The lights were dim as he made his way down the corridor that led to the main stage.  Frank was in front of him with a flashlight, keys jingling against his hip and a dull buzz coming from the walkie-talkie attached to his belt.  Spike could hear the rumble of the crowd growing louder and louder as they moved towards the area behind the stage; it seeped in through his skin, into his veins and soon his heart was pumping in time to the steady roar of several thousand fans.

His band mates had already begun with an instrumental version of Shudder To Think, a slow, depressing song that was bogged down with Spike’s own self-pity.  God, he really needed to get some new stuff.

Someone handed him a microphone and he took a deep, deep breath.  The soles of his boots hit the steel staircase with a tinging clank as he made his way up to the stage.  As he moved onto the platform, he brought the microphone to his lips.

“Your body sways in the moonlight,” he sang in a deep tenor.

The crowd erupted in a screaming mass, cheering, and the lights suddenly went up, making the crowd’s vast voice deafening.  Spike strode across the stage and stopped in front of the mic stand.  He worked the microphone into the clip and leaned in.

“Graceful pale and darkened veil.

Sweet melody, you move me.

Even though you’ve damned me to hell.”

Oliver began to pick out quick notes on his guitar; a precursor to the rousing solo he had coming up.  The steady beat of Oz’s bass was subtle, binding the guitar with Xander’s drumming and creating one cohesive sound that flowed outward and over the audience.

Spike tipped his head back and wailed into the mic, “I shudder to think that you might see,

that this love for you is real.

I shudder to think that you might know,

that I’m dyin’ here down below.

I shudder to think that you might ever love this man beggin’ at your feet,

because I have no hope left,

and no prayers to speak.”

The words didn’t have much meaning for him any longer, but they still left a bitter taste on his tongue.  It was hard to believe that he’d once felt that way, so miserable but so eager to be loved.  He was willing to sell his soul to Drusilla for just one ounce of her love and affection.  What a bloody waste.

He relished in the feeling overtaking his mind, body and soul; a sort of erratic calm that both lifted him up and kept him in a warm cocoon of peace.  That was what it was all about.  Being on stage, getting that high that couldn’t be found anywhere else, in any bottle, in any pill - it was heaven under flashing lights.  The chanting fans were his choir of angels; they sang the sweetest hymns of appreciation and adoration.  Here, he was loved.  Here, he was home.

“Baby, you leave me broken, battered,

tooorrrrrnnnn!”

He howled into the mic and dropped to his knees on the hard surface of the stage.  With his free fist, he pounded the floor in time to the heavy bass kick from Xander’s drums.  Sweat poured down his forehead, masking the tears that fell from his eyes.  The words, the song was clawing to get out of him.  It burned in his chest and left an acid trail up his throat.

“I bleed ruby tears,

sewn into the snow.

And I count my crosses,

row by row.”

As the first notes of the chorus came out of his mouth, the crowd chimed in with their collective voice.  It hit him like a tidal wave, word after word washing over him in warm, salty swells.  They sang in perfect unison, in perfect time and tempo, in perfect pitch; an echo of his own voice.  He threw his fist out, holding the microphone towards the audience and if it was possible, they became louder by the gesture, screaming the words up to him.

He stood up, tall and unyielding, his arms outstretched like he was bound to the cross.  His eyes closed as Oliver’s solo began.  The flat, oddly-placed sounds assailed his ears.  They lent to the tragedy of his lyrics, an unfortunate array of nerve-shrieking notes that sent chills through him.  It was the closest thing to the pain he had felt as he wrote the song. 

Bringing the mic back to his lips, he dropped his head.  “Saccharine divine,”

burn me in your fire.

I live and die by your hand,

wrapped in the coolness of your desire.

Shuddering.

Shuddering.

Rapture in the death of your love.”

He was deaf to the final refrain and even though his mouth moved no words came out.  His hand slipped into the pocket of his jeans and as his fingertips felt the cold metal ring locked inside he winced.  Pulling it out, he studied the platinum band, the diamonds glittering under the bright stage lights.  It was the shackle of his marriage to Dru; a bloody shining piece of shit.  How many times had he looked down at it and prayed to its defective power to make her love him? 

His eyes burned.  His jaw clenched tightly.  He squeezed the ring in his hand and took a deep breath.  Drawing his arm back, he chucked the symbol of his love and devotion to a woman that would have none of it.  It soared in the air, over the heads of hundreds, their eyes wide as they realized what it was.  As it dropped, every person within a twenty foot radius scrambled to catch it.

And Spike turned his back to the crowd, fist in the air, as the lights faded.

*** *** ***

In the days that followed, Spike felt as if a two ton boulder had been lifted from his chest, allowing him to breathe, to see with perfect clarity all of the things that he had been blind to.  He used to say that he wasn’t more alive than when he was Dru, but the truth was he had been a walking corpse, animated only by her fickle whims.  Everything he did, said and thought revolved around that woman.  He had called it love then; now, he knew it was fear.

After all, who was he if not her willing slave, her puppet on silk strings?   Everything about him was a product of her making.  He wore black for her, adopted a devil-may-care attitude for her, sang for her, bled for her…  Hell, she’d even plucked his bloody name from the stars and bestowed it upon him like a royal title.

