LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T. S. Eliot
***
Spike shouldn't have gotten drunk the night before, but at the time there really seemed no other course of action. Something had woken him but he wasn't sure what, just that a slice of pink light was bleeding through his curtains. The sun was setting in the usual way, which meant that he'd slept through the whole day.
Spike wondered if Buffy had stopped over and he'd just been too knackered to wake up. She might have decided to spare him or maybe she simply had not gone. The possibilities were a bit too much for him given the aching and fragile state of his head, which felt as thin as the shell of a robin's egg. Spike wondered which way Buffy had decided to wipe him out of her life.
He'd always been a constant reminder of a desperate moment to every woman he'd loved, starting with his mother.
Anne hadn't even given him a proper first name; hadn't extended him the protection of her last name. He'd been Spike Pratt after the American git who'd loved her and left her. Spike Pratt, who’s Christian name she never knew. Spike Pratt whom he'd never met despite years of searching only to find his father had died of a heroin overdose two years after he had been born.
Spike wondered if his mother wanted to forget he was part of her.
It seemed he was always with a woman who didn't love him back; he'd spent his youth fooling himself about Cecily and then Dru. Before he'd left for the states to live with Uncle Giles he'd asked Cecily to marry him when he turned eighteen. Cecily had smiled at him and said, "You're a sweet boy. One day you'll look back at this and laugh." That never happened.
Dru had only wed him to stay in the country. She'd told him as much when she asked to marry him. She'd known how crazy in love he'd been and he'd thought she would change. Despite years of married life, she'd never developed more than a need for him. It was the sort of affection you acquire for a hand-me-down chair that you see every day and always feels comfortable. You don't write poetry to the chair, you don't dream of it, you don't love an object.
He was doing it again, basting in self-pity. Poor Spike in love with his own pain. Hadn't he chosen Dru arrogantly because she was the one everybody wanted with her perfect ass and her angel's voice? There were other girls he could have had, who would have loved him easily, but he'd had to have Dru because he wanted to get her recalcitrant heart to beat for him.
And now Buffy. That relationship had been designed to pass in a season; they weren't meant to feel more than pleasure, but Spike was starting to think he might have been drawn to her the way kamikaze pilots longed to fly. The only way to soar was to accept that eventually you'd have to immolate. Each kiss, each look had been another stick lovingly placed on his funeral pyre.
Maybe he loved her because he couldn't have her and this was all a game he hadn't been realizing he was playing.
"Hurry Up It's Time."
Spike shambled out of bed and into his bathroom. He used the toilet, brushed his teeth and dragged a comb through his hair. At least he still had hair, even if it was becoming dashed with silver, he thought.
"Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker."
He'd tended to his body, too, and it looked alright for a guy who was almost forty. Everything worked, he wasn't plagued by aches, and he could still get hard without the help of the pharmaceutical industry. There was no reason to dwell upon the eternal footman, or how he'd been a fool, how this felt like a last chance that hadn't so much slipped away as beaten him back to escape.
Spike didn't know if he ought to call Buffy or if her absence made it clear that she wasn't going through with the abortion and she didn't need him for anything anymore.
He dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, let poor Sunshine out of his cage and took the dog for a walk. Spike would eat some beans and toast; he'd go to the gym and then maybe the bar down the street. He wouldn't call her. He wouldn't dive into his own chest to scoop out his heart for her.
Sunshine marked every house on the street twice before they headed home in the dark. As they approached his place, Spike saw someone standing on his porch. Buffy was standing on his porch. She was standing in the puddle of light; her blonde hair was pulled up into a sloppy ponytail, she was wearing baby blue plaid pajamas and flip flops. Buffy looked like she'd just escaped a burning house and she had a suitcase in her hand.
Sunshine barked and Buffy's head whipped around toward the sound. Her eyes were red, she'd been crying.
"Spike."
Buffy was bouncing down the three steps that led from his house to the sidewalk at a fast clip. She was throwing herself into his arms and crying; her wet tears collected in the hollow of his throat. Spike held her and Sunshine zigzagged around them, wrapping their legs with his leash.
"What if the baby has your eyes?" Buffy asked.
"Does that still matter?" he asked, stroking the flannel covering the small of her back with his free hand while trying to hold onto Sunshine with the other.
"I didn't keep the appointment," Buffy said.
He kissed her mouth and she seemed to melt against him. Spike felt like she was devouring him. Finally, she let go and Buffy looked up at him, her lower lip trembling. He could feel his eyebrows crunching together as he stared into her face.
"Let's go in," Spike said.
Spike kissed her forehead and then pressed his own to the spot where his lips had touched for just a moment. They untangled from Sunshine's leash and entered his house. Buffy took off her flip flops and used her pink tipped toes to set them by the door before she headed to his overstuffed couch. She collapsed on the cushions with a soft exhalation of breath, like the sound of a pillow being plumped.
Spike watched her and then went into his kitchen to prepare Sunshine's dish, wondering what she wanted. He tried not to get excited, but lightness was flooding into his chest.
He was scraping out the can and Sunshine was mooching around his legs. Spike tapped the tines of the fork on the edge of the green, plastic bowl. Spike set the dog's dinner on the ground and then went to his sink. Buffy was so quiet, it was beginning to worry him. Spike turned on the creaky faucet and a weak stream sputtered out. He squirted a shot of lemony, yellow dish soap into his hands and then rubbed them together under the water.
