A sequel to Spike Covered in Chocolate
Part Two: Dawn
Sunday, June 15, 2005
9:30pm
So this is my first entry in my brand new journal. It’s so nice! It’s all red and soft and feels like velvet. Spike bought it for me yesterday at Pier One. I woke up this morning and found it sitting on my desk with a little note in the bag that said: ‘Nibblet, Figured you needed a fancy, poofy, grown-up journal for going to college and all that. I was up all night kicking some vamps’ asses, so don’t bother me in the morning, or I’ll bloody kill you. Love, Spike.’
I think Spike was lying about fighting vampires last night. There hasn’t been a lot of evil activity in Sunnydale for the past few months.
Actually, the most disturbing thing that’s happened lately is that Spike’s started shopping at Pier One.
It started about six months ago. One night Spike said that he would stay in and hang out with me, since patrolling had been slow for about a week. I’d actually had plans with Tommy that night, but I cancelled them. I mean, Spike never wants to hang out with me. He’s out patrolling almost every night, from sunset to sunrise. At least, that’s what he says he’s doing. I think he hits some bars when the vamps aren’t out, because one night he came home and tried to kill Mr. Gordo.
I hardly see him during the afternoons, since I usually have either newspaper or Prom Committee after school, or else I’m out with Tommy or my friends. Most days I rush home from school, grab a snack, and just run back out the door. So it was nice of Spike to offer to hang with me for a night.
He said we could do anything I wanted to do, so of course I wanted to go to the mall. Spike completely hated it, especially after I saw him steal a CD from the music store and I made him put it back.
But then we went to the food court, and this really pretty woman came onto Spike. It was so incredibly tacky. We were sitting at a table eating McDonalds. Well, I was eating McDonalds, and Spike was was drinking a chocolate shake that he poured vodka into from that flask he always carries. This woman was sitting at the next table, chewing on a straw and staring at Spike.
“Can you believe how obvious that skanky girl is?” I said.
“Huh?”
“You haven’t noticed?” I rolled my eyes. “I swear, guys are so clueless.”
“And you silly bints are all brain surgeons, right?” Spike said with a snarl.
“The girl behind you is totally checking you out,” I whispered.
One of Spike’s eyebrows arched and he looked like he’d just been offered a gallon of blood. He didn’t turn around and look at the girl. Instead, he slid out of his leather coat, exposing his tight black t-shirt. He leaned back in his chair and slowly stretched, the muscles in his arms bulging as he raised his arms over his head. He turned around, looked at the woman, and let his lips fall apart just a bit, as if he was surprised to see her. He smiled casually at her, his tongue visible through the slight opening of his mouth.
Spike may not be a brain surgeon, but he sure as hell knows how to get to someone when he wants to.
I swear, the woman just melted.
“I can’t watch this,” I said. “This is so gay.”
“Gay?” Spike said through his smile, his eyes still on the woman. “Stick around, little bit, and I’ll show you the definition of heterosexuality.”
“No thanks,” I said, standing. “I’ll meet you in Old Navy.”
An hour later he still hadn’t met me, so I went wandering around the mall in search of him. I know Spike can be a jerk sometimes, but I didn’t think he’d just leave me. I walked only a few stores down when I saw him through the window of Pier One.
He was standing in front of a display of dishes. They were blood red, with little moons etched into them, and he was holding a salad plate in his hand, as if trying to guess its weight, and how much damage it could inflict if used as a weapon. I walked into the store and yelled, “Hey slut!”
Spike looked up immediately.
“Have you seen this store?” he asked me. “It’s bloody amazing. They got these little candles and statues and things. Reminds me of my old crypt. And look at this.”
He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me toward the furniture. Sometimes I have to remind Spike that not all of us have supernatural strength. He nearly dislocated my shoulder dragging me to look at this stupid little trunk.
“I had one of these, back in 1890,” he said, smiling wistfully. “Used to keep corpses in them for snacks, till they started rotting and stinking up the place.” He chuckled. “And Dru would scream at me...”
“Thanks for the visual,” I said.
“And these!” Spike grabbed a creepy African mask off a shelf, held it in front of his face and growled. “Scary, huh?”
I pushed the mask away from his face. “Too scary. Once my mom had one and it raised the dead.”
“Really?” Spike said. He looked at the mask in his hand and smiled. “Cool. Think this one would?”
“Spike!” I slapped him on the arm, trying - unsuccessfully of course - to get him to drop the mask. And then he did the hug-thing.
The hug-thing is the greatest thing ever. I don’t think Spike invented it, but he’s certainly perfected it. It’s when I hit him, shove him, or otherwise get especially annoying. He hits me back, but not really, not enough to hurt. Just a grab at my wrist or shoulder, or a quick tickle of my sides. And then, when I’m off my guard, all giggly and silly, he grabs me with one arm and hugs me.
Just for a second. Just one squeeze and it’s done, and the giggles are fading away and the fake-fight is over, and he’s back to browsing the shelves at Pier One, watching TV, or warming up his blood in the microwave. But it’s just the nicest thing. Like a small reassurance. A tiny, “Yeah, still here, everything’s okay, see?”
I’ve tried to get Tommy to do the hug-thing, but he just doesn’t get it. If I gently push him, he just says “ow” and looks all cute and hurt.
Tommy. He’s so sweet. I mean, how many guys would go out with a girl for over a year and still want to wait for prom night to do it? Not any of the boys in my school. Except for Tommy. The sweetest guy ever! When I told him I was going to Columbia and not UC Sunnydale, he only held my hand and looked all cute and sad.
Spike, however, was a different story. I told him right after I told Tommy. We were sitting on the couch one Saturday night, eating popcorn, and Spike was telling me the story about how he kicked Angel’s ass in a mineshaft once. Which I’m pretty sure is a complete load of crap, but I still like to hear him talk.
