Title: Blue Eyed Devil
Author:
Pattyanne
[email protected]
Disclaimer: None of the BtVS
characters
belong to me.
Feedback: Love some, thanks!
Rating: Up to NC-17
Summary:
AU. Spike Devlin is the
lead singer for the band 'Blue Eyed
Devil'. Buffy
Summers is the local
preschool teacher he falls in love with
shortly
before leaving for a nationwide
tour.
Part
Forty-two:
All alone in what felt like a ridiculously over sized
bed, Buffy missed him. The little snatches of sleep
she fell into weren't
enough to even start a halfway
decent dream, and when she was awake, all
she
did was think about him and sniffle.
Her back ached horribly from
her period, and she
would have loved nothing better than to cuddle
into
Spike's warmth. Although she'd known that
she was at the wrong end of the
month for con-
ception, she still had a vaguely let down feeling.
Unable
to pin it on anything else. she attributed
that to Spike's departure as
well.
The phone ringing was a welcome distraction, even
at 10:00 pm.
"Hello?"
"Hey, baby...."
**Thank god**
"Spike...hi. Are you
in Seattle?"
"Um, no....we're about 100 miles out. Bus got a flat,
and
we had to wait around for that to get fixed."
She smiled. "For a big
important star like you they
should send out a new one."
"You'd think
so, wouldn't you?" He paused a moment,
then said, "Listen, love...I'm sorry I
was such a mess at
the airport. I just....I hated the idea of being so far
away
from you."
"Spike..." She could feel her throat tighten at
the
memory. "I wasn't any better off than you were,
believe
me."
"Didja find the letter?"
"Yes. It was
beautiful."
"Well....I meant every word of it. Gonna write another
song. Just for you. Would you like that, sweetheart?"
"So much." She
nodded, forgetting for a moment that
he couldn't see her. "Make it a pretty
one."
"Pretty as you are? No problem."
Buffy caught a glance of
herself in the wall mirror. Pretty
did not really describe the way she looked
at the moment.
Her hair was a mess, her make up was smeared around
her
eyes like a raccoon, and her clothes were rumpled from
sleep. "Ugh," she said
softly, sticking her tongue out at
her reflection. "To be honest, I look
pretty hideous at the
moment."
There was a short silence, then
Spike asked, "What's
wrong?"
"Nothing." Buffy's fingers tightened on
the handset. "I
just miss you."
"I miss you, too, baby....now tell me
what's wrong?"
"What do you mean?" she hedged.
"Just what I said.
You sound out of sorts. Are you sick?"
He sounded like he was looking for
an excuse to hop
the next plane back, and she briefly considered letting
him do just that.
She sighed. "Of course not," she said,
matter-of-factly. "I
just...my period started is all. It makes me a
little....out
of sorts."
"Oh."
Was it her imagination, or did
he sound disappointed?
He suddenly chuckled, a sound that sent warmth all
the way
through her. "Better luck next time, right?"
"Wha...what did
you say?" **Please hold while I
find a tape recorder, or a court
stenographer..**
After a pause, she heard him take a deep breath.
"I
said....maybe I'll have better luck next time."
"At
what?"
"At what do you think?"
God, this man could be frustrating!
"I don't know. How
would I know?"
"Well, I'm not talking about a
lottery scratch off,
love. Come on....don't tell me you've never
thought
about it?"
"About.....?"
She heard him exhale
heavily.
"You really like it all down in black and white, don't
you?"
he muttered, then spoke up. "About having a baby."
Buffy shoved
her face into her pillow and screamed, then
placed the phone back to her ear
and spoke calmly. "You
mean....you and me?"
"What?!" He laughed. "No,
'course not. I meant the pandas
at the Washington Zoo. I read in the paper
here that
they're trying to do the deed, but no
soap."
"Spike..."
"Performance anxiety. That's the problem. I
mean, just
imagine trying to make love to your girlfriend while some
git
in a lab coat is standing on the sidelines, waiting to
stick a thermometer
up her...."
"Spike!"
"Yes, darling?"
She couldn't help it,
she had to laugh. "Stop teasing me."
"But it's so much fun."
"For
YOU."
"Yeah, for me. Now tell me you love me."
Buffy smiled. "I
love you."
"Now tell me that you want...shhhhhhssssss...uch as I
do,
baby!"
"What?" She strained her ears as hard as she could. "I
didn't
get that? Spike?"
She heard a loud hiss and pop, then several
clicks....
"..... uffy? Can you hear..........." Static
crackled.
"No," she almost shouted. "I...I can't hear you!
Spike!"
After another round of hissing and clicking, his
voice
cleared. ".....you when I get there, okay? Love
you,
baby!"
"Spike! Wait. I can hear..." The line went dead. "...you
now."
Buffy slammed the phone back into its cradle, uttering
a
word she'd only used once in her life before, and not
a bit sorry for
it.
********************************
Ring-ring.....ring-ring......
"Hello?"
"Baby,
I'm sorry," a voice whispered. "I know it's late but
we just got in and I
had to make sure you were okay. You
feeling any better?"
