She turned around and there he was.
Just like that.
It was three days before Christmas and eighteen years since she had seen him last and she turned around in a cheese shop, in a cheese shop and there he was.
It was him. No doubt, no doubt.
Recognizing him would never be the way he appeared to the world on the surface--clothes change, hair changes; no, it was him and the sound that came from deep inside him and fell in pearls to the world singing: Spike.
Buffy was in vertigo, falling but floating too...floating...
Her arms sagged and hands released the shopping bags and they fell in a double plop to the floor, the first one made a soft thump and the second one crumped. It was like the faraway sound of crash and fall but cushioned too, to make the break easier to take. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear...does it make a sound?
No.
The answer would be 'no'. My world is only made real with me in it.
Spike turned his head to follow the faint sound of something breaking and never saw the second blow coming.
Buffy.
Buffy.
Buffy.
Buffy.
Buffy.
oh god.
Buffy.
They looked and locked into each others eyes and his heart started to beat and hers stopped.
He turned slowly to face her and Buffy noted the leather was gone and in it's place was a warm dark brown suede jacket. His hair was dark blonde (au natural?) and brushed back off his face. It looked a little bit longer than she remembered, but good. He looked good.
Buffy started moving toward him and she saw his hands come up in almost a reflex defensive gesture of 'slow down slow down now' and she paused for a moment as she looked into his eyes and saw his naked heart in them.
His heart, for her, still there, in his eyes. The surprise of seeing her, the deep shock of it shook his insides to the outside and he hadn't had time to compose himself, to present himself to her without the flowers and chocolates attached.
His large soft eyes, god, she could fall into them...over again, all over again...
She moved into his space, his three foot parameter and he cocked his head watching her come.
Buffy stopped when she was a foot and a half away from him, she stopped her feet, but she couldn't stop her hands. She raised a hand and touched him lightly on his elbow, moving slowly as one might with a wild animal, even a beloved one...to give him time, to give him time...
She felt a warm current heat up from the point of contact and she could feel, she could feel Spike trying to decide to pull away, pull the plug out and run or...
Stay and surrender to the soft warm feeling of blessed infinity that had always been the pillow he walked on around Buffy.
He looked into her eyes and reached out now to gently stroke the three loose strands of blonde hair back to a safe position behind her ear. That was better, little bits of Buffy hair tucked out of the way of heavy machinery and leave nothing loose to snag on the hard edges pf the world--never take anything for granted. His fingertips skimming her cheek as he tucked the strands behind her right ear And there behind her ear, was the soft socket dip of flesh that would make her scream if he grazed it lightly with his teeth, yes...there it was...right there...
"Buffy..."
He said it outloud but so soft was her name in his mind, it came out in a whisper that went right through Buffy flesh to Buffy bones and down to tell Buffy toes too.
She raised her hand and placed it on his cheek closed her eyes and said nothing for a moment as she let herself enjoy the cool feel of his flesh.
"Spike..."
He chuckled.
The complete mirth of he that is Spike was suddenly there back in her life, the warm eyes, the cool flesh, the chuckle that sang out sorrow and wisdom and love lost and found...
She opened her eyes and smiled into his and said simply.
"I am so glad I found you..."
Found him? Like he was lost out there somewhere in the world...but hadn't it felt that way? A beloved gone away on a dangerous expedition to the new world to come back long, long, long after hope was gone.
And here the sailor waltzes up the road from parts unknown in Antarctica or Mars, whistling a merry ditty.
Well, not Antarctica...just the world, and not whistling, just that Spike chuckle.
She repeated softly:
"I'm so glad..."
Her simple strange words undid him a bit and he experienced a rush of complex emotions too rapid to sort out.
Instead he chuckled again, and looked around her body and pointed behind her at the floor.
"I think something broke..."
She looked at him blankly for a minute.
"In your parcels...I...I..." (he couldn't stop looking into her eyes...they hooked his tender vitals like a bit fish and wouldn't give him up)
Spike gestured again for her to look behind her...desperate for some time to regroup and compose himself...he bloody would not break down bawling in a blooming cheese shop.
"'Fraid I heard something crunch...maybe not..."
Buffy laughed gently and turned around to look at the bags waiting like sad forgotten pet dogs behind her.
"Great...just great...oh well...that's why they're valuable, because they're breakable."
She looked back to Spike, who, in the time it took Buffy to look behind her, had stepped two feet away and closer to the door...
"Spike...I..." and her voice trailed down to a small question mark.
Spike looked at her almost sadly..
The lass never did understand what it did to him to be around her...she never really understood how much he loved her. To stand next to her was like standing next to the gates of heaven but not allowed in and grateful as he was to know heaven was real and love was next to godliness...it hurt too...to be left behind.
"Buffy..."
