Sometimes it can be so strange, the way the human mind works and the random things that can pop into your head at the most inappropriate of times. Usually it seems to happen during those times when you should be focusing on the big picture and not on the most insignificant details.
However, as Buffy continued to stare meaningfully at Spike, and watched him blanch as he registered her presence in the kitchen, all she could think about was that she had always thought the man’s pasty looking skin couldn’t get any paler until that moment.
She could tell that she had scared him, but she didn’t really care. He was purposely keeping something from her. And she was determined to find out what it was.
Never tearing his gaze away from her, he rasped a hurried goodbye into his cell and flipped it shut, before slipping it back into his pocket.
“Well?” If words could kill, Spike would have been pinned to the wall bleeding out from that single utterance.
“Well what?” He finally looked away from her, shuffling his feet and sticking his hands into his jeans pockets.
“Well…I’m not an idiot. What the hell was that all about? And I want the truth. What are you hiding from me Spike?”
With a sigh he leaned against the kitchen table, running careless hands through his already mussed hair.
“It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, because you always try to make sure that I don’t find out nothing.”
“I said it’s bloody well nothing!”
Buffy froze as he thumped the table with his fist so violently, she was sure she heard it crack. With a scornful half-chuckle, she slowly approached him.
“I’m not scared of you, Spike.”
“I don’t want you to be.” He admitted quietly. “You’re the only bloody thing that I have left, Buffy. Before you knew me, I was…I was nothing to write home about, let’s put it like that. But with you and your…and Joyce, I could be a good man. I am a good man.”
She was almost close enough now to feel his breath on her, but one look into his eyes stopped her cold. As she looked into his eyes, she saw how tortured they appeared, as if even admitting anything about his past was unleashing long repressed emotions. But he was right when he told her she was all he had left.
And he was all she had left now too.
It wasn’t as if her real father was coming to the rescue anytime soon, and there was no one else now.
“If this is going to work. Us. As a…family. Then I need to be able to trust you, and I can’t if you’re lying to me, keeping secrets from me, hiding things. God, Spike, don’t you get it? I just lost…”
The silence seemed to stretch on forever, like it was a living, breathing being with a beating heart. Neither of the pair were sure how long it had been when Spike finally cleared his throat and spoke.
“It’s debts, Buffy. That’s what I didn’t want you to know about.” Keeping his eyes studiously averted from her own, he continued in low even tones. “I have some money worries, nothing serious, nothing that I can’t sodding well work out, but nothing that I wanted you to find out about. You just lost your Mum, and I didn’t want you worrying about my buggering problems, alright?”
“Debts? What kinds of debts?”
“Old ones.” A bitter laugh escaped his lips, and he stood to retrieve a bottle of Jack from one of the kitchen cabinets, taking a long swig before swinging round to look at her, his eyes wild. “Long time ago, before I met you or your Mum, I was a bit of a sod. Strike that, I was the kind of bloody bastard you would cross the street to get away from. Turns out some things aren’t so easy to run from though, pet.”
Taking another gulp of whiskey he sat back down in the chair, turning away from her so that she didn’t notice the guilty expression plastered on his face. He knew that if he gazed right into her eyes, he wouldn’t be able to hold back the full truth from spilling forth like a leaky faucet. This way was better.
Scratch that.
This way was easier.
“I want you to be proud of me, love. I don’t want to sodding well disappoint you. If you knew…what I was, what I’ve done, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.”
“Spike…”
“Don’t say anything. I know what a royal fuck up I am. I just…can’t lose you too.”
In one swift movement, she crouched down to where he sat on the chair and wrapped her arms around him, letting him bury his face in the crook of her neck, feeling his hot tears spill endlessly on her skin.
As his body sobbed harder, he pulled her into his lap and her own salty tears threatened to spill. They clung to each other like they were the only two people left in the world. Like they were each other’s oxygen, their bodies molded to one another.
As the tears began to subside, Buffy finally noticed the position she was in. Her legs were splayed as she straddled her stepdad’s lap, her breasts pushed against his chest. Only thin layers of cotton and denim separated their own skin. For the first time in weeks, since her world had fallen apart with grief, Buffy began to feel stirrings of lust deep in the pit of her stomach. She knew just how wrong that was. This wasn’t about sex, it was about comfort and bonding, but her body’s own involuntary reaction was out of her control.
Underneath her butt, she could feel Spike’s own involuntary reaction growing and a tiny wiggle brought a quiet groan from him. Pressing her nose to his collar, she inhaled his scent, the scent she loved so much, the scent that had brought her off so many times when she’d slipped her hands into her soaked panties and imagined they were his hands and mouth. He was the scent of pure masculinity, with traces of cologne, cigarette smoke and whiskey. As his thumb started to work circles on the slightly exposed skin of her hip, she couldn’t hold back a moan of her own, jolting forward to hit his own swollen arousal.
The feel of his lips, as they cascaded along her neck, was like heaven. They made her forget everything else in her life. Her grief and Spike’s secrets and lies just melted away into oblivion. Right now there was just her and lips of Spike. Open mouthed kisses peppered her jaw line, and she craned her neck to allow him better access to her sensitive flesh.
“Mmm, Spike…”
Buffy’s whispered moan suddenly brought the world back into focus for Spike, and the kitchen tile impacted hard against her hip, as she found herself tossed to the floor. One glance at Spike and at the remorse pasted on his face over what had almost happened, and her own reality came crashing back.
Scrambling to her feet, she tried to compose herself, but it wasn’t easy with the memory of his lips burning trails of liquid fire against her.
“Spike…”
“No! Just…don’t. What we…That can never bloody well happen again.”
“Nothing happened! It was just…comfort.”
“Little too close for comfort. You’re my daughter, Buffy. You’re my dead wife’s child.” Each word struck her like a knife to the stomach, and she genuinely thought she would keel under the heart wrenching agony of hearing it. “And I…I think we should keep our relationship more appropriate from now on. You’re just a kid, pet, and…it shouldn’t have happened.”
“I’m not a kid, Spike, I’m almost seventeen years old. You think you know me? Well you don’t. You don’t know anything about me, or what I want or what I need. So don’t you dare get all judge-y on me. You’re not my real father and you have no idea how glad I am about that. Even my real dad…the dad that doesn’t give a damn about me…could do a better job than you can.”
With her eyes flashing fire, the pain of womanly rejection mixed with the grief she already held etched into them, she cast him one last look, before storming out of the room, and running up to her room like the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Sighing, Spike considered following her and trying to chat it out but he didn’t have the strength. Making his way back to the table, he went for his whiskey, only to see the bottle turned on its side, the precious amber liquid spilling onto the floor.
“Bloody fucking hell!” He roared, picking up the bottle and slinging it against the wall. As it shattered, the poet in him couldn’t help but think that those shards were some kind of metaphor for his life.
Everything was screwed.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry, I missed this chapter from my original posting. So here it is now.
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading. Please review.