“Me too.” She caught his eye and blushed.
“Guess it’s a good thing you talked me into it.”
“What would you do without me?” she teased.
Spike suddenly became lost in thoughts of her again, “I don’t know, kitten.” He remembered how most of the night he’d been staring at her. He’d only started to relax near the end when they sat down in a group talking and laughing. He couldn’t hear enough of her laughter after that.
She blushed again and turned away, but he stepped towards her and reached to lift her head up to look at him.
“I’m being serious now, Buffy. Thank you. Not just for tonight. Thanks for taking me in, I know you probably didn’t want to.”
“It’s nothing.” she replied.
“It’s not nothing.” he said firmly.
She walked away brushing it off again as no big deal. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “I couldn’t really say no anyway. I mean I was here and…”
He sat down opposite her. “Yeah you were here, weren’t you?” he said staring at her as if he was looking for something.
She looked at him completely confused at what he’d meant by that.
“Why New York, Buffy? Why did you come here?” he finally explained.
“Why not?”
“Honestly Buffy. Why did you come here? I’ve always wondered. You loved California, you could have stayed there.” He looked at her seriously, pausing and then finished, “So why come here?”
“Because of you.”
“Me?” he asked, taken by surprise.
“Yeah. You always wanted to come here; you were always banging on about how great it was.” She looked down at the table instead of at him and said, “And I…I wanted to be here with you.”
“But I…”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Spike.” she interrupted him, “It’s not like I came here last year planning to live with you, or even hang out with you. I knew we’d probably never see each other. I’m not talking about then; I’m talking about when I was younger.”
He sat there saying nothing, waiting for her to continue when she was ready.
“I idolised you, you were my big brother. You were cool and exciting, and you had all these plans. I wanted to be that exciting, and I didn’t have any plans of my own then, so I modelled mine on yours. I grew up knowing I was going to go to New York and live here, go to college here. And then we...”
“Yeah.” He jumped in, not wanting her to explain how they had drifted apart; he knew that story all too well. “So, why did you still come after that?”
“By then I’d gotten pretty set on it for other reasons. I’d researched the college, the courses, the city. When it came time to decide where to go I still had my heart set here because I knew so much about it.”
“So you moved here because…”
“It was one of the best places to go.” she finished.
“Why didn’t you just say that when I asked then?”
She tried her best to keep his gaze so that she knew he was listening to her. “Because it was one of them, Spike,” she paused, “but wanting to go here because of you, that was still a reason that made me choose it over all the other equally good schools. So you needed to hear that. I wanted you to know.”
“Oh.” he said quietly.
“I wanted you to know because I’m so glad I came here.” she said after a while.
Spike said nothing.
“I’m telling the truth, Spike. Moving here was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s given me a new life.”
Eventually he looked at her, and gave her a genuine smile. “Well that’s good then, pet.”
“Sometimes I’m afraid though.” she said looking away.
“About what?”
“Afraid it’s not going to go anywhere.”
“It will.” he said sweetly.
“You can say that, Spike. But I want to be a journalist, and what do I do for a living?” Her face fell, and so did her voice. “I waitress.”
“After college there’ll be loads of things you can do in journalism. You’ll have qualifications and…”
“I know, but they don’t guarantee anything, Spike.” She sighed. “And even if I got a shot, who knows what would happen...I like doing this course, but what if I’m no good at it? What if I can’t be a writer?”
“You’re serious aren’t you? You really doubt yourself that much?” It broke his heart to hear her talk about herself this way. And everything she wasn’t saying he could see in her face. She was truly afraid of these things.
“I’m just being realistic. Just because this is something I want to do, doesn’t mean I’m going to get to do it. You have to have experience, luck and talent. I have zero experience outside this course and I’m like the unluckiest person in the world!” Spike looked as if he was going to jump in so she continued, “And you can’t say I have talent because you’ve never read any of my stuff.”
Buffy liked that he was trying to reassure her, but she wasn’t a child, and she was trying to share something with him that was really important to her. She was trying to tell him her true fears and she just wanted him to listen.
Spike immediately retreated, closing his mouth. She was right, and even though he wanted to tell her she was talented, he knew she wouldn’t accept it. It upset him that he couldn’t comfort her the way he wanted, but saying something now wouldn’t make her feel better.
They sat quietly for a time before Buffy broke the silence. “You’re right you know; I probably would have stayed in California. But I’m so glad I didn’t. I love my course. I moan and bitch like everyone else about work, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
“Huh.” Spike laughed, and it made Buffy look up questioningly, so he answered her, “I had a very different experience.”
“Spill.”
“What do I get if I do?” he said suddenly smiling cheekily and curling his tongue behind his teeth.
“Nothing.” she said firmly, but with a smile, “I’ve shared, now its your turn.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I had a great time…at first.”
“At first?”
“You know when it’s just about the people and the fun and the new experiences? That was great. I’d go out, go places; I’d hang around with interesting people. I liked the campus, I liked living here. Bloody hell, I even liked my course at first.” he said, and then suddenly became quiet.
“So what happened?” she pressed.
“I didn’t want to do the work.”
“No one does.” she laughed.
“Yeah, but everyone does it anyway, because they want to pass…I didn’t. I stopped caring. I don’t know when, but I did.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to do English, pet. The more I went to class the less I cared. And I wanted it to be the other way around, I wanted to come here and learn to love it.”
