Author: Tramp For Vamps

Email Address: sweet_blackberries@msn.com

Summary: Answer to Challenge #2 –- What did Giles and Spike talk about during Something Blue when Buffy was off at the magic shop getting spell supplies?

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, etc. own the television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and all of the characters. This story is only meant as entertainment fiction and not an infringement of copyright.

Spoilers: Through Something Blue

Rating: PG

Feedback: Sure, but bear in mind that this is my first Buffy story, so please temper all criticisms with large doses of compassion. Thanks.

She kissed him…and it was as if the whole world fell to pieces around her feet like shattered glass; there was only him.

Buffy felt explosions of pleasure burst along her spine like firecrackers as she explored his mouth. He smelled like worn leather, and tasted like cigarettes and copper. She would have moaned his name, but he had captured her lips firmly, seeming to forget that she needed to breathe.

She wanted to stay like that forever, eternally content within the circle of his embrace. But, there was Giles to think about. He was blind somehow, and there was no way she could let him stay that way. She either had to find out what demon put the whammy on Giles and kill it to death or figure out how to magick the whammy away.

She placed the flats of both hands gently but firmly against Spike’s chest and pushed herself away from him. The vampire loosened his grip, but still held her waist looped in his arms, his fingers laced together behind her back.

“I won’t be long,” she said, her hands stroking the firm planes of muscle under his black t-shirt.

Spike touched her mouth, tracing the full crescent of her bottom lip with one black-nailed fingertip. “Miss you already.”

She headed towards the door reluctantly. “Watch me make like the Flash, I promise.”

As the front door shut behind Buffy, Rupert Giles found his way by touch back into the living room with a fresh tumbler of scotch in his hand. Although unseeing, he could sense that the girl’s bright presence had left the apartment. He also became acutely aware just then that he was now alone in the house with one of the most dangerous vampires in history, and that he was a blind man. Although a long-time foe of all things technological, Giles nevertheless prayed that the circuits in Spike’s military brain chip would hold up for just another half hour.

Spike turned from where he was standing and headed towards the couch. His heavy boots crushed into the pile of the carpet with no sound and his body moved fluidly across the room in complete silence. Rupert didn’t even have the exhalation of breath to tell him from where the other was approaching. He did, however, feel Spike’s weight on the cushions as he lowered himself onto the other end of the sofa. Giles tensed, his spine suddenly going ramrod straight.

Spike, naturally, noticed the Watcher’s stricken statement and chuckled in the depths of his throat. “What’s the matter, mate? You seem a bit jumpy.”

“No, no,” Giles asserted, hastily. He was desperate not to show any fear, but he knew he was already sweating and that Spike could smell the salty tang of perspiration coming off of him.

Spike barked a short laugh and propped his feet up on the coffee table. For once, Giles made no effort to correct him.

“No, of course not. You’re not the least bit skittish around me, you. Look, first off, I’ve already eaten,” Spike grinned, never one to mince words. “Second of all, you know that I can’t attack. And, even if I could, nothing ruins an engagement quicker, I’ve found, than eating the bride’s father. Tends to put even the most sensible women off. Buffy wants you to walk her down the aisle and she’d stake me for good and all if you’re not here to do it. Chip or no chip, I’d as soon kill you as I would my own father.”

Giles’ eyebrows raised in surprise. “You mean you didn’t? Kill your own father, I mean? I thought the first thing vampires did was turn on their own families.”

Spike shrugged. “Sometimes. ‘S’not as easy as it sounds, y’know. People are funny. When they see a dead relative standing on the front step, they will insist on either running away screaming or slumping down in a dead faint. Makes it hard then, securing that all-important invite. Anyway, my father was dead long before I was ever turned.”

Rupert’s forehead beetled together as he felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Spike. Or, rather, sympathy for the young man he once was. “Oh, I’m…very sorry, Spike.”

“S’okay.”

An uncomfortable silence followed, broken only by the small noise of the ice crackling in Rupert’s glass. Finally, Spike stretched and draped both arms over the back of the couch, feigning an air of nonchalance. “Actually, I came over here to have a small talk. About the wedding.”

Giles bristled again, this time for a different reason. “Spike, if you’re seeking a father-son chat about the particulars of the wedding night, let me kindly ask you to talk to Xander. Or, for that matter, anyone else at all. In fact, I believe Mr. Douglas down at the grocery gets off work at three, maybe he could spare you a few moments.”

“Rupert, I’ve been around for well over a hundred years. I doubt you need to have that kind of talk with me. I could give you a few pointers though, if you like.”

Giles grunted in offense. “Thank you, no. So, what did you want to discuss about the wedding? Other than the fact that it’s utter madness, of course,” he griped, saying the last bit under his breath.

Spike sobered. “I wanted to talk about Buffy. Rupert…do you think Buffy will ever really get over Angel?”

Giles paused, frowning. He’d never known a love charm to have such complex layers before. The spell-caster must be a person of extraordinary power for Spike to still be affected so strongly outside of Buffy’s direct presence, he thought. He actually sounded like a man in love.

