The Things They Left Behind – Part IV
(PG-13ish)
Thanks to everyone who’s been reading with me today! (blows kisses) Hope this final chapter (it’s a long one) satisfies.
****
Some months later…
Reason enough to be nervous. No use pretending that he wasn’t.
Spike had stamped out about eight cigarettes since he’d arrived, and was no closer to knocking on the door than he had been when he’d gotten there. He was fairly certain that neither Dawn nor Buffy were inside, and couldn’t decide if it made a better impression to wait for their arrival and knock on the door, or for them to find him waiting.
A child zoomed by on a bicycle, and Spike idly watched him clatter down the street. The little apartment was…cozy, lit warmly by the glow of streetlights, the air perfumed by the sweet smell of coffee from the little café around the corner.
Maybe he should try to come upon Buffy while she was killing vampires, zip his way into the fray with a flip remark. Or maybe he should just leave the bracelet looped around the door handle.
His reverie was broken by the sight of a slender girl powering her way down the strata towards the door, white fluttery skirt swishing and fretting at her knees. Dawn Summers, a young woman now, emanating confidence and joy with every step.
No going back now.
“Spike?” The vision in white froze, then darted forward. He’d only time enough to straighten from where he leaned against the wall when Dawn threw her arms around his neck, squeezing him tight. “I knew it! I knew you would be back.”
Tentatively, he squeezed her back. They’d been left on uncertain footing with each other, her threat still hanging in the air between them, his realization that he had ignored her as badly as everyone else, despite his vow to be the one who didn’t.
“Bit?”
“That’s me. And thanks for not reading my diaries.” She released him to look him up and down. “Lorne’s going to be so excited! He didn’t think you guys were coming back!”
“Lorne?” Caught off-balance, he looked around. Sure enough, the demon in question rounded the corner, did a double-take, and sprang forward at a run. “Spike!”
Dumbfounded, Spike found himself drawn into another embrace. “Thought you guys were goners for sure, cupcake. We couldn’t find any traces… where are the others?”
“They’re safe,” Spike replied, trying to extricate himself without being obvious. “They’re in L.A. Actually, we’ve been looking for you. CAA said you were taking some personal time?”
Lorne‘s face darkened a bit, and Spike suddenly remembered the orders that Angel had given him, and how very unfair that was to the pacific Lorne. “You could say that. Working on going global – Bollywood could use my special touch, especially with all the movies they put out.” He straightened. “And our old overlords?”
“Stymied. For the moment. It’s entirely possible that something bigger than us is giving them trouble.” Spike didn’t want to go into too many details, and Lorne looked satisfied with that.
“Explain it inside,” Dawn said, ushering him in. “We’ve got lots of time before Buffy gets back.”
Spike’s fingers clenched on the bracelet inside his pocket, but he let himself be drawn in. This warm welcome was puzzling him to no end.
“I figured you would be screaming at me,” he said in an undertone to Dawn.
“I was going to,” Dawn replied, and he saw a spark of the old fire in her eyes. “But I figure Buffy’s going to really hand you your ass on a plate. You can wait out the calm before the storm with us.” With a beatific smile, she glided into the kitchen to bring out tea, coffee, and cookies. “What would you like for your last meal?”
****
There was laughter and light streaming from the windows when Buffy returned from a quiet night of hunting. There were few enough vampires in this part of Europe, but enough to give her beginning students some practice without worrying they’d be overtaken by a gang of vampires.
Lorne and Dawn – at least, she hoped. If Dawn had decided to throw an impromptu party at their place, it was going to be a very strained morning. She was pleased that they, at least, managed to believe in her optimism. Dawn treated Spike’s disappearance as temporary, and she wondered with some trepidation if her sister would begin to view all deaths this way. Lorne crawled out of his Seabreezes long enough to begin building new business contacts – L.A. was done for him, he proclaimed.
For her own part, Buffy knew he wasn’t coming back this time. A person only gets so many chances, and the suicidal run of Angel’s team had been their last stand. She’d already grieved when he died the first time. At least now, she had some of his things – “personal effects,” she supposed, was the military terminology – to cling to this time. To help her remember.
She unlocked the door, noting that the laughter instantly ceased at the sound of her key rattling in the lock. If it was a party, Dawn was so-
Alive.
Spike looked up at her from his position on the couch, alive and whole, costume of dark leather and black clothes, hair as fluorescent yellow as daffodils. He looked frozen to the spot, taking her in with wide blue eyes, as if the sight of her surprised him.
