“Spike?…How did you get this number?”
“I found it on this flier pinned to the inside of a phone box.” He replied playfully.
“Ha. Ha.” she said snidely, “What do you want?”
“Wanted to see if you…urgh…look, this is hard for me to ask…”
She butted in, “Yes, Spike. You were adopted.”
“Shut up, Buffy. That’s not what I was going to ask.” he said angrily, and then he paused and changed his tone, “Listen, I’m in town.”
“In New York?”
“That is where you live init? Wouldn’t have said ‘in town’ if I was in Hawaii, would I?”
She just huffed and with that he could tell he was going about this all the wrong way. Time to stop messing about and just ask her; if she said no, she said no. “Look, I need a place to crash…That’s why I phoned. I wanted to ask if I could stay with you a few weeks while I look for a new flat in the city?”
“Well let’s see…in the past 5 minutes you’ve called me a phone box hooker, and told me to shut up…”
“Please, luv?”
Her stomach flipped. He shouldn’t call her that should he? I mean…she’d heard him call loads of women that, but never her…She thought of Dawn. Had he ever called Dawn that? Because if he had she was worrying about nothing…but she couldn’t remember…Wait, what was she worrying about exactly? She realised she hadn’t said anything for a while, and so stuttered something out to cover. “W-W-What about Dru?”
She heard him sigh down the phone and then he answered regretfully, “We broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If I didn’t know how much you hated her I could have believed that. You sounded almost sincere.” He laughed a little.
“I am, Spike. I’m sorry you broke up.”
He paused and relaxed his voice a lot more. “It’s okay. It was the right thing, we both knew it. It was a joint decision, for the best and all that rot…But it means I kind of have to find a place to live. Said she could have the apartment seen as she found it and spent time making it over… I’ve been staying there while she’s been at her sisters, but I think she wants to come back now…which means I have to find somewhere else.”
Buffy sighed deeply all the way down to her toes. She was stuck. She didn’t want to leave Spike in the lurch, but this would be inconvenient. Her place wasn’t very big and sure she had a spare room, but it was still a small flat altogether. Then there was the fact that she was busy with college and work pretty much non-stop and her and Spike didn’t get along well enough to comfort her that he wouldn’t get in her way…But he was her brother, well, her stepbrother, and he was in a bind. “Okay, Spike.” she answered eventually.
“Really?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Thanks, pet.”
Buffy settled; she always liked when he called her ‘pet’, even though she wouldn’t admit it. That was something he had always called her, and it made her feel safe. At first endearments like that hadn’t been just every other sentence, when they were younger he only called her or Dawn ‘pet’ when they were upset or down, to make them feel better and it always worked. When she got older she’d usually chastise him and tell him she wasn’t a little girl anymore. This time she didn’t.
“Do you remember the address?”
“No.” he replied confused.
“Oh right, I remember, you’ve never been to see me before have you?” she said sarcastically.
“I’ve been…”
“Busy, yeah I know.” She sighed trailing off. He only lived just outside the city, not in another country. It wouldn’t take him much to get here, but he had never made the trip for her, and she knew he wasn’t busy, even if he said he was; he just never made time to visit, because of Dru.
There was nothing wrong with her that Buffy could put her finger on, it was simply a clash of personalities. They didn’t get on and so the inevitable happened when a couple you know gets serious and you don’t get on with one of them, they’re going to spend more time together and less time with you.
Buffy still sort of resented Spike for it though, because they’d even kept in touch when he moved away to college; in fact they had talked all the time for a while. It only started becoming weird between them when he met Dru in his final year and didn’t move back home like he’d said he was going to. She felt awkward visiting when he moved in with Dru, so she only saw him at holidays when he came home to see the family. Then he even stopped doing that, and she couldn’t even blame Dru for it. She knew it was his decision, no one could tell Spike what to do, not even her.
She gave him the address and he said he’d be round with his stuff in the next few days, so she said she’d leave him a key under the mat, which he found a very cliché place to hide a spare key.
