Spike looked up from the forms he was looking over to find Buffy chewing her bottom lip and playing with the hem of her shirt. She reminded him of a little girl at that moment and he smiled. “Yes?”
“You weren’t really that mad at me earlier, were you?”
“When?” he asked, confused.
“When we were arguing about that painting.”
It was times like this when Spike was reminded that Buffy was not tiny-hearted and that things did not just roll off her back like they were nothing. The girl felt things hard and deep. She played a good game of pretending she didn’t care, but she did. And since that night she’d unloaded on him, they’d had a funny kind of relationship. They still danced around issues at times; sometimes they’d talk about them, but only briefly. If there were one word he had to use to describe their relationship it would be delicate. Well…maybe not even that. It lay somewhere between strong and delicate, but leaning toward delicate. This whole thing was new to them still and he knew that. More than once a day he was struck with the thought that Buffy was all he had right then. And on the other side of that coin, he was all she had. It was a delicate situation to be in for it begged the question: Did they really like each other or did they just put up with each other for fear of dealing with things alone?
But, looking at her now, at the fear in her eyes, the way she looked at him as if he held her life in his hands, Spike decided to go with the idea that she truly liked him, as well as needed him. God, how lonely and afraid must she be to feel that one little tiff that was soon forgotten was something that could end their…whatever they were.
Hank truly was a bastard.
“Buffy, I can be quick to temper--”
“No, shit.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“No, shit.”
He grinned, “But we said our peace, yeah? You called me a jackass, I called you a bitch, you went for coffee to cool off and we’re fine. Okay?”
Instantly, she relaxed, letting out a breath that it would seem she’d been holding. Her entire posture changed; a weight was lifted. He had the sudden urge to hug her. Before that night they’d shared a bed and he’d held her, when was the last time she’d been hugged?
“Okay,” she nodded and started back to the front.
“Buffy?”
“Yeah?”
“How did you meet that guy?”
“Who? Angel?”
“Yeah, Angel.”
“In line at the coffee shop.”
“Oh.”
“I think I freaked him out too, I’m surprised he asked me out.”
“How’d you freak him out?”
Buffy chuckled a bit, “Well, he asked where I worked and I told him. He made a comment about how it must be cool to work for my mom or whatever and I said ‘No, she’s dead.”
“Buffy!”
“What? It’s true isn’t it?”
Spike shook his head. “That’s cold, Buffy.”
“It’s not cold,” she said indignantly, “It’s the truth. She is dead. What was I supposed to say? ‘Yeah, it is cool working with her’?”
“You could have said she ‘passed away’.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”
“You’re such a brat.”
“I know it,” she said proudly.
“Go back to work, brat.”
“Yes, sir!” And she made a big show of saluting him. “Need some fuckin’ direction in my life don’t I?”
Spike heard her laughing all the way to the front and he couldn’t help but laugh too.
“Do you ever think what it would be like to have a mental illness?” Buffy asked on their way home from work that day.
Spike glanced over at her, “I’ve wondered, but not in depth or anything. Have you?”
“Yeah. I mean have you ever wondered what it would be like if one day you woke up and heard voices? Or if you thought the TV was talking to you. If you were like that guy in ‘A Beautiful Mind’, and you thought the government was after you.”
“You have to stop watching and reading these things about mental illness, pet. They’re starting to get to you.”
“Nah. I just…I guess I find comfort in knowing I’m not that bad off. And then I get scared cause I think I could be one day.”
“Buffy,” Spike said sternly. “You’re not going to be like that. I won’t let you.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think it’s something you can control.”
Silence, then, “You know what I wonder?” Spike asked, smiling.
“What?”
“If people who are crazy know they’re crazy.”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Brat.”
And Buffy just laughed again.
November 13, 2005
That ponce Angel called Buffy this evening. Now, he was supposed to have called last night when he got home like any truly enamored boy would do. That’s the operative word here: boy. What is with making the girl wait for his call? Fucking amateur.
She went into the other room to talk with him; right in the middle of a movie we were watching together. That kind of hurt. It made me want to stamp my foot and demand that she stay and call him later – this was my time.
But, I have to keep myself in check here. Buffy is allowed to have friends, she’s allowed to date if she chooses. Just because I don’t have many friends to speak of, just because Joyce was pretty much it, doesn’t mean that I have to hold it against Buffy for trying to live her life.
I just don’t think she realizes that I need her. I know she needs me—her reaction to our stupid little tiff was testament to that, but I don’t think she knows I need her too. Maybe I should tell her?
“What’s this?” Buffy asked when Spike placed something thin and rectangular wrapped in aluminum foil on her lap.
“Open it.”
Tearing into the gift, Buffy smiled. “’Queen’s Greatest Hits. Volume One and Two.’” She looked up at him. “Don’t you have this?”
“I don’t actually. But now you do and we can listen to it when we’re working or when we’re cleaning the dishes from dinner.”
Buffy beamed at him, “Thank you.”
“I’m thinking we should expand on the things we have in common: Queen, moping, and candy.”
Buffy laughed.
“Though I think we’re learning we have more in common everyday, don’t you think, pet?”
“I do. Thank you,” and she jumped up from the couch and pecked him quickly on the cheek. “I’m going to play it while I get ready for ‘The Date.”
Spike nodded, his cheek tingling from her kiss, and his blood simmering to a boil over her date.
