Transitions - Ch. 13

Buffy cried out, riding the wave that made her entire body arch away from the rug, her legs clamped around Giles's hips, her heels digging into his thighs.

"Ah! Buffy!" he gasped, in a way that didn't exactly sound passionate.

Slowly, she spiraled down, panting a little herself. "What?" she asked, when she could speak again.

Giles had been over her, propped on his elbows as he thrust, but now he sat up, pulling away, a pained expression on his face. Buffy couldn't remember him following her over the edge, and he was still hard, but he wasn't inside her either. She couldn't figure out what she'd done.

"Giles, sweetie, what?" She sat cross-legged on the pillow, watching his face, wondering. "You weren't ready, or too much on your mind, or--" But if any of those were the case, he would have been wilted, wouldn't he? Again, her lack of guy-knowledge irritated her.

"No, no, love. Nothing like that." He pushed a hand back through his hair. Whatever it was, Giles didn't want to say: Buffy could see him search for the most tactful way to go. "You may need to remember I'm not. That is to say... You may wish to keep an awareness of..."

Buffy shook her head. "I'm thinking bluntness is called for here, Rupert, 'cause I'm not getting what you're trying to tell me."

Giles looked at her ruefully. "I'm not Angel. You're the Slayer. I bruise. Please do remember?"

"Oh!" Buffy put her hands over her mouth. His expression might have been funny, if she hadn't felt so guilty at the same time.

"Understand that it's entirely damaging to my male ego, that I've said these words to you."

"Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"Let's leave things are they are, shall we? No apologies necessary." Giles sounded stuffier than he had in a long time, so she really had embarrassed him.

Buffy knew she could take it as a compliment that he'd actually spit out the words, though, not locked them in and said nothing. It was like a giant step of trust forward for the two of them.

"The last thing I want to do," he told her, "Is to interfere with your pleasure."

"Oh, but I like you interfering with me." Smiling, she slid onto his lap. "Mr. Giles, I think my skills need honing."

"I'm inclined to agree." Giles hoisted Buffy onto the bed, leaning over her, smiling. "Care for a spot of training, Buffy?"

Buffy giggled. "Would you like your protective padding?"

"You, Miss Summers," he laughed in return, "Are an evil young woman." He lay beside her, turning Buffy toward him, his thigh pressed up against her center. Capturing her head with his one hand, he kissed her so thoroughly some minutes passed before she could speak again.

Spike and Maria wandered the streets of L.A., slipping through the warm press of humans, drinking in the cold pulsating colors of the neon lights. Every club they tried allowed them entrance--it got kinda boring, Maria thought, after a while. Took all the challenge out of life.

They looked cool, though. Especially together. In that town where image was everything, they looked like movie stars. In the darkness of the clubs, Maria took a sip here and a sip there, sharing with Spike all the beautiful women they could find, but every drink blood tasted thin and bitter--a little like the women themselves.

By the tenth club she'd had enough. The music had been some sort of European techno-crap, and it gave her a headache--or, not really a headache, she didn't get those anymore, but a feeling as if her teeth had been clenched together for hours. She was glad to get out into the night, into the blazing neon, beneath the cover of the deep blue sky. She was glad to have the dry wind that blew in from the desert touch her skin.

"I'm bored," Spike said. "That was no fun a'tall."

"I hear ya."

"About five seconds from now, I'm gonna start broodin' like that wanker Angel."

"Oh, but look." Maria smiled. In the curb lane, practically at their feet, an old beater car had broken down. A car with Kansas license plates.

"But, sweetheart, you're not in Kansas anymore," she murmured to herself.

Beside the stalled vehicle stood a tearful girl with the longest, silkiest honey-blonde hair Maria had ever seen in her life. The girl wore the cutest little baby-blue pleated skirt, and the fuzziest little sweater. From the shortness of the skirt and the tightness of the sweater, Maria guessed that the Kansas girl was trying to be bad, but her end result was just that she looked like a sweet, naive little bundle of wholesomeness.

Ooh, yes, Maria thought. The girl was like a gift from heaven. Or hell. Wherever.

"But, Daddy!" the girl said into her mobile phone, in a cute little daddy's-baby whine. "But, Daddy, what am I supposed to do?"

Dimly, Maria could hear the father's answer, a grumbly sound without actual words, like the voices of the grownups in a "Peanuts" cartoon.

"Hi," Maria interrupted. "You havin' problems." She let her strong Boston accent return full force--when people heard her real voice, they couldn't believe it wasn't a joke, they'd drop their guards instantly.

