Transitions - Ch. 7

An old DeSoto had been parked across three spaces, just outside the entrance to the park. Maria Del Ciello ran her fingers over the dusty blue paint-job as she walked by, and grinned--the car's windows had been blacked out in patches, and she figured she knew well enough who the vehicle belonged to--she'd seen him on enough tapes back at the Watchers' Compound.

Sure enough, there he was, over by the kiddie roundabout. Long, black-leather coat, red shirt, black jeans. Burned-blonde hair, though his brows and lashes remained dark. Good jaw, good shoulders, tall. Maria strolled over to the roundabout, perching on top of the steel-pipe handholds, the platform turning a little beneath her weight. Spike--for of course it was he--wasn't a messy eater, that was good. He did things with style.

The British vamp finished drinking and wiped his mouth, letting the woman he'd chosen for his evening's victim slide out of his arms, drained dry in one go. This one had to be good--he'd killed two Slayers and literally nailed Moira Bannister-St. Ives. Maria remembered seeing that horrific scar when the two of them had showered in the women's teeny locker room at the Compound. She'd wanted to touch it, she remembered, to run her fingers over Her Ladyship's taut, flawless skin, and then feel the ridged interruption in that flawlessness. She hadn't dared. She'd never dared touch Emmy, except in the course of normal combat, much as she'd wanted to.

And now, just the night before, she'd seen Moira, object of her affections, kissing her arch-enemy, Wesley Wyndham-Price. First at the edge of Rupert's special forest, then in the rain, outside Her Ladyship's hotel. Maria had opinions on the subject. Emmy and Wesley--this was not to be. Not while she had breath in her body--okay, well, a little late for that. But not while she walked the earth. No way, no how.

Spike noticed Maria's attention and scowled. She lit a Camel, blowing a smoke ring in her fellow vampire's direction.

"Bon appetit?" she asked.

"Fair enough." Spike didn't lose his scowl. "And 'o the 'ell are you, when you're at 'ome."

Midlands accent, but not too heavy to understand, the way some of them were.

"The previous comment was brought to you by the letter 'H,'" Maria laughed. "Nice ta meetcha, Spike. How's tricks?"

The vampire shrugged. "Can't complain. Bloody dull these days. You ta blame fer that?"

"Blame my sire--she's the one who tried to stir things up. With the help of the Watchers' Council."

Spike lit a smoke of his own and climbed up beside her on the roundabout, appraising her with frank interest. Maria knew she looked good: leather pants and white tank top, thigh-length leather coat, her wild hair twisted into a French braid. Once cool thing about vampirism was that you could dress in black leather in California all summer long without turning into a sweaty mess. She'd started wearing again all the silver rings they'd made her take off back at the Compound, with their bloody Rules of Dress and Comportment, so everybody could look like a friggin' clone of suddenly-not-so-Windy Wesley.

"Wot about that bleedin' forest, sprung up where th' Factory used to be? Reeks o' magic, that does."

"Rupert." Maria blew three smoke rings in quick succession, sending each one chasing after its predecessor.

"The Slayer's Rupert? The old, stuffy Watcher-bloke?"

"One and the same." Maria reached into the breast pocket of her coat, pulling out a bottle. "Care for a nightcap?" She drank, then passed the fifth his way.

"No bollocks." Spike drank too. "Then why'd he let--?"

"Let Angel do what he did? Who knows. How much do you know about magic? Maybe that kind's something you never want to let loose." Maria jumped down, making the roundabout spin. "Catch you later, Spike. Feel free to keep the bottle."

Maria sauntered away, heading for Willie's--knowing, somehow, that the Brit vampire was bound to follow.

And so he did. In fact, he beat her there. She found him sitting all alone at the bar with a boilermaker in front of him. Maria threw a sideways grin his way, then fed a couple quarters into the jukebox. A heavy bass-line filled the otherwise empty room, the opening riffs of Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing."

"C'mon, Spikey, dance with me," Maria said, shedding her coat across the back of a chair.

Spike watched her a minute, then slid off his stool. He kept his coat on, and Maria slipped her hands in underneath it, pushing her fingers into his back pockets, feeling up her fellow vampire's taut ass--just for the point of interest; she really didn't care. His hips pulled into hers, tight and close. They moved together, perfectly.

"Why 'aven't I 'eard of you before?" he asked, his cold lips close to her chilly ear.

