Dawn put down the paint roller she had been cleaning, washed her hands and came over to look at her mother's list and lay claim to a can of Coke. She pulled out one of the rickety chairs and took a seat next to Joyce at the ancient Formica-topped table that had been left by the store's previous occupants.
"I could do the banner," she suggested.
"Thank you, honey! I seem to have my hands full just trying to get the light-catchers finished." Joyce had come to the conclusion that while there might be other things for which she'd be qualified, she wanted to do something that would let her keep at least one foot in the art world. Sunnydale was too small to support two competing galleries and, unsurprisingly after nearly a year, her old workplace had already been fully staffed when she made her return from the dead.
She had managed to talk several local craftsmen into providing stock on a commission basis, pottery, hand-made candles and the like. That had gone some way towards keeping her start-up costs to a minimum.
After that, she had worked on resurrecting a few skills she hadn't had occasion to put to use since her college days, turning most of the loft above the store into a studio. She'd turned several bolts of linen into tablecloths, of which she and Dawn had so far managed to embroider about two dozen. She'd produced enough handmade greetings cards to fill a stand. However, the glass and the tools she had ordered for the stained-glass light-catchers and picture frames that she planned to make had taken longer to arrive than anticipated. The first few small pieces she had done hadn't come out good enough to sell, well, not in her opinion, though Buffy and Dawn had each claimed one for their own rooms. Now, time was running short, and she was going to be working flat out to get the pieces she had planned finished in time for the opening.
"I'm guessing food means actual cooking?" Buffy asked, sounding doubtful. "Rather than finding a caterer in the phone book?"
"Not necessarily, honey," Joyce decided, knowing that putting Buffy on kitchen duty could easily result in disaster. "I'm sure you can pick up most of the things we'll need at the deli."
"Well, if it's just shopping, I can do shopping... I'll make up an order. You can check it over and I'll drop it off and then pick up the stuff that morning."
"Not the cake," Dawn amended, "but I guess I can bake that the day before."
Buffy raised an eyebrow in disbelief, but the last thing she was going to do was volunteer to do it herself. If it came out with the texture of pumice stone or Dawn decided to use peanut butter instead of frosting, then she could always add a frozen gateau to her shopping list.
"Decorations?" Joyce asked.
Buffy looked around at walls that were now mostly lilac. "We've got those purple and silver ones in the attic from the millennium."
Her mother looked at her watch. "By the time we get home and get something to eat it'll be nearly time for Spike to pick you up for patrol, but maybe you can check them tomorrow sometime."
"I can't buy booze," Dawn pointed out. "Buffy will have to get the drinks."
Buffy shrugged and her mother ticked off one more item.
"And other than the rest of the decorating and the shelving, and Xander's going to put those together this weekend, that just leaves party favours."
Buffy's lips lifted into a smile that was almost smug. "I think I can cope with that one."
Joyce cast a curious glance her daughter's way, but decided that she really didn't want to ask.
Buffy stuck her hands deeper into her pockets as she and Spike meandered their way to the cemetery, wondering why it was that she found the idea of wrapping her arm through Spike's far more tempting these days than she ever had when she had been screwing him senseless on a regular basis.
"Spike?" she asked slightly hesitantly. "Do you still have that car of yours or did you trade it in for poker kittens when you got the motorcycle?"
Spike looked momentarily embarrassed. "No, I didn't trade it in for kittens, just didn't seem much point leaving it rusting in a lock-up half way across town when I was walkin' everywhere. Car like that you have to keep on top of the maintenance."
The slayer gave a disbelieving snort, which Spike pointedly ignored, continuing with his explanation.
"It wasn't like I was planning on needing it for a daytime getaway. Figured I was done moving for a while."
Buffy grinned and shot him a teasing glance. "So did you get anything for it... or did you have to pay the guy at the junkyard to take it away?"
"Heyyy!" Spike couldn't help protesting, even though he knew it was exactly the reaction Buffy had been angling for. "I'll have you know that I could have got plenty for her if I'd gone to a specialist dealer but I wanted to make sure she went to someone I knew would look after her instead."
"Someone who might let you borrow it?" Buffy asked hopefully.
"Maybe," Spike answered slightly cagily. "Why the sudden interest?"
"Well, you know 'Summers Day' opens a week from Saturday?" Buffy checked.
Spike gave her a look that seemed to ask whether she thought he'd been living on a separate planet for the last few months. "I'd heard a vague rumour," he drawled. "You did tell her I said just to let me know if she wanted help with anything?"
"I did, but we've been trying to make sure she doesn't hang around there after dark... Partly because of the vamp thing, partly to keep her from overdoing it. Anyway, Mom decided she wants to throw a party there on the Friday night."
