CHAPTER 7 –
“Am I even?” Buffy, delicately balancing on a chair in brown heeled boots, called down to Spike. He looked up, studying the height on the streamer she held in her hand. He tried to ignore the flash of skin he got when her shirt rose up. He meanderingly wondered if she was wearing a bra.
He didn’t know what had happened to him. Well, yes he did, Buffy Summers had happened to him. It had been simmering under the surface since the day he had met her. But ever since that innocent little kiss on the cheek she gave him he didn’t know which way was up. Even Lisa was looking at him weird these days, like she was wondering what the deal was with spacey Uncle Spike. Now, every time he tried to concentrate on something pertinent, his mind ended up toying with lecherous thoughts of Buffy and various food items. It was on the verge of getting ridiculous.
Since his father and Jenny were taking a taxi from the airport to the house, Spike was relieved of that particular duty and had more time to finish the decorations. Buffy had come over early to help. Lisa had run circles around them, begging to help too. So she was currently over at the dining room table nudging red and blue paper plates and plastic silverware onto place settings.
They had found Raggedy Anne and Andy party supplies at the toy store and Lisa had shown the most interest in those. Now his entire downstairs was adorned with the dolls’ faces. Lisa (and now Buffy at Lisa’s request) was wearing cardboard paper cones on their heads covered in a collage of the dolls. Buffy’s mom had even made Lisa a dress. Lisa had woken Spike up at an ungodly hour that morning, new dress clutched in her hand, demanding his help with the buttons. It was a little blue dress with ruffled cap sleeves and a petite white apron with miniature white buttons. With the exception of the hair color, Lisa was now a twin to her doll. In a neatly arranged pile in the living room was a quickly growing stack of colorfully wrapped presents, which Spike kept playfully chasing Lisa away from.
“Is it going to be awkward?” Buffy asked him, while he held out a hand to help her off the chair, “Angel’s mom here with him disappearing?”
Spike shrugged, “Angel may be Jenny’s son, but she knows what an idiot he can be.” They were interrupted by the doorbell. “Them already?” He followed the rapid clicking of Lisa’s patent leather shoes. She beat him to the door and flung it open. They were still working on the whole don’t-open-the-door-to-strangers thing.
“Hello Lisa!” an older man, Spike’s father Buffy surmised from the accent, greeted warmly, bending down on one knee to admire her. A woman, who must be Jenny, bent over him, telling her how pretty her dress was. Lisa took their attention eagerly, spinning on tiptoes to show off. Spike caught her when she tripped and righted her. Unfazed, she darted into the living room, excited from the company.
Spike’s parents, heavily weighed down with enough presents for a small preschool, entered the house and Buffy got a good look at them. Jenny had dark features, matching those of the picture of Angel Spike had shown her. While Spike’s father shared his accent and lighter shading, that was about it. Rupert Giles could not have looked more different than his son. Spike had said he took after his mother, but that was a massive understatement.
“Buffy’s mom made the dress,” Spike offered, relieving his parents of some of the boxes and leading them into the living where Buffy waited.
“Buffy?” Giles looked perplexed, “What’s a Buffy?”
Buffy took a step forward, bringing herself into view, “I’m a Buffy, actually.” She smiled hesitantly.
At the sight of the attractive blonde, Giles shot his son a look, one which Spike answered with a raise of his eyebrows in an innocent “What did I do?” gesture.
“I’m Joyce’s daughter.” Buffy offered, having witnessed Giles’ reaction.
“Oh!” Giles looked visibly relived. “Buffy, I’m so sorry, I’m afraid we’ve never met.” He offered her hand warmly and she took it. “You have to forgive me, my son’s track record led to me to jump to the conclusions you were . . .”
“Rupert,” Jenny interrupted firmly, elbowing him out of the way, “You’re babbling. Buffy, it’s so nice to meet you.”
Spike let out the breath he had been holding and smiled gratefully at Jenny. Great, now Buffy was going to think he was some sort of man whore. Granted, back in L.A. he did have a revolving door of women, but not anymore. Not since Lisa had come into his life. And if he wanted to pursue something – someday – with Buffy, now was not the time to be delving into his past. All that would lead to is a childhood filled with horrible poetry, an adolescence of run-ins with the law, and adulthood full of women whose names he couldn’t remember. None of which would be putting him into a favorable light.
He was saved from any further embarrassment by the doorbell. It was Joyce and Dawn. The latter greeted Spike before going in search of her sister. Joyce joined his parents.
While niceties were made, Joyce and Jenny marveled at how they hadn’t seen each other in years, and everyone was introduced, Lisa was getting impatient.
“Uncle Spike,” she whined, twisting in her dress, clutching at a balloon.
“Ok, sweetheart,” he soothed, smoothing down her curls, and drawing the attention of everyone, “What would you like first?”
“Cake!” she declared, smiling when they laughed at her glee.
Jenny turned to her husband, “Rupert, go out and bring the rest of the gifts in would you?”
