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Buffy had lived with her vampire long enough to know one thing: when Spike got quiet, it was time to get worried.
This latest weird quiet spell had lasted over a week, and had made it impossible to enjoy their otherwise-stellar date night, even though they’d gone to their favorite Italian restaurant, the one willing to spice Spike’s food like it had a vendetta against taste buds. Spike hadn’t even gotten into a loud “discussion” with the bartender about “wrong football opinions.” It used to annoy Buffy, but now she just got a glass of wine and watched it like its own spectator sport, knowing that as soon as they got home the passion could be diverted into other, much more naked, much more Buffy-focused directions.
And yet as they walked through the cool night back to their apartment, Spike’s attention was not Buffy-focused at all; when he wasn’t frowning at his boots, he was staring down side streets like they might hold the answers to the great questions of the universe.
“The lights are extra pretty this year, don’t you think?” she said, even though the white-light snowflakes and red-and-green “Ho-Ho-Ho”s were the same ones that went up along this drag every holiday season. They’d even put up the one that had the middle lights missing and just said “Ho Ho,” which was Buffy’s favorite because it made her think of chocolate.
“They are that,” Spike said, peering down another side street.
Buffy tried again. “So happy that Giles is back to being Giles again. Do you know how weird it felt giving a twelve-year-old ‘The Complete Dickens’? I know he wanted to rebuild the library he used to have in Sunnydale, but I couldn’t help but feel like some kind of evil aunt. Oh! That reminds me. Dawn wants us at Christmas early, so I can keep an eye on Joyce while she cooks.”
She intentionally mentioned Joyce, because Spike was her niece’s biggest fan; the day Dawn had sent out the video of Joyce walking, he’d called her while working a case. According to him, they were dealing with a toddler genius of the likes the world had never seen, with finger paintings to beat Picasso and the mechanical aptitude of Da Vinci. As far as Buffy knew, Picasso and Da Vinci had also been potty-trained, but this was too dangerous of a comment to make around Spike.
But all he said now was, “Makes sense.”
Buffy scrambled for another subject, her eyes landing on a string of multicolored lights one of their neighbors had strung up in their window.
“Hey! Whatever happened to that snowman decoration we had?” she said.
“Trashed when that Gh’rglock demon attacked.”
“Oh yeah,” and for a moment Buffy frowned. She’d liked that snowman. It had been the first decoration she’d bought for their apartment, after they’d realized it was silly to keep having separate places when their relationship had managed to survive being crammed into a tiny trailer in an honest-to-God containment camp. “Well, we should get another one. I liked it. It had style, with that little corncob pipe, and that little hat, and those fangs you made out of wire. . .”
Spike said nothing, just frowned as they entered the small, well-lit park that marked the last stretch before their building. It was late enough that they had it to themselves.
Buffy was starting to get scared. She’d been telling herself it was just a normal relationship lull, that the vampire murder case at work was getting to him, because as much as he pretended otherwise, the vampire cases did get to him. But what if it was something more? They’d been together five years now. Five years! That was like a millenia in Buffy Relationship Time. And while Buffy was feeling happier and more content than ever, maybe that was a mistake. The last time she’d stopped worrying about a long-term relationship because she thought everything was hunky-dory, her boyfriend had hopped on a helicopter and flown off to the jungle the next day.
Maybe Spike was bored. Maybe she talked too much about shoes, and about what celebrities the birthmark on their doorman’s head looked like. Maybe she hadn’t taken enough of an interest in what was happening on General Hospital, or let him keep enough of the furniture he liked to drag in off the street. She shouldn’t have kept buying him blue sweaters when it became clear his brief flirtation with alternative wardrobe colors was just that: a flirtation. She shouldn’t have drawn such a firm line at two cats, or said his candles were a fire hazard, or wrinkled her nose at the blood mugs. She shouldn’t have spent so many late nights doing paperwork for the new gym, or gotten pouty when his cases kept him out all night. And in bed, maybe she should have . . . No, wait, scratch that. There was nothing else she should have done in bed. Last month, by the mailboxes, she’d overheard their downstairs neighbor call them “the ones who have loud sex on the floor all the time,” which had made Buffy both embarrassed and kind of proud, like maybe she should get that on one of those little family plaques advertised in catalogs. Welcome to the Home of The Ones Who Have Loud Sex on the Floor All the Time. Our internet password is FloorSex.
But there was still so much she should have done differently, because--clearly--this silent act was because he was trying to figure out how to break up with her without getting a stake in the chest.
It was time to call out the big guns.
“So I got a call from Angel the other day, and now he’s ditching whatever his thing with Illyria was and we’re running off to Fiji.”
Spike’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Yeah, it was sudden, but it feels right, you know?”
