This chapter is dedicated to twilight. Thank you!
"I'm sorry."
"Don't say that," Tess answered quickly. She didn't want Spike to feel guilty for being honest about his feelings. "Something like that takes a lot of courage to say. And it feels like poetry to me. So don't get all angsty, right? I haven't even got a sword to steal." A second of laughter did little to break the tension this time. But they were still there, still talking, and Tess knew that was a good thing.
"I feel like I'm letting you down. There's so many things I'm supposed to do, and I don't know how. Isn't it supposed to be natural?"
"I don't know. But what I can say is I'm happy you're here, and I'm happy you're you. I feel alive whenever we're together, and if I don't see you for a day I'm looking forward to the next time we meet. And I'll make this really clear, what I want isn't the feel of your lips, as if I could claim one part of you, or to gaze adoringly at your muscles like the girl in some trashy paperback novel. It's you. Just you. Can I have that? Can you be my–"
As soon as she'd spoken the words, she started to think about what she'd just said. He was still trying to understand his own feelings, and a part of her said that it was unfair to be asking more of him. Maybe he needed space to sort himself out before he could even think about someone else. But it had felt like the right thing to say in the moment, and it was only when she heard her own words that the cresting wave of embarrassment started to wash over her.
"There's an inner voice screaming at me to say 'yes' right away," he whispered thoughtfully. He stepped closer and put his hands on her shoulders, so that he could look straight at her and she would know that he was serious for once. It was a slightly awkward position because her hands were still in his, but that didn't matter now. Her whole attention was on his words. "It's hard not to. But I think I can't, not now. I'm... I think I'm not boyfriend material."
"You–" Tess started, but he interrupted with one raised finger that didn't quite touch her lips.
"Please, let me finish. It's hard to say this. But there's things I need to deal with. Things I can't share. I want to say..."
Tess wanted to remind him of the film they just watched, about a samurai who put his own issues in front of his happiness. She wanted to tell him that whatever the problems were, she could help him. And then she thought about her own problems over the last couple of months. She'd even told herself that she wasn't ready to say anything about her feelings yet, and she needed to wait until she was out of diapers at night before she could even think about falling in love. And she knew she couldn't throw the first stone here. She wanted to know that there was something between them, but she also needed to sort out her own problems first so that she wouldn't have to lie to him.
"Me too," she answered. "Sorry, I didn't think about it like that. But maybe..." A pause, and a deep breath. She ran the conversation through in her head again, and none of the options made sense. She'd never thought this would be the hard part.
"How about this? We're not 'dating', whatever that means. I'm not even sure I know. But we enjoy each other's company, and we spend a lot of time together because that makes us happy. We've both got things we need to deal with before we're ready to take that next step. But we could use some moral support, right? Even if it's something you can't talk about, knowing there's somebody who cares can take away some of the pressure. I really wish sometimes I could just switch off all the worries, and times like tonight are the closest I can get. So, I don't know... I'm not sure what I'm suggesting, but..."
'I know a way to switch your worries off,' Tess could have said. She hadn't liked being small and helpless, but she couldn't deny that when Gabby had tried to turn her into a baby, all her stress over school and exams had completely vanished. She hadn't even been worrying about the bedwetting thing, like it hadn't happened yet. And that morning with the pacifier, she had become careless because she wasn't worrying about anything. Maybe there was a way to do something similar that wasn't so humiliating and wouldn't go too far, but it wasn't something to bring up now. She went for a more practical response instead:
"If we have more nights like this, and keep talking, and be there for each other. That sounds good to me. And then later, who knows? If it feels natural."
"Yeah, that. If you want to be... you know. Then I can't promise anything, but I promise I'll try. Once we're both ready for it, and you don't have to deal with the fallout from my problems. Is that okay? I don't want this to feel like a rejection, because it really isn't. I just don't think I'm ready. But I think I said before, didn't I? When I couldn't find the right words. If I ever find out I'm interested in girls..." Tess found that she'd been watching his lips as he spoke. Maybe it was prompted by the mention of kissing before, but when she watched she could really see how hard he was trying to think about what he wanted to say. And she could exactly remember the conversation he meant.
"I'll be the first person you tell. Right? I should have realised what you were saying at the time. I think you knew, really. What I was thinking, and what I wanted. Or at least you knew as well as I did, which isn't much."
"I think your friends were hinting enough. You let them know you like me, right? I thought you might want to be... my girlfriend I guess. And I turn the idea around in my mind, and I can't see the downside. But I knew I'm not ready yet, and I was sure you'd be mad if I said that. And really, I think I don't even know what it means. Like... a kiss. Why is it important? Do you get like an urge to do it, or do you try it and suddenly understand why it matters? I'm happy to try when we're ready, but half the things our friends do... I don't know which parts are important. I'm sure I want to have... those emotions. But I don't really know what they are, and I don't know if I'd recognise them."
"Well, that's probably the most confusing and yet relatable confess–" Tess started, and then something occurred to her. She gently pried her fingers free from Spike's, until they were almost no longer touching. She hesitated; it felt like losing contact would break the moment, even if it was just for a moment. So she followed an instinct that was more childish than she would normally accept, and gently bit one of his fingertips to maintain the physical connection while her own hands were opening her bag and pulling something out. A rectangular package, wrapped in a few layers of tissue paper. She pressed it into his free hand, and then transferred the other back from her mouth to her hand.
"Scared I'd run away?"
