TANGO
Author: 1stRab-id/Rabid/Raeann
Characters: Buffy/Spike/Roscoe(aka Rocko)
Valenti
Rating: R
Beta Babes: Unavailable…so you can
just imagine…the horror…the horror…
Synopsis: This is the story of
Buffy’s attempt to return to dating and put her
craving for Spike behind her and how that plan
goes seriously awry…because
well…it's just SO wrong <eg>
Spoilers: Up to the Season 6 Eppy Bargaining…well not really…more like to “The
Gift”
because after that I went all AU…
help and there were all kinds of ramifications but
not the same ones we have in
S6! So…other different Ramifications…and I went
totally off canon and then I
got all depressed and quit. Actually this fic
was part of the B/S history that
led to the events in my fic
Cuore Della Notte…but I
wasn't able to finish the
massive thing (which also includes my version of
the Buffy resurrection)…Still,
I
liked this bit and wanted to resurrect IT!
Even if it's lame.
Disclaimer: Obviously everything
belongs to Joss because if it belonged to me I
would be in the bloody loop wouldn’t I? Anyway, all
hail the genius of Joss
Whedon and Co. and don’t sue me for being insatiable
in my longing for B/S
interaction.
“Though
I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.”
William
Shakespeare from “A Winter’s Tale”
Part
TWO
The
corner mart was open 24 hours. In a row. Which was a good thing because
Buffy
only remembered to shop around
and put Mr. Pointy to bed. She was totally not used to being the breadwinner…or
buyer…or whatever…for the family. As she prowled the empty aisles with her
basket, she thought about how her Mom had made it all
look so easy. Joyce
Summers,
her daughter was coming to understand, had been something of a wonder
with the working and the child rearing and the
dinner creating.
“Pasta!” Buffy said, perkily, as she picking up a
box of noodles. “Pasta makes
for a nutritious dinner.”
She
turned the package over and frowned at the instructions on the back.
“It
seems simple enough,” she remarked, to nobody in particular.
But
cooking was a deceptive art. And the
Slayer had learned through bitter
experience that unlike Aikido, Swordsmanship,
Remote Viewing or even French
Braids,
it was one she was not going to master.
“Nothing
ventured, nothing stuck to the pot,” she quipped and with a fatalistic
little shrug popped some ziti and a jar of ready-made
sauce into the basket on
her arm.
“Salad, breadsticks and a nice peach sorbet
and I’m done,” Buffy said, pausing
to ponder, still thinking out loud, “Unless we
need cereal…or milk...or juice,”
she sighed, “and once again, with the reminder to
self about making a list.”
Trying
to visualize the cupboards at home, Buffy stared, absentmindedly, up the
aisle toward frozen foods. It took a moment to register something very
odd in
her line of sight.
There was a black clad, blue-eyed, vampire with a lit
cigarette smoldering in his right hand a few feet
away from her. He was leaning
nonchalantly against the aisle
shelves, watching Buffy with a sort of creepy
intensity. Which, when she came to think about it, was fairly normal. It was
the shopping cart beside him that was odd.
“Spike?”
the Slayer exclaimed, not believing her eyes. “What are you doing
here?”
In
answer, the blonde vampire held up his left hand displaying a six-pack of
dark ale, definitely not domestic.
“You’re
buying beer at the Quick-Mart?” Buffy asked, in surprise. “Since
when?”
“Since
the beer fairy stopped delivering,” Spike responded. Pushing away from
the shelving, he set his beer burden in the bottom
of his cart, took a long drag
off his cigarette and started toward her leaving
his buggy behind. “I called him
a poof one night last week and he just sodded off.”
“I
meant more like…since when are you actually buying things,” Buffy clarified,
definitely not amused by his wit. “Paying with the
money as opposed to say…I
don’t know…STEALING?”
“This
is the only bleeding place open at this hour,” Spike explained, his tone
infuriatingly reasonable. “How many
times you think I can rob it before someone
catches on?
Then we make with the recriminations and the blood-shed and the
searing head pain.”
“How
many times have you robbed it already?” Buffy asked, pointedly.
“Three
or four,” Spike shrugged, not really remembering. “Why?” he added slyly,
deliberately misunderstanding her.
“You want us to knock the place over, now?
