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“Because I’m not ready for you to not be here.”
“And the Principal? How’s he fit in?”
Buffy held Spike’s gaze for a moment, hoping that enough had happened between them now for Spike to understand her without the need for words. There was, at the same time, both too much and not enough for her to say. And really, if she had to be honest – which, she figured, Spike deserved at this point – being open about her feelings had never exactly been her strong suit.
Spike continued to look at her for a few seconds before looking down, apparently reading enough in her silence to not push any further. They sat like that for some time before Buffy realised that something felt off.
“My God, the house is so quiet,” she said at last. She had gotten so used to the hustle and bustle of having a house full of teenage girls, plus Andrew, that she had forgotten how still the nights could feel when she was alone. Well, almost alone. She wasn’t sure how much she liked it, despite having wished for peace at least once a day for the last few weeks. Usually while having to referee some shouting match about Andrew’s labelled food products.
Spike snorted softly and nodded, “Command Central”.
“It’s starting to wig me out.” Buffy brought her hands up to clasp her upper arms, rubbing the skin to distract herself from the ooky feelings that had been brought on by the unfamiliar stillness.
Spike watched her with a small affectionate smile across his lips. “You should get some rest. It’s been an intense night.”
“When is it ever not?” She asked wryly. They both laughed, eyes meeting once more, softer now than before.
“Still,” Spike said as he rose to his feet. “Think I’ll turn in myself. You good to lock me in for the night?” He gestured to his wrists, though Buffy had known what he meant.
“No.”
Spike frowned, they’d had this conversation just the night before, and Buffy had agreed that when everyone was asleep it was probably safest for Spike to wear the chains.
“I mean, yes. I can. I will. But…” She faltered, biting on her bottom lip before continuing. “Can you stay with me, just a bit longer? I don’t think I could sleep right now.”
Spike paused for a beat before nodding. “Sure.” He made to sit back down before Buffy realised she couldn’t stand the eerie, silent house any longer.
“Let’s get some air.” She stood and crossed to get her denim jacket from the rack by the front door, shrugging it over her shoulders as she walked towards the kitchen and out onto the back porch, Spike following a step or two behind.
The cool night hit her as she stepped onto the deck and she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Spike continued past her, down the wooden steps, and stopped a few paces away on the lawn. His back was to her, his face turned to look up at the stars.
“This is better. The quiet feels more…normal out here.”
“It’s always been a good place for avoiding crowds.” Spike turned to glance back at Buffy over his shoulder as he spoke. “Or the echoes of them.”
Buffy smiled, remembering their conversation from a year ago. She stepped forward and lowered herself down to sit on the first step, as she had done each time they had found themselves alone on the deck.
“I remember the first time we both sat out here. When my mom was sick.” She swallowed around the tight feeling in her throat, something she noticed was becoming easier as time passed. “You were kind to me. And I think it was the first time I ever really considered that you could be good.”
Spike snorted at that and turned to face her. “Right, because showing up with a shotgun and planning to blow your brains out was a real high point in my journey to becoming a good guy. I came here because I wanted to hurt you, love. Not because of some noble act of selflessness.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Buffy replied firmly, hoping to shut down the self-loathing before he got himself worked up. “It doesn’t matter why you came here that night. What you did was kind, and it was good, and it made me feel less alone.” She looked into his eyes intently for a few moments before dropping her gaze to the frayed corner of her jacket. She picked at a loose thread as they fell back into silence.
Buffy wanted so much in that moment for Spike to come and sit beside her. To hold her in his arms. Or even just to tentatively rest his hand on her shoulder, the way he had before. But she knew that he wouldn’t do that. Not without her making it clear that that’s what she wanted. And she didn’t think she was quite there yet, at the point where she could openly ask him for that level of intimacy. So, instead, she asked about something else that her memory of their night on the porch had triggered.
“What happened to your duster?”
A brief look of confusion passed over his face, knitting his brows together, as if he wasn’t quite sure how they had segued to that.
“It’s still in the school basement, I presume. I didn’t take it with me when you moved me out to your boy’s broom cupboard.” He smirked, gently teasing her, as they both knew it had been the right call to move him out of the Hellmouth.
“Why not?”
The smirk slowly fell away from Spike’s face and his eyes darkened in shadow. He looked down at the ground and shrugged before replying. “I had that coat for a quarter of a century, pet. It’s bound up in a lot of memories.”
