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Author's Chapter Notes:
I am absolutely floored by the amount of support this fic has gotten. Thank you guys so, so much.
~*~

“You know, when you said shopping, this really wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Oh, sod off. You’re just itching to do this.”

“Um, actually, no. I’ve never itched to explore the nether regions of the world’s furniture industry.”

“But you’ve always wanted to explore my nether regions,” Spike said in a perfectly innocent tone. “And if I get new furniture, then we can do just that.”

Buffy scowled at him. “Perv.”

“Don’t you know it, baby.” Silence. Then: “So, picking out furniture with me is really that dastardly a task?”

“Did you just say dastardly?” Buffy paused beside a couch. Large, plushy, comfy-looking—would’ve been perfect if it wasn’t cream colored. Spike shuddered theatrically.

“Spike! Answer the question.”

“What? Oh. Yeah, I did. What’s it to you?” He tweaked her nose. “Avoidin’ the subject, Blondie.”

“Am not!”

“Are so. You still won’t answer what you think of going shopping with me for furniture.” He grinned at her to hide some very real trepidation. “C’mon, admit it. You want me.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want the responsibility of redecorating your heinously appointed apartment—until,” she added hastily, “I’ve had the chance to make plans. I mean—honestly, Spike, it’s terrible. And you dragged me out here with absolutely no warning!”

He looked at her suspiciously. His girl’s eyes were shining, her face the absolute picture of innocence—hell, even her hair exuded apple-pie American trustworthiness.

‘Course, he’d never trusted the Yanks. Bloody unreliable lot, they were.

“Right, then,” he said with mock-weariness, already knowing where the conversation was headed. “Exactly what kind of shopping do you propose we do?”

That glint in her eyes, he decided, wasn’t innocence. It was pure, demonic intent.

“I have an idea,” she said, and dragged him out of the furniture store.

Two hours later, Spike was convinced he’d gone to hell. “Pet, this is the fifth clothing store we’ve been in!”

An abject observer would have said he was whining—but Spike never whined. It was as simple as that. He was merely complaining…in a slightly less than dignified, but still very menacing, manner.

“And I’ve only bought two pairs of jeans, three tops, and a bra,” Buffy replied. “Come on, Spike, you’re the one who’s gonna be looking at me!”

The bint did have a point…Spike smiled widely, his prospects suddenly much improved. “Right, then. Carry on.”

“You are such a pig,” she said affectionately. “Okay, what about this top?”

It was red. It was strappy. On her, it would be almost illegally skimpy. Spike gulped. “Looks wonderful.”

She grinned and draped it over her arm. “I love the clearance rack. What about this one?”

Yep, he was in hell. And he was, by the looks of things, going to languish there.

Luckily for him, when she finished with the hellish mall sojourn, Buffy was more than willing to go to the ice cream shop and down an enormous cone of double fudge ice cream.

“Now this,” she said, licking the cone as they walked through the park, the bags forgotten in the Desoto, “Is something I could get used to.”

“Licking phallus-shaped objects?”

“Ew. No.” She waved her gone and winced when chocolate drops spattered the sidewalk. “Being served,” she explained. “Telling the pimply-faced teenager to get me food, instead of the other way around.”

Spike couldn’t help himself—he laughed out loud. “You’ve really got a complex about that.”

“What? I do not!”

“Do so,” he teased. “Every time someone serves you, it’s practically an orgasmic experience for you—ow!” His girl had hauled off and punched him in the arm. “That bloody well hurt. Abusive bint.” He pouted.

“Oh, please. You’re a baby,” she informed him, grinning.

There was a little bit of chocolate on his lips, which Spike took as a sign from God or whoever the hell was in charge that he was supposed to grab her shoulders and kiss her.

“Come over Friday night?” he asked, nipping lightly at her lip and then soothing the spot with his tongue.

“Hunh?” Buffy pulled away, looking up at him with unfocused eyes. “Oh. Um…I guess, sure.” He heard the unspoken message: and this is different from every other day, how?