Something had clicked for him in Albuquerque.  It had started the moment he’d heard Drusilla’s voice on the other end of the phone.  The spell she had cast on him twelve years ago began to dissipate, revealing reality in ribbons of vivid color.  Everything was bright and clear and real for the first time in over a decade.  He saw her for who she really was, what she really was- just some loony bint that had tore a path through his life, leaving him cut and bleeding while she laughed in his face.

He saw Drusilla, and he saw himself.   But in place of the person he used to know, a stranger had taken up residence, unfamiliar in every way save one. 

In a world unrecognizable to him, he knew her.  Buffy Summers, with her green eyes that looked upon him as if they’d known each other since the beginning of time and before, was his truth.  Bloody girl might not know shit about herself or what she wanted, but there wasn’t anything ambiguous in the way she saw him.  She’d always known the man underneath the façade, that macabre mask he’d worn for Dru, and it was that unshakable faith that was pulling him back from Purgatory’s gray haze.

“So, are we gonna talk about what happened in Albuquerque or should I just go on pretending I didn’t see you toss a rather expensive piece of jewelery into a mass of screaming fans?”

Spike glanced up from his notebook.  Oliver had slid in to the booth across from him, a somber expression on his face that suggested his intentions were sincere rather than meant to poke fun.

“Not much t’ talk about.”

Oliver shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back.  “I went with you to pick out that gaudy bauble and I know how much you bloody paid for it.  A man doesn’t just chuck a thirty thousand dollar ring into an audience and not have anything to say ‘bout it.”

“Balls,” Spike muttered.  He sighed heavily as he swept a hand through his gel-free hair.  “You’re not goin’ t’ drop this until we’ve had it out, are you?”

His friend smirked.  “Just as I thought.  You must really not want to tell her.”

“What are you on about?  Tell who?”

“Buffy.” 

Not much got past Oliver Alden, King of Physically Unable to Mind His Own Sodding Business, and damn it if Spike wasn’t perturbed at that.  Could a man not have anything for himself?  A thought, perhaps, without someone trying to dig into his head and pull out all the visceral strands of unprocessed contemplation?  And the fact that Oliver was practically blackmailing him into this conversation didn’t exactly help either.

Spike tossed his pen down onto the table, folded his hands and slapped them on the table.  “Fine.”

“Oh, little prince, don’t pout.  You’ll feel better once you talk it out to Uncle Ollie.”

“You’re a creepy bloke; have I ever told you that?” Spike said, brows furrowed over the slow burn of blue embers.

Oliver shrugged nonchalantly.  “Wouldn’t be the first time if you had.  That’s been my key descriptor for years.”

“Perhaps that’s something you should work on then.”

His friend didn’t say anything to that, just shrugged again.  That was par for the course, though.  Oliver wanted to talk about everyone else, but never about himself save those few details he’d shared over the years.  He would constantly dig into the psyches of the people around him, rummaging through the bits and pieces until he found something truly interesting.  The minute anyone got too close to his own thoughts, though, Oliver would shut down completely.

It pissed Spike off to no end.  Their whole friendship was one-sided and he was sick of being Oliver’s pin cushion.  Years and years of the poking and prodding had left Spike quite sore.

Yet, when it came down to it, Spike couldn’t force himself to confront Oliver.  He’d never been able to.  It was this unseen force that closed his throat and made his stomach churn every single time he tried to point out their obvious dysfunction.  Maybe Oliver wasn’t the only one afraid of letting his demons see light.

They sat in silence for several minutes before Oliver cleared his throat and said, “She’ll understand if you explain it to her.”

“Right,” Spike snorted.  “How the hell can she understand if even I don’t?  She’ll call me foolish, at the very least.”

“Because of the money?”

Spike nodded slowly as his eyes focused on the blurred scenery outside the window.  Of course Buffy would say it had been a bonehead move to throw that damned ring and she would be right.  He’d been so used to having money that objects didn’t have much meaning anymore.  Just like the house, that he’d wanted to hand over to Dru just to get her off his back.  But Buffy still knew the value of things.  She would have told him to auction it off for charity or some sodding do-good cause instead of throwing it away like the piece of garbage it was.

If he had it to do all over again, though?  He’d have done the same bloody thing.  The flood of release that rushed through his veins as he watched it leave his hand and soar foot by foot away from him- that wasn’t something he could have gotten from selling it and he’d needed that feeling.  Their split hadn’t been real until that very moment and it had ended on his terms.  Finally, he’d got a word in by tossing a physical representation of their marriage into the darkness, away from the lights and flash, away from him.

“’M not sorry,” Spike finally mumbled. 

Oliver studied him for a moment.  “No, I suppose you’re not.  But you have to talk to Buffy, guilt or naught.  She’ll hear about it eventually and then you’ll be the prat that kept it from her.”

“Not so much concerned with her reaction of me throwin’ it as I am the fact that I still had the bloody thing after all this time.  Don’t rightly know how I am gonna explain that.”

“Well, why did you have it?”