Somehow, the thought that he should be frozen at the sight of her at her own house infuriated her more than any thought that he’d never contacted her, never left any goodbye letter when heading off to face Wolfram and Hart, the fact that he’d taken so damn long since then to get here.
“What’s the matter?” she snapped harshly. “Taken by a vision? You do not want to be staring like that at me.”
“Peppermint chip! Let’s go off to get some gelato. And maybe some espresso – and maybe -” Buffy hardly registered Lorne and Dawn’s hasty departure as she stared down Spike, who slowly rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off of her.
“Hello, Buffy.”
“Sure you want to say that? Or would you prefer something a little more cryptic?” She tore off her coat and flung it at a chair. “How about you just toss my bracelet at the doorstep with a few more bread crumbs to follow?”
She saw him convulsively swallow. “I didn’t mean for you to follow anything,” he replied, pushing his hands into his coat pockets. “Just wanted you and the Bit to have your things. Something from your old home.”
“Then why did you write those notes?” she fired back, not liking the screechy pitch she was hitting. “Why be so cryptic and leave those things for me to find and to try and come after you? Why not write something like, ‘Hi Buffy. It’s me, Spike. I’m less dead than you thought, and here are some of your things from Sunnydale. I might end up dead in a few days, so just saying goodbye for old time’s sake. Cheers, Spike.’”
He scowled, and she felt instantly better. “Never thought you’d figure it was me, Slayer. Figured you’d pin it on Angel. Didn’t intend to lead you on a scavenger hunt. Just something I wanted to do before I died. Again. Which I did and spent the last few months trying to lead part of Los Angeles out of a hell dimension, thanks for asking.”
Buffy very nearly winced, but wouldn’t be deterred. “Okay. So stupidly, which is par for the course with you, you sent over some of our things. Why the hell didn’t you tell me that you were alive?”
“Came back as a ghost at first. Couldn’t touch anything or leave L.A., so that rules out phones, letters, telegrams, or foot travel. Then, once I recorporialized-”
“When you what?”
Spike glared at her. “When I became solid – a vampire, instead of a ghost – I heard from Andrew. He said you’d moved on, were busy with a new life. Didn’t see where I’d do anything but disrupt that and remind you of the past.”
She put her hands on her hips, glaring right back. “Except for the part where you secretly send me reminders of my past.”
“Figured you’d actually want those.” Acid resentment was beginning to creep into his voice.
“You know, I’ve had some guys leave town to get away from me. But you’re the only one who’s ever pretended to be dead to do it!”
“I wasn’t trying to get away from you. I didn’t- I wasn’t gonna hold you to anything you’d said when I died.” His infuriated expression had faded into that restrained look she recognized from that last year in Sunnydale. The downcast eyes, the resolute stance…such a far cry from the Spike she’d known before.
“You didn’t.” Some of the fight left her, and she flopped into the nearby plush recliner, adrenaline still zinging through her veins, making her charged-up and exhausted at the same time. “You told me I didn’t mean it. But thanks anyway.”
He followed suit, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Because a few nights before that, I told you that was the best night of my life, and you smiled and told me it didn’t mean anything to you. Then I see you with Angel,” she waits for him to say that they were kissing, but it seemed that he couldn’t get that word out, “and then you tell me you love me? When I’m dying? When no one else can hear you or ever will? Tell me, Buffy, would you have run right back for more of that?”
Suddenly, Buffy sees this predicament through his eyes. Go back for more pain? Run halfway across the world to hold her to those words when she’d proven to be fickle when it came to him? Especially when there were people over there who cared about him, as Lorne’s behavior proved.
“Would you believe me if I told you that now?” she creaked out.
The expression on his face is incredulous, disbelieving. She feels herself being examined minutely, as if he was using a spectrometer to gage the strength of her gaze, measuring the pitch of her voice, the stance of her body.
“That’s right. Because you didn’t come back. Because you decided that you’d rather be absolutely certain about your memories than to risk being happy here.”
The crushed expression on his face mirrored the feeling of her heart. There was no way that they’d ever pick up all these pieces. There was too much hurt. Maybe Spike did have the right idea. She just needed him to go, and then she could cry her way out of this pain.
Buffy turned, picked up her purse, and lifted out Spike’s lighter and leather, placing them on the coffee table beside her.
“I’d like my bracelet back, please.” She infused her words with enough coldness so that the And then leave my house went unspoken.
Spike reached into his pocket, fished out the little trinket of a bracelet. Instead of placing it on the table, though, he moved from the couch to a kneeling position on the floor, as if he were going to ask for her hand in marriage. Buffy quaked, but held out an arm, palm upraised.