Chapter Ten
Buffy was too weirded out by having Angel meet her at the door. What was supposed to happen in that little scenario? Did Spike, who was only eight years older, make the pretense of being her Dad and pretend to clean a gun while he questioned Angel? It was what she imagined her own father would do one day—okay, maybe not cleaning an actual gun, but making her date uncomfortable, letting the guy know that she was his little girl and the guy did not have free reign to hurt her in any way. Sadly, Hank never had. When she told him in the past that she was seeing this boy or that, the news fell on deaf ears.
Spike seemed all too eager to meet Angel and play the part, but Buffy hadn’t gotten around to how to explain exactly what Spike was, she herself barely even knew, so she didn’t think it necessary to make an already strange situation, stranger. She felt bad enough about leaving him behind. What was he going to do with himself while she was out? Not that he wasn’t a big boy and couldn’t figure it out, but they’d spent every day and night together under the same roof and there was a kind of comfort in that. She felt as though she was abandoning him, and she knew all too well what it felt like to be abandoned.
“I’ll be fine, Buffy,” he assured her when Angel pulled up in the driveway.
“What are you going to do?”
“Read. Maybe write. Watch TV. Perhaps in that order, maybe not in that order. Would you like me to take minutes?”
“Now you’re just being…what’s that word?”
He smiled, “Shirty.”
“Yeah, that’s odd by the way, but ok. All right, I’m off like a prom dress!” she called out over her shoulder as she made her way to the door.
“You better not be taking anything off! It’s your first date!” Spike shouted, following her to the door.
She giggled breezily. “It’s an expression. But I like that. You do the stepfather role quite well.”
Spike growled and Buffy giggled again, giving him another peck on the cheek. He watched her through the window as she ran out to meet Angel, who had been on his way up the walk to greet her.
He had to hand it to her; she wasn’t dressed like most girls her age seemed to dress these days. There were no signs of underwear peeking over her low-rise pin-striped khaki’s and a matching pink v-neck that did not have her cleavage hanging out. She also wore a matching scarf that draped down her front. She looked fresh and pretty, approachable and respectable.
The house was empty without her. He could hear the clock ticking in the background and the hum of the fridge. When Angel’s jeep sped off, Spike sighed heavily and went to turn on the TV. He couldn’t stand the sounds of silence much these days.
Angel, Buffy decided was a nice enough bloke. She felt the urge to roll her eyes at that thought. She was spending way too much time with Spike if she was starting to sound like him in her head.
He took her out for Chinese food after hearing that it was her favorite and then to a movie since there was a horror film out she had mentioned she wanted to see. Some, Buffy supposed, would think it was an odd sort of date--for how could they really get to know each other sitting in a theater? But it was just the type of date that Buffy liked. That way, there wasn’t too much talking. She hated too much talking on a date. Mostly because she never knew what to say and too many times she’d put too much stock into the first date and trying to “read the signals” and “signs” that this could go somewhere. Screw that.
She’d take Angel in small doses, stretch out their getting to know one another and make it last. It’d give her something to do; it’d at least amuse her for the time-being. Angel, from what she knew already, seemed a simple kind of creature. Not simple as in stupid, but simple in that he was a go to work, come home, veg, sleep, get up and repeat the process again kind of person. His intellectual pursuits didn’t go beyond that of work, which was a lot of work and important work, but nothing for the soul, nothing that challenged his heart and his mind for the betterment of his nature.
And when the hell had she become so obsessed with that sort of thing anyway? Oh yeah. Probably because she felt as though her soul was black.
As if she had much room to talk anyway about the betterment of life. She’d graduated with honors and done what? Went to work in a candy store. It certainly had sweetened her disposition that was for sure. What did she have to show for that hard-earned Bachelor of Arts in Communications diploma she’d received? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. That didn’t stop her however, from testing Angel on his awareness of the world around them, on his opinion of it and the state it was in, on the state of his soul and what he felt his place in all of it was.
“You’re so…deep, Buffy,” he told her.
She smiled mysteriously, liking very much the sound of that, and because she liked that statement, she started to like Angel.
November 15, 2005
Buffy was secretive about her date with Angel. By impression only, I’d say she wasn’t all that impressed. However, she plans to see him again. Maybe to give him another chance? When I asked her how the date went, all she said was, “Fine”, and shrugged. Then she sat down with me to finish the movie I was half-watching while I read a book of collected poems.
I don’t have the attention span to study one author’s work the way I used to enjoy. I only have the attention span to read briefly, make a couple notes, and move on. Why did I never do anything with my English studies? I mean, I was a double major in art and English, but I always leaned more towards English. Thought about writing a book with illustrations—my own illustrations— as childish as that sounds. Thought it could be a way to meld my two loves together though. I could have written based on the art, or drew based on what I wrote.
Then my parents died and with them, my direction. Then I met Joyce and she gave me direction.
I do not like where this self – analysis is going. I’m starting to feel guilty about something that I can’t even describe. And here, in this journal is where I’m supposed to self-analyze and share my thoughts and feelings. But when you can’t even admit to, or bring yourself to share your own thoughts with yourself, then what do you do? Tell your journal you’re just not ready, I guess.
Journal, I’m not ready.
Buffy has been really into reading Wiccan websites for information on different things. She was telling me the other day about how Wiccans view darkness. Supposedly, they don’t think of it as wholly bad thing. They see it as a chance to learn things about yourself, about the deep down inner you. It’s a journey; it’s where you learn things about yourself that you hadn’t before explored. Who knew so much could happen when you shut the light off before you drift off to sleep? But it’s true though. At night is when those thoughts of who I am, where I’m going, and what I’m doing plague me most. It’s the night when I think of Joyce. It’s when I am alone in the dark in my bed that I worry.
Buffy is…
Journal, I’m not ready.