She hung up the phone, her mind buzzing trying to imagine what the next few weeks would be like. She figured they’d be uncomfortable for sure. They were brother and sister, maybe not by blood, but they had always been close. Well they used to be close, but they hadn’t seen each other in 2 years, and the last time she’d even spoken to him was before she moved here to New York 10 months ago. She knew she’d changed a lot since then, so expected him to have changed as well. It would probably be more like living with a stranger than anything else, only a stranger that had been there all the way through your childhood. Someone who used to comfort you when you cried, when you scraped a knee, or someone called you a name, but who also had the power to make you cry worse than anyone else ever could. Brothers are so much fun aren’t they?
Her and Spike had always had a weird relationship. She couldn’t ever figure it out to be honest. She’d tell people he was her brother, but they were friends too despite the age gap. They had always got on, played, fought and shared things like normal siblings, but there had always been something strange there. It was different with Dawn and him, because Dawn was actually his sister. Maybe it was because as far as Dawn knew he’d always been her brother; their family had always been that way. But both Buffy and Spike could remember a time before their parents got together. It may not have been a long time, because Joyce and Giles married when Spike was 13 and Buffy was only 6, but Buffy could remember her father, even though she wasn’t his biggest fan, and she remembered her first awkward meeting with her soon to be stepbrother.
“Who are you?” the boy in front of her said, snatching away the picture frame she had taken from his desk.
“I’m Buffy Summers.” she said quietly, retreating into the hallway.
“What you doing here?” the little boy asked nastily. He didn’t like people being in his room, or touching his stuff.
The little blonde girl shrugged. “I came with my mom. She said I…” She noticed he wasn’t really paying attention to her answer even though he had asked the question. He had his back to her now, but she could tell he was staring down at the photograph. “Who’s the lady in the picture?”
He turned around confused then looked down. He placed the picture on his desk again, but this time face down. “No one.” he said suddenly loosening up and acting as if it didn’t matter, although it was obvious that it did. “So what did you say you were doing in my room?” he asked again.
“I…” she stuttered, it would be the first of many times he would leave her a little speechless, because he was intimidating even then, before he called himself Spike, before he drove his motorbike and wore his leather coat, before he got his scar and bleached his hair blonder than hers. “I said I was here with my mum. We’re staying for dinner. She said I should come upstairs and look for William. That I could play with him…Are you William?”
He nodded, arms crossed in front of his chest.
“Do you wanna play with me?”
“I…”
“WILLIAM?!” Came his father’s loud voice, it made Buffy jump. Rupert always had to shout that loud, because he could never get his attention any other way. William walked past Buffy, who was still stood slightly in his doorway afraid to come back in. He brushed past her to the top of the stairs. His father was at the bottom of them. “Would you come and set the table please William?” He paused, “You can get Buffy to help you if you want.” Rupert said.
William looked back towards the frail little thing in his doorway, and figured she’d probably be more of a hindrance than a help, and not just in setting the table, but generally in his life from now on. Something inside him sensed this was not the last time he would see ‘Buffy Summers’.
It had turned out that the photograph had been of Spike’s mother. Buffy remembered when she had gone and asked Rupert about it around a year later, a few months after her and her mother had moved in with him and William…God it felt strange calling him William. He’d been Spike since he was 17, and she had never thought it was strange. She’d been too young to pick fun at the name at first and then she’d got used to it. It never occurred to her that it was a very unusual name, because William seemed the unusual name to her. It had never suited him, and he never seemed comfortable with it. She didn’t know why Spike suited him better, but it did. Although she had never known, or really wanted to know where the nickname came from. She shuddered to think…in fact, she really did…That was weird…Anyway where was she?
That’s when she looked up and saw her bus pulling away from the stop. She’d gotten so lost daydreaming about the past that she’d totally missed its arrival. She sighed looking up at the sky. It was a bright sort of day, not sunny, but it didn’t look like rain, so she decided to walk instead of waiting another 20minutes for the next one.
She went to pick up her shoulder bag, but instead ended up knocking it over, she had always been a little bit of a clutz. Luckily not much fell out, her folders only slipped out a tiny bit and she just shoved them back inside so that she could close it. She gathered up the pencils putting them in the front pocket again, closed that up as well and then reached for the other item on the floor, her purse.