A
sort of, Bonnie and
the contents of her basket before continuing,
“’Cause if that’s what you’re
planning we need to get the breadsticks first…a
nice Chianti…maybe a little
cheese.”
Buffy
closed her eyes and counted to ten but when she looked again Spike was
still there.
She decided to pretend he wasn’t.
She stepped around him and
started for the dairy case, certain now it was
milk she needed. Spike fell into
step beside her not taking the hint.
“Idin this nice?” he sighed. “Very
domestic. They say it’s the secret of a
healthy relationship…doing the little things
together. Call it Quality Ti…”
“Bugger
off!” Buffy snarled, whipping around on him.
Spike
fell back a step from the unexpected assault and then what the Slayer had
just said hit him. It hit Buffy at the same time.
She turned a lovely shade of
red.
“I-I
m-mean…Go Away,” she stammered, blushing right down to her toes.
“Oh,
I understood you the first time, Pet,” the vampire assured, grinning
wolfishly. “English is my native tongue, you
know.”
“And
I could so easily make it Sign Language,” the Slayer growled, using one
hand to mime the ripping out of Spike’s native
tongue. Fed up with him, she
moved in, menacingly.
“Alright,
alright, don’t get all lathered up,” Spike said in a tone guaranteed
to make Buffy wince. “You need a little personal
space, that’s always an
option.”
“Matter
of fact,” he added, with a snap of his fingers, “I believe it’s another
secret of the healthy relationship. I was watching the Mars and Venus thing
again yesterday, Lifetimes' got the reruns,” Buffy
bristled and he quickly
amended, “Only ‘cause I couldn’t sleep,
and…anyway…that Moonlighting bint was
going on about how…”
Buffy
turned on her heel and walked away from him.
Spike watched her move off,
tilting his head slightly, thoroughly enjoying
the view. He had a
self-satisfied little grin on his
face. He waited until Buffy reached the
end
of the aisle before calling after her in an
echoing voice.
“Mind
you remember Dawn likes the real Romano cheese…none of that powdered
Parmesan crap.”
Turning
the corner, Buffy stared down one of the bag boys as he gaped at her.
She
was about to get on with her shopping when she suddenly realized she should
make sure Spike made like Elvis and left the
building. She hurried to the
produce section, ducked down behind a mountain
of watermelons and targeted his
basket in the security mirror over the cash registers.
Buffy
watched, in fascination, as items disappeared from the shelves and
reappeared in Spike’s shopping cart. After a very brief time, the cart headed
for checkout.
She watched the weird exchange of money between vampire and
clerk. Once
the cash was totally out of Spike’s hands it became reflective
again. His
groceries, also, reflected nicely on the conveyer belt but as soon
as he picked up his paper sack it was gone.
A
minute later, the store’s electronic doors seemed to whisper open and closed
of their own accord. Peering around her cover of watermelons,
Buffy watched
Spike
fade into the darkness of the parking lot.
His coat, faintly visible to
the last, glittering and swishing as it picked up
the overhead lights, finally
flickered from view. With a small sigh, Buffy straightened up and
took a step
back. Something brushed lightly against the bare
skin of her shoulder.
Something very like a warm hand. Nerves already at the twanging point, the
Slayer
yelped and spun around.
The
most attractive man Buffy had ever seen was standing just inches away from
her. He was a brunette. His tightly curled hair was cut short and he
had a
high, intellectual forehead. His mouth was finely chiseled, his nose was
straight and his cheekbones were pronounced. His eyes, however, were easily his
most striking feature. They were blue under dark upswept brows, but
as Buffy
looked into them they seemed to shift shade from
and finally back to
Unfortunately,
Buffy didn’t have as much time as she needed to study the man’s
chameleon like eyes before fate stepped between
them. Fate took the form of the
Slayer’s forgotten grocery basket. It crashed into the lowest watermelon in the
precariously stacked fruit peak,
destabilizing it. As the melons rumbled
into
motion, the masculine vision stepped out of the line
of fire. Buffy, still at
ground zero, did an impressive series of pirouettes
and flips to avoid the
cascading fruit.
She almost succeeded in adverting disaster and then she
slipped in a puddle of juice and went down. Within seconds, Buffy Summers,
Vampire
Slayer Extraordinaire, was buried alive under an avalanche of
succulence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“
into the Magic Box the next morning. “You’ll never
guess what happened.”