Buffy rubbed
her eyes and peered at the bedside clock. "Yeah,
I'm fine. Why are you
whispering?"
"Oh, there was a mix up with the hotel and I'm sharing
the room with Oz."
"No fancy suite this time?"
"Supposed to
be, but no. Listen, darling...you go back
to sleep and I'll call you
tomorrow, okay? Are you going
to work?"
"Um...yeah. Of
course."
"Of course," he echoed. "That's my sensible Miss Buffy.
Talk
to you tomorrow, then. I love you."
"I love you, too."
She hung up
the phone and stared at the ceiling.
There were times she really hated
sensible Miss
Buffy.
*****************************************
He
called the next day during the lunch break, but
was only able to talk for a
few minutes when he
was called away to solve some sort of lyrics
dispute
before, as he said, Xander and Andy came to blows
over
it.
She didn't hear from him again until after his perfor-
mance, and
he sounded so tired that she didn't want
to keep him on the phone too
long.
Over the next few days, Blue Eyed Devil traveled from
Seattle to
Salt Lake City to Denver. Buffy only got hurried
phone calls reporting their
progress, since they were moving
so quickly.
On Friday afternoon, he
called the school. Buffy was
waiting for it.
"Hey, I have a surprise
for you!" she announced. "Wait."
She ran back to her class and assembled
them into a
semi-orderly line, then marched them down to Willow's
office
where she pushed the speaker button on the phone
and nodded at
them.
"Hi, Spike!" they chorused, fairly in voice with
one
another.
Buffy heard him laugh. "Hi, kids. You being good
for
Miss Buffy?"
She shook her head and gave them a teasingly
baleful
look, but they knew that one and just giggled.
"They learned a
new song," she said. "Do you have
time to hear it?"
She'd warned them
that he might not, had tried to
explain how busy he was on this tour, but
like children
everywhere they'd chosen to believe otherwise.
"Of
course I do," he said, justifying their faith. "Let me
hear it,
guys!"
Buffy led them through a slightly off key verse of 'This
Land
Is Your Land', and when they were finished, she
held up a hand for silence so
they could hear him.
"That was wonderful!" he said loudly. In the
background
she could hear a lot of whistling and clapping. "Everybody
here
liked it!"
"How could THEY hear?" Samantha asked, tugging on
Buffy's
sleeve.
"I put you all on the speaker," Spike answered. "Thank you
for
the song, all of you. I miss you."
The entire group of children babbled
out different
versions of "We miss you, too."
Willow escorted them
back to their classroom, and Buffy took
the phone off speaker. "Did you like
that?"
"I sure did, baby. That's the nicest thing I've heard all
day.
I can't tell you how....what? I don't know...ask..."
On her end, Buffy
heard someone talking to him. "You'd
better go."
"Yeah, I guess.
Sounds like I've gotta knock a couple of
heads together. Guess whose I
mean?"
Before ending the call he advised her to keep an eye out
for
some mail he'd be sending, stressed that it was very
important, then
completely exasperated her by making
kissing sounds and hanging up when she
tried to pry
more information out of
him.
**********************************
Buffy finished out the
rest of her day in the best mood
she'd been in all week.
After
sending the last little one out the door with his
parents, she tidied her
classroom, locked up for the
weekend and said goodbye to Willow.
The
tingly sensations skittering up and down her
spine made her step a little
bouncier and her voice
a little cheerier as she went about the
mundane
chores of living.
She dropped off some clothes to be dry
cleaned, then
ran into the market and did her shopping for the
week.
Before heading home, she stopped to fill her gas tank.
The
station she frequented was across the parking
lot of 'Sunnydale Savings and
Loan', and she turned
her back quickly when she saw Riley Finn exit
the
building and get into his car, hoping he wouldn't
notice
her.
The last thing she wanted at that moment was for
Riley to see her
and ask her out.
**Nice guy, that Riley,** she thought, watching
him
drive away. **Just not the RIGHT guy...**
Someday soon she'd have
to lay her cards
on the table with him, let him know that friendship
was
all they would ever have together. It wasn't
fair to let him think otherwise,
and she wasn't going
to spend the rest of her life devising excuses
for
turning down his invitations to dinner and a movie.
Soon....but
not today. Today her thoughts were all
for Spike Devlin, and she wasn't about
to let anything
interfere with
them.
************************************
As she stood on the
front porch, juggling her packages
while simultaneously searching for her
keys, she saw
that the mailbox had a package in it. She shoved the
door
open, dropped everything she was carrying on the
floor and retrieved
it.
It was a thick mailing envelope, with her address
written in black
marking pen. She slit open
the end, then tilted it, catching the contents
in
her hand.
A videotape. Plain, black, standard everyday
videotape. The only clue to what might be on it
was a post it sticker,
its message written in the same
hand as the envelope.
Watch
me!
"Okay." Obediently, she popped the tape into
the VCR,
turned on the television, and pressed
'Play'.
TBC.......