‘Most of them bad’ went unspoken, but she knew they both felt it hanging in the air.
“I liked the duster.” She told him simply, not wanting to get drawn into rehashing Spike’s demon exploits right now. “You were wearing it the night we first met.” She tried to keep her voice light, trying to lift some of the gloom away from his expression.
“The Bronze. I remember. The first time I threatened to kill you.” The very edges of his mouth twitched, and Buffy took that as encouragement that she could bring him back from the edge of self-torment he was currently teetering on.
“The first of many. You never could quite finish the job.” She smiled cheekily, feeling some tension ease from her shoulders as they settled back into a familiar pattern of conversation. They’d worn this path over and over again in the course of the last three years, and it was a comfort to find themselves here again. Like muscle memory. Reflexive.
“I wasn’t the only one, love. How many times did you chicken out of staking me when you had the chance?” His eyes were bright again, teasing, glinting at her in the moonlight. For a moment, he was himself again, and her heart ached.
“I never ‘chickened out’, Spike. I just…took pity on you. Especially after the chip. It wouldn’t have been fair to stake you when you were all defenceless. It would have been like staking a puppy.”
“Oi!” He shouted out in mock (?) outrage and she bit down to stifle a laugh. “Bloody puppy. I was always bad, love. I just…” he blew out a frustrated breath as he cast his mind around for the words. “Fancied a change, you know. After a hundred years of chasing down humans it was getting a bit stale. Needed to spice things up a bit. Challenge myself. ” He sniffed and looked at her with his eyebrow raised, daring her to disagree.
She laughed then, gently, openly. “You’re right, I had forgotten you were always about the trendsetting.”
“Still am.” He puffed his chest out, and Buffy smiled at the gesture. For weeks, he had seemed almost cowed. Shoulders slightly hunched forward. Defensive. But out here, in the calm stillness of the night, the two of them trading barbs with each other like old times, he seemed to be finding himself again. “I’m the only vampire who ever won his own soul back. Even sodding Peaches couldn’t do that, could he?”
Buffy rolled her eyes and groaned, only half-jokingly. “Please don’t get started on that again. I really don’t need to hear the Spike vs Angel Saga: Part 187.”
“But-”
“No.” Her voice was firm, but her expression was light. He pouted slightly in return, but didn’t push it, instead turning his face towards the sky once more with a sigh.
“He wears lifts, you know.”
Okay, so maybe not.
"Spike.”
He smiled at her then, a tender crooked smile that laid bare the warmth of his feelings for her. She smiled back, almost shyly, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes, before she dropped her gaze back down to the loose thread on her jacket once more.
“So, you didn’t tell me, how was your date with the Principal?” Although Spike’s voice was soft, his expression was guarded, his head tilted slightly to the side as it always was when he was trying to read her.
“It was…nice.” Buffy thought back on the evening and realised she hadn’t given it too much consideration either way. It hadn’t been a catastrophic failure like Xander’s obviously had been, but she couldn’t say she was left with any burning, tingling sensations that made her want to pursue anything further.
“Nice?” Spike repeated flatly.
“Nice. It was a nice, normal date. Until, you know, a vampire showed up and told us we had to go rescue my best friend from a demon.” She sighed and bent over to rub her hands distractedly along the length of her calves. “Robin is a good guy. A nice, good, normal guy. But so was Riley and look how that ended up.”
She looked up, expecting Spike to say something then, but he was uncharacteristically mute on the topic of Buffy’s soldier ex.
“I think I’m starting to accept that having a nice, normal boyfriend just isn’t on the cards for me. And not because I’m in some dark, twisty mental space where I think my life is terrible.” She was rushing through the words, trying to get them all out before this comfortable peace between them was broken again. “But because I think that I would just be really bored. Tonight was all about the nice: the restaurant was nice, the food was nice, Robin was nice. But the only part of the night where I really felt….alive was when I was fighting demons.” She laughed bitterly. “Is that really tragic?”
“No.” Spike didn’t hesitate before replying. “It’s who you are, pet. You can’t fight it. You just have to find a way to make it work for you. So that you can be happy.”
Buffy looked up and realised Spike had moved closer to the deck, his face steeped in moonlight and earnest concern. When he looked at her like this, Buffy felt everything around her melt away. It had always been that way. His eyes could somehow make her feel like she was the only thing on earth that existed, that mattered.