“Are
you saying that because you think I’m a very bad guesser?”
placing her book face down on the research
table. “Because the turtle incident
in 9th grade was not a good example. You can't go around expecting…”
“It’s
because no one would ever guess, Wills,” Buffy interrupted, with a huge
grin. But she
sobered slightly as she added, “And you should just let go of the
turtle incident. Okay?”
“It
haunts me,”
little face peeking out of its shell…mocking me…”
“I
met the most wonderful man,” the Slayer announced, effectively cutting off
the Wiccan woman’s
painful reminiscence. Buffy gestured
broadly as she
corrected herself, “Okay, first I knocked over a
load of watermelons and then I
made a complete ass out of myself trying to avoid
the onslaught of juiciness but
then…I met the most wonderful man.”
“You
mean like a MAN man?”
interest. “Like a dating type man? Like ‘I am
here to pick up Buffy for a
fabulous evening out’ kind of man?”
“Yes,
that is exactly the kind of man that I mean,” Buffy acknowledged and then
she continued in a giddy overly feminine
voice. “A svelte, brilliant and, I am
willing to bet, terribly poetic man, who asked
me out for coffee. His name is
Roscoe
Valenti.”
“Cool,”
did you? The coffee I mean? Or rather…will
you? You said ‘yes’ right?”
“I
did,” Buffy sighed, plopping into a chair and staring dreamily into space as
she related the story, “We drove to
on the beach, sitting on the hood of his black
Jaguar.” She paused, for the
dramatic effect of the car before going on, “We
ate fine pastries and drank
and hours.”
“
stranger? Just like that? In the middle of the
night?”
“I
know,” Buffy grinned, totally thrilled with her own daring. “Isn’t it
wild?
I
don’t know what came over me. There was
just something about him I instantly
trusted.”
“Well…”
support, “…some demons or even powerful warlocks
can cast a glamour over you.
Make
you feel all safe and secure. It
probably is okay because…well…look…you
are home and nothing happened. But you should be more careful, Buffy. This IS
the Hellmouth.”
“Yeah,”
Buffy smirked, rolling her eyes, “and I AM the Slayer. I checked him
out for the fangs and the Hell-Smell, Will. He was totally clean.”
“But
he could have been a plain old human serial killer,”
pantomiming a Psycho-style knifing. “With the slicing
and the dicing and the
leaving of your body in a ditch.”
“Again, SLAYER!” Buffy reminded, tapping
her chest. She was growing impatient
with her friend’s lack of enthusiasm. “Also, I am
fine, healthy, unharmed,
elated, overjoyed, spinning around with the blissful
happy.”
“And,
of course,”
happy, too.
Happy for your happy! So, tell me more…tell me everything. What
does he do for a living?”
“Nothing,”
Buffy replied, watching
“Uhm, Buffy?” the Wiccan woman
began, her frown morphing into a scowl.
“Just
how old is this Roscoe guy?”
“Oh,
I don’t know about 75 or 80, I guess,” Buffy shrugged. She let
steam for a beat and then burst out laughing at her
friend’s dismayed
expression.
“Buffy,
don't do that,”
stop teasing.
“He’s
26, Will,” Buffy reassured, gently. “But
he invented some kind of Silicon
Valley
gizmo and then sold the company for about a half a gazillion dollars. So
now he lives the life of leisure, traveling and
such. Did I mention the Jag?”
“Y-y-yes,
you did mention,”
all of this un-Buffy-like giddiness. “And I am
still glad that you’re happy
and…well…safe…and everything…and that your date went
well. But next time
maybe you shouldn’t just go off to
of the night.
You know, just cause some people might worry.”
“There
won’t be a next time,
took a quick spin with her arms spread wide,
exclaiming, “Because this is it!
He’s
the one! I knew it the moment I saw
him. Did I mention he is such a
hottie? What amazing cheekbones and those eyes. And
there was like this instant
connection between us. Boom!
I think we’re soulmates or something.”
“'Soulmates--?'”
night. It was
only one date. Not even a date…coffee
and Danish. Isn’t it a
little soon to be…”
“
her startled friend’s brow. “But there really is
absolutely no need for you to
be concerned.
You’ll see…Roscoe Valenti is the perfect man.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“He’s
the 'perfect man,'”
afternoon at the Magic Box, “That’s what she said.
That was her exact
adjective…'perfect!'”
