[Reviews - 16]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story | ePub eBook Chapter or Story | Printer Chapter or Story

Has been viewed 3547 times

- Text Size +




"Hold him to what?" Buffy asked, annoyed at being confused by the gifts her sister and Spike had given each other.

"Here you go, luv. Hope it's not. . . well I hope you like it. Sorry it's not wrapped" Spike said, trying to distract her.

It worked as Buffy noticed the nervousness in his voice and looked down into his hand at the small silver box. She took the box and a deep breath. It was obviously a jewelry box. Spike had bought her jewelry. Luckily, she thought, it's not real jewelry. It wasn't one of the soft felt boxes that expensive jewelry came in, just one of the small silver cardboard boxes you got when you bought a twenty dollar pewter pendant at the mall.

"I'm sure I'll like it."

She opened the box, and inside, lay a silver heart shaped locket.

"Go on open it up. Look inside," he prompted, carefully gauging her reaction.

Typical, she thought, he's given me a picture of himself. No, no ego there. Nope, none at all.

She popped the locket open. Her breath caught in her throat, and tears sprang to her eyes almost instantly.

"Oh, Spike. . . it's . . ." she was too emotional to continue, and for the first time since they'd arrived she moved in closer than arms reach as she threw herself into him, hugging him, burying her face in his chest.

He pulled her in close, and kissed the top of her head. "I'm glad you like it," he whispered.

She stood there for a moment, feeling as if she had melted into him. Then she became aware of her hand on his chest. It's really a very nice chest, she thought while she fought the urge to trace his muscles with her fingers. Realizing the direction her mind was going she pulled back, away from him.

"What is it?" Dawn demanded.

Weakly Buffy opened her hand, to show her sister the locket.

"Mom?" the younger Summers whispered, as she saw the picture.

"Thank you Spike. I don't know how. . . I thought all the pictures had been destroyed. No don't tell me it's probably some dark mojo I'm better off not knowing. . . Will you put it on me?" Buffy turned her back to him and pulled her hair aside revealing her neck.

Involuntarily he licked his lips at the sight of her neck. He took the locket from her, and let it fall low on her chest. Then he slowly dragged the two ends up, around her neck, tracing her collar bone with his fingers as he did so. Despite the fabric between his fingers and her skin, she trembled a bit, involuntarily imagining his fingers tracing other parts of her anatomy. Then he clasped the necklace and brushed her hair back so it fell evenly across her shoulders.

She turned around smiling even though there were still tears in her eyes.

"Thank you, I'll wear it always."

"I'm just glad you like it. And don't worry, no black magic involved, just the magic of the internet."

Both girls looked at him puzzled.

"Your mum's gallery? They had a memorial to her on their web site with a picture. Had a friend size it down for me, and print it out all nice like."

"But wouldn't the website have been destroyed along with the gallery and Sunnydale?" Buffy asked, puzzled.

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Buffy, the web page wouldn't have been on one of the gallery's computers. Who knows where the server was, but there was no reason why it would have been in Sunnydale. They probably paid for server space for a whole year, and no one thought to take the page down, what with the apocalypse."

"Oh," Buffy hated it when her sister talked down to her like that. Not everyone could be a Willow with computers. "Well in any case, thank you again. We lost all our photos in Sunnydale, and although Dad has some of Dawn and me, he didn't keep any of Mom after the divorce."

"Your welcome Buffy. And um, sorry about destroying your home."

Buffy laughed, "Yeah, I'm going to beat the crap out of you for closing the Hellmouth. Do you know how nice it is to not have to worry about whether Xander's newest girlfriend is a demon and going to eat him or something? And that's just for starters."

They all smiled, relaxed, and began to joke about old times and catch up on life post Sunnydale.

*****************************

Buffy sipped her glass of wine and smiled, wondering how she could be so comfortable, and tense all at once. He was so easy to talk to. She didn't have to watch what she said. Not only did he know and understand her as the Slayer, but he'd seen her at her worst, most pathetic, and he hadn't run away.

On the other hand, there was all their baggage. And it wasn't one of those small wheeled suitcase that fit under the seat in front of you, no it was the full 20 piece set of Cordelia Chase, going away for the weekend with all her shoes, baggage.

