The Summers’ residence wasn’t exactly a fortress; it didn’t have a gigantic drawbridge or shiny gun turrets or anything like that. It did, however, have a front door. And like most doors – at least most front doors – it required a key to be opened. And although Buffy had a key in her possession and this should be walk in the park material, she had a beast of a time trying to get them out.
Buffy fumbled with her keys. She lost the battle and they fell to the porch.
God, I’m such a klutz around him.
Luckily, Spike was already on the case and politely picked them up for her, not saying a word of sarcasm along the way. Her cheeks flamed red nevertheless.
She quickly entered her home and was already on the second step of the stairs when she noticed he hadn’t come in.
Buffy turned around. “What’s wrong?”
Spike looked at the invisible barrier of the door. “I’m not one to enter people’s homes without permission; not my style.”
Buffy would have laughed if he wasn’t serious. “I don’t know whether that’s more gentleman or vampire, but you can come in.”
He grinned and joined Buffy at the stairs, closing the door with a very loud creak.
“Buffy?” Someone called for her from another room, hearing the sound of the door.
Buffy looked frantically at Spike. “That’s mom. Hide!”
“Hide from your mum?” He almost laughed. “Are you kidding me?”
Buffy politely nudged him up the stairs. “She doesn’t allow any boys over.”
Well, besides Xander, but we all know that nothing would ever happen...
Spike looked mad at first but quickly shrugged it off. With the silence and swiftness of a deer, he went up the stairs out of sight.
Joyce stood at the main entry, barely missing Spike’s great escape. “Buffy? Who were you talking to?”
Oh shit...
“Oh, uh...” Buffy fidgeted with her hands. Think think think. “Just talking to myself. You know me... crazy old Buffy.”
Joyce glanced at her watch. “And you’re home past curfew,” she said in a stern voice. “It’s eleven fifteen.”
Looks like she bought the talking to self thing. Dunno whether I should be relieved or mad.
“Sorry, mom,” Buffy muttered somewhat routinely. “Won’t happen again.”
“I certainly hope it won’t.” It was more of a threat than a statement.
A pause occurred before Joyce transformed back to normal nice mom.
“I put the fish on the counter in a plastic bag; I want you to bury it tonight.”
Buffy nodded. “Sure, mom.” Her goldfish had recently passed away and she really needed to give it a proper funeral before it became unrecognizable.
Joyce smiled at her daughter. “I’m going to go to sleep. Long day at the gallery.”
Her mother started with the stairs.
Oh god. What if she sees Spike?
Buffy did the only thing she could. She blocked her mother’s dangerous path with an outstretched arm.
“Where are you going?” Buffy asked inquisitively, more to buy a little time to think than anything.
“To my bedroom to go to sleep.” Was there a hint of laughter in her voice?
Buffy facepalmed. “Oh, you mean you are going upstairs to your bedroom, which is the far door down the hall and not my room which is the close one.” She said the words in an unusually high voice. To warn Spike, of course.
Joyce put her hands on her waist. “Is something up, Buffy?”
Buffy looked down. “Something up? What do you mean? Nothing’s up. Not one thing is up right now...”
“You’ve just been acting a bit...” Joyce’s brow furrowed. “...strange.”
Buffy made her best fake laugh. “No stranger than usual, I guess.”
“Well, goodnight.” Joyce started climbing the stairs again, the arm barrier gone.
“Yeah, goodnight.”
Spike thought her room smelled like heaven. He hadn’t been there – to heaven anyway – but if he had, he was sure it would smell like this.
This room is bleedin’ adorable. Look up the word in the dictionary... Buffy’s picture is there as the example next to the definition.
Little stuffed animals lined up at the head of the bed. Boy band posters plastered all over the walls. An armada of Disney videotapes that would put most rental stores and probably Walt’s vault to shame.
Does Buffy have a little sis or something?
But he knew the answer to that. This had to be Buffy’s room, it was the one she not-so-aptly pointed out to him. The room wasn’t completely innocent, anyway; it was more of a work in progress. The clothes scattered about the room were the tell-tale sign: assorted outfits that only girls in their prime would dare to try on, let alone purchase and actually wear.
No parkas here.
Spike’s eyes caught a picture frame of Buffy and her family on her dresser. He grabbed the picture with his hands, examining it closer. She was with her mom and dad in the picture; they all looked genuinely happy. Buffy was younger, still nubile, and smiling.
Probably a rarity now...
“Taking pictures of me now? You know that might be considered stalkerish in some states.”
Oh sod...
Spike quickly placed the picture frame back in its proper place, expertly remembering exactly where it stood, but stopped when Buffy started to giggle.
Oh? Two can play it that way...
“Guess I’m guilty, you’ll have to lock me up,” he replied coolly, staring back at her with a wicked, confident grin. His response was more than adequate enough to throw Buffy off balance, but in the end he was thrown off, too, because he got another one of those empyreal blushes.
Spike looked down at his wound, effectively changing the subject. “So you gonna patch me up, doc?”
Buffy streamlined to a very large chest on the ground next to her bed.
“Your mum?” he prompted.
Buffy opened the chest with a key. “She has earplugs when she sleeps. I could scream right now and she wouldn’t hear a thing.”
Oh? Spike obviously had very different, more sensual types of screams on his mind than the innocent Buffy. He let the very respondable comment slide, though, concentrating on other matters.
