There’d been no discussion of when Buffy should start working the next day, and so she procrastinated as long as possible. First, she took Gunn into the bathroom, started the shower to cover the sounds of their conversation, and quickly explained what she’d seen the night before, leaving out the fact that she’d seen Spike there. Why, she had no idea.
Gunn yelled at her for a few minutes about the danger of what she’d done, then sighed, “Well, I guess that shatters the illusion.”
She nodded, knowing exactly what he’d meant. Thus far, they hadn’t encountered anything overtly criminal or evil, and had been lulled into a false sense of security. With Angel’s arrival, and what Buffy had witnessed, they couldn’t lie to themselves any longer. This was a dangerous situation.
After Gunn had headed upstairs to run an errand with Xander, Buffy had taken a long shower, attempting to wash away the memories of the night before. It was an unsuccessful endeavor.
She dressed, she ate, she did some yoga, and finally dragged herself upstairs.
Spike heard her the instance she passed by his office, and called for her to come in.
He hadn’t slept the night before. Not necessarily a rare occurrence, but usually he managed to at least grab a few hours. He’d lain awake, a muddle of emotions blocking any possibility for rest. Guilt, fear, worry, anger, all things that Buffy’s lips and hands could have cured.
“Spike, look…“ she started to say.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” he pouted. “Had to take care of myself.”
A look of disgust flickered in her eyes, a look that deflated the small bubble of happiness within him. “I fell asleep---“ she started to lie when Fred poked her head in.
“Sorry to interrupt. Have you seen Lorne?” she asked.
Spike didn’t miss the stricken look on Buffy’s face, try as she might to hide it. “Lorne’s…not going to be working here any more,” he said cautiously, reeling from the realization that Buffy must know what had happened the night before.
“Oh,” Fred said in surprise, then quickly recovered, and scurried from the room.
“Buffy—“ Spike moved towards her, but stopped short when she quickly backed up, something like fear in her beautiful eyes. He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “How…what were you doing last night?” He finally said sternly.
She bit her lip nervously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Buffy, it’s okay,” he sighed. “I’m not mad, I’m not…” A dark cloud settled into his gaze. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Buffy. I wouldn’t, do you believe me?” At her hesitation, his voice hardened, “What did you see?”
She quickly went over her options, and settled on a careful mixture of truth and lie. “I was waiting for you, and I heard voices, so I went outside to see what it was…”
“And saw what happened.”
She nodded.
“Fuck,” he hissed, his entire body tense. Buffy watched him warily, and waited for him to speak. “I told you there’d be things you wouldn’t like.” She nodded again. “Lorne…Angelus had sources that said he was betraying the organization. It wasn’t my call. I wouldn’t have made that call.” She was still and silent. “I don’t do that, not anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve held a gun to someone’s head, and even longer since I pulled the trigger.” Still, silence. “Fuck, Buffy, talk to me!” He growled, slamming his hand down on the desk.
She jumped, and then shrugged, “I don’t really know what to say.”
“Say…say you believe me,” he pleaded. “Believe that I wouldn’t hurt you.”
She was silent for a moment, staring at his anguished face. She wanted to believe him, she did. And he seemed sincere. Dark circles hung under his tired, desperate eyes, and his entire face had a pinched look to it. A look that instantly melted away when she quietly said, “I believe you.” He breathed a sigh of relief.
The phone on his desk rang again.
“I should get to work,” she said quickly, backing out of the room. Spike sighed, rolling his neck and clenching his jaw as he answered the phone.
Buffy quickly walked towards her haven, wanting nothing more than to just lose herself in the illuminated computer screen for a few hours. But Fred ran up after her, “Buffy!”
“What’s up, Fred?” she pasted a smile on her face before spinning around.
“The inquisition starts this afternoon,” the other woman sighed. “Angelus and his people are coming in after lunch to check things out, meet you and Gunn, and mostly make our lives hell.”
“Fred, such language,” Buffy giggled.
She blushed. “What can I say, I’m a rebel. So, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I was thinking maybe you could borrow one of my suits or something, just…well, let’s just say Angelus is a bit of a flirt, and we should cover up as much of you as we can.”
“Yeah, I experience his…flirting last night,” Buffy laughed. “Made my skin crawl.”
“Oh, totally,” Fred said, then lowered her voice conspiratorially, and moved Buffy into the computer room. “There’s this huge scandal behind it. See, he’s been with that Darla woman for years, messing around on the side of that too of course, but then, he married Spike’s long-time girlfriend up and out of the blue. He had no idea they’d even been having an affair. So not only did Spike lose his girlfriend to the man he has to work for, he has to know the man is cheating on her every day. How soap opera is that?” Fred finished with a giggle.
