A/N: Banner by the wonderful effection! And I’m glad everyone is finally warming up to Oliver. Be prepared to see much more of him. Thanks for all the great reviews! You guys blow me away! Also, PA has been nominated for Spark and Burn Awards Round 2 for Best WIP, Best Romance, and Best Fantasy. Thanks to whoever nom’d me…you guys rock!
Was it possible that she really did want to make it work?
The night before, he’d had his doubts about her doing anything more than just saying the words. She had said them before, that they could try, and stupid him, he’d believed her. Then she had proceeded to stomp his heart into the ground.
But now, Spike wasn’t so sure she was going to back out this time.
She seemed happy this morning and he had a feeling that it had little to do with the oral gratification he had given her earlier. Well, he was sure some of it had to do with that, but she had acted different before he had gone down on her. But as much as he liked to believe his sexual talents had the ability to make her mood do a one-eighty, he knew there was something else going on with her.
“Are you excited?” She asked, practically bouncing with uncontained energy.
Spike lifted his guitar case onto the bus and gave her a confused look. “About what?”
“You know, about going to Phoenix. About getting back on stage. About-”
“Suddenly, I’m thinkin’ you’ve got me beat in the excitement department, pet,” he said, leaning back against the cool metal of the bus.
She frowned a little. “What’s wrong?”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he glanced away. “Nothin’.” Then he turned back to her. “’s just, I thought you weren’t exactly thrilled t’ be on tour with me and now you’re actin’ like you are actually enjoyin’ it.”
“No, I-”
She was cut off when he gave her a pointed look.
“Well, fine, yeah. At first I was a little…apprehensive, but now I’m having fun. I mean, I’m here with you and I get to see the country. What’s not to love?” She gave him a bubbly smile.
God, did he want to believe her! That she was happy. With him. But the thing about his girl was he could never trust her to not change her mind. Sure, she said she was having fun and enjoying their time together, but when would that become an excuse for telling him he was pushing too hard?
Sighing, he lifted his hand up to brush a rebel strand of golden hair from her face. He really did love her. It had happened so fast that he was still trying to get his bearings, but the realization was a plain as day. Bloody head over heels in love and he didn’t want it to end.
She leaned into his touch as his hand cupped her cheek. “How about a kiss, Mr. Rockstar?”
His eyebrows shot up. She was asking him? “What? Right now?”
“Well, yeah,” she replied, her lips quirking up into a grin, her eyes sparking with mischief.
“I thought you said it wasn’t a good-”
Before he could finish his accusation, she threw herself against his body and smashed her lips over his. He stood there frozen for a moment before wrapping an arm around her waist and letting his hand drift down to grab one of her soft, ripe cheeks.
She squeaked, jumping a little and Spike felt her smile against his mouth. Okay, who the sodding hell was this girl and what had she done to his Buffy? Not that he was really complaining. He had the girl ready and willing in his arms while he snogged the breath out of her. It was not looking bad, not bad at all.
“Hey! Get a room!” Xander shouted at them before whistling loudly in appreciation.
Spike backed away first, much to his surprise. He gave her a quizzical head tilt as he searched her eyes for an explanation. All she did was grin and give him a quick peck on the lips.
Surely, the world had turned upside down or something. What else could explain it?
He watched as she jogged off towards Anya, who was struggling with her bags, her cell phone, and a clipboard.
“Have a good morning there, mate?” Oliver asked with a knowing smirk.
Spike frowned. How the hell-? “What do you know about it?”
“Not much, but you could always fill a bloke in.”
Rolling his eyes, Spike playfully shoved Oliver away. “Yeah, keep holdin’ your breath for that one.”
They had been on the road for a little over two hours, rolling through endless desert drenched in heavy rain.
Buffy couldn’t help but stare at Spike as he sat at the table, scribbling furiously in a beaten, battered notebook as his head nodded in time with whatever beat was filtering through the headphones covering his ears. His mouth was moving slightly and every now and then, he would look upwards, trying to find inspiration in the overhead cabinets.
There was something about his mad creativity that held her captive. She could practically feel the music pouring out of him, though she could not see or hear what he was composing. Holding her breath, she watched as he struggled for a moment before finally writing more, a look of pure rapture coming over his face as he found what he was searching his mind for.
“Are you completely enthralled yet?”
Buffy jumped slightly as she heard Oliver’s voice beside her ear. “Huh?”
Oliver grinned. “You look like you’re ready to follow the boy into the depths of Hell. You know what they say about friends jumping off bridges.”
