Dance On Fire - Chapter 12

‘Can you remember, back on the tour bus when we were talking to Suzy about the first time we met?’ Pete said. ‘When you invited me home - making it very clear that it wasn't… er… sexual.’

Spike was a few steps higher on the stairs. She looked down at him. ‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled. ‘I remember that. The library, that Dylan book….’ She touched his cheek with her fingertips. ‘Do you ever think of that other time… in Glasgow… when we… that night…?’ She turned and walking along the landing.

‘No… I….’ Pete caught up with her outside one of the bedrooms.

‘We agreed - at the time - that it was a mistake…. That we just got caught up in… well… events, I suppose,’ Spike said. She was looking down at her hand on the doorknob. ‘I tried to explain it to her - Helena - later that it was… like that. But, by then, it was too late.’ She turned to face Pete, her back to the closed door. ‘I did… I still do… blame myself,’ she said. ‘I think if I… if we… then Helena and you might have still been together.’

‘No, I don't think so,’ he said. ‘She did tell me… much later, the reason she was there - in Glasgow - anyway, was to tell me it was all over. She'd met Joe already apparently, and they… well… then Charlie came along and that was that.’ He shrugged.

‘You never told me this.’

‘It was much later… y'know… when you were in Africa with… whatever her name was?’

‘She liked to be called Lilith,’ Spike laughed, relaxing back against the door. ‘But her real name was Elizabeth. God, I must have been insane.’ She seemed lost in some memory for a moment or two. She shook her head and smiled - a thin, humourless smile. ‘I think that woman may have been one of the biggest mistakes, if not the biggest mistake, of my life.’ She opened the bedroom door. ‘Ah, I forgot,’ she said, as Pete stepped into the room behind her. ‘This one is due to be decorated next.’

The room was bare, almost empty, the few items of furniture covered with dustsheets.

‘Come on,’ Spike said. ‘There are loads more rooms. But not all that many have any furniture yet.’ She turned to face him. ‘We could always share a bed, if you want. I suppose, in a way, it would be a bit like the old days, back in that bloody van.’

‘Ah, yes. The bloody van. But wouldn't that be more like a nightmare than an exercise in nostalgia?’

‘I don't know, we had some good times back in those… simpler days.’ Spike leant back against the wall between two doorways. ‘It is bloody ridiculous, all of this, isn't it?’

‘What? Why?’ Pete shrugged.

‘All this… this… coyness… about finding you a bedroom. Especially after all we've been through together.’

‘I didn't know we were being coy,’ Pete said.

‘Oh.’ Spike laughed. ‘Well, in that case…. Would you like to sleep with me?’

‘You're drunk… or stoned… or both.’

‘I know,’ Spike ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Come in here, with me.’ She took Pete by the hand and led him into a bedroom. The bed was unmade, sheets thrown back and rumpled.

Spike sat down on the bed. ‘Like you, I've been thinking about the past a lot, lately, and the future. But - most of all - I have been thinking about Glasgow.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you think it was as big a mistake as we liked to pretend it was?’ She kicked off her shoes and began to unfasten the silk shirt.

Pete looked around the room, noticing the framed photograph of Jenny on the bedside table. ‘No… no… I didn't. I don't.’

Spike stood up and shrugged the open shirt from her shoulders, she shivered slightly and her nipples hardened. ‘Well?’ She half-shrugged.

Pete stepped closer to her. ‘But… what about what you said in Glasgow: 'I'm not looking to be saved. I'm happy being the way I am, and I'm not looking to be cured'?’

‘I don't know any more,’ Spike said, unfastening her trousers. ‘I haven't… I'd… been - sort of - celibate since Lili…that woman. But….’ She sat down on the bed and pulled her trousers off. ‘Like I said, I've been thinking about this for quite a while - over the last few weeks.’ Spike kicked her trousers across the room. ‘I was imagining all sorts of scenarios, seductions. How I was going to get you into bed with me.’

‘You were going to try to seduce me?’ Pete tried hard to keep the disbelief out of his voice. ‘Why?’

‘Because I thought that if I said something like 'Would you like to sleep with me?' you would just say I was drunk and try to laugh it off.’ She sighed and attempted to flatten out a few of the creases in the bed sheet. ‘But look at this, here I am getting undressed and ready for bed as if we have been married for years.’

‘I suppose we have, in a way. I think we've been a lot closer to each other than quite a few married couples.’ It had been a while since he had seen Spike naked - maybe even Glasgow had been the last time - but it seemed the years had been kind to her. She rolled into the bed and pulled the covers around her as she sat up and turned to face him.

‘Pete?’

‘What?’

‘Come on.’

‘Oh, sorry, I was….’

‘You do want to, don't you?’ She seemed suddenly unsure, as though she realised that this was one version of the scenario that she was not imagining.

His clothes seemed to fall off. For once, he wasn't struggling with buttons, zips, and laces or stumbling around the room fighting to escape from his clothes. One second he seemed fully dressed, the next, he was naked and sitting next to Spike in the bed.

‘What now…. Oh, Shit! Shit! Shit!’ Spike thumped the bedclothes in frustration. ‘This has all gone so bloody wrong.’ She seemed on the verge of tears. ‘A right bloody cock-up.’

Pete lifted the sheets and looked down. ‘You're right, there,’ he said.

‘What?’ Spike looked at him out of the corner of her eye for a moment, and then she laughed. She lifted the sheets and had a look too.

‘At least that bit seems to be working properly,’ she said, reaching out.

‘Bit?’ Pete replied trying to sound outraged. ‘I think you'll find that what you've got in your hand is more than just 'a bit', young lady.’

‘Hmmm, I think you could be right. You'll have to excuse me, as you well know; I'm not exactly experienced in these matters.’

‘I dunno. If I remember correctly, you did rather well last time.’

‘I think that was more a matter of luck than judgement though.’

‘Perhaps you are a natural.’

‘I thought I was a natural the other way,’ Spike said as she wormed her way closer to him. Their noses were almost touching. ‘But, now I'm not so sure, or… I don't know. Maybe we can all go one way or another at different times, or we are all both, or something. Have you ever… been tempted to go the other way?’

‘No, I can honestly say that I've never been tempted,’ Pete said. ‘I have wondered about it, in idle moments, that sort of thing. But it was more akin to wondering about other things - say, like… crocodile wrestling - that I know I will never want to try in reality.’

‘I never really thought of men as sexual beings, either,’ Spike said. ‘Even the Glasgow thing - that was far more about you, than about you as a man, if you see what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘I think that maybe, with me - these days - anyway, it could be more a matter of the person, rather than the shapes their genitals take,’ Spike said.

‘Spike?’

‘What?’

‘Shut up, and kiss me.’

‘Bu…. Oh, okay.’