"Did you mean it when you said you wanted to raise the baby with me?" Buffy asked. She was coiled up on the couch, but her voice reached him.
Spike shut off the tap and then dried his hands with the blue, checkered dish towel hanging over the oven door. He walked into the living room and saw her huddled on her side. The sight of Buffy so fragile, so small made him ache. Spike had to go to her and gather her into his lap. She faced toward his blank television set and wrapped her arm possessively around his leg.
"I thought you were done with me, love," Spike said, quietly.
She writhed until she was face up in his lap, looking into his eyes.
"Spike, it felt like dying to leave you," she said.
"You don't have to say that, I'm with you no matter what," Spike said.
"But it's true. I'm in love with you. I love you. You're mine and I want to be yours," Buffy said.
Spike did not want to cry; in this moment he wanted to keep his composure, not fall apart like a bloody ponce. He crushed her mouth with a kiss. She met him with equal desperation. Spike started tugging at Buffy's shirt, but she stopped him.
"I need a shower," she said.
"I've got no problem seeing you wet," he said.
He could almost hear Buffy's eyes rolling as he kissed her again.
***
They had fumbled to the bathroom quickly. Buffy stood with her back to the spray. Even the stream of water from the shower hurt her breasts, so she was loathe to let Spike touch them, but he was persistent.
"If it doesn't feel good, I'll stop," he said, planting kisses on her neck as he spoke.
He lathered up his hands with a bar of white soap that carried a scent she'd come to associate with him. She felt enveloped by him completely as Spike coasted the white, lacy froth over her chest, not quite touching the skin. He wet a cloth and then squeezed it out over the soap, rinsing her gently. Then he knelt in front of her and washed the rest of her body worshipfully in the same way.
When he was done he regarded her breasts again.
"Your nipples are darker," Spike said, tracing his fingers in tentative circles around the areola.
"That happened when I had Dawn, too," Buffy said.
"Like red wine," he said, then he lapped at her left breast. The sensation was almost too intense, yet it felt amazing.
She watched him moving from one side to the other with the point of his tongue making delicate trails. His eyes were closed, his hair was curling from the moisture and he was moaning against her, hot under her hands. He kept at her like that until she could hardly stand.
Buffy felt the orgasm snap through her without any build up.
"Oh my God, Spike, I just came," Buffy said. She was gasping and letting Spike support her with his steady arms.
He looked up at her and grinned, his tongue teasing the back of his teeth.
"Well, isn't that neat," he said.
***
Buffy had gone from being a teenager to a mother without leaving her family home. By the time she'd become a wife, her daughter was six-years-old. She and Riley hadn't had anything like a real honeymoon. They had their wedding night at the Day's Inn and the next day Riley shipped out for his first tour in Afghanistan.
The week she spent with Spike was the first time she'd ever been on her own with a lover. It felt incredibly decadent to walk around naked and spend their free time in bed only pausing to work, eat or take Sunshine for a walk.
The week was ending and Buffy's family would be home tomorrow afternoon. It was after midnight when she let herself into Spike's house. He was asleep in bed, his bare chest white in the moonlight. She slipped out of her scrubs, crawled across his supine form and then got under the covers. Spike sniffed and then wrapped his arms around her.
"Sorry for the wakey," she said.
"No worries, love. How's the little Punkin'belly?" he asked, putting his hand on her stomach. Punkin'belly was Buffy's name for their zygote.
"Good. I do feel a little queasy, but I think that might be because of tomorrow," Buffy said.
It was comforting having his hand over her gnawing stomach. He kissed her shoulder and then nuzzled her ear.
"I can be there when you tell them, if you need me," he said.
"No, I think it would be better for them if it was only me, especially Dawn. She's kind of got a crush on you," Buffy said.
"I know. At least her puppy love will be replaced by seething hatred," Spike said.
"Yay," she said. Buffy was quiet, stroking his arm. "Can we really do this?" Buffy asked.
"Everyone does it, why not us, love?" Spike asked trying to contain his smile.
"Not the baby, I know we can take care of the baby, but how can I break Dawn's heart like this? Riley is going to be alright, but Dawn is never going to forgive me," Buffy said.
"Of course she'll forgive you, you're her mum," Spike said.
"Are you kidding? She's mad at me just because I'm her mother, I hate to see what she's going to do when she has a real reason. She'll be like Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo, but, you know, small," Buffy said.
"Well, there's that to be grateful for, I 'spose," Spike said.
Spike was tickling her cheek with the tip of his nose
"So this is our last night alone, is it?" he asked.
"I'm not feeling up to any late night snugglies," she said.
"What about fucking?" he asked with a smirk.
"Not so much," she said.
Spike pressed his lips to her cheek and then held her closer. Insecurity was overwhelming him, and he tried to tamp it down. Spike had a perverse desire to mark Buffy before she went back to see her husband; to pound into her until the only thing she could remember was his name. As she drifted off to sleep in his arms, Spike tried not to think that Buffy was going to disappear in the morning.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you to everyone who's been reading!
Chapter End Notes:
Hurry up it's time is from "The Wasteland." The line about the head on the platter is from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," as is the reference to the Eternal Footman, death.
"Isn't that neat," is a line Spike says in "Checkpoint," when he find out one of the Watchers did his thesis on him.
"Isn't that neat," is a line Spike says in "Checkpoint," when he find out one of the Watchers did his thesis on him.