Buffy maintained her front of interested gossip partner, but when Fred left to call Xander and Gunn, she sank down into her chair with a heavy heart.
Poor Spike.
The story FBI had about Drusilla Edith-Angelus had always been a little muddled. There had been rumors that she and Spike had been involved prior to her wedding, but nothing concrete. Now, the antagonism between the two men made a bit more sense to Buffy.
Keeping Angelus’s imminent interrogation in the back of her mind, Buffy quickly got to work, thinking it would be just another day of uninteresting files and mundane codes.
But the first disk she started working on was infinitely more complicated to hack into than any of the others had been. She began to get excited as she tried different ways of getting into it, rolling her eyes at herself when she realized how thrilled she was over a complicated computer problem.
Once she finally opened up the files, she was even more energized.
This was something. What, she didn’t quite know yet. It looked like a bunch of information about a delivery—tracking numbers, bank account transfers, photographs. But what was even more interesting, was that none of the names on the files were familiar to Buffy.
Except the name Liam Angelus.
Why would Spike have all this information on one of Angelus’s deals, Buffy wondered, but didn’t get a chance to think about the problem further when Fred knocked in the door.
“Buffy? Let’s get you dressed!”
Spike paced in his office as he waited for Angelus to arrive. He was stressed. The man’s very presence inevitably caused Spike to either punch a hole in a wall, or drink an entire bottle of Jack Daniels. Neither of which ever left him feeling great.
“Xander and Gunn are back,” Fred said as she came in with a coffee for him. “And I put Buffy in some of my clothes, like you asked. They should be here in twenty minutes or so.”
Spike nodded, accepted the coffee, and decided he needed some fresh air to help calm himself down.
Calm, however, was not what his body ever was when around Buffy Joyce, who was standing on the patio, wearing one of Fred’s dark gray skirts, a high-necked white blouse, and black flats.
“Well, don’t you look…” Spike started to tease her, then pulled back, still not sure if she was comfortable around him after what she’d witnessed the previous evening.
“Like a librarian?” She finished for him. “Fred can pull off this stuff, she’s all thin and graceful. I feel like a kid in mom’s clothes.”
“You definitely don’t look like a kid,” Spike said appreciatively, eyes tracing the outline of her breasts under the blouse and the way the skirt’s slit flashed a bit of thigh when she moved.
“Thanks.” After an awkward pause, Buffy continued, “Look, about last night. All of last night, not just…” she took a deep breath. “Let’s just forget it happened, okay? Everything. Should make things easier.”
Spike wanted to yell a firm no, explain exactly what was going on, beg her to forgive him, and if none of that worked, use his power as her boss to just force her to smile at him again. But he knew none of that would work with a woman like Buffy.
“Okay, sure,” he shrugged. “I apologize if I made you uncomfortable at all.”
“It’s fine,” Buffy said, aware of the crushing disappointment in her chest at Spike’s easy acceptance of losing her company.
“Remember what I said when I hired you, Buffy,” Spike said before he turned to leave. “Your loyalty is to me, not to anyone else, and certainly not to Angelus. So be careful how you answer his questions.” And with that, he stalked off.
Angel and his entourage spread themselves out in the living room, talking loudly and ordering around the maid. Gunn and Xander stood off to the side quietly, as Fred and Buffy waited patiently on one of the couches for Spike to come in.
He finally arrived, to an instant rebuke from Angel, “Don’t like to be kept waiting, Spikey,” he said with derision.
Spike shrugged and flung himself into a chair across from Buffy.
“Well let’s get to it, shall we?” Angel smirked evilly.
Buffy was used to interrogation, as Gunn was. They’d been trained to withstand it. And Xander, Fred and Spike had clearly been through this sort of process before. But after almost two hours of constant questioning about the most mundane things by Angel and his lackeys, she felt exhausted. They had asked her everything from how she’d cracked the code on each of the files, to what was in them.
“I don’t read them,” Buffy had shrugged. “I don’t really care what’s in them, I just make sure they’re…openable?” She smiled perkily.
Angel had looked at her as if he didn’t quite believe her, but then laughed and said patronizingly, “They’d probably be over your head anyway, baby.”
Buffy had wanted to smack him, or possibly kick him in the crotch.
Lorne had been brought up casually by Angel, in a way that made it seem he had just up and decided to quit irresponsibly, and his attitude about it made Buffy’s blood boil. From the sick look that flashed across Spike’s face, she figured he felt the same, and she was surprised at how relieved she was that he hadn’t lied to her earlier. Fred and Xander didn’t say anything, but Buffy figured after having worked in this environment for so long, they knew exactly what had happened to Lorne.
