Chapter 11
Charlotte smiled brightly at the redhead as she entered the hotel. “Willow, I could kiss you for your perfect timing!”
“Huh?” I didn’t think she swung that way.
“Your phone call got me away from a very uncomfortable lunch with my mother. I owe you big time,” she replied.
“Oh! Well, you’re welcome. Always glad to help.”
“Ooo! Yay! Char’s here!” The exuberant teen gave the shorter brunette an enthusiastic hug. “We’re taking Willow for some last-minute shopping before she flies away.”
Charlotte glanced around, before saying, “Is Buffy going to be okay with that? She doesn’t seem to like me very much. I don’t want to intrude on a best friend ritual.”
“It’s not an intrusion,” Buffy interjected, as she came in from the kitchen. “I already knew you were coming, from Willow’s phone call.” Friendship attempt #2 – be nice to Spike’s new best buddy.
“Uh, okay. I’m just going to slip a note under Spike’s door, and then we can go.” She hurried up the stairs.
When Charlotte came back, she was slightly winded.
“Man! It’d be nice if the elevator worked!”
“Good luck getting Angel to pay for that,” Dawn sarcastically replied.
“Let’s go,” Buffy stated.
~+~
Spike spotted the envelope in front of his door when he got up later, on his way to a shower. Hello…what’s this? There was a folded piece of notepad paper inside a plain white envelope, with his name on it. The note was written in neat, feminine script.
Spike,
Willow called me over, since she’s flying out tonight. I’ll probably be out with the girls still when you wake up. Any progress on my night visitor? I’d feel better if I knew he/it was taken care of.
I’ve been having dreams, too…well, more like nightmares, which feel very strange. I’ll describe it better in person.
See you tonight?
Your friend,
Charlotte
Just like a woman to not forget anything you say. This was one situation he hoped would remedy itself. He didn’t want to believe the scent he’d found in her room was real. That door led to a whole lot of uncomfortable scenarios that Spike didn’t want to face. Not so soon after another apocalypse. He couldn’t blame Charlotte for wanting reassurance, though. Being toyed with wasn’t fun for anybody.
~+~
They helped Willow do her Christmas shopping (cheaper here than in England), then caught two movies. The girls now had just enough time to have dinner before dropping Willow off at the airport for her flight. Knowing the area best, Charlotte directed them to a restaurant near LAX to make the most of their time.
Buffy and Charlotte happened to be in the ladies’ room at the same time.
“I wasn’t aware you’d been bitten,” the Slayer said, seeing the marks on Charlotte’s neck in the mirror.
“Happened with the vampire attack Spike saved me from. I didn’t want any odd looks while I was apartment hunting, hence the high collars.” She leaned her head to the side to get a better look at them. “I don’t think the scar will be too bad. The holes have been healing well. Spike’s pretty good at first-aid, for a vampire.”
“Oh. If you had, uh, you know…then he might have…I mean, you two look so close already…” Buffy babbled.
“You thought Spike might have bitten me during…? No, no…he’s been a perfect gentleman, Buffy,” she hastened to clarify.
“Dawn mentioned you were staying in his room, so I just thought…”
“Yeah, I slept in the room, but we didn’t share a bed like that. It was just a protective thing.” Charlotte turned and leaned against the counter. “Look, if you want to be with him, just tell him. Or don’t be. It really doesn’t make a difference to me, as long as he’s happy. As far as I can see, your worst competition is yourself.” She left Buffy to think on that and rejoined Willow and Dawn.
“Where’s Buffy?” Dawn asked.
“Still in the ladies’ room. I’m sure she’ll be along shortly. Has the waitress come by?”
~+~
The drive back from the airport was tense, though Dawn tried to liven the atmosphere by chattering away. Her sister stayed silent in the back, so she engaged Charlotte in conversation as they went back towards the hotel.
Buffy excused herself to change for patrol as soon as they walked inside the Hyperion. Spike arched a brow at the other two, but declined to comment.
“Red get off alright?” he asked instead.