He just looked at her like she was carrot-top, and oh God, Spike was going to leave her and she was still going to be using words like “carrot-top” because he had ruined her for the English language.
“Look,” she said, stopping and turning to face him. “Whatever is going on, I want you to just say it. Rip off the Band-Aid and be free. Because the quiet mood you’ve been rocking for weeks is freaking me out. Are you . . . unhappy?” she managed to choke out, the last word hanging like a sharp icicle ready to drop.
But before it could, a growl rent the air.
There, beneath a park bench, illuminated in a pool of light, was a demon-dog-looking thing with red eyes and claws good for shredding favored leather coats. Buffy suddenly knew exactly why their neighbor’s cat had gone missing.
More growls surrounded them, in stereo this time. It wasn’t just one demon dog, it was eight, and they were closing in from both sides.
“It’s a pack,” Spike said darkly.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Buffy said. “You take four, I take four?”
“My kind of math,” he said, but then he looked at her, his expression going soft in that way that made his blue eyes all warm. “Buffy . . .”
“Fight now, break up with me after.”
He opened his mouth at that, but that was all he had time for, because the demon-dog under the bench rushed him and pounced, knocking Spike down and nipping at his throat. Buffy kicked it square in the torso and sent it flying, which gave Spike enough time to get back up on his feet and face the four who were currently stalking forward from the direction of the playground. Hers were coming at her from the trees.
Buffy reached into the pocket of her long green peacoat, feeling for her stake . . . only to remember that she’d left it on the bed after realizing the red coat she was going to wear over her black glittery top made her and Spike embarrassingly matchy-matchy.
“Try to figure out a weapon!” Buffy said, mad at herself for not doing a stake-check before leaving the apartment. While it was kind of nice not to have death jumping out at her from every corner anymore, she shouldn’t get too cozy; she was still the original slayer, and there were standards.
“No need,” Spike said, reaching into his jacket and then tossing one over. “You always leave it on the bed when you change coats.”
“Do not!” she said, just as one of her dogs jumped. She rolled to the side, thrust her stake up into its chest, and twisted until it fell with an unholy howl. One down . . .
“Do too,” Spike said, taking his own knife from his boot just in time to slash the next advancing dog across the throat. “Just like you leave your earrings all over the apartment and then claim an earring demon is hiding them.”
“It is!” she yelled, kicking away the dog that had hooked its teeth into her pants and staking it before it could recover.
He stopped fighting to look at her incredulously. “No, you leave them on the table, and the cats knock them off and play with them all around the apartment, and then the next day you go, ‘Spike! I can’t find my round hoopy earring!’ and I say, ‘What hoopy earring, you have eight hundred,’ and you say, ‘You know, the really hoopy ones,’ and I say, ‘Look under the dresser!’ and you go, ‘Why would I look under the dresser?’ and I say, ‘Because the bleeding cats have been playing with them again!’ and you go, ‘Our cats wouldn’t do that. Look at their cute noses.’ And I say--oof!”
A fourth dog had attacked, knocking him down from behind. As it bent down to bite his neck, he grabbed it by its scruff and threw it off, then regained his feet.
“--and I say, ‘Remember this conversation, love, the next time you tell me there’s no demon forgetting to pay the electric bill.’”
“The lights got shut off, Spike,” Buffy said, throwing her stake and hitting the dog that was rounding on him again, right in the eye.
“What do you want from me? I spent one hundred years not paying for electric,” he said, bending down to retrieve her stake and throwing it back just in time for her to take out the dog that had been circling, its hackles raised.
Buffy was about to reignite the “embrace auto-pay” argument when two dogs decided to rush her together. She hardly hesitated before going for the one on the right. She could always trust that Spike would have the left.
The one on the right turned out to be feisty, eluding her attempts to hit its heart by dodging and feinting like this was some freaky demon-dog ballet. By the time she’d finally gotten it, Spike had taken out three other ones, which were now lying in a little pile by the bench.
“Tired, love?” he said with a smirk.
“No,” she said. “Mine was just a Barishkabob.”
“Barishnakov.”
“Whatever.”
“Think there’s a late-night food truck with Barishkabobs around the way, though, if you’re still feeling peckish.”
Buffy laughed, and they smiled at each other. Maybe she’d been wrong about Spike’s mood being an omen; maybe all they’d needed was a good fight to get them back on track. But even as she thought that, Spike’s smile faded, his face going serious once again.
She whirled around, heart pounding harder than it had during the dog attack, looking for anything that could delay the big conversation that she knew--just knew--was coming. She smelled it, like an apocalypse brewing.
Spotting the nearest crumpled demon, she headed to start clean-up duty, but unfortunately it turned out to be the melty kind. Normally, Buffy would have cheered at a no-muss-no-fuss battle, but hiding carcasses in the bushes would have at least given her a fifteen-minute respite from the Badness. Would they split the cats? Would things get awkward when Dawn still wanted to talk to Spike? Oh God, would she have to sit across the table from him at Joyce’s birthday parties and pretend to be his friend?
