Marriage Made in Sunnyhell
by Spikesdeb
Chapter 1
“In here – come on, while there’s a table free.” The trio of wet women burst through the entrance to the café, the tinkle of the bell over the door bringing smiles of remembrance to two of them. Apologising to the people who got whacked with their shopping bags and dripped on from their umbrellas, the giggling group finally arranged themselves in the far corner of the busy café by the steamed-up window.
“God! I didn’t think the sky could hold so much rain!” said the blonde, betraying her California roots. “I mean, I know – England, famous for rain but. …still… maybe that’s why they call it the autumn – trying to forget the fall of the wetness. Should we rethink the al fresco ceremony – wrong time of year and all that?”
“Oh no, Buffy! You have to! You’ve got the vows all written up and Amber’s got the altar all ready and with the candles and the willow wand and the…and you’re messing with me, right?”
Buffy chuckled at her red-haired friend. “Oh, Willow! You are so easy to tease! You think I’m backing out now, after I’ve finally got him to agree with me over the ceremony? No way! That vamp is going to be wedded and bedded like it or not; I know what trick or treat I want for Halloween!”
“Buffy! I think Spike’s rubbing off on you with the sexual innuendoes. What happened to coy girl?”
“Pfft - I guess she’s back in Rome. She wouldn’t like what I have planned for this trip. Complete prude, you know.”
The third person at the table watched the exchange between the old friends indulgently, a slight smile playing around her mouth. She’d heard so much about Buffy from Willow but it was nice to finally meet her. She felt as if she already knew her as they’d been exchanging e-mails and instant messages for the past six months since Amber had finally found the courage to ask Willow out for a drink one night after a coven meeting. Looking sidelong under lowered lashes, the honey-gold of her hair swinging across her cheek, Amber peeked at the woman who had rapidly become her entire life. Willow flashed her a wide-eyed smile as she chatted happily with Buffy about the arrangements for the wedding and the “hen night”, reaching out across the table to clasp her hand as she turned back to continue her conversation. The younger witch still couldn’t believe that the gorgeous redhead would want to be with her, but every day just got better and better. And she thanked Freya each night as she lay down to sleep at the side of her flame-haired lover.
“So, I think we’re all ready for the ceremony, but what have you guys cooked up for my ‘last fling’? Hunky stripper? Sex toy party? Both – with whipped cream? Hmm?”
Willow rolled her eyes. Despite Buffy’s easy manner she knew that in reality she’d freak if she were faced with a gyrating g-string. Not to mention what Spike would do if he found out that ‘Red’ had led his Slayer into a den of iniquity; no that was his job! But the sex-toy party…hmm, that was an idea that hadn’t occurred to her.
“Just you wait and see, missy. You’re supposed to be kept in the dark until your jaw drops when you find yourself tied up and naked. Or, wait…that might be the boy’s thing…I’m still not sure how these English customs work. Maybe you’re just supposed to be dressed up with big learner plates and flashing tiaras…don’t worry, Buffy! We’ll be with you all the way.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about! Now, Willow. Can we just go over the details again? I’ve got the vows down – you got those, right, the e-mail?”
Willow smiled. She’d read through Buffy’s vows with tears spilling down her face. Her friend had come through so much to be finally at a place where she could open her heart to the world. But that was nothing compared to the sobs that wracked her frame when she read the vows Spike e-mailed to her. Bloody Awful Poet? She didn’t think so. The words were deeply moving, truly beautiful.
“I got them, Buffy and Spike’s too. Everything’s going to be fine. Trust me. Amber’s worked wonders with the set-up, we went up to the site yesterday and everything just needs lying out when we get there. You got the pictures I e-mailed you?”
“I did, and I’ve been on the website but I just want to see it now!”
“Well, we can go sneak a peek tomorrow afternoon if you want, before we hit the sex club.”
It took a full five seconds for the end of that sentence to hit Buffy’s brain. “WILLOW!”
Willow chuckled. “Just joking, Buffy…probably.”