“
the Construction Foreman.
“Hence the group gathering?” Xander
guessed.
“We
haven’t gone out together in a long time,” Willow reminded, earnestly.
“And…and so…so what if it gives us a chance to
check him out?”
“Honey,”
Slayer
was dressing, "this is Buffy's decision."
“Hey,
who can say? Maybe he is perfect,” Xander remarked,
placing his lunch box
and hardhat on the research table. He gestured expansively in response to
You
know, like love at first sight.”
“Only
guys believe in love at first site,”
“That’s
a total myth…just like the ‘Perfect Man’.”
“And
you are not saying this because you are currently pro-Fem, right?” Xander
asked.
“Xander is perfect,” Anya chirped,
popping up from behind the sales counter,
with a small jar of weevils in her hand.
“See?
It's all in the eye of the beholder,” Xander
reposted, before sweeping
Anya into
his arms for a hello kiss. The ex-demon managed to return the embrace
and still keep tight hold of her merchandise.
“Well,
maybe…”
is…well…a little bit…strange?”
“Strange how?” Xander
inquired, coming out of the smooch but still cuddling Anya
close. He used
his free hand to divide the room into two halves as he asked,
“Strange,
as in Buffy REALLY likes some guy she just met? Or strange as in we
should be expecting him to eat out our eyeballs?”
“To-may-toe,
To-mah-toe,”
placed a small consoling kiss on her lover’s brow.
There
was a rumble of extreme horsepower outside the Magic Box and Roscoe
Valenti’s Black Jaguar slid to a stop on the far
side of the street.
“Okay,
show time,”
cautioned, “Everyone try to remember, this is very
important to Buffy. Even if
we don’t like him let’s all try to be supportive.”
The
assorted Scoobies nodded their assent as Buffy’s beau
stepped out of his
parked car.
Through the display windows at the front of the shop the assembled
friends got their first good look at him. There was a collective gasp from all
four of Buffy’s pals.
“Oh,
it can't be,”
she asked, “Is it just me or does he look exactly
like…?”
“Spike,”
Xander yelped, stepping forward to glare as the man
loped across the
street.
“That
is Spike,”
“Well,
his hair's different,” Anya said, cocking her head to
one side,
considering, “and he’s out in the sunlight, so he
can't be a vampire. But he
definitely looks like Spike.”
“Is
he here?” Buffy asked, arriving from the back room, fussing with her hair
and adjusting her outfit. "How do I
look?"
Luckily,
the question was rhetorical. Nobody
glanced in the Slayer's direction.
The bells over the shop door gave a festive
tinkle as Valenti entered and
Buffy,
eyes sparkling, rushed up to kiss his elegantly carved mouth. He turned
his head at the last second so the soft brush of
her lips landed on his sculpted
cheek and offered her a chaste embrace. The Slayer
drew back, frowning briefly,
before recovering her equilibrium.
“Everyone,”
she announced, turning to her buds with a somewhat dulled smile. “I
would like you to meet someone very special…”
“I
think we’ve already met, Buff,” Xander growled,
stepping in, aggressively.
She
shook her head at him and pointed at the mirror to Buffy's left. Both the
Slayer
and her date were reflected in the glass.
Buffy was looking dreamily up
at her new beau as he held her hand to his
heart. She was oblivious to the
Xander/Willow
exchange.
“This
is Roscoe Valenti,” the Slayer purred. Obviously, drifting in her own
little world, she waved vaguely at the Scoobies, “Roscoe these are my very best
friends.”
“I-I-I’m
holding out her hand, she regained a bit of her
composure, adding, “It’s a
pleasure to meet you, Mr. Valenti.”
“The
pleasure is all mine, I assure you,” Valenti
replied. He released Buffy
and gripped
call me Rocko.”
“Rocko,”
glare, she massaged the hand Valenti
had held as if it was bringing her intense
pleasure to recall his touch.
“I’m
Willow Rosenberg,”
strangely hypnotic male.
“
much about you.
I am honored.”
closed around her own she felt the tension bleed out
of her body. All of the
suspicion and hostility drained from her
mind. Rocko
smiled at her in a way
that seemed to ask for her understanding and
support. His palm was warm, his
touch soothing.
long as Roscoe Valenti was
there to protect her. She sighed,
staring up into
his sea blue eyes.
He really was the perfect man.
