Chapter 79 - Arrangements

They had been on the road for two weeks.

It had been nineteen days since Darla.

He had gone out every night after that day. He couldn’t stand being around Dru. All she did was talk about Darla.

And Spike.

Angelus had killed blonde girls. Two or three a night, sometimes. Cut them up and pretended they were the Slayer. Sometimes he’d pretended that they were Darla when they were beneath him. Their cries of pain could have been her screams of pleasure. She’d liked pain.

But those girls had just been distractions to tide him over.

He hadn’t had a plan beyond catching the Slayer somewhere and taking his time using her to get revenge. He’d always wanted to kill her of course, but for this, she would only be an instrument.

He would make Spike watch as he did everything he could think of to that ripe little body before he killed her in front of him. When he was done, Spike would die as well.

It had been a good plan.

Then there had been the night that Dru had started a bonfire in the living room, and all his plans had changed.

-----
-
-
-
They needed to talk.

They hadn’t actually discussed anything that had happened in the alley. She’d come home and crawled into bed, and had only gotten up in time to go to class the next day. Neither of them had brought up any related topic since. Buffy had suspected that Spike was waiting for her to do it.

So they hadn’t talked yet. But she had been thinking.

Spike was asleep.

Buffy wasn’t.

It was the afternoon, and he was napping. She was attempting to, especially since she had volunteered to watch Oz that night. So far, sleep wasn’t happening. But she continued to lie in bed, nestled against the fabric of his shirt.

She wondered, sometimes, how she could rest so easily in the arms of a killer.

Spike was a killer.

Oh, he was many other things as well. But when you stripped it all down, he was a vampire at the core. It colored every single thing he did. Every action, every thought, every utterance was influenced by what one hundred plus years of being a vampire had made him.

Even if he never killed another person, he would still be a killer.

It was easy to forget that sometimes. When he smiled at her, hugged her, helped her. When he carried up the groceries even though she was just as strong, when he kissed her before fastening the strap on her motorcycle helmet.

He was a complete mess of contradictions. He was sweet and affectionate. But he could be cold and brutal. Not to her—never to her—but it was always there. And it would always be there.

And she was in love with him.

She loved Spike.

Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe it was wrong to love someone who had callously caused so much pain and death for so many years.

But she couldn’t pick who she fell in love with. And they had shared too much for her not to want a life with him.

She didn’t think about the past, about the countless people whose lives he had ended. If she did, she would go crazy. She could only acknowledge that it had happened and that it was horrible. There was nothing that could be done to change it, whether she was with him or not. She had decided long ago that she could accept the past as long as it didn’t repeat itself.

That had been when she’d tried not to be in love with him—when things between them had been so uncertain. Buffy had known that she’d liked him, and that she probably shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it. However, she also had been sure that things between them were going to end.

No matter what she’d felt, she’d firmly told herself that it wasn’t love. Because it would be so much more crushing when she had to leave him if it was. So she hadn’t been in love.

Spike had, though.

He’d said it first.

In the days after that, Buffy had realized that she loved him. That she’d loved him already, but hadn’t been able to think about it until now—now that loving didn’t mean more pain in the future.

But she still hadn’t been able to say it. It had barely been three weeks ago that he’d told her, saying that he wanted her to know but that she didn’t have to say anything back.

Spike had said it since then, though he hadn’t seemed disappointed when she didn’t return the sentiment. But Buffy knew he wanted to hear it. How could he not? Even if it wasn’t right now, he expected to hear the words from her sometime.

But she didn’t know when to say it, how to say it. She didn’t want to say it wrong. It was going to be the first time she told him, and she wanted the moment to be special.

Maybe it was partly because in her previous relationship, ‘I love you’ had been thrown around as easily as ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ ‘I love you,’ on the phone; ‘Love you,’ at lockers before class.

Suddenly, she knew that Spike had woken up beside her. He hadn’t moved or made a sound—hadn’t even started inhaling and exhaling again—but she knew when she turned her head that he would be looking at her.