He smiled. “For dinner, pet. ‘m gonna cook for you.”

“You can cook?”

Well, he’d be able to by Friday. “You doubt my abilities?” he asked, mock-offended.

“When it comes to cooking? Um, yes.”

“Silence, blasphemer!” He smothered her half-amused, half-bewildered laugh with his lips, kissing her a bit harder this time—deliberately showing the feelings that they were both too damn clumsy to voice.

When they moved apart again, she looked even more befuddled than before. “What about blue?”

He blinked at this apparent non sequitor. “What?”

“Blue. For your apartment.” His expression must have been utterly dumbfounded, because she elaborated, “You know, roses are red, violets are blue, dogs are colorblind, and apparently so are you…?”

Blue? He’d never considered it before. There was white…there was black…and there was red. But blue?

When he voiced this opinion to Buffy, she rolled her eyes. “You are such a boob,” she said. “There’s a whole color spectrum, did you know? There’s even green. You know, the color of the trees and the grass…and ooh, there’s yellow, too!”

He winced. “Hadn’t considered that you were gonna girlify my apartment,” he complained.

“Oh, please, are you five? Blue is totally a boy’s color. It’s the boy’s color.”

“But ‘s not my color,” he protested, knowing how very weak his argument sounded and yet somehow feeling compelled to keep it up anyway.

“Which is sad, really,” she said, cocking her head and looking at him. “You’d look good in it.”

He smirked at her, unable to resist the opening. “’course I would, but would it look good around me? Blue’s not very badass, and you know ‘m just about as bad as they—‘ey!”

His girl had dissolved into giggles. The ice cream cone was inches away from staining his leather coat as she leaned against his arm, laughing for all she was worth. “I am bad,” he muttered defensively.

“The baddest,” she said, snickering. “Of course, there was that time you were two hours late to work so that you could save that kid’s hamster—“

“Damn creature was up in a tree! Could’ve been eaten!”

“—or that time I caught you crying because of a Dawson’s Creek rerun,” she continued blithely. “And there’s also the whole baby thing.”

His cheeks reddened at that. “I do not, he said indignantly, have a ‘baby thing’.”

“You totally do,” she said with the cheeky impudence of a youth who knew she’d cornered the adult before her. “Come on, any time there’s a baby around, you can’t help but cuddle it. You even coo at it. It’s not wonder you’re such a wimp.”

By the end of her speech, Spike was spluttering. She’d emasculated him as only she could—stripped down all his defenses and yanked out his vulnerability as proof that he was what she claimed.

Still, he was never one for giving up easily, so he just grinned at her. “Well, who’s to say ‘m not just practicing?”

It was her turn to look gobsmacked. “Pr—practicing? For what?”

“For havin’ little brats ‘f my own.” He damn near laughed at the expression on her face. She’d hardly have been more shocked than if he had announced plans to join the circus.

“You don’t think—I mean, we—“

“Maybe someday, kitten.” He felt uncertain suddenly—not the same inexperienced and gawky uncertainty that plagued youths, but a deeper sort of feeling. The full and cognizant knowledge that he was taking a risk. “You don’t want to, then?”

For a second she studied him, her green eyes wide and serious. Then she smiled. “Like you said, maybe someday.”

He couldn’t stop himself from asking. “So you think this is—you think we’re gonna stick around, then.”

“Of course.” She replied like it was a foregone conclusion, something that made him feel quite nicely reassured. “I mean—didn’t you?”

“Hell yeah,” he said vehemently. “Just wasn’t sure—you’re a teenager, luv, try though we both might to forget it. Thought you might be havin’ second thoughts.”

She dropped her chocolatey cone into a nearby trash can and placed her hands on his shoulders, a quiet, serious expression on her face. Going on tiptoes, she pressed her lips to his. It wasn’t a kiss of anger, or of passion. It was instead filled with love—with promise.

“Never.”

~*~

A/N: “You are such a boob” is, of course, from Firefly. I really couldn’t resist.





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