“Buffy …”
She would, she would have to pretend to be his friend. There they’d be, at Joyce’s seventh birthday, and Buffy would be at the cupcake table, and Spike would show up in a smoking blanket, all handsome in dark-denim jeans and dark-brown leather (because of course it was only after they’d broken up that he’d start taking her styling suggestions, just to taunt her). And he’d be smiling and laughing with Xander, talking about his shiny new place across town, where he’d just set up the auto-pay for the electric bill, and then his eyes would stray across the party and meet hers. And she’d give a little wave--then have to give another little wave, because the first one was done with the cupcake in hand and just looked like she was wiggling a cupcake at him. But then she’d give him a real wave, and he’d give her a sad smile, and then they’d sit on opposite sides of the room while Joyce opened what turned out to be the same gift from them both, because they still thought alike sometimes, even after these years apart.
“Pet ...”
Or maybe he wouldn’t show up alone. Maybe he’d bring a date. Maybe it’d be Harmony, and in that case, she really was going to stake him now. Harmony would be fresh from filming the reunion season of Dancing with the Stars, and Buffy would be pissed, because that meant she couldn’t watch it. And she’d turn to her date, a guy named … Aniley … who she’d only brought because she didn’t want to look like a cupcake-wiggling loser in front of Spike, and whisper terrible, gossipy things about Harmony’s lame attempts to be a big bad back in the day. But the joke would be on her, because Aniley was star-struck, and that was what she got for speed-dating anyway.
“Buffy …”
After several long, tortuous hours of making sure they were always in different rooms, the party would wrap up, and it would just be the four of them, because Joyce had gone to bed and Dawn and Xander were cleaning up in the kitchen. Aniley, the cleft-chinned traitor, would start asking Harmony questions about Dancing with the Stars, and Buffy would have to leave or else barf cheap birthday pizza all over Dawn’s rug, the fluffy kind Buffy told her to buy because it absorbed sound when you were having sex on the floor (not that Dawn and Xander ever did this; Joyce had been conceived via immaculate Keyception).
And so Buffy would go outside to her sister’s back porch and take a seat, just like she always had in Sunnydale. The door behind her would creak, and then suddenly, there would be Spike, sitting next to her. And after one of those long stretches of comfortable porch-silence that she’d only ever found with him--ironic, given he could usually talk the ear off an Earrrmagaghk, which was a name she’d just made up for a thousand-eared demon--she’d ask him if he remembered the first time they’d sat on the porch together. And his eyes would crinkle at the corners, and he would say yes, and she would tell him that at least he had better hair now.
Spike would ask polite questions about how long she’d been with her date, although after a few minutes it’d be clear from how many times he called Aniley “the Great Chin” and “Soldier Boy Redux” that he was also a little jealous. It would happen enough that Buffy would feel bold, and ask him why he was back with Harmony. And after a small hesitation, Spike would say that he wasn’t, not really, he just wanted to make her jealous, because Xander had been talking about a Stonehenge statue Buffy was dating. After assuring him that she and Aniley weren’t serious--they hadn’t even tried to kill each other once!--Spike would laugh and Buffy would kiss him, and then they could start all over again.
Because that’s what they did, right? They started over again. They’d done it when she returned from heaven, and when he returned with a soul, and when he returned from burning up on the hellmouth . . . or at least when the stupid idiot had finally revealed that he hadn’t burned up on the hellmouth. They’d done it when he’d finally come back from flying around on his weird bug ship, and they’d do it again, after whatever this latest blip was.
“Buffy, please turn around,” Spike said.
This time, Buffy did. She was finally ready to face what was happening, because it wasn’t the end, not really, just another beginning.
Spike was kneeling on the ground, his hair a tousled post-fight mess. In his hands was a small velvet box.
A lot of things suddenly made more sense.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah. Oh,” he said. “Meant to do it at the restaurant tonight, but then ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ started playing, and know you hate that song because half the presents are just birds.”
“I do,” she said softly. “And if the six geese are laying, then it’s just more birds.”
“Right,” he said. “So then I thought I’d do it on the walk home, but I couldn’t remember which way we took that night we--”
“Oh, you mean the one where we--”
“Yeah,” he said, voice dropping in fondness.
“That was a good night.” She still had inappropriate thoughts sometimes when she saw signs advertising home appliance repair.
“But then you started talking about Christmas, and I wondered if wanting to do it tonight was just me jumping the gun like I always do.”
“You do,” she agreed. “It’s why you’re no longer allowed to answer the phone when the cable company calls to ask if we want more packages.”
