An Englishman in New York

A/N: I think the chapters will be getting longer from here on out. It's taken me some time to really get into the story because I've never written a fanfic before. (Actually, I've never written anything but term papers before.) Hopefully, I'm learning.


Happy Birthday


The days passed quickly, each moment spent hastily as Joyce, Buffy, and Dawn scrawled to gather everything that would be needed for the Christmas meal. Spike helped as much as he was permitted, yet he often found himself being shooed from the kitchen by Joyce as her daughters looked on with knowing smiles.

It didn’t take Spike long to figure out that they were planning some sort of party for his birthday, and he didn’t have the heart to protest.

In truth, he hated his birthday and had planned on ignoring it entirely save whatever gifts he knew his parents would send from home, yet now he would have to face the day in all its ugliness – and pretend to enjoy it. For the sake of the three Summers women, he would do so.

Buffy was perplexed; Spike didn’t seem at all excited by his upcoming birthday, and turning twenty one was a milestone. Sure, he already drank – where he got his never-ending supply of Jack Daniels was between Spike, God, and whoever kept selling it to him – but there were gifts to be had!

She wondered if this was yet another of those ‘guy things’ she would never understand; she also wondered if something had happened on his birthday to make it a day he would rather forget. She knew all about horrid birthday memories.

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The morning of his birthday dawned, finding Spike alone on the back porch, a bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He knew that Joyce wouldn’t wake for another few hours, and that Dawn liked to sleep as late as possible when school was out, but he still had to worry about Buffy visiting his basement room as she was wont to do in the morning, so he’d done the thing any man would do in his place: he’d hidden outside.

As predicted, Buffy woke at sunrise and crept silently downstairs and into the kitchen, grabbing two cups of coffee. She silently thanked the powers that be for the timer on the coffee machine as she made her way into the basement. Used to rooming with Spike, she had taken to visiting him in the morning to discuss their plans for the day as they always did in their dorm room. She found the cot empty, but his luggage was still there.

Curious, she climbed the stairs again and instinctively stepped outside onto the back porch. When she saw the bottle of liquor in his hand, she palmed her brow. He drank quite a bit, that was true, but she had never seen him start the day with Jack. “Happy birthday,” she said cautiously.

“Yeah, well, it’s my birthday,” he muttered. “Don’t rightly know about the happy part.”

It was more than she had expected him to say. When he got in his moods, the usually verbose man became deathly quiet, and it always made her nervous. She sat down on the steps beside him and offered him a cup of coffee. “Are you okay?”

He accepted the coffee, doctoring it with a few pours of Jack. Capping the bottle, he set it on the bottom step and shook his head. If he spoke, he would cry, and if he wept, she would think he was weak.

Unsure of what to say, Buffy set her coffee aside and smoothed his hair lightly. Without the gel he used to slick it back, the bleached locks were untamed and curly, making him look boyish rather than roguish.

They sat that way for what felt like hours; Spike had no idea how much time had passed, and he allowed Buffy to stroke his hair as he focused on nothing in particular. “Dru died on my eighteenth birthday,” he said quietly.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, tears immediately springing to her eyes. She had only thought she knew what a horrible birthday was. She had been sadly mistaken. “What… You don’t have to –”

“She was sick, always sick, even when I first met her. I think that’s part of why I loved her. She was frail and needed someone to protect her, y’know? Had cystic fibrosis. The doctors were amazed that she lived to be seventeen with the way she was… Died right there in my arms, and you wanna know what she said?”

“What did she say?” asked Buffy gently.

“She said, ‘I wanted to wait for your birthday because today is the day I can see you. You’ll love the sunshine. You need to love the sunshine.’ She was always sayin’ shit like that. She was right bonkers, but I loved her for it.”

“The day she could see?”

“She was, and don’t laugh, she was psychic, y’know. Not like Miss Clio or that lot, the real deal.”

“What did she mean, you’ll love the sunshine?”

“Fuck if I know. I hate the sun.” His voice broke over the words, and before he realized what he was doing, Spike had dragged Buffy into his lap and buried his face in her hair.

Unsure of what to say, Buffy remained silent and wrapped her arms around him firmly, her actions more comforting than any words she could utter. She stroked his hair, then his shoulders through the material of his duster, and on impulse, she kissed his temple and cheek repeatedly.