“Yep. She said it was nice seeing you again, and to just let her know if you want any England-specific stuff shipped to you. We got a lot done today!” Dawn replied.
“I’m happy for you, Bit. I suppose we’re going to have to devise a plan to relieve your boredom now that it’s just you and Big Sis?”
“Well…besides college scouting, I have very little planned…”
He grinned knowingly. “That’s what I thought. As long as there’s not another apocalypse, I’m at your disposal, princess.”
“Isn’t he the best big brother?” Dawn said sweetly, looking over to Charlotte.
“If you say so,” she teased. “I’m the oldest, so I wouldn’t know.”
Spike snapped his fingers, as if a revelation had struck him. “That explains the bossiness!”
“Hey!” Charlotte socked him on the arm.
He chuckled. “Proving my point, luv.” His smile changed from mocking to sweet. “How was your day, pet?”
“Much better once Willow called. I had to have brunch with my mother this morning, which meant another lecture about not living closer to home and why I should be married already. I know she means well, but it’s the same speech every time! I keep hoping she’ll find a new hobby to distract her,” she complained.
“Wow, no wonder you raced up to meet us so fast,” Dawn stated. “Well, I’m going to park my butt in front of the movies I rented. See you guys around.” The teen hugged the pair, then skipped off to her room.
“Did you have dinner, luv?” Spike asked, now that they were alone.
“Yeah, we stopped to eat before going to the airport. I’ll be hungry again in an hour, though. How was your evening so far?” She hopped up on the counter and began swinging her feet back and forth.
“Unremarkable. So, what’s up with the Slayer?” he asked bluntly.
“She just embarrassed herself a bit while we were out. Nothing to worry about. Did you see my note?” Charlotte asked.
“I did. Why didn’t you mention the dreams before?” he asked, concerned.
“Because a couple nights of the same dream is no big deal – it’s fairly normal. Now, it’s been a week, so I’m guessing it isn’t going away soon.”
“And it’s the same one every night?”
Charlotte nodded. “Every night. Like a period horror movie. There’s a wagon encampment, and vampires, and screaming, frantic people. I wake up just before my character dies.” She shuddered. “I don’t often have nightmares, so this has been pretty disturbing. I’m sure it will pass eventually…just my imagination reacting to what happened. What about the vampire that was in my bedroom?” she asked, shifting topic.
Connor and Angel walked in, so Spike didn’t get to answer. Charlotte hopped off the counter just as Angel turned his attention to them.
“I’m looking forward to…” He stopped mid-sentence, turning paler than normal, if it was possible.
“Dad? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Connor joked.
Charlotte shifted uncomfortably as the vampire stared at her with an indiscernible expression. She moved slightly behind Spike.
“Take a picture, Peaches. It’ll last longer,” Spike said sarcastically.
“Wha’? Oh…right…sorry,” the elder vampire mumbled. He turned and walked into the kitchen without another glance. Connor started to follow, until Spike held up a hand.
“Allow me.”
The young man shrugged and let the vampire go after Angel. Spike found Angel sitting at the table with a mug of blood, staring into the cup.
“Mind explaining the act in there, Angelus?”
“Spike…”
“Humor me.”
“No thanks.” Angel gulped down the rest of his blood and left the kitchen, Spike hot on his heels. “Let me get that book for you, Connor, and then we can leave.” He continued towards the stairs.
“Just hold on a minute, Peaches. Answer the soddin’ question!”
Angel turned weary eyes to his grandchilde. “Just an old memory, Spike. Let it go.” The dark vampire continued up the stairs to his room.
Connor and Charlotte looked around awkwardly.
“Spike? Let’s just go,” she pleaded. He turned back to her and softened.
“Sure, pet. I can talk to the Brooding Wonder later.” Spike grabbed his coat and guided a grateful Charlotte outside.
~+~
Buffy answered her cell without looking at the caller ID, pausing under a streetlamp.
“Buffy speaking.”
“Cara! I have been trying to catch you for days, mia bella. How is your time in Los Angeles? Angelus – he give you no trouble?”