"And?" Spike prompted, eyebrow raised.
"And I get to buy all the food and drink... which is kinda easier if it's a matter of walking out of the deli and putting everything in the trunk rather than trying to balance half a dozen paper sacks and keep everything the right way up."
"Tell you what, pet," Spike suggested. "You buy some masking tape and a few rolls of tinfoil and I'll play chauffeur all you want, but, since your mom is going to be busy in the shop, it's probably going to be easier to borrow her car than get my hands on the DeSoto."
"Done," Buffy agreed.
"On two conditions..." Spike hastily added.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Which are?"
"I get an invite..."
Buffy's hand left her pocket without much in the way of conscious thought, swatting the vampire across the arm. "Like mom was going to have a party and not ask you? Duh! And?" It would have been so, so very easy to wrap her fingers around the crook of his elbow instead of returning her hand to her pocket, but... not yet.
"You make sure you get some spicy chicken wings."
Buffy just gave a slight 'I should have known' shake of her head in reply, and they walked the next hundred yards or so in silence before curiosity got the better of her. "So if you didn't lose the money on poker, what did you do with it?"
Spike thought of the bits and pieces he'd bought to make the crypt a little more comfortable for those times that Dawn had been there that summer, and their occasional outings to the cinema or the theatre or to the pier and of the money that he'd slipped to the teenager when Willow had decided that they'd overspent on buying clothes for the life-size Barbie and cut the real kid's allowance back to nearly nothing...
"To paraphrase a living legend, 'I spent a lot of money on booze and birds. The rest I just squandered.*'"
Buffy gave a wry smile as she spotted the glowing tip of a cigarette in the darkness outside her window. Even now, after all this time, he waited there. Even though it had been months since her mom had begun inviting him in for hot chocolate after he walked her back from patrol. He'd come in, share a drink... but as soon as either she or her mom showed signs of tiring, he'd head out into the darkness. Only he wouldn't go any further than the tree at the edge of the garden, not until she'd turned out her bedside lamp, not until she drifted into sleep.
Every night she slipped into the arms of Morpheus with her slayer senses telling her that her very own guardian demon was watching over her... and every night it took a greater effort of will not to open the window and call to him. Every night she bit down on her pillow to keep herself from screaming his name as she did what little she could to release the post-slayage tension from her body... and every night she awoke in the early hours, soaked in sweat with his name on her lips.
So what's new? What was new was that she had decided this limbo thing had to end.
They'd never be friends... or they'd never be just friends. They could play the parts. She could talk to him about how she didn't know what to do now her mom was insisting that she go back to college, how she worried about what would happen if the shop didn't get off the ground and she was sucking money from her mom's pockets. She could slay with him. Even family video nights didn't seem complete any more without him providing sarcastic commentary. He was her best friend... but she couldn't tell him the 'best friend' secrets. She couldn't talk to him about that special guy that maybe she liked, not when he was the guy, not until she was completely sure. Ever since the pokey demon with the impossible name, ever since she had told him maybe sometime, she knew that Spike, with an occasional restraining hand from her mom when he'd come close to losing his patience, had been waiting for her to come to her senses and realise... and she had finally got off the short bus.
It had been nearly two weeks now since she had been forced to admit to herself that it was never going to change. Nearly two weeks since she'd rented "From Hell" for her and Dawn to watch one afternoon while her mom was at some meeting with the bank.
When you found yourself watching Johnny Depp, wondering what he'd look like with his hair bleached and wishing that those expressive eyes of his were a certain specific shade of blue instead of a soulful brown, that was when you had to admit that you had it bad. Bad enough that it wasn't going to go away this side of him completely breaking your heart.
Two weeks of waiting for the perfect moment, talking her mom into throwing the party, planning it all in the finest detail, including making sure that it would all go down after Xander left to work on that contract in Barstow, so that she could invite him, knowing full well he wouldn't come. Xander's self-righteous lectures were so not going to ruin that night... Two weeks gone or nearly and at least three more nights of self-induced torture to go before she could even make the first move... always assuming she didn't cave and summon Spikeo to her balcony. Apart from that whole 'doing things right this time' thing, the big problem with that was that even if she would have be to blind not to realise that her mom was already treating Spike like the son-in-law she didn't have, she was also pretty certain that aforementioned mom would not want to be kept awake all night by the sound of him and her daughter making up for months of abstinence with wild, knee-trembling, wall-tumbling sex... or to get up tomorrow and find parts of the house missing, though maybe with the amount of negative equity on this place, if they could bring it all down, the insurance-. Buffy pushed the window closed and pulled the curtains tight before she could get any further with that thought. She should just about have time for a nice cold shower before she went to bed.
