Clearing her throat, Buffy kept her eyes fixed on their joined hands. Telling her deepest secrets to Spike wasn’t something that she felt entirely comfortable with.
But Tara had told her that she needed to follow her heart, and she knew that if she was ever to work through her issues then she had to listen to the wise words of her therapist.
“When I met Angel he seemed like the perfect gentleman,” she started stutteringly. “He was sweet but mysterious. I had this image of the two of us as Hollywood’s first couple. God, I was such an idiot. I even had wedding patterns picked out. He said all the right stuff to me, the stuff that made me all…”
“Googly eyed?”
“…all crazy and stupid.”
“So…googly eyed then?”
“Shut up, Spike,” Buffy smiled. “Anyway crazy-Buffy doesn’t make the best decisions and when he wanted to…do stuff, well I agreed to it.”
“You shagged him?” yelled Spike, drawing the attentions of several other patrons. Buffy flushed deeply but Spike didn’t care that. “How the bloody hell could you shag that giant-foreheaded ponce? Everyone knows the man’s a user!”
“Yeah, now I know it. But back then I didn’t know that! I thought he was my Prince Charming.”
“Prince Charmings sometimes seem like frogs, love. Don’t you know that? The ones who seem perfect are always the most flawed,” he told her confidently, before adding more shyly, “…and vice versa.”
“I wish you’d been able to give me a little nugget of that fortune-cookie wisdom before Angel broke my heart.
“Yeah? Well, I wish I could rip out his bloody lungs and use them to wipe my ar…”
“O…kay! I got the picture,” Buffy interrupted, not wanting Spike to elaborate on his colorful threats. “However gross and disgusting the picture might be.”
“I’m a crude, rude man, love,” he said with a nonchalant shrug.
“Getting that. So, anyway. After I…was with Angel, he told me that it was over. He wanted to concentrate on his career and having a girlfriend would send it all screwy.” She stared down into her cup of ice cream, fighting back the prickle of tears as she recounted one of her most painful memories. “I didn’t want to admit that the truth was he just got what he wanted and then he was done with me. He used me, Spike. I felt like nothing…like dirt. You’ll be amazed to know that I retreated to the land of denial for a long time after that.”
“You know, the actual truth of the matter is that Angel O’Connor is a pansy-arsed git,” Spike told her, nodding when her head whipped up. “At least you’re not alone, pet. That nancy boy’s shagged a lot of poor girls who fell for his ‘charms’. He likes them young and vulnerable and he’s a bleeding master of manipulation.”
Buffy shook her head. “It doesn’t help though. I loved him and after that it was hard to let myself fall in love again. Then I met you and…” She halted suddenly, self-conscious about the fact that she was pouring her heart out. “And I think that’s enough talking about me,” she told him firmly.
“Yeah, I know about what happened with me and you, pet.” Guilt hung over Spike’s shoulders like a third presence.
“What about your exes?”
Spike chuckled, shaking off his darkening mood. “I assume you’re not referring to the birds I shagged onscreen.”
“A thousand gallons of no.” Buffy scowled. “Really don’t wanna hear about them.”
“Truth be told, I don’t want to think about them myself.” He tossed the empty cup of ice cream into the trash can on the other side of the room, winking at her when it slid in. “There was only one girl I ever really loved in my past.”
“Just the one?” Buffy lifted an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Yep. I was 18 years old and bloody naïve as buggery. Her name was Drusilla. She was…my black goddess. Skin like the first snow of winter, lips like the deepest, juiciest cherries you ever saw and a mane of midnight colored locks.”
“Cheesy much?”
“Oi! It’s not cheesy. I wrote poetry for her, to tell her how I felt about her.”
“Whoa, back up there a second there, Walt Whitman. You write poetry?” Her mouth was gaping open with shock. Spike was a vulgar, bleached headed, leather clad punk who took his clothes off for money. Writing poetry was right up there with ballet dancing and piccolo playing on the list of things Buffy never thought she would associate with the Brit.
“I used to, love.” He grinned. “Why so surprised?”
“You’re demeanor doesn’t exactly scream poet.”
He shrugged. “Mass of contradictions, I am.” Buffy nodded, starting to see that Spike was a complex, multi-layered specimen of a man. “Pity that Dru didn’t appreciate the poetry though. Bint cheated on me with every Tom, Dick and Harry in London. In the end I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I headed over here, to find my fame and fortune in Hollywood. One thing led to another, and after that I ended up as the biggest star of modern pornography. Guess I’ve got Dru to thank for that.”
Spike paused for breath, feeling a little embarrassed that his whole life story had just come pouring out like water from a leaky faucet.
“She didn’t deserve you,” Buffy said, surprising herself with the sincerity of her words. For the first time she felt like she was really seeing the vulnerable but real man behind the ‘mask’ and she found she liked him a lot more than she would have expected. Internally she frowned at that thought.
Was Spike actually…likeable?
“Yeah, I guess not. The bitch always played me like a fiddle.” He paused and chewed on his lower lip. “You remember our first date?”
“A few years ago, you mean?”
Spike nodded. “Well a few weeks before I met you Dru came out here to see me. She was apparently between shag buddies at the time and fancied playing with my mind a little bit more. I was sick of it already by that time and I told her to get on a plane and go back to England. Anyway, right before the night of our date I got a phone call from Dru. She told me she was pregnant and she wanted me to come home and be a dad to her kid.”
“That was why you were so distracted,” said Buffy in dawning realization. “I always kinda thought it was me but…I guess it was your ex-ho that did it to you.”