"I'm the new girl in town," Maria answered, as the music throbbed through her. "But you won't get off treating me like a freshman--remember, a Slayer made me, and I was only a few Latin verbs short of being a Watcher. Anything you want to know, I can tell."

Spike nuzzled her ear. Maria remained unmoved. "So, I'm interested. Wot's th' plan?"

Maria whispered the words to him, delighted when her new partner in crime gave her a big laugh, then a smile.

Someone knocked on the door around seven-thirty, and Buffy answered cautiously, rising on her tip-toes to peer out through the peephole. She was treated to the sight of Xander's face, distorted by the peephole glass so that his nose looked huge and the rest of his head tiny.

Buffy opened the door. Willow was there too, with a couple video boxes in her hands. Xander had a big bag of stuff that smelled so good her stomach instantly started to rumble. Both of her friends looked as if they'd been whacked in the face with shovels, and Willow's newly horrible hair now hung in lifeless, over-conditioned squiggles around her face.

"Don't look at it," Willow ordered, then asked, "Do you think maybe Em knows some good-hair magic?"

"I'd definitely check with her on that," Buffy answered. "Believe me, it can't hurt. Other than that, how are you guys?"

"Remember those Sisterhood of Jhe babes?" Xander answered. "You know, that time when I asked you to find my spine, and you told me to stay fray-adjacent? Multiply."

"By about a hundred," Willow agreed, rolling her shoulders to ease out the kinks. "Can we come in?"

"Oh! Sure!" Buffy stepped back from the door.

"We tried calling your place, but your mom said you weren't home," Will continued. "She sounded mad. You didn't--?"

Buffy bent to whisper in her friend's ear. Willow started giggling, putting her hand over her mouth in a hopeless attempt to stifle the sound.

"Oh, Buffy! No! Your mom and dad both? Oh, how awful. It's not funny. I know it's not."

"I hope someday your mom and dad catch you," Buffy told her, a little miffed.

"But it wouldn't be the same--Oh! Oh! I'm sorry. Shutting up now. Somber."

"Your mom and dad caught you naked in bed with G....someone?" Xander looked simultaneously intrigued and--he didn't seem quite able to hide it--disgusted.

Willow, being a girl, was struck with ring-radar. Her eyes flashed downward to Buffy's hand, then up again, a little smile playing over her mouth. Buffy felt happy-tears come into her eyes, and Willow gave her a little nod.

"He's doing okay, then?" Will asked quietly.

"Not great, great. But okay. Definitely okay." Buffy hugged Willow first, then Xander. "I wanted to thank you guys again, for last night. You really are the best of the bestest friends ever."

"Our pleasure, Ma'am," Xander answered, in a funny, fake, Western-sheriff voice. Then, in his own voice, he added. "We're glad you're all right. You scared us, Buff."

"I'm sorry," she told them, her own voice sounding temporarily small and fragile. They all stood quiet for a minute, considering what they'd almost lost, for the second time in two weeks. "I love you guys, you know that?"

Then they all had to hug again. Group hug, just the Slayer and her original Slayerettes.

"So, uh," Xander said. "We brought Chinese. To--you know--break the Chinese food jinx."

Buffy smiled at him. "You want plates, or do we just eat out of the boxes?"

"Start with plates and then ignore them," Willow decided. She went to put her videos down on the coffee table, pausing to kneel beside the couch, where Giles had been napping, but now appeared to be at least semi-awake. "Hey, you," she said, stooping forward to kiss his cheek. "How are you feeling? Buffy taking care of you?"

It took Slayer hearing, from across the room, to hear Willow whisper, "Congratulations, I'm so happy for you," into Giles's ear. She held his hand gently for a minute, looking down into his eyes.

Buffy didn't feel the least bit jealous. She knew how much her best friend and her Watcher--sweetie--no, fiancee loved each other. If Giles had "a father's love" for anybody, the way that jerk from the Watchers' Council said, that person would be Willow. And Willow had already told Buffy that she loved Giles like family.

A little bit stiffly, Will got to her feet, and to Buffy's surprise, Xander took her place. The sight of Xander trying to be gentle and careful was almost comical, but he did okay. He was helping Giles to sit up, fussing with pillows, and Giles was taking it, patiently--or maybe really appreciating the help. Xander sat on the coffeetable, and the two of them talked, Xander looking intense.

Buffy remembered what her best guy friend had said, when he'd come in with all his luggage, about needing Giles. It could be that he needed Giles like a dad, the same way Willow did--kind of funny, really, to think of her two best buds being almost like her stepkids, but they were all family, anyway. Maybe the most family any of them would ever have.