"Please...please...you still need to get...um...your cheese. Buy your cheese and let me look at you, o.k.? You fell off the face of the planet and now here you are in front of me and go buy some cheese while I take it all in."
While she takes it in?
He smiled and nodded and so distracted was he, that he bought 2 pounds of goat cheese instead of the 6 ounces that was wanted.
And Buffy watching him all the while, like a starved thing finding a feast, didn't help. She had reclaimed her parcels and seemed to be waiting for him. Hadn't she Christmas shopping to attend too? For friends and...family...
"So...are you living in Chicago...are you staying here?" She finally asked.
"For a while..." He responded airily.
Well...that answer left a lot to be desired.
"Mom! Mom?" A strapping young lad appearing to be in his late teens was moving quickly through the shop. He just about exploded vitality and good humor and so merry was he, the people he brushed quickly past instead of admonishing him, gave him the gift of a smile.
Ah, youth.
He had bright blonde hair and dark green eyes and white skin that spoke of living long in a northern climate. He spoke directly to Buffy and he angled his body in a small slight against the strange man so holding his Mothers attention.
"Mom...it's getting late, Janny's gonna be left waiting and there's her family too. And they're old money, Mater mine, and old manners--"
"--Speaking of which..." Buffy took a deep breath and began... "Michael...this...I want you to meet...William..." and now her eyes went from Michael's to Spikes as she said by way of further introduction.
"He has been such a good friend to me for long...words fail after that...they fail..."
She and Spike exchanged a warm look and then Spike turned to look at Michael and held out his hand. Buffy watched Michael hesitate, but only for a moment; he was a good hearted person, a good person after all and he pushed aside the slight qualm he was having in wake of his Mothers obvious pleasure in seeing this strange man and took Spike's hand.
They shook firmly and it was brief...but it was enough. It was enough.
(vampire)
Buffy watched Michael as he pulled his hand away from Spike and resist the urge to wipe his palm on his clothes like a truculent child.
Something in Buffy's gut shrank a bit at the body language and what that implied but she hadn't survived to the ripe Slayer age of 39 by putting whip cream on puddings.
"Michael," she said firmly "William has saved my life more times than you have hairs on your head."
Part conversation, part caution.
Michael flushed and tried again, a little more warmly this time.
"I...thanks...I mean it's nice to meet you."
Spike nodded briefly but said nothing. Buffy looked to Spike, at his tight face, alabaster skin going now almost bone white and his eyes threatening to fill--the world saw a stoic statue, Buffy saw 'Spike' and knew a moment of fear.
She looked at Michael.
"Can you take my packages and bring the car around Michael? It's down the street on the west side of Lincoln...I'm gonna stay for a minute and book William for the Holidays, I think he should come to our party on Christmas Eve..."
Michael's jaw hung open for a moment which represented his vote in the matter and then he snapped it shut and said quickly:
"Yeah, yes, defiantly..."
But so weak was his answer and so obvious was his disdain that his agreement in words spoken were made null and void by the attitude. But that wasn't the most of Buffy's worries at the moment. It was the look on Spike's face--or the lack of a look.
Buffy spoke softly:
"Please get the car Michael."
Michael nodded and left, packages under his arms, doorbell jangle and out into the night.
There was the silence now, if you didn't count the sweet lull of holiday tune done a la tra la piano in the background and the din of conversation in the fore.
Buffy looked at Spike's frozen face. There would never be any secrets between them and as if to confirm this mutual trust he asked softly:
"It's true, isn't it?"
Buffy looked up into his face and nodded ever so slightly.
Spike looked down and Buffy said, "lets step out into the street"
She took him by the elbow and led the way out of the German shop onto the quaint street outside. They were in Germantown on the northwest side of Chicago and there was three inches of snow on the ground and all the shops were done up in bits of borrowed light and it was all so beautiful and Spike looked so struck. So stricken.
No, she had never ever imagined this scenario, never wanted him hurt again...but she would fix it, she would, before it got out of hand and things between them tumbled down to never again.
She walked the twenty feet to the square across from the shop and sat on a bench and Spike followed quietly taking the time to think it out. He sat next to her and waited
"I would have told you, you guessed before I could...how, how did you know?"
Spike looked down.
"The handshake, taking his hand. The bond...vampires can feel a bond through blood or...flesh..."
Buffy nodded and slipped her hand through the crook of his arm
She looked at him and waited for it all to sink in and then Spike breathed softly:
"How?"
When she didn't answer he turned to look at her and she had a slightly smushed comical look on her face and a arched eyebrow...
"You want me, to tell you--"
"--don't be daft, pet..." he choked out and finally managed to ask again: "How?"
She reflected and said slowly..."I...think...I think, it had something to do with holding your hand on...that day...when we caught fire...it...healed the wound in my side completely...and maybe did...other things...too."