“Yeah, nasty bint always had a penchant for messing with me. See Dru had another bombshell to drop on me. Even though she wanted me to play daddy…the kid wasn’t mine.”
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Buffy, licking her lips nervously.
“Yeah, bloody understatement there. Of course I told her to sod off, but it hurt. Story of my life.”
“Wait a second, if you sent her straight back to England, why did you ever think the baby could have been yours?”
Spike looked like a deer in the headlights at her perceptive question. “We might have…uh…shagged a bit first.”
Buffy wrinkled her nose in disgust, outwardly showing no other sign that it affected her. However, inside she felt seething jealousy. The thought of Spike allowing this woman to play him gnawed away at her gut.
She tried to tell herself it didn’t mean anything.
But Buffy was believing that assertion less and less every time she said it.
An air of heaviness settled over them and Buffy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She didn’t like this newfound tension that had sprung up from discussions about their exes. It led to too many questions inside of her mind and, judging by the pained expression on his face, Spike felt the same.
“Do you ever wish you could turn back time?” she asked him. “Just get a do-over and un-fuck up all the fucked up stuff?”
Spike grinned at her flowery language. “Didn’t peg you for such a potty mouth,” he laughed, leaning his head back. His tongue curled behind his teeth as a very naughty thought embedded itself in his brain. “That the kind of language you use in the throes of passion?”
“You know you’re a total pig, right?”
“Don’t deny it turns you on, Summers. I bet I make you cream from it.”
“And we’re still in Piggy Town.”
Spike chuckled heartily, catching the twinkle in her eyes. So the little princess was enjoying his overt flirtations, was she? He couldn’t deny that made him feel all warm and cozy on the inside.
Buffy wanted a hole to open up and swallow her. Spike had been flirting with her…making sexual comments to her…and she’d liked it! Maybe she’d been dropped into Bizarre-o Land but she was finally gelling with Spike. And she was doing it while sober. Okay, subject change really required, stat!
“So,” Buffy tried cheerily. “Got any jobs lined up?”
Spike seemed a little puzzled by the sudden change in conversation, but he didn’t question it. In truth, he was disappointed to have his flirtations cut short, but he understood that it was best not to pressure Buffy when she was railing against something. That way only led to badness.
And badness wouldn’t lead her to him.
“Actually, I’ve been looking over a television script,” he nodded. “Bloody good too.”
“Really? What’s it about?”
“Vampires,” he told her, blushing a little.
Buffy chewed on her bottom lip thoughtfully. “Wait. Is it ‘Joan: Slayer of Vampires’? Or something like that?”
“Yeah, that’s the one!” chuckled Spike. “You’ve been reading it too?”
“I got a copy of the script for the pilot from Giles,” she admitted. “I think they want me to come in to read for the part of Joan, but I don’t know. I guess I don’t really see myself as a ‘Slayer of Vampires.’”
“I could see you as that, pet,” Spike smiled. “Probably all in leather, heels, hair flying about like a water nymph.”
“Water nymph? Really? I’m hoping you do not get the job of wardrobe designer for that show.”
“No worries on that score. They want me in for the male lead.” He met her eyes with his. “That would mean we’d see a lot more of each other.”
Buffy blushed and looked away. Her heart was pounding faster in her chest in the way that only Spike seemed to be able to provoke.
Buffy cleared her throat. “Giles told me that Dawn Keyes was offered a part on the show too,” she said, hoping to distract him from the way he was staring hungrily at her lips.
“Hmm?” he said, snapping back to reality. “Dawn Keyes?”
“She worked with us on Murder Most Strange. I’m surprised you don’t remember. You were flirting enough for a whole entire army.”
Spike chuckled. “Jealous pet?”
“As if!” she scoffed, hoping he hadn’t noticed the blush that pinkened her cheeks.
“Keep telling yourself that.” Spike leaned back in his seat, stretching like a big cat. “When you finally admit it to yourself that you want me, well it might be the day I go bloody ice skating in hell but it’ll be a joyous one.”
Buffy tried to avert her eyes and concentrate on the remnants of her ice cream but that was such a yummy position for him to be in. His lithe muscles were rippling relentlessly under his tight black T-shirt and she suddenly wondered what it would be like to eat her ice cream off of that toned, hard chest.
Immediately she gave herself a mental shake.
Bad bad Buffy!
“See something you like?” Spike probed. Had his voice dropped an octave? It sounded…huskier. As if he’d just had a heavy night of screaming out his pleasure. And there were the bad thoughts again.
“Uh…we should go!” Buffy said, surging to her feet before he could reply. Her panties were already moist and creamy so she couldn’t spend another moment looking at him without possibly climaxing right there in the ice cream parlor.
“You want to go?” he frowned. “Feeling a little tired are you, pet? Need me to put you to…bed?”
“I…umm…I got a headache,” she hedged, refusing to look at him.
“Massage can be a good cure for that,” he murmured suggestively, standing so close to her that he inflamed her cravings even more.
“Spike…” she began.
However, her sentence was cut short when a pair of teenage boys came barreling past the two blondes, almost knocking them to the ground. Spike’s arms automatically banded around Buffy to steady her. She graced him with a grateful smile but wriggled free before they could recapture the lost moment.
The blonde had a feeling that he was about to kiss her before the distraction and although there was a part of her that wanted to taste his lips again she wasn’t sure her psyche could handle it.
“Let’s go,” she said, turning and heading for the door.
As always he could do nothing but follow in her wake.
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