The tequila bottle was quickly drained in the duration of the afternoon, and a few hours, many bottles of water, and innumerable saltine crackers later, the two blondes managed to sober up enough to drag themselves out of the disorganized house and into Spike’s black Desoto parked on the street, the owner of the car convinced that his companion was still too inebriated to make her way back to her dorm room at night.
“I’m fine, Schpike,” Buffy slurred, as she slid onto the bench seat and fell over onto the driver’s side. “I just need to walk it off.”
“Yeah, and some li’l nasty’ll find you in your walking and make a nice treat of you,” he muttered half to himself as he moved around the car and slipped onto the seat as well, gently pushing Buffy up so he could situate himself. Just as he turned the key in the ignition and put the car in drive, he found a sleeping blonde resting against his right arm, snoozing away to the tunes of the Ramones. “Walk it off? Yeah soddin’ right,” he said to himself, heading in the direction of where he knew UCLA to be located and trying not to jostle the girl next to him.
There was just one problem with the situation—she kept slipping and sliding, and it was really quite distracting, Spike concluded—really, almost to the point at which his driving could be disrupted. Slowly and gently, he snaked his arm around her body and pressed her sleeping form against his chest, her head finding a pillow on his shoulder and her breath teasing the junction of his neck.
They rode that way in considerable silence, the only sounds coming from Spike’s softly-playing CD player (the punk music sounding really rather strange at this volume, he noted), until they began to near the campus. Pulling over on one of the darker streets, Spike killed the engine and slowly began waking the blonde up.
It proved to be a more daunting task than previously suspected. He poked, he prodded, he yelled, he shook—only when he turned the radio onto one of those nancy-boy stations and turned the volume up did the blonde begin to stir. “Wow, kitten, that was some nap you took,” he gently teased, when Buffy sat up and gave him a sleepy look of disdain.
“Where are we?” she mumbled, opening an eye wearily and lifting her head up. She’d been leaning against something nice, warm—living. She cautiously opened the other eye and realized that she was pressed against Spike’s chest, with his arm securely around her shoulders.
“Oh!” Spike jumped, retracting his arm and moving as far towards the door as he could, a strange warm feeling in his face as he realized he was blushing. “We’re a few blocks from the school—I figured you wouldn’t like it much to open your eyes and be faced with the commotion and such of the busier streets.”
“You’re all too right,” she muttered, squinting her eyes shut for a moment and rubbing her temples until her head began to clear—ever so slightly, at least. “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you then,” she said, finding the door handle and reaching for it before a hand snaked out and held the metal shut.
“Are you crazy?” he exclaimed, the blonde wincing at the volume of his voice. “Sorry, he muttered sheepishly, until he remembered his reason for incredulity and recalling his previous attitude. “You’re not going anywhere alone in your state.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Buffy snapped, in a harsher tone than she intended. When Spike looked away to hide the flash of hurt, she winced and reached out to touch his arm. “I didn’t mean to be mega-bitch, Spike, but I can take care of myself,” she clarified.
“Don’t care,” he said shortly.
“God, you’re a real pain in the ass sometimes!” the blonde girl answered icily, glaring in his direction. “Acting all noble when you’re the one who got me drunk in the first place!”
“I—got you—I did not get you drunk!” he sputtered, plain disbelief in his voice and expression. “If I recall correctly, you…” He trailed off at that, a thoughtful look appearing on his face. “Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t recall at all.” When Buffy raised her eyebrows and smirked, he quickly added, “But I’m still not letting you walk to your dorm alone.”
“Like you could stop me,” she said tauntingly, and reached for the door handle again, opening the door and stepping out of the car into the cool January weather. Just as she thought she’d won, she heard a door slam behind her and turned to see Spike catching up with her—and wearing an interesting article of clothing that she had yet to see on him.
The black leather duster swirled about his thin form as he pulled it on, stalking up towards her as she subconsciously waited for him. It looked… good, she thought, a small smile appearing on her face as the inner vixen made an appearance for the first time in a while. Can’t you think of anything better than ‘good?’ she asked, suggesting, hot, sexy, scrumptious, yummy, lickable—
“You’re stubborn, you know that?” she said, the vixen yammering away despite herself.
“Pot, kettle, black,” he pronounced slowly, smiling, and, shaking her head, Buffy began to lead him towards the campus, realizing that they were parked only a few blocks away from the Bronze.
When she told him as such, a memory stirred within his mind. “What’s the club called again, love?” he asked suddenly.
“The Bronze,” she answered distantly, kicking at a can in the alley they passed through without paying much attention to the question.
Spike was silent after that, thinking back on a pretty blonde waitress, whose petite body he’d grinded against, who’d made him hotter than he’d been in a while, who flashed a flushed smile at him during his flirtations and not returned. It can’t be, he told himself, eyeing the girl next to him warily as she chattered about something or another. Probably a lot of blonde waitresses, with thousand-watt smiles and cute embarrassed faces and amazing bodies and—
“Spike?” He suddenly realized that in all of her maundering she’d addressed something to him.
