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She was a cute in that sort of way a pet is cute, if you think about it they’re adorable, but it’s not your pet and you don’t want to go closer to them in case they might bite. Spike had always been that sort of way, unreacheable. Cute, but dangerous. Or like the movies called it a femme fatale. There wouldn’t be getting kidnapped and given slaps by men, like in Double Dragon, for her, oh no, if anyone tried that, she’d grab their hands and break their heart.
At least, that was what Wheels figured...really it wasn’t like she had entered his thoughts very often, oh just about 26 times in an hour. But then she had a baby...and then that Shane thing had happened. And he had lost his parents. And shit had gotten real, and his life had gone down the drain and who has time to think of love.
He stares at the mirror one days and thinks on whether or not he should keep his mullet, because it is so 80’s and after all what sort of Rock Star has a mullet? Plus the 90’s are starting...and that someone gets him to think about Spike’s hair and then eyes, and that smile and he curses himself for the lot of idiocy.
They had talked once, once! And the advice he had given was basically a shrug of the shoulders...he felt like he wanted to say something more at the time, but he was young, and inexperienced with girls, and what the heck? She has to be the one to make up the decision.
Now he’s older, and still inexperienced with girls, but he has kissed a few...of course if you go by Joey’s tales, the few he has kissen are like a drop in the bucket compared to all Joey has had, and he might even have went as far as third base with some of them. But it’s probably lies. Either way it’s not like Wheels wants to take things to go that far with Spike, though he wouldn’t mind, same
as he didn’t mind Heather, or anyone else who came on to him. It’s just that, well, it’s complicated.
Not complicated in a sort of Snake’s brother way...that dude might get AIDS or something, and hey, if Wheels isn’t getting any, at least he can’t die of anything like that. Not that he would probably get it because he isn’t gay, his mind reasons, he’s not queer. But that thing he wants...that thing with Spike.
It’s hard to pin point exactly what he sees in her, because really, and that would sound like something he would have to unravel someday, it’s complicated. He knows he repeats those words a lot, very often in fact, but they are simply the truth. There isn’t anything else he can add to the conversation, she has Emma, she has guilt over Shane, she has to figure out her life, and he has to stop getting kicked out of every damn place, like he was almost thrown out of his grandmother’s place, and all those classes he was ACTUALLY thrown out of.
And he figures...Spike deserves someone better, not some punk kid troublemaker who can play two notes and wears glasses. Yeah, not some wimp, who cries himself to sleep because of his parents and whose only thoughts of violence go to the driver who was drunk when he got into that car…
She deserves a man to protect her, a man to love her. She deserves someone who is like liz, but who she can also date. He has heard gossip here and there, but really, Spike doesn’t seem like the type...he means it. Liz might, he doesn’t know, it’s not his business, but Spike seems straight. She has a baby for goodness sake!
And bloody hell, he’s not ready to be a father yet...he’d have loved to be one, one better than Mike ever was, or to provide what Shane unfortunately can’t, the kid is messed up, he took acids and jumped off a bridge if the stories are to be believed. But he’s at that point where he’s smart enough to know he’d make a shit parent, but not smart enough to be a good one. At least he can avoid all that heartbreak.
Because really Spike would never go for someone like him, maybe if he was rich and famous, or maybe if he had the answers to her problems...but even then Spike probably would glance at him in disgust.
Not that she ever did that to him, and it would hurt if she did, sneer at him. But at least it’d be attention, it’d be something more than a “Hey should I keep my baby or...thoughts?”, it’d be more than a conversation to which he has no real answer.
Of course Wheels wants a relationship just like his parents had, and of course, of course, wheels wouldn’t mind being with Spike, but how can he? That’d make her stuck, stuck with someone who sucks, someone who is an angsty teen.
Wheels knows they’re all angsty teens, and that testosterone and puberty and all that crap give him an excuse to say “Not my fault”, but yet he feels that in this, it’s definitively his fault...if only she hadn’t gotten pregnant, if only he wasn’t such a douche, if only, if only.
Those ifs float above his head and he can’t shake his head. And he sits in class and thinks of her, and he does the selfless thing and never even attempts to come on to her. Because really, why would he? She deserves better.
And time passes, and she appears to have a crush on Snake, and it hurts, it hurts but he urges Snake to “go for it, man”, not only because she’s a hot piece of tail, where Snake has lacked it everywhere. But because she’s Spike.
There is no one better...and well, if he isn’t good enough for her, then perhaps Snake might be, at least she’ll be happy.
And isn’t that all he wants?