“Everything’s fine, Paolo. Angel is still not evil, and Dawn and I have been enjoying old haunts. We used to live here, you know, but I’m actually out on patrol now, so it’s not the best time to chat.”
“Bella…why do you still chase the vampires at night? You have all those charming little girls to do it for you, now, and it causes you stress. Allow me to call a spa and arrange for the pampering you deserve,” the Immortal oozed charmingly.
“You don’t have to do that. I’m doing plenty of relaxing. We went shopping and to the movies, just today!”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am,” she said quickly. “Dawn wants to visit the colleges, so I’m not sure when I’ll be back in town. I’ll let you know, of course. Bye, Paolo.”
“Cara…”
Buffy ended the call before he could talk her into anything. The Immortal was a good boyfriend, if you liked things casual and pressure free. He took her lots of places, encouraged her to indulge herself, and didn’t ask for one ounce of her heart. It was the perfect fling after Sunnydale…unless you considered how…off it felt for her to get physical with him. The kisses were good, but his hands felt too warm, his touch too firm or too soft, and it just wasn’t…right. So, she strung him along as the only woman who continued to resist being taken to bed, and he kept up the chase. Oh, she’d heard the rumors, too, and knew that he wouldn’t stay long if he finally “conquered” her.
She didn’t know what all he did, and didn’t feel like asking. As long as she, or the other Slayers, didn’t catch him doing something evil, then it wasn’t happening, and Buffy was free to be wined and dined all over the city. Now, seeing Spike face to face again, she recalled the intensity of their relationship – from their fights to the sex to their, well, fights again – and in that light, her relationship with Paolo was sorely…lacking. It didn’t spark her mind, her body, or her heart. The real question was, was it enough to live without the potential of what she and Spike could make, or would she forever go through life comparing every man to him and coming up short?
Could you have a quarter life crisis? A lot of her decisions were coming in question lately, and Buffy was starting to doubt how well she had been living her new lease on life. Did the world still really need her? She was only 23. Who had everything figured out at 23, especially when life had been halted in favor of Slaying? She wasn’t even supposed to be alive right now, and if you counted her resurrection as a rebirth, she wasn’t even quite three years old. Could she really be blamed for taking a year to be shallow and fluffy?
Maybe Dawn wouldn’t be the only one going to college soon. It would probably make Giles happy…
~+~
“Mmmm, that’s wonderful,” Charlotte moaned.
“Bloody mess of knots, you are. How did you do this, luv?” Spike kneaded the tension out of her shoulders as she sat between his legs on the couch.
They’d rented movies and picked up junk food, and Charlotte had shown him her new apartment.
“Try having lunch with my mother. She’s the only person that can make me potentially homicidal. I love her, definitely, but the nagging drives me insane.”
“Tell me about your mum,” he coaxed, his talented fingers turning her muscles to mush.
“Well, she’s a perfectionist for herself…more fair to others. We got along really well until she started to get burnt out on teaching. It wasn’t the kids. The administration pissed her off, but she couldn’t afford to quit until she could get full retirement. Combine job dissatisfaction, loneliness from the lack of a boyfriend, and menopause, and you get one bitchy woman. By the time I moved out, she didn’t have many friends left, so giving me advise became her new hobby. She’s convinced that she’ll never have grandchildren if I don’t find a guy within the next year, and proceeds to tell me so every time we meet. It’s not even really about me. She’s just lonely and bored, except for the cats.”
“Cats?”
“3 of them, currently. I expect more to follow if she doesn’t find any real people to hang out with.”
“And what about your da’?”
“Only see him at Christmas, and that’s only for the sake of my half-siblings.” The disdain was obvious in her voice.
“A real wanker, eh?”
She snickered. “Well, I don’t know what he does in private, but yeah, he’s a jerk. Never kept a promise in his life, at least to me. My little sister is the favorite. The perfect little girl that never questioned him, and the only one of us that was planned for. I scrimped and scrounged for college, and she got a BMW for turning 16. So, yeah, when it comes to my father, I’m ‘bitter, party of one’.” Charlotte pointed to the bag on the end table. “Pass me the Milanos.”