She stood up and began to walk home as she opened it up and threw back in her unspent bus fare. She pressed the left side closed, and then opened the other where she saw the plastic compartment that held her pictures. There were a few family ones, one of her and her best friend from high school, Willow, who she still kept in touch with regularly, and one of her and Faith, a fun loving party girl she’d met at college. She’d never really understood why Faith was at college, because she never went to class, but she had been a good friend to Buffy. She’d helped her come out of her shell a lot, and even though Faith never went to class, she never pressured Buffy to skip it…well maybe once or twice.
The picture on top of the pile directly underneath the plastic was of her mom. And then she remembered what she had been thinking about.
She’d gone to ask Rupert - or Giles, as she had always called him - about the picture, only to find out that the photograph was of his first wife Jenny, who had died when Spike was just a small child. Buffy was still very young at the time, but she understood 2 things, 1# that she had upset Giles by bringing it up, and 2# that if she had upset Giles, she had probably upset William at their first meeting. She asked Giles why he was so sad about the picture and he told her that it wasn’t her fault, but that when someone talked about Jenny it made him and William miss her all over again. Buffy not having much tact at that age tried her best to ask her next question without upsetting him further. She asked him if he still loved Jenny, and he said that he did and that he missed her very much. He also said that that didn’t mean he didn’t love Buffy’s mother, Joyce, because he did love her with all his heart.
Buffy saw that love in the years to come. She never doubted Giles’s love for her mother, or vice versa, and she was happy for them from the very start. She’d never thought or seen much of her own father, so that was never a problem. If someone asked her who her dad was she would name Giles as easily as breathing. She knew it was harder for Spike to accept things, because he was older and used to life a certain way, a ‘him and his dad against the world’ kind of way. But eventually they all settled into life and when Dawn was born it really brought the family together. Sometimes throwing in another sibling makes things worse, but it made Giles and Joyce a stronger couple, and Spike and Buffy became closer, because they now had something that truly tied them together as a family, and also a younger sister that they could both pick on.
Buffy got back to her flat feeling quite tired. She didn’t regret the walk however, it had let her get some fresh air, given her time to think, and she hated the bus sometimes anyway. She was sure she would have been just as tired if she had waited for it instead. She fished out her keys and unlocked her door. When she got inside she put her keys on the table next to her house phone and saw that she had a new message.
“Hey B.” Faith’s message played. “The Bronze. Tonight. It’s this new club. Be there. Seriously, call me.”
She didn’t have any classes the next day so she called Faith and agreed to go with her. She hadn’t been out in a while, or had a chance to see Faith, and she’d heard about this place a while ago. She was tired and just felt a bit down, but nothing a night out and some fun couldn’t cure.
Faith came to hers a few hours later and helped her pick an outfit out. Most of the time Buffy ended up wearing the outfit she had picked out herself, but it was fun just to hang out and root through her wardrobe together while the two talked about Faith’s latest conquest and drank whatever kind of lighter fluid or motor oil Faith had purchased that night and tried to pass off as alcohol.
They often got drunk at Buffy’s and then went out later, it was better when it was time to go to the club. If you were already a little bit drunk you seemed like you’d been to a few places before you got there and the bouncers were less likely to think you were underage. They both had fake IDs, but it just meant that the bouncer looked at them less questioningly, which was always a good thing when it came to fake driver’s licenses. But they got in this night without a problem.
Inside, the club was a bit grungy, which Buffy didn’t mind and Faith completely loved. It was a little out of the way and had taken them a while to get to, but the music was great and the guys were hot, and Faith was buying shots by the bucket load.
They danced to every song they could, they danced with everyone they could, including each other, which always got a few leers and stares from the male population, because they were completely hot chicks, who didn’t mind rubbing up against each other in the spirit of having fun. Eventually Faith seemed to get very friendly with a guy that had tattoos all over his arms and Buffy decided to have a break from dancing. She rarely went further than a dance with guys, because she never really liked the kind of guys you met at clubs, but she understood that Faith did.
After a while she felt the effects of the alcohol she’d had back at her place begin to wear off, so she went to the bar. She was still drunk, but she had to keep up with Faith. Fake ID at the ready, just in case they asked.
“Jack and soda, please.” she said, searching inside her bag for her money.
“Buffy?” a familiar voice caught her attention.
She looked up, and for the first time got a good look at the barman she’d addressed.
“Spike?”