Rolling her eyes, Buffy scanned the menu. Her appetite at the moment was out of all control. She knew that if she was really a traditional bride-to-be she should be refusing all food and dieting to get into the gown. But the first thing Spike did when he turned up on her doorstep in Rome was drag her out for a pizza and pasta blow-out, telling her she needed to get some flesh on her bones. Her vampire liked something to get hold of. Oh, boy, did he ever!
After ordering a large serving of cherry cheesecake and large latte, and ooohing an aaaahing over the choices made by Willow and Amber, Buffy settled back into her chair delighting in the comfortable feeling washing over her. She’d never been happier; a young woman in love, she was about to marry the object of that affection, and she was surrounded by friends. What could be better than that?
“I’ve been wondering how you knew…you know, that he was the one?”
The shy girl with the golden hair looked up at Buffy, her mannerisms and gentle nature so reminiscent of Tara that Buffy knew why Willow had fallen head over heels with her in such a short time.
“That’s a question and a half…hmmm. Well, I suppose deep down I’ve known all my life…my second, no wait, third life.” At the girl’s confusion, Buffy explained glibly, “I’ve died twice – Xander gave me mouth to mouth the first time then Willow invoked all manner of occult assistance the second time and brought me back from the dead.”
At Amber’s shocked look, Willow nodded solemnly. “I’ll tell you all later, sweetie…it’s worth an entire night of storytelling.”
After shifting to allow the waitress to serve their goodies, Buffy continued. “Well, when I came back from the grave -- I mean, literally as in clawed my way out -- I wasn’t really…me, not entirely. You see, I’d been in heaven and then I was dragged out.”
Casting a glimpse across at Willow who was visibly cringing, Buffy leant forwards and covered her friend’s hand with her own. “Willow, please. I don’t bear any malice against any of you. At the time, yeah, I wasn’t happy. Understatement of the century! But I get why you did it, really I do. And now………well now I am so grateful to you that I can never thank you enough! Without you I wouldn’t have this, I wouldn’t have Spike. And that would be way worse than being dragged out of heaven.”
Both girls across from her sighed out an “awww”, and the whole table was in danger of collapsing as they leaned together over the top of it in a wet-haired group hug. Untangling the multi-coloured strands and sitting back down, the various yummy goodies were eaten and appreciated, the drinks sipped and mmmmmmmmm-ed at and waistbands loosened.
“Go on, Buffy. Please! It’s all so romantic!” Amber sighed. Willow reached over and caressed her hair affectionately. She loved this woman fiercely and thanked the Gods that she’d been in the right place at the right time to connect with her.
“Well, as Willow will no doubt tell you, it took a lot to get me to react to anything when I was first back. I couldn’t feel anything, really, except wrong. Not happy, not sad, not angry. I just…existed I suppose. My sister and my mom couldn’t get through to me at all and as for my friends…I resented them, you see, for yanking me out of heaven. But they didn’t know why because at first I didn’t tell them where I’d been. They assumed I was in some hellish dimension and thought I was just shell-shocked. I couldn’t tell anyone…except Spike. He knew. He was always there, you know, just there waiting to take anything I could give him. He’d tried to tell me hundreds of times how he felt about me but I was awful, just treated him like it was some big joke. I didn’t want to believe him because if I did it meant changing my whole outlook on demons. I was the vampire slayer; demons were soulless beings and didn’t, couldn’t, love. If I admitted anything else then how would I be able to carry out my calling? If every time I met a vampire, a demon, I’d be wondering about the family it left behind as I staked it… hence the no-believe Buffy.”
Buffy smiled at the memories of all the times Spike had been there when she needed him, hovering in the background until she deigned to notice him. And she always did notice him; she finally admitted that to herself. In fact if ever she couldn’t see him, she craned her neck around trying to sense him until her vamp radar picked him up. Then she would settle.