Buffy shouldered open the door of Summers Day, a box about twice the size of a shoe box in her arms and another smaller box on top of it. She slid both onto the counter that now occupied the corner opposite the door at the front of the shop before sliding the smaller box into a drawer under the counter. "Dual purpose party favours, present and correct," she announced, pulling the tape from the top of the box.
"Let me see," Dawn demanded, nearly pushing her sister out of the way in her eagerness to get into the box. "Mugs?" she asked. She sounded less than impressed until she pulled what she had taken to be a plain white mug from the case of twelve. "Ooh! They've got the store's name on." On each side in an elegantly scripted impressionist blend of pastel hues the mugs read Summers Day against a background of Shakespearian quotes, including the one from which the store took its name, in a smaller script.
"Saves on clearing up," Buffy told her in a satisfied tone. "Everybody takes home their own dirty dishes..."
"And what was in that other package?" Joyce asked, from where she stood on top of a ladder arranging some of the more expensive ceramics on the top shelf.
"Other package?" Buffy asked with an air of false innocence. "What other package?"
Spike broke off from his self-appointed task as music monitor, having so far rejected all the CDs that Joyce had had in the car's glove compartment, and most of the preset radio stations. At the sound of approaching footsteps, he turned the radio off and shrank as far back against the driver's door as he could.
Buffy climbed into the passenger seat of her mom's nearly unrecognisable four wheel drive. Even a car as big as it was seemed almost claustrophobic when, apart from the smallest possible slit for him to look out of at the front and a couple of tiny gaps that allowed a view of the wing mirrors at each side, all the windows were covered with tinfoil. She slid her single paper sack through between the front seats and into the foot well behind Spike.
Spike, looked over, his eyes distorted by those same ridiculous goggles he had worn when they had tried to take Dawn away from Sunnydale. "D'you get everything?" he asked.
Buffy nodded. "Napkins, plastic plates, straws, bottle opener, candles for the cake, a proper knife, a bag of mixed plastic cutlery and enough Coke to keep Dawn on a sugar rush for a week."
For a moment Spike tried to think over all the things she had said they would need. He failed to remember anything that she might have forgotten and after a quick check in his mirrors he pulled out of Walmart's handicapped parking area. "Where to now, Lady Penelope?" he asked.
Buffy tilted her head slightly to one side. "Mom took the cake with her when she drove to the shop this morning and it's probably best if we hit the deli as soon before closing as we can, so I guess it's the liquor store."
Three quarters of an hour later, as the first pink edges were beginning to shade the clouds of the evening sky, Spike pulled up in the parking area at the back of Summer Days and began getting his blanket arranged for the dash to the store's back entrance.
Even before he got there, Dawn pulled it open and stepped out of his way. As soon as he was inside, she began to help her sister pull some of the bags from the car, Buffy seeming to select specific ones to pass to the younger girl, who disappeared upstairs to the studio with her load.
Spike looked around at a loss for where to begin until Buffy came in and pushed several bags onto the old table that still sat near the rear of the shop out of the reach of the afternoon sun. "Pick a tablecloth, cover this up," she instructed him. "Then, see what you can do with these." She indicated the Walmart bag and some of the bags from the deli. "...and no snacking on the buffalo wings until everybody else gets here. I want to check on mom once I get the rest of the things out of the car."
"No need," Joyce announced coming down the stairs just slightly ahead of Dawn. "The few that aren't done now will just have to be finished another time. I think I have enough to be going on with."
"We can take care of this, you know, Joyce?" Spike told her, tilting his head to one side and looking slightly puzzled.
"Is something wrong?" Buffy asked, knowing the look.
"Guess not... Some of these old buildings have weird acoustics. It just sounds like there's still folk moving around up there," he said, still sounding thoughtful but looking to Joyce as if for confirmation, "but that would be a stupid idea, seeing as how you would have noticed half a dozen people clomping through your workshop like a bunch of Clydesdales."
"Yes, well, I'm sure we would have," Joyce answered, casting a glance in Dawn's direction, but she didn't sound quite so decisive as Spike thought she might have hoped for.
It took less than ten minutes for the four of them to arrange the food and hang most of the decorations around the room, giving it a festive air.
Joyce looked at the room in general, the food laid out on the table, the mugs and the bottles of red wine on the counter and seemed to find herself satisfied. "Dawn, I think it's time you brought that banner down. Spike, if you can get up on the counter at that end and I use the ladder at this end, she should be able to pass it up."