Spike handed her the package of cookies and resumed his manipulation of her back. His fingers worked down to waist level as she leaned forward. He spread his hands around her waist and marveled, “You are so tiny.”
“I’m 5’2”. What else would I be?” she quipped.
“Short doesn’t necessarily mean small, pet.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll admit that there are birds with bigger bone structures than me. Women on both sides of my family were petite. I was the tallest yet, on my father’s side, until my cousin and sister grew up. They both have tall mothers, so the tiny genes were defeated. What about your family? What’s your real name?”
Spike adopted what Charlotte thought of now as his ‘storyteller’s voice’. “William Atherton III. I had one much younger sister, who died of pneumonia. Father was away on business most of the time, so it was Mother and me, and the servants. And then it was just us, and a maid and a cook, once Mother took ill. Her friends eventually stopped visiting once word of her consumption spread. Tuberculosis, they call it now. She was as kind and supportive as any mother could be. Probably a bit too much so.”
“Why do you say that?” She turned half way so she could see him, since he had stopped the massage.
“Well, pet…I wasn’t like I am now. William was a ponce – entirely too naïve for his own good and too much of a homebody. I wrote poetry, of all things – bad poetry – and everyone I knew ridiculed me for it, except Mum. Becoming a vampire gave me the confidence and strength to deal with those who made me miserable. I’d never felt more alive. Your vampire family encourages you to sever the ties you had with your mortal life in a brutal fashion, and I reveled in their deaths. The soul tries to make me feel guilty for that, too, but I can’t seem to care much. They were a horrid lot.”
She offered a sympathetic smile. “It’s hard being the outcast, no arguing that. There have definitely been people who wouldn’t have been safe from me without a conscience. What happened to your mother when you died?”
“I, uh…well, I wanted to see her well again…but she wasn’t my mum after that…and so I had to dust the demon. It said horrid, ugly things that haunted me for a very long time, until last year, really, when I finally realized that hadn’t been my mother talking. I was, um, a very young fledge at the time, and so I hadn’t understood exactly what she would become. I mean…I still felt the same, you know? Just freer, and so alive. Like I’d been awakened from a fog filled dream…and I wanted to share that,” he mumbled, afraid she wouldn’t understand.
“Hey,” she said softly, lifting his chin. “It was a nice thought, from the knowledge you had at the time. I probably would have done the same for either of my grandparents, in your place. You can’t help but want to see a loved one vital and strong forever. I’m sure she would recognize your intentions.”
He nodded, smiling a little, too. “I know. Are you always this understanding?”
“Pretty much,” she chirped. “People have been telling me their problems since kindergarten. It just happens naturally, and I learned how to help them along. A gift for empathy is what my mother calls it. You wouldn’t believe the personal things I know about her, too.”
Spike twitched and shuddered, and she giggled.
“Turn around, luv. I’m not done, yet.”
“Okay,” she said grinning, and complied. Far be it from her to ever turn down a massage from a master. “I’m glad I’ve seen this movie before. We haven’t been paying much attention to it.”
“Background noise. Pass back one of those.”
Charlotte held up a cookie behind herself, not expecting his teeth to graze her fingers as he took the whole thing in one bite.
“Hey! Watch the fingers!”
“Oh, they weren’t in any danger,” he scoffed. “I barely touched them.”
“I distinctly felt teeth on my fingertips, and you have sharp teeth!”
He playfully pushed her onto the couch, so that Charlotte’s legs were draped over his lap, and started tickling her. “Little girls who cry wolf don’t get real rescues.”
“Aaack! Except that the big bad wolf is attacking me! Ha, ha…aaaaah! Spike!” She squirmed and wiggled, trying to evade his hands, but he had her caught, and that mischievous glint in his eye said that he wasn’t stopping the torment any time soon.
Well, if she couldn’t get away, then she’d retaliate. Charlotte wormed her hands under his arms and dug her fingers into his ribs. She was delightfully surprised when he jerked and laughed in response.
“Oh, so I’m not the only one who’s ticklish!” she declared gleefully.