Looking up at him, she wished that she could return the favour. She wished that she could make him feel – just with her eyes – that he was the only thing that mattered to her right now. That she was so glad that he was here, that he was safe, that he was with her when everything around them was so uncertain. She wished that she could convey all of that through her expression alone, because he deserved to know, and she didn’t think she would ever be able to get the words out to tell him aloud.
They continued to look at each other for a few moments before Spike spoke again. “Anyway, this thing with the Educator was obviously doomed from the start. I mean, you? A restaurant? Where you have to sit and talk with someone for hours? That was never the right set-up for you.”
“Oh really?” Buffy quirked an eyebrow at him. “Given it a lot of thought have you? What would you have suggested?”
Spike smiled back almost bashfully; he clearly had thought about this topic before and Buffy instantly regretted making light of it. She was about to tell him that he didn’t need to answer her when he shrugged nonchalantly. “You need something more…involved. Something active. Something where you can let go and be free. Be yourself.”
He paused and Buffy could see the muscle in his jaw clench, his tongue running along the back of his teeth as he clearly weighed up whether to say what he wanted to say next. “The first time I saw you at the Bronze, you were dancing with your mates. I was amazed at how open you were. The other slayers, when I watched them, they were all responsible and isolated and bound by their destiny. Whereas you were…well, you were you, Buffy. You were alive and raw and so bloody…” He broke off and Buffy had no idea what he had been about to say, but she had caught the wave of genuine emotion and affection that had passed over his face the second before, and she realised she didn’t need to hear the word to know what he meant.
“So, if you and I were to…go on a date…” Buffy started, her voice soft and quiet but still somehow seeming to echo loudly around the garden and in her ears. “You’d take me dancing?”
“It’s all you and I have ever done, love.” Spike’s words were equally soft and equally deafening, pulling Buffy back to the first night they had spent together on the porch, when he had told her about the other slayers.
Buffy swallowed, steeling herself for what she was about to do. She looked up at Spike for a moment before thrusting out her hand towards him. Instinctively, he took it and pulled her to her feet, and suddenly they were toe to toe with each other. Slowly, tentatively, Buffy took her free hand and brought it up to Spike’s face, lightly brushing across the cool skin of his cheek, before she wound her arm around the back of his neck and settled her hand on his shoulder. Her other hand remained clasped in his as she pulled them closer together so that his forehead rested against hers.
“Buffy…”
“Dance with me, Spike?” She breathed the words against his lips, desperately quiet, and held herself tense against him until he wound his free arm around her waist and she relaxed against him, moulding herself against his chest.
And then, he started to sway, holding her close to him, nuzzling his cheek gently against the side of her face. She released a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding and breathed him in, the scent of him, of night air and cigarettes and whiskey. Breathing in his tenderness and his love and his soul. Her hands clenched around where she was holding him and she felt a tightness in her throat and a warmth behind her eyes, but she refused to cry now. This wasn’t the time for tears, or for thinking, or for anything other than just being present. Enjoying this one perfect moment, just the two of them. Not thinking about the house full of Potentials, about the First, about Giles, or her friends, or any of the things that had happened in the last seven years. She willed herself to do what Spike had described – to let go, to be free, to just be herself.
Buffy wasn’t sure how long they were out there, cutting small circles through the lawn as they danced, silently and without music. It didn’t feel that long, but at the same time it felt like forever, and at the same time it felt like it would never be long enough.
Eventually, she felt Spike press a gentle kiss to her hair and bring them back to standing. She stayed still, her face buried in his chest, eyes closed, until he stepped back and released her. She looked up at him with wide eyes, hoping that he could understand what she felt without having to say it. Because she did feel it, she felt it so deeply that her chest ached with it, but she could also feel the words still sticking in her throat, never quite making it out.
“We should…” he started.
“Yeah.” She smiled at him and they started to head back towards the house, side by side.
She wanted to say something before they reached the door, before they went back inside and this moment was over and just another memory, but he was already reaching for the door handle and she didn’t have time to think anymore.
“You were right.” Spike paused, his hand already gripping the doorknob, and looked back at her, raising an amused eyebrow. “About, you know, the whole dancing-date thing. You were right. It was perfect.”
Spike didn’t say anything in return, simply nodded his head, but the smile he gave her was so pure and so real that there was no need for words. She knew, and he knew, and that was all that mattered.
FIN