“There’s more!?” objected Spike, craning his neck to follow his father. He had a feeling Lisa’s grandparents were going to overcompensate for the loss of Angel, but this was above and beyond.
Sure enough, Giles reentered the house with another bag of presents on one arm, and a red classic Radio Flyer tricycle in the other. The chrome handlebars and fender shone against the sun streaming in through the door behind him. Giles sat it down and rang the trike’s bell, which had Lisa sprinting to him. “Anything for our baby,” Jenny cooed, taking Lisa’s beaming cheeks in her hands. In seconds Lisa was off, peddling away from the group and fighting to maneuver herself toward the living room. Spike immediately saw the bad idea of turning her loose in a room full of breakables and sharp edges and quickly scooped her and the bike up, ignoring her outburst of protest, and quickly turning her around to bike into the kitchen, a less scary room now that the cupboards were latched and the knives put away.
Soon Lisa grew tired of the bike for the moment and remembered her ignored request for cake. The grown-ups were already sitting around the kitchen table laughing and Lisa, getting tired of not being the center of attention, had peddled back into the hallway and disappeared. Having honed his ear for uneasy silence, Spike got up from the table mid-conversation. Buffy put a hand on his leg, giving him a concerned look. He shrugged her off, telling her it should be okay, and headed out of the kitchen to find his niece. He was beginning to think she had somehow inherited his penchant for trouble. For the easiness of the transition to Sunnydale, Lisa was more than making up for it now.
He walked into the living room to find the comforter from Lisa’s bed thrown hap-hazardously over the coffee table and part of the chair – in effect making the tent he had shown her how to make last week.
“Hmmmm. Where’s Lisa?” he called out, playing like he didn’t realize the cover he had just washed a couple days ago had been dragged down the steps and thrown into the middle of the living room. “Where’s the baby?” He heard her huffing and small whines she made when she was upset over something coming from under the cover. Spike sighed dramatically, “Oh well, I’m just gonna have to have cake and presents without the birthday girl.” He made loud steps, feigning that he was leaving the room.
“I’m here,” she huffed piteously. She hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before because she was so excited and had woken up very early, contributing to her uneasy mood.
Seconds later, Spike lifted one end of her tent. “There you are,” he exclaimed, laying down on the floor so he could slide partly into the tent. “You’re going to miss your birthday.” Lisa shrugged, laying her head on her crossed arms. “This is a good tent,” he admired, “Who taught you how to build a tent this good?”
“You,” she admitted.
Spike nodded, “That’s right. We have a lot of fun don’t we?”
She nodded, a bit more eagerly.
“Well, there are an awful lot of presents and big cake with your name on it. We can’t eat it without you. Think of all the fun we can have, playing with your new stuff.”
Then came the question he had been both dreading and waiting for. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked. Spike almost cried, in sadness for this little girl and in frustration for Angel’s stupidity.
He had thought over and over and over about how he would handle this situation when it arose. And he had decided long ago that honesty was the best. She had been jerked around by her mother and father from birth. She didn’t deserve that from them and she certainly wasn’t going to get that same treatment from him. “We don’t know,” he replied. “I’m sure he misses you though.” Spike purposely tried not to think too much of Angel and what had got them in this current situation. He just put his head down and did whatever he had to do to get them through the day.
Lisa made no response and Spike didn’t miss the few tears that slid down her cheeks.
“I don’t know, but that rectangle box over there from Buffy looks like something you were admiring at the store the other day,” he hinted.
“Babysitter Barbie?” she warbled, a hint of excitement in her voice.
“Might be. But we can’t find out until we have cake. What do ya say? Is it time for cake?”
“Yeah!” Lisa replied, temporarily broken from her bad mood.
Spike backed out of the tent, “Come on sweetheart,” he held out his arms and slid Lisa from her hiding spot, picking her up to wrap her arms around his neck and carry her into the kitchen. What met him there made him almost drop his niece.
“And here’s a picture of Will in school. This was before the punk stage. Wasn’t he cute in his glasses?” Jenny was whipping out pictures from her purse and everyone, most importantly Buffy, was hunched over the table, staring at snapshots of him from all different ages.
“Oh, bloody Christ, Jenny!” She looked up at him, not the least bit ashamed.
“Bloody Christ!” Lisa echoed, awfully proud of herself.
The entire kitchen froze. Spike watched helplessly as his father gave him a look over his glasses before taking them off to agitatedly clean them with his shirt.
“I swear to God that’s the first time that’s happened,” Spike vowed, waiting for his father’s reprimand like he was in third grade again.
“Oh, Rupert, don’t you remember the words he used to repeat off you when he was Lisa’s age. In fact,” she began, drawing in her audience, “there was this one time in particular . . .”
“Okay, enough,” Spike interrupted, “take those bloody pictures off the table, it’s time for cake.
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks goes to Ali, my beta, who absolutely made this chapter (and eventually the story altogether) better than ever