Companion Piece to Letters from Space (Andrew/Xander friendship, PG)
((Title from Edwin McCain's I've Seen a Love.)
Special thanks to Selene for the gorgeous artwork for this story.
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She’d nearly thrown it away.
Finding a blank envelope in the center of her bed when she’d returned home that night had been a surprise, and not an entirely welcome one. She and Giles, relationship already strained by his betrayal, had stopped speaking altogether over what she had interpreted as his far too blasé attitude regarding Spike’s sacrifice on the hellmouth. Communication, however, was still necessary, and they’d resorted to using Willow, Xander, and the Potentials as go-betweens whenever avoidance became impossible; on a few occasions, however, the lack of an available third party had meant that she received notes in tight, rigid script, tension and annoyance and disappointment imbuing every letter on the page.
So when she’d entered her room, exhausted and drained after a day of training and shepherding the Potentials from pillar to post in an effort to round up a good stockpile of life’s necessities, such a disapproving note was what she’d expected when she’d walked in and seen the little island of white in the middle of the patterned spread. Furious that the all she was giving was apparently still not yet enough, she’d had it in her hand to dispose of it when she realized that the envelope wasn’t of the heavy, watermarked stock that Giles reserved for such communiqués; rather, it was a plain paper envelope, with ink cross-stitching the insides to preserve privacy. That fact in and of itself gave her no real clue as to where it had come from, but it wasn’t Giles’ style, and that had been enough to stay her hand, to make her place it on the nightstand rather than in the trash.
It had been two more days until she’d read it, two days during which Andrew acted twitchy and Xander circumspect, a number of whispered conferences between the two of them finally prompting Xander to mention the envelope to her one night as he passed her in the hallway, her nightly routine complete and her mind already firmly on the sleep that she was determined would not be elusive that night, as it had been on so many others.
“The envelope—from the other day? Just read it, Buff.” That was all Xander had said, preoccupied and tired all on his own, but the fact that he knew about the envelope at all was enough to reawaken her so-briefly-sparked curiosity.
She had pulled down the covers, tucked herself in, and unfolded, by the faint light of the bedside lamp, the pages she’d found inside the envelope. The note from Andrew, the message between the lines that told her he’d been afraid to simply hand the gift to her, had made her both smile and ache, and she’d thought to herself that she’d need to do something small, something special for him the next morning. There had been a comic shop a few blocks away—she’d hoped that maybe Xander or one of the Potentials knew of something that he wanted and hadn’t yet bought.
The tears had begun within the first stanza, pricking and burning her eyelids as she fought vainly to blink them back. By the end of the fourth, she’d given up on any thoughts of holding in her grief and was instead simply wiping the tears away frantically, trying to keep her eyes clear. Two pages, three, then on to the fourth and fifth; the edge of the sheet had been soaked from being used as a proxy handkerchief, and yet she’d simply sniffled and continued. The last word had served as little more than a coda, a signal for her to go back to the beginning and start anew.
She doubted that Andrew would ever really understand what a gift he’d given her; it was obvious that he had poured his heart and his energies into his effort, and she was more than grateful for that alone. But what he’d done was so much more—that was Spike, her Spike, there on those pages, recreated through the eyes of another. Eyes unburdened by the baggage of Spike’s first tenure in Sunnydale, his returns and efforts to kill her, the struggle he’d put up against the changes resulting from the chip and his love for her. The Spike that Andrew had memorialized was the Spike that she saw when she closed her eyes to sleep, the Spike that her heart remembered, even though her mind remained an archive of all of the other. To see him there—in black and white, ink and parchment—as her Spike meant that he had been that man to someone else, that what she had seen wasn’t illusion or hopeful projection but truth. Her Spike was real—real to someone other than her—and the joy and the relief of the discovery made her weep with joy and longing and despair all at once.
Andrew, however, had done more than simply capture Spike. Apparently, because of his omnipresence, he’d managed to simultaneously annoy everyone and fade into the background; the latter skill had served his observations well, allowing him access to moments that she’d believed had gone unwitnessed by anyone but she and Spike. She’d felt as though she was the walking memorial to the messy, complicated, confusing reality that had been the love she and Spike had shared; flipping through the pages, she discovered that a written memorial had been created for her. Fragments of conversations, glances, moments when he’d taken her hand or held her when no one was watching, allowing her to be needy with him though everyone else wanted nothing but strength… it was all there. Moments that made her hate herself for having wasted so much time, followed quickly by the ones that made her grateful for the times they’d had.
She’d stunned Andrew when she’d seen him the next morning, giving him a genuine hug and murmuring a “thank you” in his ear. She’d taken him to the comic shop later that afternoon, but she got the distinct impression that nothing she’d bought had made him as happy as the hug or the thanks.
When the tension with Giles had gotten to be too much, when the situation with the Potentials had eased enough that her absence wouldn’t be an undue hardship, Buffy had packed to leave. Dawn coming along had been a foregone conclusion, but the invitation she’d extended to Andrew had surprised those who didn’t know about the poem, as well as those who did and still didn’t understand. His bags and boxes had stacked up alongside hers and Dawn’s, however, and had been shipped at the same time. He was still sometimes an annoyance, always just a bit too much, but Buffy had come to think of him as a sort of younger brother—hers to protect, to spend time with, to take care of as she’d vowed anew to take care of Dawn.
Sitting on the couch, fingering the well-worn paper gingerly, she found she didn’t need to read along any longer; the words were there when she closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe that she’d almost thrown it away. She’d been so thankful for that poem for so long, it seemed inconceivable that soon she wouldn’t need it, wouldn’t need the daily devotional reading to which she’d become accustomed.
The knock on the door startled her from her reverie, and she jumped over the back of the couch in her haste to reach it. The heavy, dark wood swung open to reveal what may well have been the most welcome sight she’d ever seen: Spike, in the flesh, duster and life—well, his version of it—intact. He looked so uncertain, so shy and hesitant, that she knew she’d be the one making the first move. The soft kiss she gave him as she leaned across the threshold brought a smile to both of their faces, even as it brought some of the old confidence back into his stance.
“Come in, Spike,” she whispered against his lips, and he stepped forward into the apartment, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her against him.
“’Spose I oughta be grateful that Andy can’t keep his mouth shut,” he murmured into her hair, taking a long moment to simply glory in the feeling of her in his arms again.
“You don’t even know the half of it,” Buffy answered as she tilted her head back to kiss him again.
There’d be time enough to show him later, to let him read for himself the words that had helped to keep him alive in her heart and her mind during the long, cold days he’d been gone. Time enough to show him just how grateful for Andrew’s gift of gab they both should be. But now, Buffy thought as their lips touched again… now, time was just what they made of it.