They wrestled around until it landed them on the floor in a tangle of limbs, further complicated by Charlotte’s long skirt. The surprise change of location had them both stopping in surprise, breathing heavily from laughing.
I’m not sure which one of us leaned forward that last inch, but I think it was me. She just looked so beautiful, with her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes…and I’d laughed more in the last week than I probably had in my whole existence. Not evil laughter, or mocking laughter, but genuine mirth with company I enjoyed. Her lips are so soft, and she still tastes like the chocolate and sugar from the cookies…
The first thought that pops in my head is this is how my first kiss started, back when I was a teen, except that Spike is a much better kisser. I’m making out with a good friend…is this wise? I barely know him, but I know I don’t want this messed up. And while I’m thinking, he slips his tongue between my lips and I catch it with my teeth, earning me a little growl and a tighter hold. God, he’s good at this. I could so get swept away…
He sensed that she needed to breathe, and moved to her neck, starting the kisses just below her ear. Charlotte squeaked when he nipped at her scar, the ripple of pleasure taking her by surprise.
“What are we doing?” she asked breathlessly.
He smirked, brushing her nose with his. “Snogging. I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“Yes, I realize that. I mean, what are we doing?”
Spike peppered kisses along the unmarked side of her neck. “Acting on attraction.”
“Should we? Don’t you have, uh…unfinished business, back at the hotel?” she hinted.
He stopped, looked up, and sighed. “You mean Buffy…”
Charlotte nodded. “I don’t want things to get…complicated, if you two haven’t found closure.” She cupped his cheek, brushing her thumb along his cheekbone to emphasize that this wasn’t rejection. “I know you still love her, Spike. And I don’t think she’s…resolved…what she feels for you, either. You owe it to yourselves to find out.”
He dropped his forehead to her shoulder with a groan. “Easier said than done, luv. Part of me just wants to go where I’ll be first. Everything I did, everything I wanted, my grandsire had gotten there first, usually mucking everything up in the process. There’s so much to work through with her, and she can irritate the bloody hell out of me…”
“But will you be happier without her there every day? If you had the chance to wake up next to her every morning…”
“It’d be a bloody dream,” he whispered. “But dreams are just that…I don’t know if she’d ever love me enough to let me in her life like that.”
Charlotte wrapped her arms around him as she felt the energy drain out of him, his face pressed into her neck. She partly wanted to kick herself for reminding him of his troubles and erasing that smile, but she wasn’t the type of girl to just take physical pleasure from another no matter what it did to their lives. She couldn’t in all good conscience let him go further when he still carried a torch for another woman. One or both of them would regret it later, most likely, and she had just told Buffy that afternoon that she wasn’t competition. And Charlotte didn’t want to make that statement a lie.
“I still want you,” he joked, trying to lighten the moment.
“I know, but that doesn’t make it the best decision. I want a diamond necklace, but I’d be crazy to try to get it on my salary. Think of it as deferred gratification. Waiting makes the possible getting all the sweeter.”
“Proverbs from a wise woman. I suppose you’d like me to move?”
“Well, I haven’t vacuumed yet this week…”
Spike pushed the coffee table further towards the TV, then rolled off of Charlotte and stood up. He extended a hand to her to do the same, and kissed it once she was on her feet.
“Thank you, luv. You’re better to me than I deserve. Can you forgive me for not thinking with my brain?”
She smiled benevolently. “Of course. You weren’t the only one involved, after all. I think I’m going to get the ice cream.” She sidestepped him, patting him on the arm, and Spike breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t screwed up their friendship.
Charlotte retrieved the chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and two spoons while Spike put the next movie in the DVD player. They sat down on the couch again, close, but not touching.
As the opening credits rolled, Spike couldn’t help but ask, “So we’re okay?”
“Yeah,” she replied warmly. “We’re okay.”
He smiled happily and dug the spoon into the tub of chocolate.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This chapter has another kiss. It's the last one in the story that isn't platonic. I saw nothing wrong with it, since Buffy is still technically with the Immortal. I think it's good for Spike to realize he has options, and decide when he has a choice.