“I don’t think I could ever do what he does,” Buffy replied, her gaze sliding back to Spike.
“Ah, it’s not so hard. Just like writing poetry.”
Buffy rolled her eyes before glancing at Oliver again. “I can’t write poetry either.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have. I had to write poetry for my high school English class.”
Oliver snorted. “That’s not the same thing. You wrote poetry because you were required to. You should write because you want to.”
“You sound like the teacher that assigned that poetry in the first place,” Buffy told him with a smirk.
“I was going to be a teacher, you know,” Oliver said.
She could not picture him as a teacher. The teachers she had known did not have piercings everywhere or tattoos, nor did they wear t-shirts with scantily clad women straddling motorcycles proclaiming that the wearer ‘rode them hard and put them away wet’. The teachers she knew did not talk about sex like it was a recreation sport and have coke parties in their hotel rooms.
Although, to be fair, maybe if Oliver wasn’t so immersed in the clichéd world of rock-stardom, he might have been different.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
Buffy laughed. “Was it that obvious?”
“Just a tad.” Oliver smiled at her. “It wasn’t my true calling, obviously. My da had been a teacher and me mum, as well. Thought I should start a new family tradition. But I never was one for following the paths of others, so I left home and got a flat in London with a bunch of other blokes who were defying tradition too.”
“Is that where you met Dru?”
She felt bad for asking, like it wasn’t any of her business, but before she could even think about hold her tongue, the question had come tumbling out.
“Yes, the little trollop,” he replied with a huge grin. “She was seeing one of my flatmates at the time. Thought she was the most intriguing creature I’d ever come into contact with. I figured I was invisible to her, but one night she crawled into my bed and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Well, if Buffy had ever wondered about Dru’s faithfulness before Spike, Oliver’s story would have left little to ponder. But Buffy had always known that Dru’s only goal in life was finding her own pleasure, regardless of how her behavior affected everyone else.
Damn, she was really starting to hate her ex-employer.
“Did she leave you for…” Her voice trailed off as she glanced to Spike.
“No, not Will. Someone else.”
She gaped as his blasé response. “Didn’t you get mad?”
She would have been furious to find out she was being cheated on.
“Nah. It was what it was. Had some good times, me an’ her, but I wasn’t looking for anything serious.” He chuckled and shook his head. “She was right pissed when I didn’t come after her. Nailed a sodding cow heart to my door and wailed for hours in the hallway. Crazy bint.”
That was something uniquely Oliver. His ability to take a situation, that to any normal person would have been considered the shit hitting the fan, and find it…amusing. She seriously doubted his sanity sometimes. He was either crazy or the most sane person on the planet.
When Oliver lifted his head, though, his expression had darkened. His mouth was set in a grim line as he stared at Spike. “Found the perfect puppet, hadn’t she? Poor Will, who’d only ever really wanted to love her. But she used that to her advantage. Almost broke the boy.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to mention that Spike was only a couple of years younger than Oliver and that calling him ‘boy’ was a little strange. But it sounded right when he said it. Not disrespectful, just an acknowledgement that Oliver felt Spike hadn’t grown up yet.
“She didn’t though.”
Buffy had been worried for a while that perhaps Dru had done much more damage than Spike was letting on. That concern was quickly dissipating with each passing day as Spike seemed to be gaining his confidence back.
“No, but it’s not over. She’ll try. It’s what she’s good at.”
Yeah, she’d try, but she would have to get through Buffy first. She wasn’t going to let Dru hurt Spike again. And the bitch was going to pay.
Spike felt drained. Staring down at the bold blue words scrawled in his handwriting all over the notebook, he couldn’t shake the awe that had drawn him into a stupor. He had no idea where than sudden burst of inspiration had come from. And he was completely amazed.
The song he had written…it wasn’t about Dru. He couldn’t remember a time when he had written about anything other than Dru or his love for her.
It was cleansing. A sudden rush of open creativity bursting through him like he had never felt before. He felt free and unhindered. Like anything was possible.
“What?!” Anya screamed into her cell phone. “Which one?!”
The whole bus went quiet as they watched Anya slam her phone shut and stomp over to the television. She started flipping through the channels, ignoring Xander’s cry of protest.
“Anya! I haven’t seen that episode of Dragon Ball Z yet,” Xander whined.
“Shut up, Xander! This is more important than some dumb Japanese cartoon,” Anya growled out.
The satellite dish was something new this year. They didn’t have it on the last tour. But everyone was in agreement that they had to find something to keep Xander quiet through the long hours between gigs and the dish was the best solution.
