Buffy walked up the incline to her front door, grateful to be the first one home. Every time she entered the house she reminded herself to bake a pie for the guys at the V.F.W. for putting in the ramp for Riley and widening the entrance so his wheelchair would fit. Her conscience reminded her that if she hadn't been fornicating with her daughter's English teacher, she'd have had the time to bake many pies.
Buffy closed the door and took off her heels before stepping onto the hardwood floor. She noticed that Dawn had tidied up before she and Riley had gone off to visit his mother. Since her stepfather had come home, Dawn had become much more helpful around the house. Her daughter still complained about doing her chores incessantly, but not around Riley. Dawn saved all the angst for dear old mom.
Buffy walked silently to the bedroom in bare feet, shedding her clothes as she moved. She hung her skirt up in the closet, folded her top and placed it neatly inside a drawer before allowing herself to collapse into bed.
She had a midnight shift at the hospital and wanted to catnap before it was time to don her scrubs, but Buffy's mind wouldn't let her rest.
In the bar she'd felt like a fraud, and had almost walked out when the bartender glanced at her, convinced he'd known her sinister purpose. That changed though. Once she'd been in bed with Spike, she hadn't thought about Riley, hadn't imagined it was his hand touching her as she thought she would. It was almost like she'd been moving in the charmed enclosure of a dream, a sleepy space free of self-recrimination.
Now that she was back home, Buffy felt the weight of what she'd done, the guilt, but also a curiosity about her new friend. She wondered if Spike had gone home to his wife and kissed her the way he'd been kissing Buffy. Did the poor woman know, and just put up with his infidelity? He might have kids, how ickey was that? Could he and his mysterious, beloved wife be in an open marriage? People still did that, right? It wasn't just a myth perpetrated by that sex columnist in the free paper, was it?
Buffy wondered if she was one in a string of mothers he'd seduced. He'd been so calm when he asked her out for that drink, and then he'd gotten all commanding in the bar. Plus Spike seemed to know stuff about her body, stuff that he could have figured out by doing lots of field research. And that thing about tasting her was so goofy, who even says that, and why was it so hot?
Why was she acting like a jealous girlfriend and getting angry at him? She was just as bad, probably worse. Boat. Same. Kettle. Black. House? Definitely glass.
Riley was going through a period of adjustment, pain and loss. Riley had told her he couldn't make love to her "in the foreseeable future," it just reminded him of what he'd never have again. After he'd come back from the V.A. Hospital, they'd given them an instructional video on how to have sex after a spinal cord injury. Riley had shut it off halfway through and asked her to leave the room. She heard him crying through the door.
Before he'd left for Afghanistan, Riley would've let her see his tears, but not now. Not yet.
Buffy held out hope things were going to get better, they were already closer than when he first got back.
But then she went ahead and let Spike put his hands...and then his sharp, sharp tongue.
She'd never thought of herself as a sexual person, that seemed like an irrelevant distinction. Everyone was sexual, that's just a normal human thing...well, except Morrissey. Buffy had gone through dry stretches, after Dawn was born and when Riley was away fighting. She didn't have one night stands with guys who’d offered, she’d held out for a relationship. When Riley was gone, she hadn’t strayed, hadn’t even considered cheating. Her abstinence had an expiration date, so she just waited.
When suddenly faced with the possibility that she wouldn't have sex for years, though, if ever, the whole landscape changed. It was melodramatic, like something Dawn would scribble in the margins of her notebook, but she'd actually felt like part of her was dying. She had her husband back but only partially and he was telling her he might never be with her fully again.
Spike had been so solicitous with her and so good to Dawn. Plus Buffy could see him get flustered every time she'd lean forward or brush his arm. It was nice feeling him want her. Knowing that someone like him wanted her had been enough at first. Someone like him, what did that even mean, she wondered. Somebody attractive, somebody clever, somebody who made her laugh? Those things were true, but that wasn't what made his attention so flattering.
No, it was the way he looked at her, that's what made Buffy want him. Spike looked at her like she was an alabaster-skinned saint frozen beatific on a pastel prayer card; reverent, holy but at the same time his eyes told her he wanted to make her step down from the firmament so he could lift up her voluminous gown and bend her over the altar.
God, that Catholic girls' school really messed her up.
So at first she’d only flirted, just to watch his pupils dilate and to see that sweat pop up on his brow. Then she let their relationship change. She was the one who’d taken it off the safe path and plunged them both headlong into the wilderness.
Buffy covered her head with the quilt Riley's mom had made them for a wedding present to try and block out the noise. Of course it didn't work. All the static was coming from the inside.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you Willow Trees!
Chapter End Notes:
The sex columnist in the free paper is a reference to Dan Savage, without whom I would not know what the word yiffing means. Morrissey is the lead singer of the Smiths and claims to be asexual.