“Angel’s been gone for months now, Spike. Why are you concerned about him?”

“Huh! Yeah, gone but not forgotten!” Spike leaned forward. “Look, I know Buffy loves me. If nothing else, a lie could never be formed by those adorable lips. But, Angel ripped a giant hole in her when he left; it’s like she’s been keelhauled. She’s doing her best, but the wound just hasn’t healed yet, anyone can see that. I just wanna know if you think….”

“If I think what?”

“If you think she ever will heal. If you think she’ll ever be completely mine.”

Suddenly, Giles felt extremely uncomfortable with the conversation. He couldn’t believe that he was discussing the state of his Slayer’s heart with one of her mortal enemies. He could believe even less that said enemy’s voice was genuinely choked up with emotion at just the thought that Buffy might never get over her first love and be his alone. Giles decided it was time to change tactics and attempted to end the discussion.

“Well, Spike, is it really fair for you to dwell on Buffy’s past relationship? After all, she and Angel were only together for a couple of years. You, on the other hand, were with Drusilla for over a century. Surely, if anyone has the right to have doubts it’s Buffy, and you don’t want her questioning the strength of your affections, do you? Perhaps it’s best to leave well enough alone and stop speculating.”

Giles felt the cool force of Spike’s blue eyes regarding him steadily. After a moment, Spike spoke softly. “That’s exactly right, mate. You’ve just made my point for me. I was with Dru for over a century.”

“Uh, sorry? How is that your point?” Giles said, flustered, the side of his neck starting to burn where he could feel the vampire still staring at him. “I’m afraid the thread of your logic has slipped out of my grasp, so to speak.”

“When something is for such a long time and then it suddenly isn’t, you know,” said Spike. “Ask any bloke who’s ever survived a heart attack if he missed the moment when his heart stopped beating. For that matter, ask any vampire. You never notice the sound of your heartbeat your whole life. But when it stops, the silence, I can assure you, is deafening.”

“That’s what it was like with me and Dru. Oh, yeah, we had a long run together, but she ended it. I caught her cheating on me, didn’t I? Not just once, but twice! I couldn’t stay with her after that. I’d have been the stupidest git on earth if I had, living or dead.”

Spike stood up and started to pace the room in long circles. “Now that I look back at it, I think she did it all on purpose. I mean, Dru was crazy as a bedbug, but she always had lots of class.” He smiled wistfully. “Always the best of everything for the likes of her. There’s no way she’d be attracted to a slimy Chaos demon.”

He stopped and looked introspective. “No, she did it to give me peace. I see that now. I thought she did just to hurt me –- ‘course, it did hurt, so much so I almost went and got myself a tan. But I think now that she did it out of her own twisted sense of mercy. If there hadn’t been a clean break, I never could have moved on.”

“But Angel couldn’t do that, could he? That ponce, ‘Saint Angel of All Souls’, couldn’t even be as merciful as crazy-bedbug Dru. What does that say about him?”

Giles pursed his lips. “Perhaps that portrait is a tiny bit unfair to Angel….”

“Bollocks!” Spike shouted. “It’s totally fair! He didn’t end it with Buffy; he just walked away, thereby assuring that things would always be at ragged edges, that all their unfinished business would always be hanging over her head. Inn’t it interesting, Giles, how he hung around Sunny-D just long enough to be redeemed in her eyes? Just long enough to be forgiven for his rampage as Angelus? And, then, he cuts out. How bloody convenient.”

Giles was silent. Frankly, he couldn’t find it in himself to refute any of Spike’s accusations. Giles had managed to put aside his feelings well enough to work with Angel, because the vampire was strong and the Mayor was a formidable foe. But, he had never forgiven him the way Buffy and the other Scoobies had, even though Rupert Giles was not, by nature, an unforgiving man. He could have forgiven Angel for those agonizing hours he was held captive in the mansion, but he would never, could never, forgive him for Jenny.

Spike failed to notice the silence of the other man and continued on. “The only thing Angel cares about is his own image. Look at how much time he takes just tending that nancy-boy hairstyle of his. He spends ten times longer on his hair even than me, and I’m straight out of the bottle!”

“Angel wanted to make sure he got back on his pedestal. Now he’s eternally enshrined in the Tomb of the Perfect Boyfriend and Buffy won’t ever see him fall off his pedestal again because he’s gone.”

Giles said, “Spike, I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. I don’t think anyone does, not even Buffy herself at this point.”

“What I do know is that not everything can be laid at Angel’s doorstep. It’s more complicated than that.” Giles started to wipe at his glasses out of pure habit. “I believe that Buffy’s ‘ragged edges’, as you put it, go way past the rough time she had with Angel. You have to understand that she has very unresolved emotions about her father leaving and the, um, timing of her parents’ divorce. A lacking relationship with a father can damage a young woman a lot more than any boyfriend ever could.”

Spike cocked his head. “Timing? What do you mean, timing?”

