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Author's Chapter Notes:
Big thanks to beta Ali
CHAPTER 3 –

“What do you think of the word ‘choleric’?” She was sprawled out on her bed, laptop in front of her, contemplating her newest chapter on the unjustified anger of men when their cheating is discovered.

“It’s pretentious,” Spike answered, his eyes never leaving the display of yearbooks and photo albums he had found in her room. He was reclined on the floor with his back against her bed, lazily flipping through each of them. “Who’s Will?”

“Huh?” she asked, only half paying attention to him.

“Buffy,” he recited out of the yearbook in front of him, “I love you more than anyone and I’m so glad I met you. Blah, blah, blah. Love Will.” He craned his neck to face her, “Who’s Will?”

“My high school lover,” she answered absentmindedly, concentration not leaving the computer screen.

“What!? Buffy, this is your sophomore yearbook,” he pointed, “It’s says here he loves some bloke named Xander too. What kind of freaky shit were you into, Summers?”

At his tone, Buffy tore her eyes from her Word document. He was really starting to get worked up.

“Will,” she emphasized, “Is short for Willow. I was joking about the lover thing.” She reconsidered, “Well, she is gay now so . . .”

“Oh,” he replied, considerably calmer. “Well then who’s Xander?”

“Xander and Willow were my best friends from high school,” she gestured to a photo next to him on the floor for proof. “I haven’t seen or talked to them in years,” her sentence trailed off, a flicker of sadness behind her eyes, but she quickly shook it away, back to her writing.

Spike lifted the picture in the air, studying it, “You going to look them up while you’re in town?”

Buffy nodded, “I should. They are coming to the wedding.”

Spike raised his brow, “Sure are a close knit bunch around here, aren’t you?”

“Part of our small town charm,” she answered, noticeably unimpressed by her home.

Spike glanced at the clock, “Wait, weren’t you supposed to be shopping for bridesmaid dresses or something?”

“Not until tomorrow,” she answered, “I didn’t want to go, but unless I want to get stuck with some tapioca nightmare, I’m going to have to suck it up. Dawn’s agreed to let me pick it out myself if I grace her with my presence.”

“Buffy! William! Dinner’s ready!” Her mother’s voice floated up the stairs.

Buffy turned to him in shock, “William? You let her call you William?”

Spike threw the books he was pouring over aside, getting up from the floor, “I told her she could call me that if she wanted to,” he shrugged, offering her a hand to help her up from the bed.

“You don’t let me call you William,” Buffy accused indignantly, following him down the stairs.

He shook his head, “I never said you couldn’t. You just don’t.”

“Huh,” Buffy huffed, mulling over his words in her head.




Thirty minutes later, her family was predictably engrossed in the many facets of William “Spike” Giles. Buffy poked at her mashed potatoes while questions were volleyed around the table.

“Where did you go to school, Spike?” her mother asked, all eyes on him.

“Oxford. I majored in English Literature,” he replied, relaxed. Too relaxed for being in a room full of nosey people he’s known less than twenty-four hours, Buffy thought.

“And you chose to be an editor? Why didn’t you become a writer?”

Buffy scoffed, “If you saw the office he has and his bank statement you wouldn’t be asking that question.”

“You make good money?” Joyce inquired after shooting her eldest a motherly look at her rudeness.

“Yeah, and half of it’s due to me,” Buffy teased.

Spike rolled his eyes, “Yes, Joyce, the money is good, and I do freelance on the side. Being an editor allows me to write only when I want to and about the subjects I choose. It allows me to be picky and takes the pressure off. That way,” he added, a mischievous smirk on his face, as he looked at Buffy, “I don’t turn into an irrational phobic mess like your eldest here.”

“Yeah, who’s laughing all the way to the bank in Jimmy Choos,” Buffy shot back, making a show of forking her salad into her mouth. “If my current lifestyle has been working so well for me so far, I see no need to change it,” she snipped.

Her mother leaned into the table, “Yes, but Buffy, when are you going to settle down and get married?”

“When I find a man who has more balls than I do,” she deadpanned.

Buffy was used to these remarks. When she had first told her family she was moving to New York to be a writer, you would have thought she had denounced God and declared herself a Satanist. The big city was a big scary thing for her family – a mysterious place. For months afterward, Joyce had told the inquisitive neighbors that her oldest daughter had gone to visit relatives, hoping her daughter would see the light and return home. And, just in case Buffy needed any more encouragement, every few days another envelope from her mother would arrive with newspaper clippings inside from the New York Times she had picked up from a bookstore. All the headlines were about rape, murder, or larceny.

“Can we be excused?” Buffy asked. Not waiting for a response she grabbed Spike’s arm, wrenched him out of his chair, and led him out of the kitchen.


Hours later found them outside on the side porch nursing beers. Buffy sat on the railing and Spike across from her, leaning against the house.

“What about your dad? Is he coming to the wedding?” Spike took a swig from his bottle.

Buffy huffed, “We’ll see,” she said doubtfully.

“Don’t you want him to pull through?”

“I don’t want him to suddenly pull through, no,” she looked off into the trees of her backyard.

