“Yes, love?”
For some reason, his endearments on this particular evening were making her blush. Her body was still humming from the husky whispered words in her ear from earlier and she felt a stirring in her center. To put it simply, Buffy was horny and her body wanted William. Tough, she thought.
“What did you exactly tell your parents about me?”
He grinned, “Nervous?”
“Well, duh, yeah. I mean…I don’t know if you’ve censored certain things or—“
“Well, I didn’t go into detail about how we conceived Brandon, luv. Unless of course you want me to tell them how you rode me to a gallop--”
“William!” she admonished, cutting him off and making him chuckle. “Your son is in the backseat,” she hissed.
He continued to chuckle. “He doesn’t understand what that all means yet.” He looked at her quickly, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Look at you. All with the blushing.”
“You’re flirty tonight,” she observed, trying to sound calm and businesslike while inside she was unraveling. This William was saucy. There wasn’t an air of melancholy about him; he wasn’t so down trodden and feeling sorry for himself. Instead, there was confidence. There was--
“Spike,” she blurted out.
“What?”
“You’re acting like Spike,” she stated.
“Is that bad?” he asked, shifting the car into another gear.
“I don’t know. You haven’t been him in quite a while.”
“Buffy, he’s part of me; he’s not a completely separate entity.”
“I know that,” she whispered.
“Then what is it?”
“You’re just…” she shook her head. “Forget it.”
“No, you’re not getting out of it that easy. Tell me.”
“You’re making me nervous,” she blurted out and then promptly held her breath for the fall out.
“Why?” he asked, and bless him, sounded genuinely concerned.
“Because with Spike I feel like I don’t know what to expect.”
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “You mean with Spike you get lies and lines.”
Buffy didn’t want to say yay or nay to that, so she opted to keep silent.
“Buffy, luv,” William whispered and placed his warm hand over hers that was on her lap. He squeezed her hand gently. “No more lies. None. No matter how ‘flirty’ I get, it’s still me and this guy isn’t going to play games with you. Not anymore. There’s too much at stake here, and I don’t just mean Brandon. I mean with you and me.”
Her breath hitched and her heart felt as though it were going to leap out of her chest. “What?” she managed to croak out.
“You and I…we’re friends, yeah?”
She exhaled, feeling some tension and, truthfully, some excitement leave her body. “Yeah, we are.”
“So I’m not going to do anything to jeopardize what we have. You’re…you’ve done so much for me… you know all this though, yes?”
She nodded, “Yes.” I’m the One.
Taking her hand in his, he brought it to his mouth and kissed it. “Actions speak louder than words, I know. So, I will show you rather than tell you that you can count on me. Sound good?”
She smiled warmly, looking at him. Flipping her hand around so that she could instead grab his, she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it. “Sounds wonderful.”
“Buffy…” he whispered and heaved a ragged sigh. Taking his hand back, he inhaled slowly and exhaled just as slow.
“Are you all right?” she asked, concerned. What had she done?
“You don’t know what you do to me, luv, you just don’t know,” he murmured.
“Spike--”
“I gave them the abbreviated version. I made you sound like an angel, which to me you are, so it wasn’t much of a stretch.”
Buffy blinked, the switch in topics throwing her. Light dawned and she shook her head, shifting the gears in her head back to the previous conversation the way he shifted the gears of his car. “Oh. Okay…You made me sound like an angel? How the hell did you spin that? I mean, I slept you the first night!”
“Buffy,” he said sternly, and looked at her just as sternly. “Stop beating yourself up for that. I told them we’d been seeing each other for some time, and that I kept my marriage a secret from you.”
“Which is all true.”
“Quite.”
Silence fell, and there was some kind of uncomfortable tension in the air that Buffy couldn’t quite place.
“Buffy, we…we had a connection, right?”
“We did,” she said softly.
“And we still do, right?”
“We just covered that we did.”
“I mean that – forget it. Ah, we’re here.”
That ended conversation effectively and Buffy felt it was very much a “Saved by the bell” moment.
She had been right in her previous assertion before they’d left for the night: she was in trouble.
Previous discomfort and intense fear of blazing down the path of sorting out the exact nature of her feelings for William aside, Buffy was having a fantastic evening. William’s parents were warm, welcoming and intelligent people. While Anne lectured her son on how to properly care for his son, Buffy and Giles had engaged in conversation about British Literature. Buffy could see where William not only got his smarts, but his tenderness. The presence of his parents was doing wonders for William. He was at ease, he was comfortable, and he appeared free of worry of the Adams’ and what they might have planned next. Without his concern of anyone catching them out together, Buffy felt her concern leave as well.
When dinner was over, Anne insisted she help Buffy put Brandon to bed as she desperately wanted to see where her grandson lived. She was a doting grandmother all right, and that was perfectly fine as far as Buffy was concerned. She felt a rush of joy for her son: such a boy as him should have all the love and affection in the world. She felt often that she’d burst from loving him so much, so seeing that facet in others brought an incomparable joy to her.
Going through the routine with Anne, Buffy was pleased to see William watching closely and lending a hand where he could. Or rather, when his mother would relinquish her right to help.
Once Brandon was snug as a bug in a rug and drifting off into la-la land, the threesome retreated to the living room where Giles had made himself at home. He had respectfully declined helping with the business of putting Brandon to bed. The older gentleman remarked that eight hands were not needed to put a baby to bed, and he’d make sure to make it up to Brandon in other ways in the near future.
“I have tea, if you’d like tea--” Buffy started to offer when Anne let out a loud yawn.
“Oh heavens,” Anne murmured, putting her hand politely over her mouth and smiling sheepishly. “I think the flight is catching up with me. How about you, Rupert?”
Giles shrugged, “I’m fi--”
Buffy stifled a giggle when she spied Anne elbowing him in the ribs.
Giles cleared his throat and faked a yawn. “Yes, me too,” he agreed.
William rolled his eyes. “Dad, Mom, honestly—“
“We have the key!” Anne chirped, tugging her husband toward the door. “And we won’t be waiting up! See you soon, my dear.”
“Thank--!” Buffy started, following them to the door, trying to be a gracious hostess. And then the door shut behind them before she could finish. “You.” She turned and looked up at William. “Can you thank your parents for dinner for me tomorrow?”
“Sure thing, pet.” He shook his head. “Could they have been any more obvious?”
Buffy giggled, “That was pretty funny, you have to admit.”
“More like embarrassing.”
“They’re parents; they’re supposed to be embarrassing.”
“What of yours? They like that?”
Buffy sighed heavily and shook her head. “No. They’re not. They’re…kind of prim and proper. Not quite like your ex-wife’s family, but yeah, they’re not that fun and engaging.”
“They haven’t seen Brandon yet, have they?”
“No, and who knows when they will.” Wrinkling her nose, she looked up at Will. “Can we change the subject? I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Sure, we can do that,” he nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I have a topic we can discuss.”
“What’s that?”
“The topic we were having in the car earlier before we arrived at the restaurant.”
Buffy swallowed hard. “Oh? Which, uh, topic was that? The one about Spike versus William?”
“No, the one where we were discussing us.”