She looked at him as he thought back, remembering and finally he said softly.
"The night before..."
She lay her head against his shoulder and nodded and he continued so, so softly, the falling snow spoke louder.
"It...it was so...I've often wondered if it really happened...or was something...I remembered like a dream. Just scrambled up with dreams..."
Buffy nodded, that night had been almost too beautiful to be real, she understood what he felt about it and now she spoke low.
"I think that's how...but how it happened didn't matter to me...I was too grateful. You were gone...but I had Michael...and that was something...it was something wonderful...thank you Spike."
He turned and looked down at her and managed to quip/choke out: "Anytime luv..."
And she laughed gently and nuzzled his arm, gripping him tighter.
They were quiet for a moment and then Spike asked; he had to: "Does he know about me, then?"
"Yes."
"You introduced me as William, so he wouldn't recognize the name?"
"Yes."
Spike nodded and Buffy continued quickly. "But only as a temporary stopgate thing--I didn't think a Smorgasbord was the setting for everybody OUT and into the pool."
"No, this is much better..." Spike agreed indicating the gazebo and the starry night and world going on without them.
"Makes shock poetic." he added.
"It does. All we're missing is the ice skating and hot chocolate and we can fix that too. Come back to the house with us...and lets try the introductions again, o.k.?"
Spike spoke slowly, as if the words cost him.
"Buffy...I...he doesn't like me."
"He doesn't know you."
"First impressions stick sometimes, and...and he didn't take to me..."
What could Buffy say to that? It was true, Michael was a good person, so warm hearted, but it was true--he had been... repulsed by...by his father.
She could feel Spike pulling away, making goodbye forever noises and she better open up and soon to stop that.
She turned to look at him and opened her mouth to speak but instead she was taken suddenly with his beauty, with Spike flesh just there, right there for the touching.
Her hand reached out and gently touched his cheek, stroking skimming the flesh of his cheek to his nose, tracing the bones lightly, amazed, amazed, it was him, he looked older somehow, but his eyes were in tune with the changes and the whole of him fit so well together she marveled at his solid strength inside and out.
He closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the feel of her fingers finding the map of him, finding the way he was now.
And when the water leaked out from beneath his closed eyes, she touched that lightly too, tasting everything about him with the tips of her fingers.
Her hand floated down to rest on his shoulder and she had to say it, she had to ask:
"Please...Spike, please stay...I...it makes me so happy to see you...I just want this feeling to go on and on until we see what happens next...is...there somewhere you have to be? Someone?"
Spike looked down and waited, it was a personal question. He liked it. He liked her asking it. And in the midst of this these crazy conflicted emotions was her shy island of: 'hmmm? Me still pretty to you?'
"Yes..." he said, in answer to the thought in his head and when he felt her stiffen he amended quickly: "No..no there is no one...and you?"
Buffy shook her head. She had never married and thank god, she had kept her personal affairs quiet, it had been inconvenient, but she was glad now, because now Michael would have no one to compare Spike to, and Spike would have no one to wonder about.
"No one." she said simply.
"No? Not in all these years?"
"Some...but not now. Not for a while."
There was a pause and then Buffy said quietly:
"I thought you were gone...for so long I thought you were gone..I couldn't feel you in the world...and when I did start having dreams...it was vague and half formed and not enough to go by. I only found out, for sure, you were...back...when Giles was dying...a few years back...he told me...I tried a location spell...but it didn't work..or it did on a time delay maybe, like a magnet and meeting now is the result...anyway sometime after that...I told Michael...all of it. Well...you know...the version for kids."
"Only then?"
"Only then."
"He's not a child, pet, he's a man now, and he knows his own mind."
"Yeah..." Buffy sighed. "He is...with an occasional throw back like tonight. He's getting married soon...we're meeting the inlaws tonight."
This sunk in and then Spike threw his head back and laughed.
"What?" Buffy nudged him. "What?"
"Buffy, luv..."
Spike managed between wiping his eyes and bringing the major mirth down to minor.
"You introduce him to a vampire as your bestest mate ever and say he's coming along for the holidays to be there in all his undead...glory...to sip nog with his inlaws and make small but stimulating talk with his IN LAWS and by god, woman, no I won't be coming over for that particular jollification..."
Buffy turned him around to look him in the face but had no words...no more words...so she opened up her eyes to him so he could see into her heart.
His laughter sobered up double quick and his face became still and soft as he fell down drunk deep into her all over again.
Silence.
Oh god...
Suddenly they seized each other in a bear hug and she pressed her cheek up against his shoulder and he buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her, her, her and she wrapped her arms up around him tight and he gasped out as he stroked her hair...
"Oh god...oh Buffy...Buffy...Buffy...ah luv...oh Buffy..."