“So, to gloss over a particularly unsavoury part of my third life, we started a fairly tempestuous relationship that quite literally brought a house down – don’t ask! We met in secret; I treated him abysmally, like an object that I could vent all my frustration on. But he loved me, all that time he kept on loving me, and no matter what I did to him he was always there. I pushed him away from me eventually, he was starting to make me feel something and resurrected Buffy couldn’t abide that feeling. So I told him to move on, forget me.”
“I shouldn’t have been surprised that he did just that. I mean…have you seen my fiancé?
All three girls chuckled, Willow somewhat nervously as she wasn’t used to Buffy being this sharey. She was unsure what was going to be the next statement, recalling the look on Buffy’s face as she watched Spike ‘getting it on’ with Anya in the Magic Box.
“Anyhow, enough about that particular moving on ‘cause it gives me major wiggins. There was a nasty fight between us, things were said and done that shouldn’t have been and Spike left. I thought he’d gone for good.”
And she really had, she realised, and that thought made her stomach cramp and her heart contract painfully. The thought of Spike having left after the bathroom…and never having seen him again. God, it made her feel nauseous.
“But then he did come back, just when I needed him. You know about the First Evil, right?”
Amber nodded, “Willow told me all about the last year in Sunnydale and the battle. And…Sp-Spike.”
Buffy smiled at her. “Yes. Spike. Well, that whole year was just so…draining. I was like a general of the troops all of the potentials, just little girls, and I was responsible for them. When the first one got killed, it really hit home with me. I was used to risking my own neck day in, day out. I even got used to the fact that the Scoobies did that, although I was never really comfortable with it. There was only one way to cope with the daily horror, I switched off again.”
“Well guess who got past the barriers? God, he’s like a terrier, yapping at you until you open the door. So I did. We spent more and more time together and a couple of nights before the final battle I had a falling out with the rest of the group and left it all behind, left Faith in charge. Of course, Spike found me in an empty house I’d holed up in and he gives me this amazing speech about how he loved me but didn’t expect anything from me, how he believed in me. He told me I was ‘the One’, those bright blue eyes boring into mine. And in that moment I knew. I wanted him to hold me; I wanted to tell him how much he meant to me. But I couldn’t, not yet. Not until after the battle. I had to focus on the mission; I had no time available for Buffy me. But I felt it – that’s when I knew.”
Looking up, she saw Willow and Amber staring at her with tear-filled eyes. Buffy quirked her lips in a little smile and wiped tears from her own cheeks.
“Then of course came the battle. We had the scythe, we had the potentials and we had Goddess-Willow. And we won. But Spike….” Buffy’s voice broke with emotion at remembering the scene in the Hellmouth, hands clasped with fire flickering across their joined fingers. “I told him then, before…I left him…I told him that I loved him; but do you know what? He didn’t believe me.” Pain again, clutching at her chest as she remembered “……..No you don’t, but thanks for saying it..”
Shaking herself from her anguished recollections, she rubbed her hands together and tried for cheerful. “Anyone else for more coffee? It’s still raining out, I don’t fancy a soaking.”
Willow knew that Buffy was having difficulty working through that particular time in her history. “I could go a mocha.”
“Me too, Buffy.” Amber smiled, relieved that the tension was lifting somewhat. She knew of the final days, of course, Willow had told her everything. But seeing Buffy’s face as she remembered Spike’s demise was just painful.
Carrying on the tale, Buffy leaned forwards, the hurt in her eyes replaced with a sparkle. “So now we all go on with our lives, Willow in England with the coven; Dawn in school here with mom moving over, Giles running a new Watcher’s Council, Xander with Faith and Wood in Cleveland. And I stayed in Rome. When Dawn decided to come to England I thought about it, was tempted to come over and find out as much as I could about Spike…well, William…. when he was alive. But I decided against it. I decided for the first time in my adult life I would just be me and I wanted to stay in Rome and just discover who me was.”