Spike smirked a little. Buffy’s capacity to be self-centered amazed him sometimes. So did her capacity for complete selflessness. It was all or nothing with her. “Well good thing this wedding has nothing to do with what you want then, isn’t it?”

She whipped her head around, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged, “Means your sis and mum want him there, so he should be.”

Buffy squared her shoulders, “But it’s the same thing every damn time he comes! He disappears to Spain for a few years with some secretary, shows up for one family event, and instantly he’s the most wonderful father and man on the planet! It makes no sense!”

“So glad you didn’t come out of the divorce bitter,” he commented dryly.

“Just like you handled your mother’s death so well?” It was a low blow but she didn’t care. That was a dicey piece of his history that not many were privy to and she knew it. “He left and turned my mother into a statistic.”

“You convince thousands of women a year to leave their husbands just with one of those little books of yours!” he marveled.

“They are in unhappy marriages! They are desperate . . .”

“No,” he drawled, “you’re desperate. They are in flawed relationships. The first sign of a problem, even if it’s as trivial as leaving the toilet seat up, you’re running scared. And you’re teaching millions of women to do same.”

“What? Am I teaching the women you date to not put up with your crap and you’re all pissed? For a man who goes through women like socks, you fight and awful lot.”

“And for a woman who claims to have no intimacy problems with men you’re awfully quick to give up on them.”

“I help women get out of flawed and abusive relationships.”

“But you don’t write for that crowd. No, you write for women like you,” he looked her up and down, “mid to late twenties and unwilling to stay and work for it. You want it handed to you with a nice little bow.”

“I do not.”

“Oh, but you . . .”

“Stop it,” she ground out, holding up her hand. “Stop pretending you know every little facet of me because you don’t,” she stood and pushed past him into the house.

“Fine. ‘Cause this fight we’re having is probably going to be a chapter in your book!” he shouted after her, cursing under his breath. He took a couple long gulps of his beer, emptying it. He looked at the bottle, not really seeing the label. It was that tone. That cold tone she used. Shouting he could stand. She could yell at him all she wanted, it didn’t faze him. It was when she turned all ice queen on him that really pissed him off. Channeling all his frustration and rage, he chucked the bottle into the woods, hearing the satisfying shattering of the glass.




An uneasiness Spike couldn’t explain woke him a couple hours later. He lifted his head from the mattress on Buffy’s floor. There had been an argument about his sleeping arrangements earlier in the day. When Buffy’s mom found out Buffy had banished him to the cot in the basement, she chastised her daughter for a good solid hour. Buffy had given in, apologized to her mother for such blatant mistreatment of their houseguest, and offered to make him a bed on the sofa. Joyce had shot down that idea right off the bat because A. There was a draft in the living room and B. The rest of the family (Buffy excluded) were early risers and would be disturbing his sleep that he so honorably earned in his nine to five desk job. So, here he was on an extra mattress piled full of more pillows and blankets than one would ever need in California, next to Buffy’s bed.

Which, at the moment, she was not in. A glance at the clock, proved his suspicion of the late hour. Even Buffy, who heralded the genius that came to her late at night, usually forced herself into bed by now.

After their fight, possibly one of their ugliest (and that was saying something) Spike had stormed upstairs and fallen into a fitful sleep. Spike stilled and listened for any rustling in the house and heard absolutely nothing. He tried to force himself back to sleep. She probably bunked with her sis for the night, too pissed off to be in the same room as him. But something propelled him up and off of his comfy bed and his bare feet hit the cold wood floor of the hallway.

He thought of peeking in Dawn’s room to see if Buffy was there crossed his mind, but the potential shadiness of the action convinced him otherwise. Padding down the stairs as quietly as he could manage, he hit the foyer and hung a right to the living room. He was rewarded by finding a lightly snoring Buffy asleep at her laptop at the desk in the living room, her head and arm over the keys and her screensaver (a series of pictures which included some of the two of them) floating across the screen.

He stood and watched her for a moment, but took mercy on her for the crick in her neck she was likely to have in the morning. He approached her and gently rubbed her bare arm, whispering her name. When she didn’t budge an inch, he repeated her name a little louder, accompanying it with a brush of her hair out of her face. Her face scrunched up in agitation, the little crinkles appeared between her brows and her lips visibly pouted. A small growl made its way from the back of her throat. Spike decided that he was getting nowhere fast. And even if he did succeed in waking her, he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with the mood she was likely to be in.

Mind made up, he softly slid his hand under her head, trying not to jostle her too much. Clearing her head from her keyboard, he powered off the notebook and closed it. Now without the light from the screen, moonlight singularly illuminated the room. Sliding her from the chair, he easily scooped her up into his arms. Still sleeping, Buffy leaned into his chest, one hand bunching into his t-shirt. He carried her upstairs and back into her bedroom. Pulling down the covers, he managed to slide her into bed without waking her. But just before he settled himself back onto his makeshift bed, he tucked the hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead.

“‘Night Buffy.”


TBC

A/N: The “more balls than I do” line was taken from Salma Hayek.





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