Though the pain of Dru’s death had dimmed somewhat, this day brought it all back in terrifying detail, and he absorbed the consolation Buffy gave so freely as a man dying of thirst would drink from a well. He held her for innumerable moments, letting her catch the tears as they caught on the angular jut of his cheekbone.

Buffy noticed the light in her mother’s window come on and, as though sensing that Joyce was awake, Spike loosened his hold on her so she could rise. When she climbed off his lap, the sun peeked over the canopy of trees, backlighting the young woman so that her hair appeared to be made of spun gold.

“There it is,” Spike muttered inaudibly as he watched the play of light on Buffy’s face, “the sunshine. Dru was right.”

“What?” Buffy asked as she hid the bottle of Jack Daniels under the porch and gathered their coffee cups.

“Nothin’, Slayer,” said Spike, his mood changing quicksilver-fast. “Nothin’ at all.”

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After finishing the pot of coffee and brewing another for Joyce and Buffy, Spike showered quickly, the realization that he was in love with his roommate both dejecting and uplifting at once. He loved her. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized the signs before, but he had written his feelings off as a mixture of lust, respect, and fascination. Drusilla had known before he did, just as he knew in his heart that she wanted him to be happy. There was just one problem, a natural blonde, six-foot-three problem with broad shoulders and fists nearly twice the size of his own.

Yes, Riley definitely was a problem, but problems had never stopped him before. He worked best under pressure, and he was certain that, given enough time, Buffy could learn to love him as he loved her. Now he only needed to prove that to her. Dressing hurriedly, he studied his reflection in the mirror and stopped himself when his hand automatically reached for his hair gel. Buffy had once told him she liked the curls, so he decided to let it dry naturally for once. Hell, he would even dye it the same color as Riley’s if she wanted him to.

Gathering the laundry basket, he moved out of the bathroom and took the stairs two at a time. He halted in his tracks and dropped the basket at the sight that greeted him. Buffy, Joyce, and Dawn were waiting at the foot of the stairs, their arms full of gifts, broad smiles on their faces. Even more surprising was the fact that his parents stood behind them, both looking travel-weary yet happy.

“Bloody Hell.”

“Happy Birthday, William!” they exclaimed in tandem.

“Open my present first!” Dawn said excitedly, thrusting a poorly wrapped package into his hands.

“Honey, don’t you think we should let him sit down first?” Joyce hinted.

“Oops.” Scooping up the laundry basket, Dawn dashed out of the foyer as though a hummingbird on cocaine.

“She’s a very energetic child,” Jenny said pleasantly as she stepped forward to kiss her son’s cheek while Joyce simultaneously led Giles and Buffy into the kitchen where a cake was waiting.

“Bloody Hell,” Spike repeated, following Joyce into the kitchen. After shaking his father’s hand, he sat down on a stool as prompted and was again assaulted by Dawn and her gift.

“Open it, open it!”

Grinning, he caught Buffy’s eye as he tore into the package, finding a Ramones t-shirt nestled inside the paper. “Thanks, bit,” he said sincerely, hugging the delighted teenager. Buffy’s gift came next, a small, elongated package which she handed to him with the same secretive smile she always gave him of late. When he found a black leather guitar strap with a strange design that was a mixture of tribal and Celtic tooled on it, he kissed her cheek without thought.

“This is sort of a companion gift,” said Joyce as she presented him with her acoustic guitar. “And don’t you dare tell me that you can’t take it. It needs to be in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it and I want you to have it.

“Wouldn’t dream of turnin’ you down,” he said lightly as he hugged her. “I know how you Summers women can be when you’re ruffled.”

“T-this is from both of us,” Giles stammered as he removed his glasses and scrubbed the lenses to clean them of invisible dirt. Jenny pressed a carefully wrapped flat package into her son’s hands and smiled.

Things had been strained between Spike and his father since he had taken Dru on an impromptu tour of Europe the year before her death, and they had gotten worse after Giles had learned of his knife fights, but he accepted the gift graciously. As he unwrapped the package, his jaw nearly hit the counter when he saw the contents.

“What is it?” Buffy and Dawn asked in chorus.

“Is that a first edition of John Donne’s poetry?” Joyce gasped. “That must have cost a fortune!”

“Bloody Hell,” Spike said for the third time since he had been met with the sight of his family – the Summers included – waiting for him with their arms full of gifts. “I can’t keep this. It should be in a museum or –”

“Or in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it,” Jenny echoed Joyce’s previous words.

Bloody Hell didn’t quite cover it anymore.