Since she had first found out he was alive from Andrew, she had been trying to figure out how to let him know how she felt. Let him know how much his friendship had meant to her. And yet, she didn't want to lead him on. She had to make it clear that they were not going to be a couple. She wanted him to be able to move on.

And then she'd seen him. Walked through that door and there he was, Spike, alive. Looking, well, like Spike. Same hair, same black tee-shirt, same black jeans, same blue eyes drinking her in, caressing her. She wanted to run hug him, like Dawn did. Tell him how stupid he was for hiding from her, for not telling her he was alright. Yell at him for leaving her, just like everyone else did.

And then Dawn had to bring up the suckyness of her gift. She had been searching for a gift, long before Christmas. Ever since she discovered from Andrew that he was alive. But she found out how little she knew about Spike, about what he liked other than her.

All she really knew was that he liked fighting and fucking, drinking and smoking. That didn't leave a great range of gift options. Anything sexual would send the wrong message. Weaponry was out, not just because it was difficult to ship from one country to another, but the implication was that she saw him as fighter and nothing else.

That left tobacco and alcohol. She had never known him to smoke cigars. Plus cigars, hello Freudian imagery. It wasn't as if Spike couldn't read something sexual into almost anything, no need to make it so obvious. She had kept hoping that she would find something. That something would leap out at her as being perfect, but nothing had, and so she'd found herself making the last minute run to the liquor store. So it wasn't a great gift, but then she'd never guessed he would have a gift for her.

And what a gift. For the hundredth time her hand reached down to caress the locket. It was probably the most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given her. It had effected her enough that she'd forgotten her internal promise to minimize physical contact with Spike and she'd thrown herself into his arms.

It had felt so good but she'd noticed something. He wasn't hard. Spike was always hard for her, or at least it had seemed like it back in Sunnydale. Had she been the only one who'd found the hug intimate. A little too intimate. But then maybe she was mixing up pre and post soul Spike.

Once again she was filled with doubt. He hadn't gotten in touch with her, hadn't tried to see her, and now he didn't even seem to want her physically anymore.

And that's good she told herself. He is moving on. That's what you want right. He's your friend and you want him to be happy, not to keep on pinning after you.

They sat on the couch together, talking. Dawn had moved onto the floor, and was busy button mashing on some game with really annoying sound.

They'd talked about a lot of things, mostly about what they'd been doing since Sunnydale. Buffy got the feeling he wasn't telling her everything about his experiences since he'd come back, but she wasn't going to push, especially since it seemed to have something to do with Angel. Not a subject she really wanted to get into with Spike. Then they'd talked about Europe and the places that they'd been.

"So why Rome?" he asked.

"Don't know exactly, just the place both Dawn and I really liked. Plus, Italy, shoes." She said pointing her toes to show off her heels. "Although, nice as they look, not big on comfort. Sometimes I think I should stick to my good old American slayer shoes."

He smirked, and before she could react, he had her foot in his hands, and he was undoing the straps on her shoe.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't you trust me luv?" he asked, giving her his best 'innocent' look.

She was about to reply no automatically, when his fingers sunk into the bottom of her arch, making her gasp, and reflexively try and pull her foot back.

"Does that hurt?"

"Yeah, but it's good. It's of the good." This is bad, bad, bad, her brain screamed. But she couldn't imagine pulling her foot out of his hands once he began massaging it.

Thank god Dawn was there. It couldn't be anything more than a foot massage if Dawn was there. Then again even if Dawn wasn't there, she almost doubted that this would go much further, simply because she didn't want the foot rubbing to stop. And that's all it was, the rubbing of feet. Nothing more.

She looked at his face, trying to get some clue as to. . . what? If he was hitting on her? He hadn't really flirted with her much, at least not much for Spike. Sure a complement here, an innuendo there, but it was all very low key for Spike.

He was evil. That was the answer. He had come back from the dead without his soul. That's what he was hiding. That's why he was messing with her head, not to mention her body. Evil vampire, evil foot massage.

Nothing to do but enjoy it, she decided.





You must login (register) to review.