“And
this is Xander,” Buffy said, indicating the
carpenter, who was watching
Willow with a puzzled frown on his face.
“Xander,” Rocko affirmed, giving Xander’s hand a quick manly shake.
“And
I’m his fiancée,” Anya inserted, taking Xander’s arm possessively.
The
beautiful man turned his Caribbean Blue gaze on
the ex-demon and smiled but made
no attempt to touch her.
"Anya?” he inquired, lifting one brow. “The former Vengeance
Demon?”
“Uhckh?” Xander
choked, ratcheting back up to hostile suspicion in a flat
second. “THE WHAT?”
“Oh,
I told Rocko all about our little demon hunting group
last night,” Buffy
admitted with a tiny shrug, adding, “I don’t want
to have any secrets from him.”
“Buffy
is a very forthright person,” Rocko assured the
people who had known her
the best and longest. He pulled the Slayer into a one-armed
embrace, as he
said, “It's one of the things I admire most about
her.”
“What
exactly did you tell him?” Xander asked, shooting the
Slayer a panicky
glance, “I mean, besides the Demon stuff? And you understand," he said, turning
to Rocko, "this
isn’t something WE,” he gestured in a tight circle to include
the gathered Scoobies,
“generally talk about outside the group?”
"Oh,
it's okay, Xander,"
Buffy said, shaking her head at her friend's reaction.
"Rocko is one of us now."
"What
did she tell you?" Xander insisted.
"Let
me think,” the perfect man said, making a show of recalling. “I know Buffy
is the Chosen One, the Slayer, and that makes her
really strong and quick. And
there's a Watcher of sorts…"
"Giles,"
Xander murmured, heartily wishing the older man was
here. "He's in San
Diego for the weekend."
"I
know
instrumental in defeating a Hellgod…uhm…now what was her
name?”
“Glory,
sweetie,” Buffy prompted and was rewarded with a dazzling smile from
Roscoe’s full lipped mouth.
“Ah,
yes,” Valenti nodded, patting the Slayer's hand,
indulgently. “Glory, of
course. How could I forget?”
“And
y-y-you’re not su-surprised or anything?”
him. “I mean usually there are questions. I know I had lots of questions.”
“We
talked it all out,” Buffy reassured, before favoring Rocko
with another one
of those melting looks. “I told him all about my life and he told me
all about
his.”
“Did
you tell him about the dying?” Anya asked, brightly.
“Dying?”
Rocko returned, looking down at the Slayer in
confusion. “What about
dying?”
“Buffy’s
dying,” Anya replied, airily. “You know first she was
dead and then she
wasn't. There
was a sword and blood and
exciting. Everyone had a part to play.”
“We
didn’t get into that,” Buffy hissed, narrowing her eyes at Xander’s
fiancée.
Without
understanding quite why, the Slayer had carefully omitted any reference
to her own death and resurrection when telling Rocko her life story.
She had
also left out any mention of Spike. She waved one hand now dismissing the
subject.
“And
besides there isn’t really that much to tell…dead…back…that about sums it
up,” Buffy shrugged, pulling away from the
billionaire. “So are we going out
tonight or what?”
“Ooh,
there’s a DJ at the Bronze,” Anya said. “Which means they will play music
that I hear on the radio and can therefore sing
along with rather than a strange
band with music that I have never heard before.”
“The
Bronze sounds great,” Buffy agreed, in a satiny tone of voice, as Rocko
trailed a hand down her exposed back. “A little
dinner and a lot of dancing
makes for a happy Buffy.”
“We
will go then,” Roscoe Valenti asserted, with a small
tight smile as he
absentmindedly stroked the Slayer’s
bare skin. “But first I insist on buying
everyone dinner.
Chez Louise?
And while we dine perhaps I can persuade one of
you to tell me a few more of Buffy’s secrets. I admit I am fascinated. I
didn’t realize she was quite so enigmatic.”
Breaking
their contact, the Slayer frowned, lifting a hand to her brow and
blinking, as if under the influence of some
powerful drug. She glanced at her
date, and felt the briefest frisson of fear. For a flickering second, Rocko
Valenti looked remarkably familiar and then he
looked horrifyingly wrong. Buffy
tried to focus on the subliminal change but her date
dropped an arm around her
shoulder and her glimmer of suspicion passed into
hazy memory.
END
THIS PART