Mentally Buffy cringed as she thought of all the clubs and wine bars she’d frequented in an effort to reinvent her life. All the frenzied dancing and drunken kisses she’d exchanged with virtual strangers whilst searching for blonde hair and blue eyes. Then one night after she’d staggered home to the flat she reluctantly shared with Andrew by default, she’d finally managed to get her key in the door, cursing under her breath with a string of expletives Spike would have been proud of. Bowling in the door on unsteady feet, she’d stumbled and was caught up by a strong pair of arms. Drawing in a deep breath, she caught a cry in the back of her throat – she knew that scent! Leather, old cigarette smoke and…Spike. Looking up she was caught in the most intense diamond blue gaze of her fallen lover and she cried, racking sobs that tore through her body and left her weak. But she didn’t fall, she would never fall again as Spike wrapped his arms around her, holding her close to his chest and whispering into her hair, “Buffy, I love you. I did believe you… I love you. Oh god, how I love you.”
Andrew just sat and cried, mumbling incoherently, overcome with happiness. Oh how he wished he’d had his video camera to record the moment!
“So,” Buffy continued, “Spike came and found me, and the rest you know. All loved up and happy.”
Both girls listened to the tale, hands clasped under the table, eyes wide with rapt attention and punctuating the recounting with sighs and oohs when necessary.
Amber wanted more. “And the proposal; what happened when you decided to get married?”
Buffy nearly squealed with delight. She never tired of telling this bit, having thought she would never be in this position it just overwhelmed her to tell people about it. Going into giddy-girl mode she tossed her drying hair over her shoulder and started in.
“Well, after Spike came to Rome we spent a week or two, well more really, just getting to know each other. We hadn’t really spent much time alone through everything. So we did the date thing, restaurants, cafés, movies. It was only after a week I found out he was trying to fatten me up, thought I was way too skinny! But something was missing for us; yep, you guessed it – the violence! We took to patrolling after dinner, just strolling around mostly by the river. Seems that’s where the vamps and demons hang in Rome.”
“After a couple of months it became our nightly ritual, go patrolling, work the angst off, got our blood pumping…well, my blood at least. And it was wonderful. We weren’t doing it because we had to; we were doing it because we could. Anyway, this one night it was perfect; we’d been to a fantastic restaurant in the centre of Rome and eaten tons of food – pasta, bread, gelati and had glorious wine to wash it down with. You’re looking at me, Willow – I know, not good with the alcohol, but I only had two glasses and it was with food! Anyway, after that we did the touristy thing, walking round the city by the full moon – the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain. Super relaxing, holding hands and strolling, occasional kissage. Just heavenly. Then we headed to the river for some slaying before bedtime, you know, just to finish the day off.”
“All by the river, under the bridges, there’s this graffiti – Romeo loves Juliet sort of stuff. Spike and I would read it as we walked, making up stories about where they were now. Suddenly I stopped dead. In HUGE letters, must have been 10 feet high, written with glowy paint there was ‘Spike loves Buffy. Marry me’ scrawled inside a neon-glow heart. He must’ve planned it for weeks! Then I turned to him, mouth agape, and he was on his knees in front of me holding out a red rose and a velvet box with the ring in it. I nearly fainted! Then I cried, then I screamed, then I said yes, then there was much kissing. You get the picture….”
“Oh, Buffy, it’s so romantic! And he’d done it all himself?”
“Yeah, even got the ladders and everything. Course, when I looked at him closely he was covered in paint. We had fun getting it off…”
“Too much information, Buff!” Willow chuckled.
Looking out of the window, Buffy noticed that the rain had stopped. Glancing at her watch it showed 4.00 pm.
“We’d better make a move, folks. I promised Dawn we’d have dinner tonight and I said she could stay over. You ready?”
The girls all checked their purchases and put on their coats, leaving enough money on the table to settle the bill. Hitting more people with their bags on the way out, they chattered away walking out of the door and up the street before hailing a passing taxi.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
A huge shoutout to Lou again. There are some particular bits in this one that she completely -pardon the pun - revamped, most notably naming the exotic dancer. Enough said - she owns my world.