“And then I grabbed him by the throat, pushed his pansy ass against the wall, and said, ‘Remind me again why I don’t kill you, you big prancing bugger.’” Spike smiled wickedly and shoved another handful of popcorn in his mouth.
I rolled my eyes, but he didn’t notice.
He looked out the window, where the sun was just beginning to set over the top of the hills in the distance beyond the movie theater. “Getting dark soon,” he said, and his face suddenly broke into a silly grin, like a little kid looking at candy. “Time to go kill things!” He turned to look at me. “Don’t you have some Geek-Club meeting or something?”
“It’s called National Honor Society,” I said. “And no, stupid. It’s Saturday.”
“Saturday?” Spike asked, puzzled. “Really? Then don’t you have a date with pansy-future-corpse?”
That’s how Spike always refers to Tommy. Future-corpse or, occasionally, future-eunuch. Which is why I’ve never let him actually meet Tommy. He’d probably vamp out in front of him, if not something worse, and I really don’t want to find out what that ‘something worse’ could be.
“I’m not meeting Tommy until later,” I told him. “Cause...I kinda wanted to talk to you.”
One of Spike’s eyebrows shot up. He knew something was wrong.
After I told him, he just sat there. Motionless. He looked like a statue, not moving at all, not breathing, just sitting and looking at me with eyes stormier than usual. I would’ve said he looked angry, but I’ve seen him rip the throats out of demons more than once, so I know what angry-Spike looks like. The expression on his face then was like anger, only quieter. Then he blinked, stood up, and grabbed his jacket, which was tossed in a heap of leather on the kitchen table.
“Spike?” I asked softly.
“I’m going out,” he said, his voice so low that it was almost a growl. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
And then he was gone, slamming the door behind him, before I had a chance to say anything else.
That night, when I got home from being at the movies with Tommy, I went straight to Spike’s bedroom to see if he was home, but he wasn’t. I didn’t get all that worried. I knew he was mad, but he said he’d be back in the morning.
I stretched out on his bed. When we had first moved into the apartment, he used his old sheets from the crypt, which had a slight wet-basement odor. But then Spike redid his bed in Pier-One-Vampire style, with dark red sheets and pillowcases embroidered with a black design. The material was soft, and as I lay there I ran my hand up and down the length of the unmade bed.
I felt bad about leaving, but I hadn’t changed my mind. I still haven’t. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here in Sunnydale, always afraid for my life. I want to be somewhere normal. I’m 18 now, I’m going to college, and I want to be able to start over, to walk around a place that doesn’t seemed filled with the ghosts of my mom, Buffy, and Willow.
Besides, Tara’s in New York. So it’s not like I’ll be all alone. Plus, the scholarship. A full scholarship to an Ivy League school. Am I supposed to turn that down? Stay here and go to UC Sunnydale, where vampires roam the campus and any frat parties I go to will probably end with me being sacrificed to a demon?
So then even if I manage to somehow survive four years there, I’ll have to have Spike around all the time rescuing me, and I really don’t want that.
It’s not that I don’t like Spike. I love him. He’s been here with me for over three years. He gave up everything just to take care of me. He’s saved my life more than once. And he’s a great guy to be around. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as his pet project.
I was thinking about this, lying there, feeling the soft sheets and breathing in the smell of Spike’s discarded clothes on the floor beside the bed, and the next thing I knew Spike’s hand was on my shoulder.
“Whatcha doing here, sweet bit?” he whispered.
“Sorry,” I said though a sleepy haze. “I just wanted to make sure you came home.”
There was a silence, and I thought I heard him inhale. The hand on my shoulder tightened slightly. “I’ll always come home,” he said.
I opened my eyes completely and looked up at him. The light from the hallway created a sort of glow around him. “Me too,” I said.
He slid into the bed beside me, with that familiar scent of cigarette smoke and liquor. I thought that I should probably go to my own room, but I didn’t want to. I was waiting for him to tell me to leave, but he didn’t. Instead he just lay there on his back, his eyes frozen on the ceiling.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
He responded by snaking his arm around my back, and then pulling me close to his body. He said “No” so softly that I didn’t actually hear it, I just saw his mouth move in the narrow band of light spilling into the room and over his face.
It was only the third time in the past three years that I had slept with Spike. Once was when I was 15, after my first almost-boyfriend Steve turned out to be a Enoispep demon and tried to kill me. He almost succeeded, actually. I was practically unconscious when Spike burst through the door. As Spike carried me home, I kept waking up and then passing out again. But I remember him laying me down in his bed, making me drink some water, and then I felt the mattress bend with the weight of his body as I drifted off again. When I woke up much later, he was still there, one arm around my shoulders, wide awake and staring at me. I don’t think he slept at all that night.
The other time Spike allowed me to share his bed was about a year ago, after Willow died. But I don’t think he did it so much to comfort me as to comfort him. Willow and Spike have had a psychic connection ever since the whole Glory incident. So when Kcorgnillor killed Willow, Spike felt it happen. It must have been horrible for him. But he’s never talked about it.
It must be horrible for him to have to carry that around all the time. I know what he’s going through. I know what it’s like to be filled with so much pain that you don’t think you can move, or speak, or walk; you think you can’t live like a normal person ever again. But then you do, because you have to.
It’s getting pretty late now. I should probably go to bed. I’ve got school tomorrow. The last week of school ever! Wednesday’s graduation, Friday’s the prom, and then Sunday I’m on a plane to New York. It’s all happening so fast; I haven’t really had a chance to be sad about it yet.
But I’m not sad. This is what I want. To finally grow up, to move on, and to have a life that doesn’t involve pain, violence, and vampires. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.