The group of men had finally left, after making it clear this wasn’t the last time they’d be around. Gunn walked them to the door, and everyone left in the room breathed simultaneous sighs of relief.
Xander spoke first. “I really hate that guy.”
Spike let out a bark of laughter. “That’s a bloody understatement.”
Fred giggled. “I just think he has a great big stick up his butt.” They all laughed at her feeble attempt at an insult, and the tension in the room seemed to drain away for a bit. Spike watched Buffy’s eyes glitter as she winked at Fred, feeling an almost irresistible pull towards her.
“Is there anything you need me to do tonight?” Gunn asked when he returned to the room.
“Uh, no,” Spike shrugged. “Why?”
“I was thinking of taking my girl out to dinner,” Gunn put his hands on Buffy’s shoulders and squeezing them. “If you don’t need her to work tonight either.”
Spike briefly considered saying yes, he needed Buffy, she couldn’t go, and to sod off, you prick. He glanced at the girl in question, willing her to look at him, to communicate with her eyes, but when she didn’t he just shrugged and gave his permission.
Out of the corner of her eye Buffy watched Spike peel himself off the couch and leave the room without a word. She sighed, resisting her urge to go apologize to him, and followed Gunn downstairs to get ready to go out.
The pair called Giles as they left the gates, and made plans to meet him at a tiny, hole in the wall Chinese restaurant in Long Beach where they could talk openly.
Buffy first told Giles about seeing Lorne’s murder, and she again left out Spike’s presence at the scene of the crime. She then relayed all the recent information she’d memorized from the different disks, taking great care to lay out all that which had been in the most recent file.
“That certainly does seem odd,” Giles mused. “I suppose Spike could have been involved in that transaction and his name just wasn’t anywhere in the records.”
“I guess,” Buffy shrugged, playing with her noodles. “But honestly, my gut tells me he didn’t have anything to do with it. And he was so firm that my loyalty should be with him, not Angelus.”
Gunn nodded. “He said that to me too. And those two do hate each other, I think.”
“Well fighting over a woman will do that,” Buffy said, expertly hiding her jealousy.
“Very strange,” their boss said. “What do you think it all means?”
“Maybe he’s trying to break off on his own?” Gunn suggested. “Steal deals out from under Angelus, make some extra money?”
“Or,” Buffy said carefully. “He’s looking to betray the organization?”
“That seems like quite a leap, Buffy,” Giles said. “There’s very little evidence to indicate any change of heart on Grace’s part. He may want to take down Angelus, for personal or professional reasons, but I hardly think he’d incriminate himself in the process, which he’d have to if he ever used those files.”
Buffy reluctantly agreed. “I don’t know, but it just seems like he’s not all that bad of a guy.”
“He’s a charmer,” Gunn snorted. “But we know exactly what kind of guy he is.” He then began to earnestly tell Giles about the information he’d gathered, and Buffy began to drift away, turning over all the details of the past few days in her head.
“Gunn!” Spike yelled from his office the second he heard the two return from their date. His head was filled with images of the two in some romantic restaurant, but he shook them away as he dealt with the problem at hand.
“What’s up?” Gunn asked, coming into the office with Buffy tagging along.
Spike glanced at her quickly before saying, “You impressed Angelus today, and he wants you to work for him while he’s in town.”
“For real?” Gunn said.
“Yeah,” Spike sighed. “I’m asking you, but really more telling, because he’s not big on being rejected. You’d still live here but be with him most days and nights.”
“That’s chill,” Gunn said, exchanging an excited look with Buffy. Being with Angelus while he was in town meant he’d be privy to a lot more information and be right in the thick of the action, a good place to be for their investigation. And since that man was the target of the FBI’s grander interests anyway, this new position was great for his career. Visions of promotions danced in his head, while visions of more time with Buffy danced in Spike’s.
The blonde told him that was all, and felt his heart warm at the small smile Buffy gifted him with before she left too. Just that smile told him that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t afraid of him as he feared. He stared out the window for a bit, grateful for the exhaustion that might allow him to sleep peacefully that night.
A plan began to form in Spike’s head as he contemplated his current situation. Gunn would be gone with Angelus, and Buffy would be alone. A crafty smile spread across his face, and he reached for the phone to make arrangements for the next evening.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
As a Happy Valentine's gift to y'all, you'll be getting TWO, count 'em, TWO double size chapters (meaning they were originally two chapters each and I combined them)! One right now, and one tomorrow evening. This is a thank you for your sweet, sweet reviews! So glad you're all enjoying the story.