Instead of dropping it in her palm, though, he unraveled it, held it out to fasten around her wrist. She could feel the brush of the metal links, but not the touch of his fingers – the bracelet was long enough so such was possible. But as he clasped the bracelet closed, his thumb brushed just barely against the underside of her wrist, an intimate touch that she’d never imagined.
Buffy was never certain who moved first, but their hands seemed to have wills of their own, clasping together and pulling their respective owners into a messy embrace, fused together with tears and sobs and whispers.
“I love you, I love you, you stupid, stupid idiot!” she sobbed into his neck, smacking his back with a open fist, love taps rather than actual hits. Over her own tears, she could hear him chanting, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry Buffy,” but it just made her cry harder.
She knew they were both crying out their individual grief, hers at his death, his concealment, his in remorse for his omission, in not seeing her in so long. She chanted her love in his ears, heard him chanting his contrition into hers.
As their tears slowed, she became aware of the planes of his body, the ribs that stuck out (how long had he been in that hell dimension?) the solid frame pressed against her own, answering a hunger that she’d forgotten, one that was more than, well, sexual. She’d been so hungry, she thought, turning her face into his neck, raising one hand to play in the hair at he nape of his neck.
A thought pricked at her, and she pulled away to face him, certain that she looked a wreck, comforted when he did as well.
“I love you,” she said, speaking in a forceful tone, as if she could will him to believe her that way. “I love you. If you don’t love me anymore, that’s fine, but you’re not walking away without believing it this ti-”
The rest of her stirring speech was muffled into his mouth as they kissed, quickly, desperately, as if taking small bites of air in between. They hadn’t kissed for years, Buffy thought. How had they stayed so good at it?
****
Later (exactly how long, Buffy wasn’t sure), they lay entwined in her bed.
They’d agreed on several things – one, that moving in together right away probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Reconciliation sex, while exquisite and moving, didn’t completely move them past all their issues. Also, there was Dawn to consider – though, Spike pointed out, she’d be attending school in a few months.
Two, that while Spike would help her train, he would stay an independent contractor of sorts. Spike pointed out that he was hers to command in any case, but that he wanted some freedom of his own in that respect.
Three, Sonnets of the Portuguese would become their first piece of “community property” as Spike put it. Buffy only agreed to this after hearing its true origins, and on the condition that he read her the poetry.
The agreements were sealed with a kiss – and eventually, more reconciliation sex. Now, contentedly curled into each other, Buffy stirred and groaned at his fingernails scratching deliciously along her scalp. In return, she reached back, goosing as her hand traveled the long lines of his back, along his hip and flank, then moved back, lightly tickling. She felt him smile against her hair, and turned to see it.
He looked blissful, watching her with the same offering of love in his eyes, now answered by her own. His hair was disheveled, curly, beautiful, skin like the moon. And then she realized it –
“That’s what I wanted to do!” she exclaimed, rolling back over and reaching toward the bedside table.
Spike’s chuckle rumbled through her as she fiddled with the drawer. “You mean to tell me that all those other things were just so-so?”
“No – here, look up.”
The flash blinded them momentarily, but then they began looking back at each other with new eyes. Buffy flipped the digital camera around so that they could see their images in the viewscreen, wide-eyed, dewy expressions, gleaming skin touching everywhere like lush, limp rolls of silk.
Spike examined it, grinning. “Gonna put that one in the album, love?”
“I want something of you among my things,” Buffy whispered. “I looked through everything to find some bit of you – and there was nothing. I‘ll put some fully-clothed ones in later, but I want this.” She fumbled to set the camera down on the nightstand as he reached up and devoured her in a kiss, hands on both sides of her head, thumbs stroking her cheeks tenderly. Her breath caught as she returned the kiss fervently, letting his hands fall to rove down, down…hang on-
“What are you doing?”
She pulled up his hand to find her underwear dangling from his fingers. “Wanted something of you among my things.”
Buffy snorted and fell back into the pillow. “You could have asked. I’d have given you something a little classier, you jerk.” There’s no heat in her words, just happy relief. She reached for her bracelet, unclasped it, and dropped it into his palm, closing his fingers around it. He pulled up her palm for a kiss, the feeling traveling down her veins in happy shivers. Spike broke away from the kiss, bringing her hand around to cup his face.
“Can I still keep the knickers, too?”
“You-!”
As she sprang upon him, the bedstead gave an almighty bang, tremors flinging every remaining possession they’d saved off the shelves and onto the floor.
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/421084.html