“Hmm, pet?” he replied, eyeing her questioningly as she stopped. There was a standoffish look on her face but her gaze was not on him—it was instead fixed on a group of young men exiting the bar a few shops down the street and heading their way.
“Let’s cross the street or something.” Her voice was high with something—Nervousness? Apprehension? Fear?—and he immediately complied, crossing after a truck passed them and moving to the other side of the road, the blonde girl hurriedly striding down the sidewalk and just starting to relax, when a voice called out her name.
“Buffy!” Both Spike and the spoken-of turned, the latter groaning when her worst fears were confirmed. Riley Finn was walking purposefully towards them, and the look on his face was not friendly; not only that, he was backed up by his lackeys Forrest and Graham, who were eyeing them with just as much aversion as their leader.
“What an annoying surprise,” Buffy remarked idly, rolling her eyes and stepping forward to stand directly in front of Riley, his two friends standing slightly behind him and Spike somewhat behind her. “Do you have something to say, or are you going to harass me again? Smaller audience this time.”
“Nice try at the innocence, Buffy,” he coldly said, narrowing his eyes. “Forrest, have you seen this guy before?”
“Damn right I have,” he said, crossing his arms before his chest. “Dancing with your ever-faithful girlfriend right here at the Bronze last week.”
“I can’t believe this!” Buffy exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air. “I work with Spike, and didn’t meet him until this weekend, so you can leave me the hell—”
“See, that’s where you’re being untruthful,” Graham interrupted. “Because Forrest and I both saw you with this guy—he doesn’t exactly blend, you know.”
“I don’t believe this,” Buffy said again, looking back at her companion with an exasperated expression on her face. “Spike, tell them that we didn’t meet until Sunday.”
“And that’s where I stop listening,” Riley said, before Spike could speak. “Because I couldn’t care less what lies this asshole’s got to say to cover up for your own, flat-out whorish—”
Before another word had been spoken, a blur of black leather rushed forward and Riley dropped to the ground heavily, his nose bleeding profusely as Spike’s clenched fist lowered slowly, his intense blue gaze turning to Forrest and Graham—who ran.
“You,” Spike began, his voice full of fury. “You stay away from Buffy, and leave her bloody well alone.”
When Riley managed a nod, the peroxide blond turned back to the stunned girl he was with and grabbed her hand, leading her towards the vast expanse of lawn that led to the dorm rooms. Buffy quickly walked along with him, unable to form words other than those indicating the direction of her dorm room. They passed a number of students traipsing about the campus, and learned from hearing snatches of conversation that the lights in a number of the dorms were out.
To say Buffy was stunned would have been an understatement. Yes, she had known that there would have been some sort of confrontation, especially considering Riley’s possessive accusations and disillusioned, “charitable” attempts to get back together—but that Spike had flown off the handle like that, and hit him when he said that to her… She had never expected that.
A part of her was saying that she should be making Spike leave, should be getting as far away from him as possible and keeping a safe distance from then on. But, her heart argued, there was no indication that he’d been violent before—and since when was her heart acting like she was considering Spike’s relationship in a more than professional sense?
Um, since forever, the heart pointed out, leaving the blonde with a frown on her face. She couldn’t deny the presence of excitement coursing through her veins along with adrenaline and that overwhelmed feeling she’d been so used to the past few years; nor could she deny the questions flitting through her mind—mostly, what had made Spike react so strongly to Riley’s insult?
It wasn’t the way a coworker, or boss, or whatever would have treated the situation, and there was really no use trying to pass his behavior off like that. But admitting that she believed Spike felt more for her than their barely platonic interactions would dictate was a slippery slope, that forced her to acknowledge her own budding thoughts and feelings.
When she had confessed her traumatic event to him, she had no idea that she was doing more than getting the repressed emotions on the matter off her chest—she was, unknowingly and unwittingly, releasing that block on her heart that she’d put in place after her mother’s death, that had protected her from vulnerability and the weakness that she so feared. But there was something just so open and honest about Spike that caused those walls to crumble even before she realized what was happening, and before she knew it, she had begun to fall for him.
And then, as they walked quickly through the dark pathways to her dorm building, his hand still tightly (although not uncomfortably) gripping hers, she came to terms with what she’d been trying to deny, to explain, to repress—but despite all the strangeness that came from knowing him less than a week, and only having spent a few days with him, the chemistry was undeniable.
She wanted him, and felt that the want could move from need and then on in a very short time. There was only two things that she could do—stay and let herself float down that dark and unfamiliar path of unrestrained passion; or run.
And as they approached the doors of Stevenson Hall, Buffy realized that the time for her decision had already come upon her.