He was.

“Not get any sleep?”

“No. Just thinking,” she said.

“What about?”

“You.”

He raised an eyebrow. “All good, I hope.”

She smiled. “More or less.”

“And?”

Buffy laid her head on his chest. “I’ll tell you later,” she said softly.

Spike paused, his hand coming up to rest on her shoulder. “All right, pet.”

I love you.

She didn’t want it to sound like everyday words. She wanted it to be perfect. It was everything.

He was everything.

Buffy knew what they had wouldn’t be easy. Things would always happen that they would have to work through. He saw things in a way that she couldn’t comprehend sometimes. She reacted to things in a way he simply couldn’t understand sometimes.

Spike was a vampire. He would always think like a vampire. And yet, the fact that he would do anything she asked, even if he didn’t value her reasons, had been proven again and again.

It was enough.
-
-
-
-----

The boy behind the counter was nervous.

Granted, he’d seen much worse. Demons were regular customers. But this guy…just creeped him out.

Hours ago, he had come in and politely asked where he could find certain volumes. Then he’d disappeared into the back. The boy caught glimpses of him sometimes, the man’s back to him as he occasionally stood and picked up a different book from the shelf.

The woman he’d brought with him sat on the floor at the foot of his chair, mumbling nonsense and playing with her dog.

The boy thought he’d heard the woman call him Angelus.

Vampires weren’t usually a problem, but he had heard that name before. Who hadn’t?

He was abruptly shaken out of his thoughts as he heard the chair scraping across the old floor. They were both coming toward the counter.

Angelus—yeah, that had to be Angelus—nodded at him as he headed for the door, books under his arm.

“Um, sir? Are you going to pay for those?”

“I was going to let you live.” He sniffed the air. “You’re half demon. Not much good for eating.” He paused, as if considering. “Though I could kill you, if you like.”

He looked like the prospect was beginning to appeal to him.

The boy gulped. “I h-hope the books are helpful, sir.”

“I think they’re exactly what I need.” He smiled, pushing the door open.

It closed after them with a firm thud, the bell jangling against the wood.

The boy felt a mixture of relief and dread. His manager was going to kill him when he noticed the missing books. Possibly literally.

But at least it would be quick.

-----

Angelus threw the books in the backseat. He’d already gotten the text that would translate them completely.

They had been to several interesting places. For some things you just had to hit the cities. More things and beings passed through there than ever came to a suburb, Hellmouth though it had.

“Are we going home now?” Dru asked.

“Almost. I need one more thing.” He smiled as he started the car. “A new toy.”

“Oh, I’ve got lots of lovely sharp toys.”

“I know you do. But this needs to be special.”

Dru settled back against the seat, the streetlights flashing across her face as the car sped by them.

In Sunnydale, when he had announced that they were leaving, she had immediately latched on to the idea of a road trip. Dru had appeared ready to leave, wearing a simple black dress and a scarf securely tied over her hair—despite the fact that the car was not a convertible. She also had on big round sunglasses. Where she had gotten them or why she had sunglasses he didn’t know.

But she had primly taken a seat in the front of the car and fastened her seatbelt. That had lasted all of ten minutes before she was sprawled in the backseat and humming to herself.

“Oh dear, I do believe we’ve forgotten Misty,” she said presently.

He’d gotten her another dog along the way to keep her entertained and out of his hair. Well, he’d eaten a woman who was walking her dog. That had to count for something.

But he sure as hell wasn’t driving back three miles to get the thing.

“You can have a new pet soon, Dru.”

“A pretty bird!” she chirped.

Angelus grinned. “Something better.”

If Dru had a captive Spike to play with, she might not protest so much about keeping the Slayer for a while. Of course, it might not play out that way. He’d like to take his time to savor things, but if he had to kill Spike quickly, then so be it.

Having the little blonde Slayer to toy with afterward would still be extremely satisfying. Even if there was no one to watch.