Buffy knew it, but it didn’t stop from annoying her nonetheless. She thought perhaps it was all in the knowing that made it so annoying to her, or perhaps the hope that maybe, just maybe she wouldn’t be perched like a gargoyle, waiting in impatience the way she did.
Squeezing Spike’s hand, the pair entered the house and Buffy purposely did not look in the living for a minute, instead focusing on her father, though she could see her mother out of the corner of her eye.
“Hey honey,” Hank said, standing as soon as he saw the pair. Opening his arms, Buffy walked right into them and allowed herself to be swept up in the comforting embrace of her father.
“Daddy, you’ve lost more weight, haven’t you?” Buffy mused, standing back and taking a gander at her father. His normal stocky frame had lessened quite a bit, and even more since she’d seen him last.
“Your mother makes me walk with her in the morning now,” Hank said with a roll of his green eyes, but Buffy could see he didn’t mind too much by the twinkle in his eye. Since Hank’s heart attack a few years back, he’d taken his health more serious and actually listened to doctor’s orders when they told him to start exercising more and eating well. Hank had taken it one step further and taken an early retirement, of which hadn’t stuck that well. He was “Of Counsel” at his firm, and still had his hand in a few matters.
“Well, you look good, Dad,” Buffy told him and went, finally, to her mother who was hugging William and telling him how the wedding party would be arriving at any minute.
Buffy rolled her eyes as she went to her mother. “Mom, we’re not even late. We’re here at the time we said. An hour before everyone shows up.”
“I should have told you two,” Joyce sighed, smoothing her honey blond hair back.
Typical. Her mother was notorious for telling her to be somewhere at a certain time and then changing it three times out of nerves. It was the whole reason why she insisted on having Buffy have two rehearsals before the wedding: that evening and then the following night. “Trust me dear,” Joyce had told her, “No one will remember the day of with just one rehearsal. It’s best with two and then you can all have a relaxing night instead of rushing off to do all you need the night before.”
“It’s all right, Joyce, if I know Faith, she’ll have everyone running late as it is,” Spike interrupted smoothly.
Joyce smiled. “You’re probably right.”
Buffy shot him a look and he grinned. It wasn’t fair that he had that power to make Joyce calm while she and Joyce just seemed to feed off one another.
“Need help with your things, William?” Hank asked Spike, “If Buffy is anything like her mother, she packed her entire closet.”
Spike chuckled and thanked his old friend, the man responsible for bringing Buffy into his life, and told him it was no problem.
“I’ll help him, Dad,” Buffy assured her father.
“I’m not a weakling you know,” Hank reminded her. “Not with the weights your mother has me wearing while we walk.”
Buffy giggled. “It’s okay, Dad, really.”
“Don’t forget we’re going out for the rehearsal dinner at Emilio’s.”
“Yes, mom, we know,” Buffy nodded and followed Spike back outside.
“She’s already stressing you out, huh?” Spike asked as he opened the trunk.
“You know I love her to death, it’s just with the wedding and all…she’s worried more than I have about things and it’s my—our—wedding.”
Spike paused in taking out the suitcases and turned to her, an odd expression on his face.
“What?” Buffy asked.
“The day after tomorrow you’re going to be Mrs. William Madden.”
Buffy smirked. “No, the day after tomorrow, I’m going to be Mrs. Elizabeth Madden-Summers.”
“Pet, why do you have to do the hyphen thing, eh? Just keep it to Madden, show your soon to be husband how much you love him.”
“Adopting your last name does not indicate love, William. Besides, how could I do that to my Dad, who really, was the first man in my life? And I’ve been Summers so long, I don’t know anything else. It’d be like a whole identity change!”
Spike shook his head, “Whatever you say, pet,” he muttered and went back to hauling out the suitcases.
She placed a hand on his arm, halting him.
Looking over at her, he waited for her to say something.
“You know I love you, right?”
He broke into a grin. “I know you do, Buffy.”
“The name thing . . . it’s not as important as all the other stuff, right?”
Taking her in his arms, Spike hugged her, assuring her. “Right.”
Spike watched his girl laugh and carry on with her friends in her parent’s backyard, where the wedding was to be held, and thought that he was the luckiest man on Earth. His girl positively glowed. She was an angel to him, an angel that had taken him out of his loneliness and gave him a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It was because of Buffy that he believed in love again, having been hurt by his first love when he found out that she was married. He knew though, from the start, that Buffy was the epitome of love and Isabel, his former, was just puppy love. Course he didn’t know that at the time, but now he did.
And, in two short days – not even – Buffy was going to be his wife, his mate, his everything. Well, she already was his everything.
“So, B, we’re going out after this dinner, right?” Faith Evans, one of Buffy’s bridesmaids asked.
Buffy nodded, “Yep. I already asked William.”
Faith rolled his eyes. “Asked him? Puh-lease! You’re not going to become Donna fucking Reed are you?”
“Sssh,” Buffy hissed, “My mother hates that word.”
Faith smirked, “What? Donna Reed?”
Spike had to chuckle, even if he thought Faith could be a bit much. “She’s not going to be anything even remotely like Donna Reed,” Spike assured the brunette. “She can’t even cook.”
Buffy nudged him in the ribs. “Hush up, you.”
Spike nuzzled her neck, “I love you anyway, baby.”
“So why did she ask?” Faith challenged.
“Because every time I’m with you, I end up needing to be bailed out of something,” Buffy muttered.
Faith laughed, proud of herself. She shrugged, “What can I say. Trouble follows me.”
“Or, you are trouble,” Spike suggested.
Faith just gave him a look and then smiled and nodded.
Spike laughed and excused himself to see how the ‘men’ were doing – the men being Wesley Wyndham Pryce, Liam “Angel” O’ Connor, and Hank – his best men. Buffy tended to her maid of honor, Willow Rosenberg and her other bridesmaid, Anya Jenkins.
The backyard was where Buffy had chosen for the wedding. She hadn’t wanted a huge thing, and she’d expressed to him that her dream was to marry in her parents yard with the wrought-iron archway Joyce had leading into her expanding-by-the-day garden with a little pond in the center of it all. He had to admit, it was the perfect place for the wedding, and when the chairs and tables were set up – for the reception was going to take place there as well-- it would all be that much more real.
And the fact that it was coming, and even though he was as happy as a clam, it wasn’t without some fear as well. Would he be a good husband to Buffy? Would he make her as happy as she made him? Would she grow tired of him? Was he too old for her? He was forty now. And what of children? He didn’t necessarily want to start having children right away, even if he was forty. He wanted to wait and enjoy his time with his wife before that, and he knew Buffy wanted to wait as well, for her career was just starting.
He was struck more and more, as the days drew closer to their nuptials, how incredibly unworthy he felt. Watching her laugh, how she lit up the dusk and made it seem like dawn, how she made his heart beat that much faster when she just entered a room, he thought I don’t deserve an angel like her.
Granted it was rehearsal, but just the faux walking down the aisle had made Spike choke with emotion. Imagining her in the wedding dress he drew up in his imagination, he was swept away.
And he couldn’t get the vision of her walking toward him so trustingly out of his mind. She was so young…she had her whole life literally in front of her…and she chose him to spend the rest of her days with. Him. She was walking to him to spend her life with.
The reality of it made it hard for him to breathe, and so before the main course at dinner came, Spike went out for a quick smoke. Ducking out in the back of the restaurant, which was nothing but a parking lot for employees and a dumpster, Spike lit up and inhaled deeply.
“Hello, William.”
Turning to the sound of a woman’s voice that he didn’t recognize, Spike was struck dumb.
“Isabel.”