Title: Acting The Part
Author:
Pattyanne
[email protected]
Disclaimer: None of the BtVS
characters
belong to me.
Feedback: Love some, thanks.
Rating: Up to NC-17
Summary:
AU. William St. James is
an actor in a hit television show.
While
appearing at a fan convention, he meets
Buffy and her six year old
daughter, Melanie.
AN: Thank you for all the wonderful feedback.
It
means a lot to me.
Part twelve.....
Paying no
attention to the crowd of gawkers assembling on
the playground, William
grinned and swung Melanie up into
his arms. "There's my princess," he said,
loudly enough for
everyone around to hear.
"You mean me?" Melanie
asked.
"Course I mean you." He gave her a squeeze. "Didja have fun
in
school today?"
The child nodded. "We did vowel sounds today. As,
Es, Is, Os, and
Us."
As always, she focused all of her attention on
him, not once
looking around to see who might be witnessing the
encounter
and reporting it the next day.
Buffy, on the other hand,
very much wanted this vindication for her
daughter and hoped that every
single one of the kids who'd been
picking on her were
watching.
Smiling at William, she said, "How did you know
where..."
"I followed you," he interjected, reaching for the drawing she
still had in her hand and looking it over.
His admission surprised
her. "You're good. I didn't
notice you at all."
William shrugged. "I
did a season and a half on 'Precinct Twelve'
I guess something stuck. This is
very good," he said to Melanie
as he inspected her art work. "What are you
going to do with
it?"
"Mommy hangs stuff on the frigerator," she
explained.
"Well, Mommy's very lucky to have so many of your
pictures
to hang up. The only thing on my refrigerator is a reminder
from
the vet that my dogs need to be wormed," he hinted
broadly.
She
tilted her head slightly and wrinkled up her small
nose. "Ewww!"
Much
as it had at the convention Q & A, their conversation
was drawing the
attention of the people around them, people
fascinated at the rapport between
the two.
"I'd love to have some of your pictures to put up,"
said
William, setting her back on her feet while keeping her
hand firmly
in his.
After that, nothing would do except that he see her
classroom, and she dragged him willingly inside with her.
Buffy
stayed by the door, watching as Melanie showed off
the evidence of her
scholastic triumphs. Spelling tests with
large red 'A' s on them were stapled
up on the "Look How
I'm Doing" board. A chart with the five food groups that
she
had colored was displayed with others at the back of the
room.
"Why is the cheese purple?" William asked, bending over
to
examine her work.
"I like purple."
"Of course."
Grabbing
his hand, she towed him up front to introduce him
to the class mascot, a
plump black and white hamster named
Oreo.
"I know it's none of my
business," Miss Ashton said quietly,
standing next to Buffy and preventing
anyone else from entering
the classroom, "but I'm beginning to think Melanie
knew exactly what
she was talking about the other day."
With her arms
folded across her chest, Buffy looked at the
teacher. "What do you
mean?"
Miss Ashton smiled and nodded at William, who was now
being
shown the contents of Melanie's desk. "He looks like pretty
good
'Daddy' material to me."
Her cheeks tinted a light pink, Buffy
watched her daughter peel
a gold foil star from a math test and stick it on
William's shirt. "He
does, doesn't he?" she murmured
softly.
*************************
After introducing him to her
teacher, Melanie tugged William
outside again and pointed out the various
landmarks of her
school, giving him a comprehensive tour of the swings and
slides,
the cafeteria, and every single drinking fountain on the
premises.
Gradually, some of the other children became braver, and the
next
time Buffy looked around she saw him sitting on one of the
swings
with Melanie in his lap and a group of kids gathered around
them,
hanging on every word he said.
She slowly drifted closer,
listening as he talked with the children,
patiently answering all their
questions.
His affection for Melanie was plain for anyone to see, but
what
surprised Buffy was the fact that she was sitting
there...virtually
surrounded on all sides by a growing crowd, a situation she
usually
avoided like the plague...calmly. She wasn't participating in the
conversation, but at least she wasn't hiding in the bathroom.
When
the little group began breaking up, William vacated the
swing and carried
Melanie back to where Buffy stood waiting.
"Thought maybe we could stop
and get some ice cream," he
said.
"Before dinner?" the child asked
incredulously. This was an un-
precedented event.
He shrugged and
looked at Buffy, leaving it up to her.
She was in far too good a mood to
give a lecture on proper
nutrition. "I think that's a great idea," she said,
taking the hand
he held out to her.
Their fingers laced firmly
together, he gave her hand a
squeeze as they walked towards the parking
lot.
Without thinking twice, Buffy squeezed
back.
********************
"Can you have dinner with us?"
Melanie piped up from the back
seat of William's SUV. "Can he?" she
immediately asked her mother.
They had returned to the parking area of
the school and Buffy had
buckled Melanie into her booster seat. After being
grabbed and
thoroughly kissed, she had driven her car home, followed by
William,
and they had taken his car to the local Baskin and
Robins.
Surprised at the initiative her daughter had just taken, Buffy
auto-
matically nodded and said, "Sure. If you'd like to," she added as
he
pulled into a parking space.
Turning the key and shutting off the engine,
he turned to look
at her with a slow smile appearing on his face. "I would
love to," he
said, his eyes telling her things he couldn't say in front of a
six year
old.
Unable to keep a silly smile off of her own face, Buffy
pushed open
the car door and climbed out. Melanie was already out of her
seat
and was yanking at the inside door latch. "It's stuck shut,"
she
announced, looking out through the rear window.
William opened the
door from the outside and held her hand
as she jumped down to the pavement.
"It's not stuck," he said. "There's
a special lock that keeps little girls
from opening it on the inside."
"How come?" Melanie asked, keeping tight
hold of his hand.
