Chapter Text
Giles stretches and pushes the book in front of him away. He’s been researching the weapon Buffy found for hours now but has reached the end of his usefulness without caffeine.
He rises, intending to see if the ravaging hordes have left anything that might rightfully still be called tea in the house—or coffee; he’d even accept Nescafé at this point—when he hears Buffy’s voice, low and insistent.
“Let’s just get to the truth here, OK? I don’t know how you felt about last night, but I will not—”
Good lord, please don’t let her mean what Giles thinks she means. There’s only one person she could be talking to since she spent the night in, ah, exile. Not that the experience seems to have taught her anything. But to be talking, with such aggravation, about whatever it was they got up to… It’s hardly to be borne.
Giles almost can’t hear Spike’s answer as he mumbles that he was terrified.
“Of what?” Buffy asks quietly.
“Last night was…God, I’m such a jerk. I can’t do this,” Spike says. Giles allows himself a momentary hope that this will be the end of it, that all the words will remain unsaid, as they should, but his Slayer has ever been persistent when she wants something, and now is no different.
“Spike,” she says, soft and gentle.
“It was the best night of my life,” he says, voice thick with emotion. When he continues, his tone is defensive. “If you poke fun at me, you bloody well better use that, ‘cause I couldn’t bear it. It may not mean that much to you, but—”
“I just told you it did,” Buffy interrupts. Perhaps the two of them can’t see what’s happening, but Giles can. And he has to figure out a way to stop it, a way to get Buffy to trust him again, to see that Spike is no good for her.
“Yeah.” Spike sighs. His voice is colored with emotion, with his fear, his obsession with Buffy. “I hear you say it, but…I’ve lived for soddin’ ever, Buffy. I’ve done everything. Done things with you I can’t spell, but…” Giles shudders, refusing to imagine what those things might be. “I’ve never…been close…to anyone. Least of all you. Till last night. All I did was…hold you, watch you sleep. And it was the best night of my life. So yeah…I’m terrified.”
Giles removes his glasses and pulls out a handkerchief to polish them. It was bad enough when he thought they had in fact reignited their sexual relationship. Sex, especially in the face of the end of the world, can be cold, distant, meaningless. Buffy and Spike, however… For all they apparently simply lay chastely together, in some ways, it sounds worse, far more intimate. Far more loving .
“You don’t have to be,” Buffy says.
It’s the fruition of all his fears. Buffy, with another vampire. With this vampire. Whether or not she realizes it, his Slayer has fallen in love with another vampire. Another monster.
“Were you there with me?”
“I was.”
“What does that mean?” Spike asks.
“I don’t know. Does it have to mean something?” Buffy asks, hedging, though she still sounds soft. She doesn’t yet know the depth of her feelings, then, or she’d be making certain Spike knew them as well. She’s certainly never been shy about expressing herself before.
“No,” Spike says, disappointment clear even at a remove. “Not right now.”
“Maybe when…” Buffy says.
Giles swears to himself that he won’t ever let that ‘when’ come to pass, whatever it takes.
~~~
She’s standing before him, looking up at him with those big eyes, just like always and she just lied to him.
First, she kissed him.
Then she lied.
The worst part is Angel isn’t even sure if she knows she was lying.
Calling Spike her boyfriend, if only indirectly. Refusing to tell Angel if she’s in love with him. Hell, Buffy is absolutely drenched in his scent. The only thing that gives him any kind of solace is the fact that he’s sure they haven’t had sex.
Recently, anyway.
It’s just a matter of time, if it hasn’t already happened. Because Spike is in her heart.
And now she’s… He’s not even sure what she’s babbling about now.
“...I always feared there was something wrong with me, you know, because I couldn’t make it work. But maybe I’m not supposed to.”
Well, that’s promising, at least. He can remind her of her calling, her duty. That guys—especially piece of shit vampires like Dru’s get—are just a distraction. “Because you’re the Slayer?”
“Because…okay, I’m cookie dough. I’m not done baking. I’m not finished becoming whoever the hell I’m gonna turn out to be,” she says. Great. More of her childish analogies. And cookie dough? She knows he doesn’t eat human food, right? “I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day I turn around and realize I’m ready. I’m cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat—” she breaks off, flushing bright red and not meeting his eyes. Even Darla admitted Spike was gifted when it came to eating…but surely Buffy doesn’t know that. Not sweet, innocent Buffy… It was just a slip. “O-or, enjoy warm, delicious, cookie me, then…that’s fine. That’ll be then. When I’m done.”
He stares at her a moment, stifles a sigh. Maybe he can still turn this around in his favor. “Any thoughts on who might enjoy—” he breaks off with an irritated sigh. “Do I have to go with the cookie analogy?”
“I’m not really thinking that far ahead,” she says. “That’s kind of the point.”
He supposes that’ll have to be good enough. At least she doesn’t seem to be thinking of Spike. He hands over the amulet. “I’ll go start working on the second front. Make sure I don’t have to use it.”
He starts to walk away, counting down. Then, right on cue…
“Angel,” Buffy calls. He turns back. “I do…sometimes think that far ahead.”
He smiles. “Sometimes is something.”
And it is. He can work with ‘sometimes.’ He knows she’s just throwing him a bone, but he’s nothing if not patient.
“Be a long time coming,” she says. “Years, if ever.”
“I ain’t getting any older,” he reminds her.
Unfortunately, neither is Spike. Angel will set up Buffy’s second front. And he’ll figure out what to do about Spike.
~~~
“I want to see how it ends,” Spike says, full of an odd glee as he greets death and Buffy flees the cavern. Off to the world above. Her world. No place for vampires in her light or her heart. He knows that now; understands that her last words were a sop for a dying man. One last gift.
And he has this one last gift for her, as well.
He laughs as the flames consume him.
~~~
The ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ sign teeters and falls into the crater that’s all that’s left of the Hellmouth, of her home.
Of Spike.
When someone’s in your heart, when you love someone, and then suddenly they’re gone, it leaves a hole just like the one she’s staring at.
She swallows hard around the lump in her throat as the others ask her what they’re going to do next.
She doesn’t know about them, but she’s got a plan all right.
She’s going to mourn.