“Ah-ha!” Anya exclaimed as she moved away from the television and sat down across from Spike.
“What’s this all-”
And then he saw her. Dru. And her poncey loverboy. Doing an interview with Kurt Loder.
All eyes turned to Spike except for Xander who threw a handful of popcorn at the screen and shouted, “BOOO!”
His heart was beating a mile a minute. The last time he had seen her was the day the court clerk had dropped off the divorce papers. She had been staked outside, eagerly awaiting his reaction. The evil glee playing her face as she clapped in excitement.
He felt Buffy’s small hand on his forearm and he glanced up at her.
“We can turn it off, Spike.” Her face was full of worry, just like the day he had hired her when his song had come on the radio. She knew how hard this was for him. His heart jumped a little at her concern for him.
He shook his head and swallowed hard. “No. It’s fine.”
She hovered for a few moments, unsure of what to do next, before Spike grabbed her hand and pulled her down next to him on the bench seat. He needed her with him and she must have sensed that because she squeezed his hand and leaned against him slightly.
“So we’re here with Drusilla Rayne and her boyf-”
“Fiancé,” Liam interjected.
The camera flipped to Kurt, who looked genuinely surprised. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ms. Rayne, but aren’t you still married to-”
“As soon as my divorce is final, Liam and I will be getting married before God and country, Kurt,” Dru told the camera, a wicked smile curving her lips.
“Why is she doing this?” Buffy asked, shaking her head.
Anya turned away from the screen. “She’s trying to sway Spike’s fans to believe her. To ruin his reputation.”
“Bit bloody late for that, An’,” Spike said.
“C’mon, man, nobody believes that shit. Our fans think she’s nuts,” Xander told him.
“Despite claims that their marriage was caused by Spike’s infidelity and rumored physical abuse, fans seem to be on the side of the Dingo’s frontman,” Kurt’s voice stated as the screen showed dozens of street interviews and internet blog entries.
The video stopped on a group of twenty-something girls. “We don’t believe that Spike could do anything like that. If you just listen to his music, you can tell that she’s been the one who’s been fooling around. She’s completely nuts!”
Xander smirked. “Told ya.”
“So, Ms. Rayne, could you elaborate on your reasons for filing for divorce after five years of seemingly good marriage to Spike Giles?” Kurt asked.
“You don’t know what she was going through with that-BLEEP-, Kurt. If I hadn’t gotten her out when I did, who knows what would have happened,” Liam said, his hands waving dramatically in front of him.
Kurt seemed a bit annoyed at Liam’s blatant disregard for the question he’d asked.
Suddenly, Dru appeared to be tearing up and she sniffled. “It was so hard living with a man like Spike. He was so passionate about his work and when things didn’t go his way, he usually took it out on the only person around. Me.”
“That is such utter bullshit!” Buffy exclaimed, slamming her free hand on the table.
Everyone turned to stare at her and Buffy just shrugged. “Well, it is,” she said.
“You have insinuated that your husband-”
“Ex-husband,” Dru corrected.
“That your ex-husband has been involved in a number of elicit affairs. Do you have any comment?”
Dru looked to Liam, who made a big show of encouraging her to answer the question. “I always knew Spike had a unique taste sexually, but I never knew that he preferred other…other…” Dru forced a few sobs out before gaining her composure enough to say, “Men!”
At that, Oliver burst into laughter. It wasn’t seconds after he began that everyone else seemed to find what Dru had said to be the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
Spike wasn’t nearly as amused. The idea was ludicrous. He had no interest in men. He hadn’t had any interest in other women either while he was with Dru. It was the most ridiculous accusation he’d ever heard, but that didn’t make it all right.
Not only was the bloody bitch on national television spouting all of her bullshit to his fans, but she was doing it in a forum where he couldn’t defend his good name and set the record straight. Why hadn’t they called him?
As if on cue…
“They want you to do an interview with you, Spike,” Anya announced.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Anya huffed. “That’s what I’m doing right now. Besides, I just found out. How do you think I knew about Dru’s little interview? They just called and told me.”
He had never wanted this to become public. There had been so many celebrity break-ups lately and each one had turned into a media frenzy. He had never imagined that Dru would have gone this far for free publicity. A few tearful pity-me’s on Oprah, yeah, but never the outright lies she had been ‘confessing’.
He’d bet his autographed Springsteen guitar that Liam had convinced her to ‘tell all’. Sodding bastard! Oh, he was going down. And the bloody bitch too.
Now, all he needed was a plan. ‘Cause as far as he was concerned, this meant war.