William closed the door and smiled down at her. "So
that it can't be
opened when the car is moving," he told her. "It's to keep
you safe,
pixie. It's the first time I've ever used it," he said to
Buffy.
As they crossed the parking lot, Melanie slipped her free
hand
into her mother's. "We don't got one of those on our car, do we?"
she
asked Buffy.
"No, baby. Maybe next time."
Melanie looked up at
William. "Our door sticks shut a lot," she
said. "Sometimes Mommy has to
kick it."
Holding the door open for them, he gave Buffy an inquiring
look. "You're
having car problems?"
A little embarrassed, Buffy tried
to shrug it off. "Nothing serious. It's
just an old car. You know how they
are...there's all kinds of little things
that act up."
He said nothing
for a moment, watching as Melanie examined the
various choices of ice cream
available. "You know," he finally said,
"I have an excellent mechanic. Maybe
he could take a look at it."
As much as she appreciated the offer, there
was no way she could
afford to have the work needed to fully repair her car.
She had been
letting the minor problems slide by, all the while hoping that
nothing
major would crop up.
William noticed her hesitation and knew
what was causing it. "It
won't cost anything," he added quietly. "He's a
friend, he'll do it as
a favor."
He was an actor, and he knew how to
deliver a line, but her ex-husband's
half baked stories had provided Buffy
with on the job experience at recognizing
a snow job when she heard one, and
she would be willing to wager that she
was hearing one right now. There
wasn't a doubt in her mind that the
proposed repairs wouldn't cost HER one
thin dime.
She didn't want to shoot him down by accusing him of
duplicity,
especially when it was so obviously well meant. But, at the same
time, she wasn't about to have him owe money on her account, knowing
full
well that he probably wouldn't allow her to pay him back.
Fortunately,
Melanie saved her from having to turn him down by
announcing that she'd
chosen one of the '31 Flavors' being offered
to
her.
******************************
They sat at a small
table in the far back of the shop.
Melanie worked diligently to keep the
ice cream from dripping
down the sides of her cone.
William had opted
for a dish, hoping that Buffy would do the
same. He knew that sitting there,
watching her licking an
ice cream cone would result in an uncomfortable
situation
for him.
Blithely unaware, she'd done the exact opposite of
what he'd
wanted.
He kept his raging libido as calm as he could
manage, until
his eyes zeroed in on a tiny smear of chocolate on the corner
of
her mouth. The napkin holder at their table was empty, and he
sent
Melanie back up to the counter to fetch some.
As soon as the little girl
was out of ear shot, he leaned over
the table and pinned his gaze on Buffy's.
"I want to lick that
chocolate off you with my tongue," he whispered. "It's
killing
me."
His comment both aroused and unnerved her. Turning her
head
for a moment to check on her daughter's progress, she decided
to go
with the arousal.
"Go ahead," she whispered back.
William's eyes
widened for a bare instant, and he wallowed in
the lust her words had caused
in him. Cupping her chin, he
drew her closer until he could feel her warm
breath on his
skin, then extended his tongue and lapped up the drop of
ice
cream.
He lingered on her lips for a moment, nearly choking
when
her tongue darted out and touched his.
Wondering who the
uninhibited stranger occupying her body
was, Buffy pulled back seconds before
Melanie walked up
with enough napkins to wipe every face within a three mile
radius.
Shoving her chair back and jumping to her feet, she said,
"Time
to go!" in a tone that sounded sickeningly chirpy to her
ears.
******************************
Dinner that night was
later than she normally served it.
Needing some time alone to re-group,
Buffy turned down William's
offer to help. She located some leftover lasagna
in the freezer
and reheated it, then tossed a simple salad of greens and
tomato
wedges.
After putting the meal on the table, she went upstairs
to
announce that it was ready.
Hearing quiet voices, she paused in
the doorway to her
daughter's room, and her heart melted at what she
saw.
William was sitting in the large rocking chair with Melanie
in
his lap and a book open in his hands.
"Charlotte and Wilbur were
alone," he read. "The families had
gone to look for Fern. Templeton was
asleep. Wilbur lay
resting after the excitement and strain of the ceremony.
His
medal still hung from his neck, by looking out of the corner of
his
eye he could see it. 'Charlotte,' said Wilbur after a while,
'why are you so
quiet?' 'I like to sit still,' she said. 'I've always
been rather quiet.'
'Yes, but you seem especially so today.
Do you feel all right?' 'A little
tired perhaps.' "
Once again she compared William and Angel...and once
again,
Angel came up short. He had never...not one time...sat in
that
rocker with his daughter on his lap, reading to her.
It was
another thing to add to the list she kept in her head of
things that Angel
had never done; he had never changed
Melanie's diaper...or prepared a meal
for her...or played a game
with her...or gave her a bath...or tucked her
into bed at night. Small
wonder that the child had gone searching for a
'Daddy'.
She'd never really had one.
"Nothing can harm you now.
These autumn days will shorten
and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose
from the trees and
fall. Christmas will come, and the snows of winter. You
will live
to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world, for you mean a great
deal
to Zuckerman and he will not harm you, ever. Winters will pass,
the
days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond."
Buffy sat
down on the side of Melanie's bed, just as engrossed
as she was.
"All
these sights and smells and sounds will be yours to enjoy,
Wilbur. This
lovely world, these precious days...."
The words he spoke were evocative.
These WERE precious
days.
The first six years of Melanie's life
seemed to have flown
by at the speed of light. Buffy could only imagine how
fast the
next six would go.
Precious days...
For the first
time, she found herself almost pitying Angel
for everything he had thrown
away...all the precious days that
would never, ever come
again.
TBC.....
(Excerpts from 'Charlotte's Web' by
E.B. White)
Feedback is very much appreciated.