(no subject)
Title: Fine Lines
Rating: PGish.
Summary: Fred talks to herself, and crosses the crazy line. Spred~!
Setting: Angel season 5. AU, shortly after Spike gets corporeal.
There's a fine line between recklessness and courage. Or so some song says, I imagine there's also a pretty fine line between sanity and crazy, too. I've crossed it plenty of times, and even this long after Pylea and the writing on walls, I still cross it. Though not usually very drastically.
See, Spike's corporeal again, mind. I should be happy! What I worked on for so long, finally came true. Except, I didn't do it, some box did, and for the past two and a half weeks, he's been living unlife to the fullest. Drinking himself into oblivion and surrounding himself with scantily clad women who wear too much makeup and have no sense of personal space.
But... I'm not happy.
He hasn't been to see me since the fiasco with him and Angel with the Cup of Perpetual Sodapop. He's been out there, prancing through Los Angeles like some kind of bizarre leather-clad Nutcracker Prince, with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand rather than a sword, and a woman on his arm who wears rhinestones but not underpants. I mean, come on! I did everything to help him become corporeal, and he just runs off with girls in see-through pumps and inch-long nails!
Calm down, Fred, take a deep breath, don't break another pencil.
So I've placed myself in my office late at night, writing pages and pages of equations so I can shut out the images that just won't go away of him and 'ladies of the evening', as Mama liked to say.
My fuming turns to moping, and my equations become sad little doodles.
I know I told Angel I didn't fall for his smiles and the flirting, and I really didn't. It wasn't that.
I fell for him. I fell for his mind, I fell for Spike and William. I fell for that sincerity, that quiet knowledge of things he's learned from being so old, his eyes, and his personality. Yeah, he flirts and is snarky, but he's also kind, and can be sweet. He apologised to me, for peeking on me in the shower to communicate.
I figured out myself where the 'Reaper' came from, but he came to me first.
There's so much more to him than Angel and the others see. There's something beneath the leather and sarcasm. Something prematurely aged and quiet. Not that he aged prematurely, I mean. It's... a feeling of something more than he lets on. He has so much to give, but the women of his life have refused it.
Midway through a doodle of Feigenbaum the rabbit and Copernicus the giraffe, the door opens and someone pulls up a chair.
Spike.
He smells of alcohol, but it's more his usual scent of mild intoxication than actual overdoing of the stuff. I know he's come to say goodbye.
"Hello, pet."
Pause, lift head, give look of trepidation.
"Hello, Spike."
"You okay, ducks?"
"Mmhmm, just fine. How was Harmony?"
Shoot! Damn it, brain! You know full well Harmony tried to tear his throat out, don't get jealous of her, you already forgave him for that because he had JUST come back.
"Fred?"
Quick! Change the subject!
"I-I mean, how is being solid again? I hear it's... harmonious."
I hide myself behind a thick book with symbols I don't get, but Wesley could. Why is it here, again?
He's moving, sitting himself beside me on the desk, he's a mere foot away.
"Pet, look I'm... I'm bloody sorry about not coming to you at first, you busted your arse for me, and it wasn't fair."
He looks so sincere, and his eyes are so blue. But even so, I must have leaped clear over the crazy line at this point because I'm still talking without thinking.
"That's not what I mean. I mean, I can understand that feeling, suddenly being right again, home again. But, not the two and a half weeks of running around like, like, like nothing matters!"
Like I don't matter.
"Pet, I don't-"
I've obliterated the crazy line now and am tap-dancing on it's remains. I can't help myself, because he doesn't understand and I can't speak it because he loves Buffy, he will always love Buffy and never me. But I can take one chance, get one sliver before he gets the chance to say goodbye to me and run off to see her.
I get up from my chair before he can finish speaking and take his face in my hands, mushing our lips together in the most passionate kiss I can muster. His mouth tastes like warm beer, and he smells like leather, and old libraries, and some sort of male smell that all men seem to come equipped with that make women turn to jell-o. He's not quite cold and not quite warm, but his lips feel so right, and there's electricity moving between us that would make Alessandro Volta go berserk, and I think he's kissing me back but I can't really tell.
I pull back and he's just staring, stunned.
"Fred, I-"
"I-I'm so sorry."
I grab my bag and flee out the door, through the lab.
"Fred! Fred, wait!"
Through the building, out the door, into the night.
=====
I haven't been in my apartment long. Long enough to settle on the couch and sniffle quietly into a pillow. I wipe my face and eyes.
Someone's been knocking at the door for the past ten minutes.
"Fred, open the door, pet. Come on, talk to me, please."
He must have followed me here.
I don't want to open the door, but I do. There he is, looking... I can't tell how he looks. But he speaks quietly and his voice is full of something.
"I didn't think you'd want me."
"What?"
"I've seen Knox lookin' at you, an' Percy. Th' way you an' Knox get on, thought you'd choose one of 'em. I'm a vampire, pet. I've loved twice too hard and got beaten to a pulp for it. I didn't want to start, when I knew it'd never begin."
"I love you. Come in, it's okay."
The words are so easy to say, and the corners of his lips twitch up in a smile, mouth open a little. I reach out and take his hand through the doorway.
He walks in and catches my mouth with his, shutting the door quietly behind him. Breaking away is hard, but I need to breathe like he doesn't.
"I love you, Fred."
"Thank you."
Laughter and kissing, suddenly we're lying on my couch, my head and hand on his chest, and we're holding each other, talking about silly things like why America is the only country that calls Football, Soccer, and whether I think it's too much of a problem for him to slip superglue into Angel's hair gel.
There's a fine line between sanity and crazy, but I think love and crazy are on the same side of that line.