She thought of her mom, and that made her almost, but not quite, want to cry. Will had started tugging her toward the kitchen, just about dying to know the sitch. Behind the cabinets, Buffy whispered out the whole story, and then the two of them did start crying, though Willow said over and over again, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy," and looking at the ring, and crying a little more. There was magic in it, Willow said, and made Buffy remove the band--which by some fluke, fit her perfectly--so that she could read the tiny Latin words engraved inside.

"So, what does it say?" Buffy asked her friend. "'Cause Giles had kinda hit overload by that point, and couldn't quite spit it out. He told me the ring belonged to his great-great grandmother, though, so it's old old."

"'You hold the whole of my heart,'" Will said, crying again. "Oh, Buff, that's so romantic--and so true. He really does feel that way." They hugged and boo-hooed a little more, until Xander showed up in the kitchen, wondering if they ever got to eat.

Hurriedly, they got down the plates, while Xand went to find Giles's spare glasses in his study.

Later, Buffy remembered that night as one of her warmest times. Sitting there in Giles's living room with three of the people she loved best in the world, laughing and talking as they ate the Chinese food. Xander, with chopsticks, was dangerous--if there'd been any vampires in the vicinity, they'd have been staked a hundred times over. Finally, Willow got up to find him a fork, and forced Xander to use it: she'd been sitting next to him, and was probably afraid she'd lose an eye.

Giles drank some of the egg-drop soup, but then seemed content to watch them quietly. Though Buffy wished she could get him to eat more, she didn't want to press the point in front of their friends. When she'd finished her own meal, she slid up onto the couch, taking his head onto her lap, and many times, when they were supposed to be watching the movies, she'd catch his eyes watching her instead--or her own eyes straying to him.

The way she felt for him, and labeled "love," felt so much different from the way she'd felt for Angel, and called by the same name, that the two feelings weren't alike at all.

With Angel she'd always wanted to be alone, secret, hidden. She didn't want anything to intrude, and she never really wanted to tell--she never had told much of anything, except to Willow. Buffy had come to accept, eventually, that her friends wouldn't ever feel comfortable about Angel, or want very much to be around him--the truth was, Angel never had been a whole lot of fun to be around--and she'd put up this whole "us against the world front."

Angel would be lurking and brooding for as long as he walked the earth, and he'd never change, never get any happier, or any better--and Buffy, despite the lies she told herself, would never have been able to be happy with him.

With Giles, her Giles, she could be alone, and happy, or she could share their home with their friends--and, someday, when she was older, maybe even with their children. Buffy couldn't help but smile at the thought of a bunch of mini-Gileses crawling around in their little tweed rompers. Xander was still dealing with a little bit of the ewww factor, but as she'd said before, Giles was his and Willow's family--in any crisis, they turned to him. She didn't want, or need to hide--and if people had a problem with the age-thing that was really just too bad. Sometimes Giles was a little stuffy, or serious, or a bit caught up in his work--but those were just his quirks, because he was a passionate man. He was interested in things, he was involved. She could make him feel happy, and tender and proud. He'd had darkness in his past, maybe big darkness, but he'd moved forward from that time. Instead of that hard, scared lump that Angel put into the pit of her stomach, Giles gave her a warm, comfortable, mushy feeling.

Even the way he was right now--okay, that was a little scary. But scary because she was worried for him, the way you'd be for anyone you loved when they weren't feeling well. Not scary because he was going to lose his soul and try to murder all her friends.

Giles snuggled closer to her, his eyes beginning to drift shut. Buffy touched his cheek, and he turned his face into her hand, perfectly content, perfectly trusting. Buffy's heart felt all big and heart-shaped, like it was filling up her chest.

On the TV screen, people were telling stories in very soft, beautiful Irish voices, and water lapped gently on the shores of low green islands where seals swam, and the cutest little blond kid ran wild. The movie made her feel sleepy and sad and happy all at the same time. At the end, when the family came home to where they were supposed to be all along, and the little boy ran into his grandma's arms, she started to cry again. Giles woke when the tears fell on his face, and gazed up at her, but when he looked into her eyes, he could tell nothing was wrong.

"Liked it, did you?" he asked, touching her cheek with his open hand.

Buffy snuffled and smiled, answering, "One of these days, you'll have to stay awake."

"One of these days, I shall." He drifted back to sleep, cradled in her arms, and on the floor, huddled up together, holding each other, Willow and Xander slept too.