“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he told her, kneeling on the opposite end of the long coffee table, placing a hand on her arm. “You don’t have to do that,” he repeated.
She looked up at him. “I’m sorry, am I overstepping my boundaries? I tend to clean when I’m nervous. And I’ll admit, any smudges or rings on coffee tables are a pet peeve.” She placed the Windex and paper towel down. “Better?”
He chuckled, “No, Buffy, it’s all right. I feel bad. I take you here and it’s a mess.”
“You didn’t know I’d be here; and you didn’t know I’d ask to stay.”
“True, but here you are cleaning away and I’m just watching you.”
“Spike?”
“Yes, kitten?” he asked, the pet name flying out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Could I take a shower? I just feel I need to . . . wash.”
“Of course. Just let me make sure the bathroom is clean, all right?”
“Sure, thanks,” and she smiled, causing his breath to catch.
God, she was a sweet one, he thought as he padded down to the bathroom. And so strong, too. For all she’d been through, outwardly he wouldn’t know she was shook up if not for the verbal declarations that she was.
He whistled low as he took in the state of the bathroom. What a mess. It wasn’t that there was garbage in there, it was just a mess with toothpaste smudged in the sink, his mirror dotted with toothpaste and he didn’t even want to think about the shower and the toilet. Hauling the untouched cleaning supplies from under the sink, Spike whistled to himself as he set to clean the bathroom for Buffy.
Finn had been right; she was a tiny little thing. He noticed just how tiny she was when she finally discarded the blanket she hadn’t let go of since they’d left the station. She was thin, almost to the point of skinny, but he could see from the way her arms moved, exposed, as they were in a white tank top, that she had some muscle. She wore gray running pants with two white stripes down the side and white socks, having discarded her sneakers at his front door. He could tell also as she hung her blanket up on the hook on the door, that she was not wearing a bra. Her pert breasts were visible through the white ribbed material of her tank. He was a man noticing a woman at that point, and so his mouth watered at the sight.
He showed her quickly how to use the shower and handed her a white towel to dry off with after, and exited the bathroom quickly. It wouldn’t do well to be attracted like that to the witness slash victim. He had to keep things professional.
He went in hunt for some food he could make, if he wasn’t mistaken, he’d heard her stomach growl earlier. Pasta, he decided. He could throw together some pasta. Course, his method of throwing together pasta was to boil some noodles, slap some canned sauce on it, and then microwave it so the sauce warmed. He did know how to make an excellent sauce from scratch, but he never had the time anymore, so he grew accustomed to the warmed canned crap.
His father would be so disappointed in him.
Shoving that thought out of his head, he set about boiling pasta, and listening to the shower run. The phone ringing jarred him out of his thoughts of a naked Buffy and he checked his watch. “Damn,” he muttered, and let the machine get it.
“William Giles, where are you? You were supposed to call me.” His on again, off again “girlfriend”, Anya Jenkins, demanded over the machine. He said on again, off again, because he could not seem to make a commitment to her, despite her trying as best she could to corner him into one. When she put the pressure on too much, he bolted, and then she’d back off, seduce him, and for a while they’d have great sex and some fun before she was back to demanding a commitment. This was one of those times, it seemed, that she was sliding back into demanding a commitment. He was supposed to have called her when he got off his shift so they could get together, which meant, they were supposed to get together to screw.
He just didn’t feel like dealing with Anya at the moment. He just wanted to settle Buffy in and get some answers to the questions he had swirling in his mind.
Anya could wait.
“Oh, thank you so much for this,” Buffy said gratefully, taking a bowl of pasta. “I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until we were cleaning.”
Settling into his bare, white kitchen at a small oak table, they tucked in to their respective bowls.
“Buffy,” he said when she looked up at him. “Can you tell me about your boyfriend and best friend? I know very little about your case.”
She nodded, “Sure. Well, my boyfriend, Parker, owned a bar downtown, it was, or rather is called The Realm. I was to meet him after hours so we could go back to his place. Well, when I got there, it appeared he’d forgotten that I was supposed to be there.”
“How so?”
“He was screwing my best friend, Gwen, on a pool table.”
“Oh Jesus,” Spike muttered, shocked.
“I was frozen, standing there, watching them. I was horrified and hurt, naturally. The next thing I knew there was a man all in black with a ski mask behind them. He shot them both in the head. He didn’t see me, as I was kind of standing in the shadows, the bar wasn’t even fully lit, and he never once looked my way. He took off and I called the police.”
“Buffy, Christ, that’s awful.”
“Yeah, it is,” she said softly and then without warning, burst into tears.