“You knew you didn’t want to do English, before you came here, didn’t you?” she said suddenly realising she’d been wrong about Spike all this time. From her point of view Spike seemed so sure of everything when he was her age. He’d wanted to go to college and do English in New York. But now she realised he hadn’t wanted that at all.
“I thought if I went to college I’d just like it, or I’d get used to it. I knew what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t stable, so I did this instead. I couldn’t make a career out of the other thing.”
“Since when did you care what was sensible and stable?”
“Since I grew up?” He laughed, but more at himself and his foolishness than her. “At least I thought I was growing up; I thought I was making an adult decision and facing up to things…but really I was hiding, I was too scared to do what I really wanted. In a way it was the most childish thing I’ve ever done.”
“What did you want to do instead?” she said waiting with baited breath.
Spike didn’t answer her, or even look up at her. Buffy thought she knew and she wanted to ask him if she was right, but when she looked at him she saw his pride was hurt. She’d opened up to him and now he was doing the same, but his issues were in the past and he couldn’t change them, so it was dredging up old wounds that he couldn’t do much about, and that was causing him pain.
“So my final year…I dropped out.” His head hung low and she could no longer see into his eyes properly.
“But you were so close?”
“That didn’t matter to me.” he confessed. “It was something I didn’t want. No matter how close I was to getting it, it didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want it. By the end I didn’t even want to be there.”
“I’m sorry you felt that way, Spike.”
He looked up and saw she was being genuine. “It’s in the past, kitten.” he said more for her than himself. “I have my regrets, but at the end of the day if I hadn’t gone there I wouldn’t have experienced all the college stuff, the meeting new people, moving away. And I wouldn’t have met Dru.”
That hit Buffy like a truck, right smack in the chest, and temporarily stunned her. She eventually found her voice. “Maybe that would have been better.”
All he did was stare at her, as if he’d realised something for the first time. “You’ve never been in love, have you, kitten?”
Buffy said nothing, she didn’t want to confess that to him, but by keeping silent she might as well have.
“If you had you wouldn’t say that.” he said simply. “Because it’s all worth it, even with Dru it was all worth it.”
She still didn’t say anything, but now because she had no clue what to say. She was in a conversation that was out of her understanding. She couldn’t comment on love, she didn’t know what love was.
“I hope you fall in love one day, Buffy.” He’d meant it sincerely, but she took it as patronising.
Buffy’s eyes widened and she stood up abruptly. “I’m doing fine on my own you know!” she said suddenly enraged.
Spike got up to follow her. She walked away from the table and was headed out into the hall but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back to stand in front of him. “Don’t do that.” he begged.
“Do what?” she said, still angry.
“Get defensive. I didn’t mean it that way. I really didn’t.”
She looked away and made a move to leave again, but she stopped when he spoke again.
“I’m really proud of you, Buffy.”
“What?...Why?” She said turning around.
“Why? Because you’re doing something you really want to do, and you’re stood here confessing you have no idea whether it’s going to work out or not.”
“And that’s why you’re proud?” she asked, utterly confused.
“Yes. Do you know how brave that is? To be so scared of failure, but still try anyway?”
Buffy’s rage ebbed, and she softened instantly.
“That’s my biggest regret. I wasted my time at college. I did something I thought I should do, not something I wanted to do.”
Buffy paused, but her heart was melting at his confession. “I never understood why you did English Spike.” she said honestly. She wanted him to know that even when she’d thought he wanted to go to college, she’d always been confused by it. She wanted him to know that he didn’t fool her completely. “You were good at it, but you lived for your music.”
His heart swelled at her words. He hadn’t wanted to share with her his dreams, because it upset him, but he didn’t need to, because she already knew them. She knew him.
He stepped towards her and took her hands into his and held them in front of him. “That’s why I dropped out, Buffy. Because I wasn’t following my dream. I didn’t think it would ever work out for me, so I gave it up, and then I was stuck doing something my heart wasn’t in, so I gave that up too.” He dropped her hands gently, and laid one of his on her cheek. His thumb caressed her face. “You’re scared, but you’re here anyway, living your life the way you want to. I’d give anything to be that strong, luv.”
“Strong? Me?” she giggled, “You must have me confused with another Buffy.”
He laughed, turned his head and dropping his hand. “First of all, I don’t think there is another Buffy.”
“And second of all?” she said drawing his attention back to her. She stared deep into his eyes.
“Second of all, I…” He suddenly forgot what he wanted to say and froze, still staring.
“Spike?” she said, wanting to know what was wrong.
“You’re so brave, Buffy.” he said leaning closer, “And I feel so terrible that I wasn’t here for you. I mean it when I say I’m so proud that you made it on your own, but I should have been there to help.”
“Its okay, Spike.” she said becoming very affected by how close he was to her. She closed her eyes and licked her lips when she realised they’d gone dry from her ragged breath escaping onto them. “I forgive you. I forgave you as soon as I saw you again.”
“I should never have gone away.” he whispered.
“You came back.” she said as he leaned down, and she knew he was going to kiss her. “That’s all that matters to me.”
Her last words were swallowed by his mouth, his lips fastening to hers tenderly. The kiss was slow but firm. When she opened her mouth for him and his tongue found hers she moaned.
He pulled back to look at her, but he didn’t know what to say.