"My car won't start. Or it stopped. Stopped first, then wouldn't start again." The girl ran her fingers back through the shimmery, silky hair.

"You know what it means when the little arrow hits 'E,' right?" Maria grinned, indicating Spike. "My friend knows about cars. He can take a look for you."

Spike grinned back, at both of them. He didn't look anything like reassuring. Maria reached in through the open door and under the dash to pop the hood. She could feel the girl staring at her.

"You're so cool," she said, in her little Midwestern voice. "You're like...like...La Femme Nikita."

Maria laughed. Usually, these days, she got asked if she was in a band, and she amused herself making up different band names. But they probably didn't get a whole lot of bands, cool or otherwise, in Cowflop, Kansas, or wherever this poor baby was from. She could see the girl's graduation tassel hanging from her rearview mirror. Maroon and orange. Ugh.

"Try 'er now." Spike glanced up from behind the open hood.

Maria slid behind the wheel. "You don't mind, do you, hon?"

The girl shook her head.

Maria turned the key in the ignition. She could hear the starter crank, then nothing. Stupid kid had been in such an all-fired hurry to get to the big city, she'd run her gas-tank dry. Her loss, their gain.

"What's your name, honey?" she asked the girl.

"Uh...Lisa."

"Well, Lisa, you're out of gas. So you can either wait here with your land-yacht while William and I--" She gestured to Spike--"Go on a mission of mercy. Or you can come along. Your choice." Maria smiled. She'd always had a nice smile. "We don't bite."

Spike laughed, and Maria glared at him.

"I'm a little scared to stay here," Lisa admitted. "This looks like a bad part of town. Is it a bad part of town?"

"Couldn't tell you." Maria smiled again. "I come from up north, the Bay Area. William comes all the way from Manchester--that's in England. What are you doing here, honey?"

"My aunt's gonna help me get a job. Just coffee and errands, that kind of thing at first, but later, if I'm smart..."

"What an adventure!" Maria put her arm around Lisa's shoulders. "C'mon, we're not gonna leave you standing here. My Grandmother Maria would spin in her grave. You don't mind, do you Willie?"

Spike made a face at her, grinning beneath it. "We're put 'ere on earth ta 'elp our fellow creatures."

In the back of the De Soto, Lisa began to shiver. Maria took off her coat and wrapped it around the frightened girl.

"Why are the windows blacked out?" Lisa asked.

"Ya know, that's a funny story--" Spike began, but the girl had gone on to other things.

"Maria, why is your skin so cold?"

"It's a condition," Maria answered. She put her mouth to Lisa's neck, and licked the warm, tender, salty skin.

When Lisa woke, she felt very hungry--and very, very surprised.

"Why do you do that?" Wesley asked, as they sat in the dark van inside the closed garage.

"Do what, exactly?" Moira tapped her long fingers in an irritating tattoo against the dash.

We're about to have our first quarrel, Wesley thought. Our first quarrel as a couple, that is. God help me.

"Wesley, don't start, please," she said, before he'd had time to respond.

"I only wondered why you fight so bitterly with Rupert. You care for him, and yet the two of you--"

"As if you weren't perfectly bloody to him from the moment you set foot in Sunnydale?" I've seen the tapes, Wesley. You were rude, and punctilious, insensitive to the needs of all involved, and ineffectual, besides."

"I know," he said miserably, shame like a sharp pain somewhere low in his intestines. "I have, however, apologized like a gentleman."

Moira gave a peal of less-than-amused laughter.

Suddenly, Wesley lost all patience. He found himself screaming at her, in much the same manner she'd screamed at poor Rupert. The poor man had looked pale, and still less than well, certainly in no shape for such a long journey, taken for such a sad cause. Wesley didn't love his own mum, far from it, but he should still have found her funeral terribly sad--at least as a remembrance of what they had not been to one another--and extremely trying. Moira's paranoid speculations as to what awaited Rupert in his homeland could not have helped him in any way whatsoever.

With equal abruptness, he ran out of words. Moira sat looking at him, eyes narrowed. Wesley himself felt a bit sick, drained, and as if he wouldn't mind a bit of a lie-down--perhaps a nice cup of tea as well, and one of his films to put him in a happier frame of mind.

"Felt good, did it, to get that off your chest?" she asked him in a kinder tone.

Wesley shook his head. "I feel a bit ill now."

"See what happens when you break that famous repression?" Moira ran her fingers through his hair. Wesley had used the mousse she'd bought him, instead of his usual pomade, and had spent the whole day feeling messy--but Em liked to stroke him there, and at least now she didn't feel inclined to surreptitiously wipe her fingers on a handkerchief afterward.