He kissed the side of her head, and smoothed her hair and kissed her all around her face and buried his face in the crook of her neck again.
Buffy's breath hitched once, twice, cough, cry, crying...
She wrapped her arms more fiercely around him and cried her joy into his suede coat marking it forever with salty sweetness.
He kissed the side of her head and smoothed her hair while he babbled softly.
"Ah...luv...shh, 'tis alright...shh now...shhh...ah Buffy..."
*
The colored lights from the seasonal decorations reflected on the large crystals of snow powder, making them seem flat and hard and solid, not the meager minny things they were by themselves. It was a strength in numbers thing and Michael stood by the car watching his Mother and knew she was happier in this moment than he had ever seen her and he bit his lip and looked down at his feet that should be feeling cold in the snow. Curious. A sorta of lightheaded feeling came over him and he looked at the shoppers, at the snow filled street, at the mad world that had a mind of it's own and we were all just along for the ride, weren't we?
Because the speech he had spoke to his Mother just last month was coming back in spades...
'The world is hard...the world is hard Mom, and if I've found someone who will make the whole thing easier, turn a blight into blessing...than what does it matter if we get married at eighteen or eighty?'
That's what he had said, or near enough and so he stood there in the snow across the street from the square and tried to breathe, tried to breathe, tried to breathe as he looked over and watched the two figures entwined on the park bench, his breath caught and his heart hitched and relaxed into something like a sigh that made him feel..well a little strangled in his conflicting emotions; like fear choking on something soft...soft...
He puzzled at the feeling for a moment, looked at it and then realized, oh...it's what every child wants regardless of age or circumstance. The pure soft pleasure of seeing Mom happy. And she did look so very happy.
And so he forced Janny and the In laws out of his mind for now so he could look with clear eyes out across the snow, past the public tree decorated with construction paper cut like mittens with the name of ever boy and girl in the third grade from George Washington Grammar and watched the world change, he looked out over the snow and watched his Mother kiss his Father.
He knew it was his Father, he knew it now; if not back there in the store than out there on the snow.
He nodded his head, considered, and then got into the back seat of the car.
He didn't know what was coming, he really did not, the world seemed mad at the moment, quite insane, but there was a glory in the wild wasn't there?
Well, well, well, looks like he would get his Christmas Wish after all--from when HE WAS SEVEN.
He thought back to how hard he had wished, how badly he prayed to have a whole family. His whole family. And not just any family, any Dad. He had wanted his family, his Dad.
And he had wanted the reunion to happen at Christmas time so it would have the extra boosted blessing of a happy ending. Cuz everybody knew that.
Because didn't the heartfelt wish of a child have power...especially at Christmas?
But the years had gone by without a response and by the time he was a teenager, the dream had faded somewhat. His Mom had told him who his father was in bits and pieces and when she had found out he was alive in the world, she had told him all of it--to prepare the way for such a day as this, Michael imagined.
Except by then, his life was being set, his friends were from the council and he didn't need or want an unknown element, an unknown father...and...and a vampire, even ensouled one, even a heroic one coming into the works to stir things up.
His Mother had told him that he had nothing to be ashamed of; to be ashamed of his father was the same as being ashamed of her. She had given him all the information she felt she could until he cried a halt to it. He didn't want another way to look at this, he didn't want to sit outside the rules of the world. He wasn't like his Mother...or Father...either. He wasn't a hero. He just wanted a family.
And now this Christmas...it seemed he would have one...his childhood wish had come true.
God was a funny critter.
He smiled at the twist in the story...and had he actually set a time limitation on that prayer so long ago? A default? NO. He. Did. Not.
Alright...alright; his Mom had always said that Michael had his fathers sense of humor and is that what made him smile now at the irony of this very special time delayed Christmas Miracle?
And if he had his Fathers sense of humor and his Mother's eyes in the merciful way she looked on the world...then maybe, just maybe there was enough of them in him to make him heroic enough to welcome his Father home.
Maybe...
He certainly was going to find out...wasn't he?
He chuckled and then made himself breathe and stay calm while he waited to be introduced to his Father.
He looked out the car window, and felt an involuntary softness at the sight of one parent leaning upon the other and there, see that? As one they were turning now to look toward where he sat in the car. He almost smiled at the quaint shy way of them and how they looked hopefully at him and held each other at the same time too, like some fragile treasure found and good advice walking:
One best take care, one best take care, one best take care to take nothing for granted...
God, they looked so happy. There was a glow about them, a halo even...or was it the streetlamp?
Oh look...here they come...
*
Dedicated to Catherine; I love stories the way I do, because I started reading hers when I was twelve
And this is just a short sweet sugarplum.
Happy Christmas everybody!
love,
lizerrrbeathan