“Don’t pretend like you haven’t been watching Hallmark movies every single day this week. Including the ones with that potato in a uniform who looks like your former.”
“Hey! Those are good. There’s ice skating.”
“One day we’ll unpack this insane love of ice-skating movies. But right now . . .” He opened the box to reveal a thin gold band with a bright emerald at the center. “Buffy Summers--Slayer--will you marry me and continue to bollix up every grand plan I’ve made, for the rest of my unlife?”
As he looked up at her with hopeful bright eyes, Buffy waited for her old friend, indecision, to swoop in. There remained so many unknowns between them. Spike was still going to live forever, while she still had an expiration date, albeit one that had become more Cheeto-like. She still didn’t know if she wanted kids, or if there was even a way to do that with him that would be fair to everyone involved. And their movements during daytime hours were still very much limited to whatever was in easy access of a blanket-sprint.
And yet despite all of that, Buffy had never felt more certain of anything else in her life. At least anything that didn’t involve stopping an apocalypse.
It was Spike’s turn to get illogically nervous. “Look,” he said, “know we’ll never be normal. But I think we’ve figured out something that works for us. And I think--”
He couldn’t say anything more because Buffy had fallen to her knees and was kissing him.
“Yes!” she said against his lips between kisses, fingers tangling in his hair.
He pulled back, eyes wide in awe, and maybe also a bit of disbelief. Clearly, he had been prepared for a Buffy spiral, just the wrong one. “Really? I had speeches planned for every stage of this.”
“There is only one stage and that is yes,” she said, cheeks hurting from the force of her smile, and then started kissing him again, which turned into falling, and then turned into rolling on the ground, just a little.
After many, many mind-numbing kisses, Spike raised his head. “Should head back to the apartment. One day the guys at the office are going to stop waiving the public indecency citations.”
“Says the man with his hand on my boob.”
“Touche.” Spike slipped his hand out from beneath her shirt and sat up. “But probably should get home, take a shower,” he said, but then leaned down to start kissing her neck all over again. “Unless today’s the day you want to bring demon goo into the bedroom.”
Buffy laughed and pushed him away, but when he tried to stand up she pulled him back down. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said, sitting up.
“No. Can put my hand on your other tit at home.”
After an eye-roll, Buffy cleared her throat and then looked dramatically at the small velvet box that had been forgotten at her hip. They’d gotten so caught up in the kissing they’d forgotten one very important step.
She held out her hand. Even though she was the only one with breath to hold, she thought she saw Spike’s hand tremble a little as he opened the box and slid the simple gold band on her ring finger.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, the emerald winking at her.
“Looked at a lot of diamonds,” he said softly. “But this was the only one that said Buffy. All gold hair, green eyes . . . and sharp enough to cut you if it punches you in the jaw.”
“Ha-ha,” she said, but also . . . fair.
With one finger, he tilted her chin up. “I love you, pet. And I’m yours until you’re done with me. Even if you do jump to mad conclusions.”
“I know. And I love you too. Just . . . don’t go quiet again.” She pouted. “It’s creepy.”
He leaned forward and kissed her, just as she’d planned, the sucker. A bottom lip and little marshmallows were Spike’s two main weaknesses.
“Noted,” he said when he pulled away.
“And besides,” she said. “We ended up getting back together in a few years anyway.”
Standing, he helped her up. “We did, did we? And how did that happen?”
“Well, clearly, I was doing very well on my own,” she said, taking his arm as they started to walk. “We’re talking glamorous career, great penthouse, all the fine cheeses I could eat. I was ice-skating every day, and watching a movie about it every night. And of course I was dating again, a man named Range--” Spike raised the scarred eyebrow at her. “--er. Ranger.”
Their apartment was in sight now, third window on the third floor. She could see the tiny silhouette of their cat Demon curled up on the sill, the bright glow of the television Spike had left on behind her. Demon was going to be happy to hear she was being made legitimate--well, she’d probably just bite Buffy’s ankles, because that’s what she did (look who’d raised her?!) but it would be a happy bite.
“And where was I?” Spike said.
“Oh, you were a mess. Watching soaps all day. Not bathing. Blood all spoiled.”
They’d made it to their apartment building, where she stopped at the entrance, not wanting to go in just yet. As he wrapped his hands around her waist, smiling indulgently, Buffy suddenly felt like the luckiest vampire slayer in the world because there were so many nights, nights that would end just like this, stretching out in front of her.
“Amazing I won you back from old Rangel then,” he said.
“Range-r, Spike. Range-r,” she said, and then kissed him deep, and for a man trying to cut down on public indecency charges, his hands were going interesting places. Maybe they could--no, tonight she wanted to do their celebrating at home, although where was yet to be determined. They had a reputation to protect, after all.
Smiling, she pulled away. “Well, you know, I’ve always been accused of having something of a soft spot for you.”