"My poor dear love," Moira continued. "I believe that now you've seen all the unpleasantness of which I'm capable. As you pointed out, I'm not your Handler anymore. I've no right to criticize you."

Wesley nodded, mutely, though in the dark she most likely could not see.

"Let's go in, shall we? Have a bit of tea? Watch one of your lovely, ridiculous movies?" Moira slid down from the driver's seat and walked around to Wesley's side to help him--he continued to be a bit unsteady on that long step down. "I want you to lie on the sofa with your head on my lap, and I shall kiss and stroke and caress you until you're quite pink all over."

For a moment, still angry with her, Wesley thought to resist such blandishments--but in the end, he could not. What she promised lay too close to his own fantasies--and Moira made a lovely cup of tea.

In the end, she made him muffins as well, tiny ones suitable for popping directly into one's mouth. The entire house smelled of apples and cinnamon, making it seem less bare, rather more homelike.

"What do you think of staying here a while longer?" Moira asked. "We needn't, if you don't like to."

"I'd thought that as well," Wesley confessed, not admitting any of his other thoughts, those concerned with roses and rings. "Though I shouldn't force you."

"We're too polite for our own good." She poured tea into his cup, arranging coffee-table, muffin-plate and saucer so that he could reach comfortably from his reclining position on the sofa, then slipped a tape into the video player. "I've requested a leave of absence from the Council, citing medical reasons. My solicitor's hard at work on some of the immigration aspects--for both of us."

"It's not that I wish to emigrate from England," Wesley told her, worried. "It's just that I'd rather like to stay here."

"No, there shouldn't be any trouble being granted resident alien status--my LeFaye pots of money certainly can't hurt anything. It might perhaps be easier, though, were we to marry."

"No," Wesley answered vehemently, sitting up so suddenly that he upset his tea.

Moira went to her knees with a towel, sopping up the mess, her eyes never leaving his, even as she worked. "It's such a horrid thought, then, being married to me?"

"Emmy, no, not at all." Wesley found his hands waving violently through the air. If she didn't understand, how could he explain to her. "No, it's just that, you see, I don't want it to be easy. Us. Marrying. I want it to be terribly difficult. Or, no, not difficult. What is it I'm meaning to say?"

"That you wish to slay dragons for me, or find magical rings in the heart of a deadly forest, or rescue me from a burning pyre?"

"Yes! Exactly! Or no." He looked at her, troubled, feeling the corners of his lips turning downward. "I want to woo you, and win you, and shower you with flowers and love-letters, and get down on my knees to you. I refuse to be modern, convenient, or nonchalant."

"My Wesley." Em bent forward, kissing his mouth, her lips tasting of honey and tea. "I apologize in advance for any acts of mine that might savour of the above. I shall endeavor to be as old fashioned, inconvenient and passionate as you would ever wish me to be."

"That's all I ask."

"And when am I to expect this kneeling and fervent exchanging of vows? I'd like to keep my schedule clear."

"After considerable showering, and not before."

"One feels that, if we're to be perfectly old fashioned, I ought to move out, then. Get a flat of my own."

"Ah, no, I feel we needn't go so far as that," Wesley answered, half-afraid that she actually would.

They fell asleep on the sofa together, lulled by the cheerful strains of "The Music Man." Wesley found that he dreamed of a lovely large library like the one in the film, and Moira in little spectacles and a prim shirtwaist, such as Madam Marian the Librarian wore. Try as he might, though, he could not place himself into the role of Marian's love, Professor Harold Hill--he'd nothing in his nature of the charming rogue.

When he woke, stiff and needing to avail himself of the facilities, Em still slept deeply. The most urgent business accomplished, he let himself out into the wilderness of the backyard, hoping against hope that something yet lived there.

In the tangle of brambles at the bottom of the garden stood a single overgrown rosebush, and upon that bush bloomed a single red rose. Wesley took that as an omen, a good sign.

He removed a pair of scissors from his pocket and cut the rose's stem--carefully, just past a cluster of five leaves, so that the bush would bloom again. With great attention, he nipped off all the thorns, then let the flower lie in his hand. So brilliant it was, and so perfect despite its wild state. An appropriate bloom for his Emmy.

Inside the house once more, he lay the rose upon her bosom. Either that light touch, or the fragrance woke her. Moira's eyes opened, and she gazed, with love, up at him.

"Rupert and Buffy will be gone by now," she said.

"Yes," Wesley answered, "I think that they will."