[A/N: I’d like to thank Dana, smlcspike, BloodyLuv, SarahandJamesFanatic, gypsy jin, secret guest, rosie, Aurora, PhotographyNut, daydreamer, B, Jenna, J, and anon for the awesome reviews that fuel this fic. You all rock! Yep, I did the banner all by myself and everything. With my 1337 photoshop skills that I acquired five minutes ago. Poke fun if you want. I suggest looking closely at it, as I added a few things into it that were pretty low on the opacity. And yes: giving endless horizons no hope since ’07. Title and description pretty much say it all... POV changes from Spike to Buffy, just an FYI. Title from the Led Zeppelin song. And yeah, I was thinking Zep also with the “out on the tiles.”]
Spike whirled around and in one swift motion placed all the force he had into Riley’s gut. It was a haymaker of an uppercut. So much force behind it, so much anger. One hit was always enough when it came to Spike. Always.
Riley toppled to the floor, the wind effectively blown out of him. The hit finally knocked some sense into Riley; it had brought him right out of his drunken state. He weakly and rather pathetically scraped for the floor away from Spike. His other populars friends were suppose to back him up now, right? They were suppose to help Riley get up. They were suppose corner Spike, grab him and let Riley throw a furry of punches at his enemy. Right?
No one besides Buffy tried to help Riley. Everyone was too afraid of Spike. The man had only thrown two punches total in two fights and won both of them. Granted, they were against Riley, who finally bore his true colors as a complete coward and weakling, but he was the football captain. Used to be the football captain, anyway. No one was sure of his status now.
Buffy tried to help Riley breathe as best she could. “Why did you do that!?” she screamed to Spike.
“I thought that was...” I thought that was what you wanted. But that thought chilled Spike to the bone. What had gotten into him? Well, the punching Riley part was simple enough to understand – Riley was an asshole, after all. But what inspired him to protect and defend Buffy? Her skin and eye tone? Stupid, just stupid.
“Bloody soddin’ hell...” Buffy should be saying thank you, but she was sleeping with the enemy. “Just... just whatever... I’m outta here.”
Spike headed for the door but remembered Faith. As much as he wanted to leave right now, he wanted even more to crash this stupid lame party. He dove for the stairs. The eyes of the room were still on him, everyone had stopped dancing and drinking. The music was even off. They were all just staring. Just staring at him. Kind of like old times. Except now, now they were scared. Scared of Spike.
Spike quickly scaled the stairs to a hallway. He tried door number one, but was greeted with a rather surprising image.
“Oh h-hey s-s-sorry,” Spike stuttered uncharacteristically. “Didn’t know people were... practicing the finer arts of S and M in the guest bedroom. I’m just gonna...” He pointed to the hallway rather dumbfoundedly and finally shut the door.
The second door was another bedroom. And no, no raunchy sex in this room. At least not yet. It was unoccupied, actually. Spike sat down on the bed in the center of the room and immediately his hands dove into his bleached hair. He was shocked. Years of hatred mixed with lust and he comes up with... with soddin’ protecting her? What the fuck was that?
Everything was just so wrong. He wanted to help the person that he hated. H-A-T-E-D. As in malice. As in not helping in a time of need. Or any time. He wanted to help the person that never once helped him. Buffy watched him sleep in the fire for years. Hell, she started the fire that seared him sometimes. He wanted to help the person that had caused him so much anguish and grief and dark desire. He could oppress this urge to be a shining knight when he was in complete control of his actions, but Spike knew subconsciously that his basic instinct was always to help Buffy. And that was something he tried to purge, condemn, crucify, eliminate, eviscerate... but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t send it off to permanent purgatory.
Buffy is in permanent purgatory. Torn between two lives... two ways of living.
The SAT, her home life, helping with her homework, and now sticking up for her... what had motivated Spike to do these things? Was it love? Some type of demented hate?
Still perplexed, Spike took off his black duster and threw it on the desk opposite the bed. It was kind of hot in here, which was exceedingly weird because Spike was usually unaffected by the temperature. Put him in the harsh sun of Death Valley during the peak of the summer with his leather duster and he wouldn’t mind a bit. But now, now he felt everything. Everything he didn’t want to feel.
Her emotions. Her problems. Her deathly living.
He was just starting to sort his thoughts when...
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Yeah,” Spike blurted in a high tone, too lost in his thought to speak in that smooth and deep tone he’d grown accustomed to using.
Buffy entered the room. She looked rather calm for just having her current secret affair beat up her ex-boyfriend. She was mad at him downstairs, but she seemed to have lost that with the elevation. Twelve feet did wonders to the air and the mind.
“Oh, hey,” Spike scratched the back of his head and looked down. “Sorry... about that... thought it was, well... thought it was what you wanted.” He could hardly believe he just said that, but he didn’t show any signs of, well... anything.
