cordelia looked way stupid humping thin air and sticking her tongue out into nothingness. Buffy giggled. She stopped giggling when she saw the back of Cordelia’s skirt slide up all by itself.

After she finished throwing herself all over Spike, Cordelia flounced around the shop hanging up flyers. While Cordelia plastered papers on the front window, Spike sat down at the table and stared at Buffy.

“How have you been, Buffy?” Spike said.

“Fine,” Buffy said, without looking at him.

He only called her Buffy when they were alone or no one was listening. She loved the way he said her name, the way it rumbled in his chest. It was as if he invented her own name for her and no one should be allowed to say her name but him. She forced herself to be Casual Girl and not let him see how a little thing like the way he said her name made her quiver all over.

“I haven’t seen you around the cemetery,” he said. “I thought you might like some help on patrol.”

She didn’t understand why he expected to see her at the cemetery when every time she looked, he was chasing around town with Cordelia.

Buffy flipped the page of her book though she hadn’t read a single word. The woodcut drawing on the next page showed a demon performing a highly embarrassing sexual activity with his mate, who appeared to be in a highly embarrassing state of liking that activity. She turned that page, too, to get back to the comfort of boring text.

“I’ve been checking out some of the other cemeteries. I don’t want the vampires to think they have a safe spot,” she lied, hoping her voice sounded calm, if not indifferent.

Spike placed his hands on the table and stretched out his fingers in Buffy’s direction. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but Cordelia chose that moment to put her arms around Spike’s neck and give him a slobbery kiss on the ear.

Humph. Spike hates getting slobbery kisses on his ears.

“I think you should leave now,” Anya said to Cordelia. She closed up her cash register. “Spike is scaring away the customers in that creepy coat of his and I don’t think I like you any more because you’re stealing Buffy’s orgasm friend. Unless you’re going to buy something.”

Buffy blushed.

“Let’s visit a few more stores on the street and hang up some more flyers,” Cordelia said.

Spike followed Cordelia out of the shop.

Xander banged open the front door and bumped into the two love birds on their way out. He forgot to kiss his fiancée, in his hurry to find out what his former girlfriend had been doing with Spike.

“Danger, Will Robinson,” Buffy warned.

He circled back, kissed Anya with a proper measure of affianced enthusiasm, and came over to the reading table.

Buffy riffled the pages of her book in a distracted manner that Giles would have found distinctly objectionable.

Dawn came into the shop a minute later and stopped by the front counter, looking for a trinket to snitch.

“What were they doing here?” Xander asked Buffy in an undertone.

Buffy showed him a flyer. “Handing these out.”



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Dawn snatched the flyer from Buffy’s hand. “Cool. You should go Buffy.”

“What is it?”

“A whole bunch of guys you never met before sit at tables with clocks. You buy a bunch of tickets for $5.00 a piece and you pick out a guy to talk to and give him one of your tickets. You start the clock and introduce yourself and talk to a strange guy for five minutes. Then, you go on to the next guy.”

“And, I would want to do this why?”

“You should go because your social life has a non-existent Hellmouth quality to it. The money is for a good cause - the new high school gym. You owe Sunnydale a new gym after you blew up the old one. Spike’s going to be there.”

Buffy opened her mouth to say she didn’t care where Spike planned to be any time in the next century, but stopped herself. “I have to patrol. Sunnydale can buy their own new gym with the money they saved from not having a mayor that’s a jumbo snake demon.”

What outfit did she own that would cause maximum Spike droolage? And, where she was going to get enough money to make Spike keel over with jealousy while she talked to as many other guys as possible and ignored him? Working at the Doublemeat didn’t permit extravagances like paying to make Spike jealous, but she was desperate.

“Xander?” Buffy asked, “Can I borrow thirty dollars from you until payday?”

Xander ignored Anya’s frantic signals to prevent him giving Buffy a non-interest bearing loan and handed Buffy the money.

Thirty dollars would let her flirt with six guys. That would show Spike. Buffy ran out of the shop and went straight home to patrol her closet.

***

A few minutes after Buffy left the shop, Dawn went out to the alley. She flipped open her cell phone, which Buffy didn’t know she owned, and dialed a number.

“She’ll be there,” she said and hung up.


 
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