“No, y’know what I—”
“You can meet her some other time, now’s not exactly the right moment.” Buffy popped the chest open. “We couldn’t explain the wound and she wouldn’t be very happy if she knew you were here... in my room.”
Buffy placed the first aid kit on her bed.
“Sit down,” she said.
Spike sat on the desk chair ten feet away from Buffy.
Buffy giggled. “No, silly, over here.” She patted on the bed.
Kill me now... there’s a thin line between heaven and hell...
He sat down on the bed and peaked into Buffy’s locked supply kit.
“Looks like you got all the stuff a sixteen-year-old girl could ever need. Stakes, holy water, oversized cross, first aid kit...” He laughed a little. “Your mum doesn’t know about you being the Slayer, huh?”
Buffy opened the first aid kit with a click. “No, she doesn’t.”
“It would be a lot easier on you if you told her...” He sounded wishful.
Buffy took some things out of the first aid kit. “I told her one time and it ended with dad leaving, me going to a mental institution, and us moving here. Now she lives in denial of it all.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” She thought about her tangent for a second, eyes widening. “I so totally didn’t want that to sound malicious diatribe like back there.”
An awkward pause occurred before Buffy continued playing nurse.
She took a mouthful of air before she started, needing the oxygen to get her a little high. “I need you to take off your shirt so I can—”
“Sure, pet.” Spike rose to his feet and tossed his black duster on a chair.
He started with his shirt when Buffy turned her blushing gaze away from him, obviously a little... startled by the sight. And Spike wasn’t born yesterday, he got the subtle gesture quite clearly. Too clearly, in fact.
“Hey, I’m not that ugly...”
Buffy was too quick to refute his words. Her gaze flew back to Spike and she had that deer in the headlights look to her when she saw him shirtless. She minced her words. “It’s not... it’s not that I think you are...”
She trailed when he made a devilish grin, obviously happy that he caught her in his trap. His very sexy and desirable trap.
“Oh, you’re evil,” she said playfully.
He tossed the shirt on top of the black duster. “Only in the evening, pet.”
Spike sat back down on the bed and Buffy started to clean the wound. She tried her best not to ogle at his chest, only focusing on his wound which was suspiciously located obliquely to Spike’s abs, which were probably just as much of a danger zone as his chest or his arms or his...
Really, any way you put it, she was screwed.
Buffy opened the cap to the rubbing alcohol, trying to focus on less exciting things. “This might hurt a little.”
She glazed over the wounded area, disinfecting it entirely. Spike didn’t even flinch. Alcohol in the wound and he was too preoccupied with the cute little sight of Nurse Summers.
Hurts so good maybe...
Buffy was expertly placing some white bandages on the wound when her pinky finger barely scraped his side. Now, they’d never touched before, at least not skin to skin, so it was quite the shock, quite literally the shock, when they connected for the first time. Pure electricity, in fact. Like touching the bad power lines, the ones that birds didn’t even perch on.
So, of course, the response to the innocent touch was simple: he jumped up and she quickly pulled her hands away.
His voice was jittery as he returned to a seated position. “S’nothing. Just hurt a little bit.”
Even when I lie I tell the truth.
It all finished rather uneventfully, with Buffy finishing with some tape and Spike putting his clothes back on. Well, as uneventful as Spike putting back on his clothes could be to her. And with prior knowledge in mind, he thought “uneventful” might have been a very bad choice of wording on his part.
Spike hopped back on the bed, sitting next to Buffy. His eyes wandered to Buffy’s bookshelves, which were full of “young adult” books and Disney movies. “So, you wanna watch The Lion King before we go to sleep?”
Her gaze went to her feet. “You must think I’m like five years old by my room...”
“Never said that, pet.”
She raises her eyes, the ones that were full of hope.
“I think that the worst thing that can happen to a woman is if she’s thought of as a girl.” He said these words with such beautiful sincerity; she knew he meant them with every fiber of his being.
They stared into each other’s eyes for what felt like a lifetime. Spike didn’t say it exactly; he was actually very roundabout and cagey in his demeanor of complimenting her. But the implications were there: he thought of her as a woman. And if that didn’t make a girl feel good, nothing did.
And then in an instant they weren’t staring at each other’s eyes anymore. Oh no, both Buffy and Spike graduated with highest honors from that school of thought. Now they were onto bigger and better things: they were looking suggestively at each other’s lips, hers glossy and plump, his pale and parted.
She edged a half inch closer to him on the bed. Even though her palms were facing down on the sheets of the bed, they were still sweaty and hot, hands already feeling the passion that awaited.
She leaned in and closed her eyes, just as he did, ready for whatever heaven would happen next...
Spike suddenly jumped off the bed and onto his feet, effectively ruining the moment and keeping his now notorious promise. Buffy fell over to where Spike should have been, to where he should have caught her with his lips. She regained her bearings and glanced up at him.
Spike sheepishly scratched his head. “So, what’s this I hear about burying a goldfish?”
I have to be your least favorite person in the world right now. I’m so sorry. :( I hope you liked the chapter, at least everything before the ending. But you gotta realize, I hadta do it, it’s in the nature of things. Please review if you have time. Giddiness from reviews = sooner updates = sooner to true Spuffyness.
(Penny, all your thoughts are belonging to us.:)