A small smile formed on Buffy’s face. It was hardly distinguishable to the naked eye, but again, to an expert in Buffology, it was clearly evident. She slowly crept over to the bed and sat down beside Spike.
Together they let the silence in the room overtake everything else. The music was blaring downstairs, but the silence in the room – the room where they were, where their emotions and thoughts and feelings presided – was comforting.
The whole atmosphere of the room was comforting, really. The white sheets of the bed. The ticking of the grandfather clock. The painting on the wall of some windmills in the Netherlands. The presence of two very different people in the same room. Well, Spike wanted to think they were very different. He wasn’t quite sure of that anymore. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“You didn’t have to do that...” Buffy broke the long silence. “He was just drunk... he wouldn’t have done anything...”
“I know,” Spike replied with a heavy sigh. “But I wanted...” too embarrassed to admit his inherent need to help her, he trailed off.
Buffy gazed quizzically at him. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” Was she calling him out?
“Help me...” Buffy’s gaze went off into nothingness. She was obviously also perplexed, with a kind of cute dumbfounded expression smeared all over her vivid face. “When you obviously don’t...”
Spike turned again to face Buffy. She looked just as confused as him. He desperately wanted to change the subject. “Is one-hit wonder okay?”
Buffy giggled. “He’ll be fine. Pride’s a little damaged, considering this is the second time and all.”
But it wasn’t really the second time. Spike could have used all his fingers and toes to count how many times he’d helped Buffy – or at least had the thought to do so – since school started. He dunked her head below water, yes, but he’d also helped her. Threw her a lifejacket while pushing her head six feet below.
The silence wasn’t comforting anymore. The silence was awkward.
In an act of sheer whimsicality, Spike jumped up and started fiddling with the window. He’d had enough of this awkwardness.
“What are you doing?” Buffy asked curiously, reveling in the mischievousness and spontaneity that is Spike. He was like the kid that always got in trouble at school, but also had a really interesting imagination and thought process. Okay, maybe that was Spike.
Spike popped off the screen to the window with a small ping.
“I dunno, Buffy.” And he really hadn’t a clue. “I’m just... lost. I need some air.”
And so Spike climbed through the window and out onto the roof. Luckily the roof wasn’t a very steep grade, so Spike was able to sit right down on the black tiles. He stared out into the deep blue ocean. The night was prowling; to some it might have been a bit chilly outside. Luckily the effectiveness of the temperature had worn off, probably from the minutes of silence in the room, and so he was unaffected.
A half minute later he heard a stifled grunt. Maybe it was a whimper; he wasn’t really in the mood to categorize unintelligible sounds. Someone was obviously trying to make their way through the window onto the roof. And that someone, most obviously, was Buffy. She carefully moved over to Spike, bending her knees so she didn’t slip, and sat down beside him.
They both sat, side by side, and watched the ocean together. Not a sound from either of them was emitted. The night was perfectly still, calm, and besides the muffled sounds of the party downstairs, the world seemed asleep. Buffy and Spike’s feet dangled off the roof.
The first thing to see, looking past the blue depths of the ocean, was a blunt, almost fuzzy horizon, that cut the sea and the sky in half. The distant vicissitudes of the world brought some kind of odd hope. An endless horizon, never nearing or veering, only searing the mind with hope. Hope. A dark new day approached, and yet a horizon always brought hope. Needless hope.
Scattered across the night sky were bright little ornaments people called stars. Scientists predicted that these stars were other suns, but no one had even explored the dimensions of our own sun, so who could really say what they were. But Buffy and Spike could surmise what they weren’t. And they weren’t suns.
Maybe they were ornaments? Ornaments were put on oddly shaped trees during Christmas to celebrate Christ and life and living. But these ornaments in the sky were always up, year round, illuminating the dark new day. Giving people hope. Needless ho—
The moon’s face smiled at Buffy and Spike. The face was clearly distinguishable, one just had to look hard enough at it. It was there, the undertow of the lips and the pupils of the large grey eyes were ever present. And if one looked even harder, one could see the moon’s eyes flicker. Wink. The moon winked at Buffy and Spike, giving them hope. Needless—
A shooting star scorched the bleak sky. The meteoroid already penetrated the upper atmosphere, combusting as it combed an ionization path. That was where the light came from. The burning. The blaze. The incineration. They were both sure of it.
It was the first falling star Buffy or Spike had ever seen – at least one that wasn’t Hollywood produced – but neither jumped up in amazement or squealed or got out their camera phone. The moment... the moment was their own, not to be disturbed by such calamities. Besides, the shooting star sieved surreal hope.
Hope.
Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. Candide had believed in hope, the best of all possible worlds, on his journey. Did he need it? they both wondered.
The moment ended when the shooting star stopped flickering. Warped back into reality, Buffy started to speak.
“The ocean’s nice,” Buffy cooed, sharing the picturesque sight with Spike. They both unconsciously allowed the waves to soak them up and again take them to a different place. An alternate universe. A place where stars were ornaments, where moons were faces, where the sun was just another orange ball in a big playpen. A place away from here. A place away from the hate and the torment and the uncertainty of life.
Anywhere but here, the traveling sign usually read.
Spike grinned a little at Buffy’s spot-on comment. “Yeah, it kinda is...”
He hadn’t allowed the ocean to soak him up, though. And maybe he hadn’t entered the alternate dimension with Buffy. “But the ocean... has the ocean lost its way?”
Buffy peered directly at Spike, surprise and playfulness seeping through her face. Were Spike’s words possibly a metaphor for change? Buffy noticed Spike’s eyes weren’t as dark as they usually were. They had a lighter tint now. Kind of a baby blue. Usually dark with desire, and now light...
Light with love? Buffy’s heart fluttered. Had the waves drenched both of them?
Spike felt Buffy’s heated gaze and turned to face her. “What?” he asked in a rough British way.
Buffy looked down. “Oh, nothing.” She adored this moment. With him. With no past to ruin things. Was it possible that Spike could just forget everything? Could they live in this moment forever? In this place where the sun rose to a bright new day and broken glass didn’t cut and alcohol on the wound didn’t sting. Buffy wanted that more than anything in the world... someone who actually cared about her.
“Y’know...” Spike started. “I think I realized something just now... sitting out here with you... watching the ocean with you...”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you realize?” Buffy sounded cute, like a child asking where hamburgers came from. But she wasn’t thinking about hamburgers right now. No, now she was thinking about Notting Hill, and The Notebook, and Pride & Prejudice, and Serendipity, and Can’t Buy Me Love, and Casablanca. Half those romance movies had happy endings. At least half.
“I realized... I realized that I...” Spike took a deep breath. “...that I...”
That he loved her? Was this Spike’s final submission? A profession of true love? Was he unequivocally admitting his true feelings? Moon eyes for years... the suggestive poetry... catching long stares... Buffy had a clue, but she didn’t flatter herself enough to believe...
Images of life with Spike flashed through Buffy’s mind. Attending college, having a decent home, a life expiration date that leaped past graduation. A good job. A family. A person who cared for her. A person who loved her. Did he? Did Spike love her?
“That I don’t love you...” The air went stale. Absolute zero in Physics. The molecules were frozen in time. Everything was frozen. The whole ocean was frozen. Spike was not in the alternate universe with Buffy. At least not now.
“I don’t think I ever did... I thought I did, but I didn’t...” Spike let out a heavy breath as he rambled, “I just bollixed up hate with lo... err... lust. Fancy me, the stupid git who does that...”
Spike chuckled a little. How could he possibly laugh in such a dramatic moment? So close, yet so far away...
“...and the stuff I do for you... that stuff is just because my mind’s a little wonky... that’s all... so you don’t have to soddin’ worry...” Spike placed Buffy’s tender heart in a blender and watched it spin around to a beautiful oblivion.
“Worry about what?” Buffy was on the verge of tears. The white knight galloped away, giving a thousand beggars’ change to the rich. The waves were whisking away from the shore. Enlightenment thinkers weren’t enlightening anymore. Lewis and Clark did not explore. It wasn't suppose to be this abhor. But it was only gore, only peaceful war. Nevermore.
“Worry that this will ever... be anything. I didn’t even care when you helped Riley... the enemy... that’s how much I don’t care...” He threw a tile of roof into the endless abyss of the sea, only it wasn’t so endless to Buffy anymore.
Yeah, needless hope.
“I just wanna ride that wave,” he pointed to a wave flowing to the shore, “for the lust, nothing more than that... rendezvous then I’m through with you...”
Spike was too preoccupied with the view of the ocean to see the single tear escape Buffy’s eyelid. The lone tear slid down Buffy’s face, leaving a trail of burning canyon in its wake. The lingering tear was leaving a laceration on Buffy’s face. When the tear finally dropped from her face... when the wave finally crashed into the shore...
A loud bang from downstairs brought both of them back to the real world.
Wow... that’s just... wow. I didn’t think I could write Spike that bad. He just took a perfectly lovely moment and turned it into that... c’mon, you gotta have something to say, even if it’s just wondering how the hell I’m gonna turn things around. Or will I? *evil laugh* Faith next chapter, which should be in by Friday; Saturday if homework becomes a nuisance. Reviewo es muy muy muy appreciato. See? Definitely need to practice my Spanish!