Soon, Dawn came running back downstairs, carrying a length of what looked like wallpaper that had obviously been carefully folded to avoid creasing it. She passed one end to her mother who held it against the wall and pressed a couple of times with the staple gun she had been using earlier before handing the gun to Dawn, who opened out the banner as she moved, passing the other end and the gun up to Spike. The vampire adjusted the length of paper until it seemed level and fixed his own end in position before he jumped down to see how it looked from a distance.
Dawn had used a thin wash of colour as a background, almost the same lilac as the shops walls, and then she'd used a font and colours as near to those on the mugs as she had been able to manage, but the message had nothing to do with the shop's opening. Instead, it read 'Happy Birthday, Spike!'.
The vampire stared at the banner for long seconds and Buffy was sure that there was a hint of moisture in his eyes, when he finally managed a less than eloquent, "Wha'?"
Buffy stepped up next to him. "You never want to tell anyone about your past. We couldn't even try to find out when it was because we don't know your real name, so we picked one for you. According to Giles's diaries it'll be four years to the day on Monday since you first turned up at The Bronze and threatened to kill me, so officially it's Monday, but by then the shop would have been up and running and you might have got suspicious. Happy birthday, Spike."
A chorus of voices started singing a slightly ragged version of 'Happy Birthday to You' and first Anya emerged from the stairway followed by Giles, Willow, Tara, Clem, Halfrek and a middle-aged man who Spike didn't recognise. Anya carried a huge chocolate cake with a dozen flaming candles. Giles had what looked to Spike like Dawn's portable CD player and several of the others carried ice buckets, the first of which held something suspiciously resembling a bottle of champagne and Clem grinned as he cheerily waved a bottle of Jack Daniels.
"You did all this for me?" Spike asked hoarsely turning to Buffy as the song finished.
Buffy grinned. "Well, duh! I don't see anyone else's name on that banner. Now go blow out those candles while I sort out the mugs, and count yourself lucky I only bought one packet instead of a hundred and twenty eight.**"
She gave him a nudge toward the table where Anya had put the cake down.
"Make a wish!" Dawn told him excitedly, claiming his arm as her own now that her sister had relinquished it, then she stopped in her tracks, staring first at Halfrek and then at Anya. "Human? Right?"
Anya rolled her eyes as Spike took a deep breath and blew out the candles. "It's not like he's going to say it out loud, anyway, is it?"
As the last flame flickered out the room filled with the sound of The Clash's version of 'I Fought the Law'.
Anya beamed proudly at the look of pleasant surprise on the vampire's face. "Giles chose the music and I helped him make it into compilation CDs. You can keep them afterwards. Happy Birthday!" She stepped forward and stood about six inches in front of him with her arms held slightly awkwardly away from her sides, until Spike recognised the gesture for what it was and stepped into the hug, wrapping his arms around her.
Buffy moved mugs one by one over toward where her mother was opening the bottle of champagne, naming the guests to herself as she slid them across. Mom. Me. Dawn. Giles. Anya. Clem. Brian. She smiled at the thought that a chance meeting had brought Joyce's old suitor back into her life, still single, and, once they managed to convince him that Joyce's death hadn't been a rather extreme form of brush-off, still interested. Willow. Tara. Hallie. Pausing she leaned over the counter to open the top drawer and pulled out another mug, different from the rest. Spike.
Her mother gave her a knowing smile as she read the legend on that last one, pressing it and another into Buffy's waiting hands. "About time, honey," she told Buffy her in a dry tone before she began passing the remaining mugs around.
Spike had been caught out once tonight already, so when Buffy seemed intent on passing the mug in her right hand to him rather than giving him the one in her offhand, he was quick to raise it so that he could read what was written there.
A second later, the mug had been abandoned on a nearby shelf. He reached out almost tentatively to cradle Buffy's cheek with one hand, drawing her towards him as he bent his head towards her and brought his lips down to meet hers in a slow languorous kiss that only just fell within the bounds of what might be decent with Joyce and Dawn in the room.
As Spike lifted his head Giles gave a gentle cough. "I think perhaps we should have a toast. To Spike..."
Spike waited dutifully as everyone else drank to his health before he raised his 'Kiss the Slayer' mug and countered. "To Joyce ...and to every success in all her new ventures," he added, with a teasing glance at where Joyce's fingers were entwined with the stranger's.
*George Best (22nd May 1946 - 25th Nov 2005), footballing legend for Manchester United and Ireland - "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
**Based on the fact it's two years approximately since Spike told Willow he was only one hundred and twenty six rather than the date he was turned as per Fool for Love.