"I don't know. I just didn't want to stop holding onto you. Not right now."
"So what's this?"
"Another present. I was going to say one for your birthday and one for Christmas, but I couldn't decide which is which. I might have suggested opening it while I'm away, so it's like there's still a connection. But right now, I want to see you open it. I'll explain why, if it makes sense like I hope."
They'd been wandering through the town's many parks as they talked, stopping for important moments, and this part of Upper Ashfields wasn't familiar. But it didn't take them long to find a park bench, under a light hanging from one of the trees so they could see what they were doing. Tess watched as Spike took out the gloves, with a slight expression of confusion, and put on a pair. She could explain those later. Then he opened the binder and found the comics within. She could read the surprise in his expression easily, and happiness as well. He was excited to read them, but that wasn't the purpose here.
"They're MK's comics," she said. "Maurice G. Kernigan."
"The same ones you've been reading?"
"Yeah. But he's written a lot. I've not read that arc yet, but from what I hear I think they'd be a good place for you to jump into the franchise. But that's not why I suggested opening them now. I looked at them when I was wrapping them, and..." her finger reached out to indicate one particular issue, the penultimate in the Cassarone Twins saga. "Look at this one. Page three. There's a guy who looks like he might be a young Cerberus Shark, and he's giving almost a full page monologue. It doesn't spoil the earlier parts of the story, I think, and it would be a good idea to read it."
Spike seemed confused, but that was only to be expected. He turned the page, and stared at the page under the harsh white light for a moment. And then he started to read.
Tess would have said she didn't have a preconceived idea for how many of the characters should sound. She'd seen some of them in movies, both recent ones and the various half-hearted and international efforts from the last century. But the actors' voices, as good as they were, never stuck with the character. She didn't hear their voices in her head, like she would when reading familiar characters in Chloe's fanfic. And Cerberus Shark was probably the hardest to imagine, because she'd seen three very different actors playing very different interpretations of the character. She might even have said that she only read the words on the page, and didn't know what she thought his voice would sound like. But then she hear Spike read the words, and she knew there was no doubt about it now. She didn't know what accent he was using, if it was one he'd picked up from some other person in a TV show or a new creation. But she knew that it was exactly how Shark sounded in her mind's eye; and she would hear it every time she read the comics in future. The surprise was so much that she almost missed the start of the speech.
"That's the thing with magic," he enunciated, exuding confidence like a champion prizefighter striding into his old gym and handing out tips. "You never understand it. If you could find it on a brain scan, pin down the neurons responsible, and work out where the power comes from, then it wouldn't be magic, would it? If you could do it by the numbers, if you could see how it works and analyse it until you understand the whys and wherefores, that would be a new kind of science. An amazing discovery, sure, like Nikola Tesla in 1904 when he threw the switch on his first breeder reactor, but it would be new science. Not magic. Magic isn't just something we don't know, it's something we can't know. The moment you think you understand it, and know how to find it, then what you have isn't magic."
Tess didn't say anything, but Spike could probably sense how she felt from the tension in the hand that was resting on the back of his. He stopped, even though there was another speech bubble still to read, about how someone's efforts to analyse magic were just destroying it, and sending it away where they would never find it. But he stopped, and looked back at her.
"I caught a glimpse of that speech," she said. "And it stuck with me. Perhaps it's the same for... well, love, I guess. You try to work out what things you have to do for it to count, and you're just going through the motions. I think... I don't analyse my feelings much. But I think we don't need to put everything into categories and find a word for it. What's the difference between a friend, and a best friend, and a boyfriend? Is there a spectrum somewhere, where one thing can slowly turn into another? Maybe trying to draw a line in the sand and say what I feel is missing the point. I don't want to say that one day you're my friend and next day you're something else. I just... I want to be with you, and you make me so happy by being there. So I don't care what we call it, whether we're dating or friends or both. Can we just enjoy every moment, without needing to worry if there's something you need to do to officially cross over that dividing line."
"I can live with that. Just understanding that it feels good to be together, and we don't need to know if it means anything yet. Maybe I can be your... whatever you want to call it."
"My Spike," she chuckled.
"Guilty as charged. And I never realised you were thinking so much about this. You're really, really sure you want..."
"I didn't go all introspective. I just know what I like. All the big speech, that popped into my head after what you said. Like you're worried about letting me down because we don't meet some random criteria that neither of us understand, when we could just be happy with what we feel. All the words just came from nowhere."
"Words can be magic like that. Maybe that's why lips are so important."
"Because they shape the words?"
"Yeah, I guess. But I was thinking like... people put all that value on a kiss because it's a thing everybody's heard of. It's like the sign at the side of the road that says 'Welcome to Bollocksfeet', it's not an important landmark for any real reason but it means you can tell somebody where you got to."
Tess chuckled when the image of that particular sign came to mind. Presumably it was one of the ones around the little village of Bullocksfeel, where there were always kids gathering with magic markers to give lost travellers a laugh. But even when she was laughing, she knew what he meant. It might be nice to have a kiss, but she had to agree that it was a strange measuring stick to decide if you were in a relationship or not. And once she thought about it, she was sure that she didn't mind either way.
She had her Spike. She held his hand in hers, and she could lead him wherever she wanted. She knew he would always be there, and that he would be happy to help her try out more traditionally romantic activities when they had buried their own little embarrassments. But right now, she thought the first place she should drag him along with her was back to a lighter topic of conversation. Something that would make the best possible use of the time until they had to go home.