Giles hesitated. Obviously, Spike had no intention of being maneuvered away from this topic of conversation and was keeping doggedly on. On an ordinary day, Giles would have just shut him down and refused to discuss Buffy any further. But, the day wasn’t ordinary. He was blind, and even Spike’s constant chatter was a lifeline in the dark sea Giles was cast adrift in. It was rather a comfort to have someone to talk to, especially another Brit. Of course, this one was dead, but one couldn’t always be picky about one’s company in Sunnydale.

“The master vampire that Buffy faced in L.A. when she was first called as the Slayer was very powerful. Buffy had another Watcher before me, I don’t know whether you knew that.”

“I didn’t.”

“Merrick wasn’t a man I knew personally, but he was a man that I have every reason to respect. He died defending Buffy from that monster.” Rupert smiled gently to himself. “She seems to have always inspired that protective trait in her Watchers. I should have realized that I was fated to care about her from the very start.”

“Buffy’s final confrontation with this vampire was, in a word, cataclysmic. There was a great deal of collateral damage done to the school she attended, not to mention to the general student body. Of course, her need to protect her identity prevented her from defending her actions to the school board. She was branded “delinquent” and “troublesome” and thrown out of the school district. Sadly, at this same time, Buffy’s parents decided to divorce. Joyce brought Buffy here to go to school and Hank Summers stayed in L.A.”

Spike blinked his blue eyes rapidly in disbelief. “So? What’s one thing got to do with the other? Buffy’s ol’ dad is a big executive, inn’t he? They could have afforded the cash to put her in private school and stayed together if that’s what they’d wanted.”

“Well, I suppose….”

“Look! Unruly kids don’t break people up any more than Chaos demons do! If they did, no couple in history would’ve stayed together, going all the way back to Adam and Eve!”

Rupert put out a calming hand in the general direction of where the vampire was standing. “Spike, I agree with you. Unfortunately, no one has thought to inform Buffy of this fact.”

Spike’s voice became very low and dangerous. “Are you trying to tell me that they actually blame her for their divorce? I can hardly believe that about Joyce.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of what they’ve said,” Giles clarified. “I think it’s a question of what they may have failed to say. Guilt within families can be very subtle, you know. It often creeps in uninvited, like a ghost. If you’re not proactive in exorcising it out, it will linger and haunt you, sometimes for years.”

“Great,” Spike huffed in annoyance, “so I’m a vampire fighting against Summers’ family ghosts. Brilliant.”

“Actually, this is one of the rare times as a resident of the Hellmouth when I’m pleased to say I’m speaking metaphorically.”

Giles leaned back against the pillows and fondly remembered a long, sweet night listening to ‘70s rock and eating too much band candy.

“Listen, Spike. I have every admiration and, ahem, affection for Buffy’s mother, especially, but people don’t become perfect just because they become parents. The bottom line is: Buffy’s parents have neither shown her how to have a successful romantic relationship nor how to move on properly from a failed one, because they really haven’t accomplished either themselves. Buffy’s going to have to find her own path out of that emotional thicket. And, no, the problems with Angel certainly didn’t make that journey any easier.”

Spike’s jaw clenched, and the acute stinging in his eyes warned that tears were not far away. He felt a rising sense of despair. “So what are you saying, Rupert? You don’t see any hope for the two of us at all?”

“No. I’m saying she’s seen a lot of pain and tragedy for such a young woman. Harsh experience has taught her that her calling as the Slayer, a calling she can’t ever lay down, has cost her people she loves in the past and may do so again in the future. On the other hand, she also has all of the resiliency of youth. I believe she will heal in time. If you want to be with Buffy, you’ll have to be patient.”

Spike mulled Giles’ words over in his mind for a bit. Then, he brightened. “Yeah, I can do that. Be patient.” He winked at the Watcher, even though he knew Giles couldn’t see him. “After all, that’s the one thing I’ve got in spades, inn’t it? Time.”

Giles suddenly shook his head, as if trying to clear himself of a mental fog. Why was he trying to cheer up William the bleeding Bloody as if he were really a nervous bridegroom?! Good Lord, he thought, I’m getting just as bad as the two of them. Can the spell’s circle of influence actually be widening? If this isn’t stopped, soon the whole town will be throwing them a wedding reception!

Giles pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus his thoughts. “Spike, I don’t really know why I’ve been telling you all this. Frankly, I don’t know what’s come over me, aside from mysteriously being struck blind, that is. Needless to say, this conversation stays in this room. If you say anything to Buffy under any circumstances, I’ll douse you with petrol and set fire to you myself.”

Spike laughed. “Oh yes, needless to say, Watcher! Needless to say! My pint-sized Slayer does bring out the mother lion in all you blokes, like you said. Don’t worry, Rupert, it stays here with us. The little woman doesn’t have to know absolutely everything, does she?”

Just then, Buffy Summers walked through the door with a brown paper bag in the crook of her arm. She spotted her beloved, Spike, from across the room.

She smiled.

The End