He thought about it briefly before shaking his head.  There wasn’t a clear answer to that question that he could find.  At first, it was because he had been convinced that Dru would come back to him like she had every other time.  Weeks went by and at some point he realized that wouldn’t happen, yet he still kept it.  He’d stopped wearing it sometime around week five, but it was always on him, in a pocket or dangled from a chain around his neck.  He’d had it for so long, worn it for a dozen years and he’d felt naked without it.

That was just an excuse.  Maybe that ring was the only way he could hold on to the persona he wore, a costume with all the bells and whistles that made him Spike Pratt, badass lead singer of a multi-platinum rock band.  He didn’t have Dru anymore, but he had that costume as long as he kept the ring with him.

It was ludicrous really.  As if a ring could have the magical ability to glamour him into someone he wasn’t.  But the truly ludicrous part was that he didn’t need the sodding ring or Drusilla Rayne to be that person, he already was that person.  And not just the shell of it, but solid through and through.  It took a fearless leap for him to realize it, cutting himself off from everything he thought he knew in order to finally to see the truth.

Spike growled.  “When did things get so fuckin’ complicated?”

“For you?”  Oliver tilted his head then favored Spike with a sympathetic smile.  “The moment you realized that little boys and girls were completely different creatures.  Been fascinated with them ever since, I suspect.”

*** *** ***

Texas was a huge state.  Seeing it on a map was one thing, but driving across it in a bus was an entirely different experience.  They had crossed the New Mexico/Texas border almost five hours ago and Austin was still another five hours to go. 

Buffy wasn’t sure she could stand being cooped up for that long, not that she really had a choice in the matter, unless she told them to pull the bus over and she finished the trip to Austin on foot.  Perhaps she wouldn’t be going stir crazy if the rest of the passengers weren’t so damned quiet. 

Not one of them had said more than two words since leaving Albuquerque and she was beginning to think there was something going on that they weren’t telling her.  She’d fished, of course.  Anya, who could never keep her mouth shut, ignored her by faking a phone call.  Xander just stared at the television, laughing inappropriately as he watched a rerun of The Powerpuff Girls.  Oliver had just given her a knowing look and Oz…well, she hadn’t even bothered with him since he said so little to her anyway.

That only left one person and she was absolutely dreading it.

Spike.

Buffy glanced up from her book, looked around the small living space and resigned herself to the task at hand.  She didn’t miss the exchange of looks between them all as she stood up and made her way towards the room at the very rear of the bus.  If they thought that would dissuade her from seeking Spike out, they were mistaken.  If anything it only strengthened her resolve.

Her heart began to pound violently as she neared the door and after a passing moment of hesitancy, she lifted her fist and knocked.  There was a muffled reply that she could only assume was Spike granting her entrance.  She slid open the pocket door, revealing Spike sitting cross-legged on the bed with his notebook, guitar and an iPod with some fancy-looking earbuds attached.

“Hey, luv,” he said softly. 

She shut the door behind her and moved to sit on the very edge of the mattress.  “Hey.  What’cha doing?"

“Just tryin’ to get some ideas on paper before I forget them.”

“Oh.”

Spike stared at her, a slight smile playing at the corner of his sensuously-full lips.  “What’s on your mind, pet?”

“Is there something going on that I don’t know about?  I mean, everyone is acting kind of strange and I…  I am just imagining things or what?”

His mouth dropped open a little as if he were trying to say something but no sound was coming out.  Then he laughed, not jovial by any means, but this self-depreciating cackle that made the hair on her arms stand straight up.

“Shoulda bloody known you’d catch on,” he murmured, his eyes downcast.

She frowned.  “Spike?  What are you talking about?”

His gaze flicked back up, an ocean of Pacific blue cascading at her in a powerful wave, and his expression was full of reverence.  “Happened back in Albuquerque.  That show, you know the one.  Didn’t know how I was going to tell you or even if I should.  Not much point to it, I figured, since it really had no bearing on…us.  But Ollie was right.  You’d have found out either way and I’ve been on the wrong side o’ your temper too many times to risk puttin’ myself in the storm’s path again.”

He was babbling, she realized.  Sure, he’d been known to go off on tangents occasionally, but this felt different.  There was a sort of calm nervousness about him, which was a complete oxymoron and yet that was the only way to describe it.  His mouth was running a mile a minute, but his body, his face were deadly still, stuck in a relaxed daze as if it had been drugged.

“It must have been that call that changed things.  Hearin’ her voice again and suddenly everythin’ made perfect bloody sense…”

Buffy heard his words and felt her heart start to crumble.  What was he saying? Had talking to Dru again changed his feelings about her?  She thought back to that conversation, but nothing stood out that would indicate he wanted to be with his soon-to-be ex-wife.  Not that it had to since he could have decided he wanted to reconcile with Dru much later.

Jesus, it was no wonder no one wanted to answer her questions.  No one wanted to be the bearer of bad news and tell her that Spike was running back to Dru.

“So I tossed it out into the audience and baby, it felt…  I’m free now!  Finally free,” he announced, a huge grin on his face.

Wait- huh?  She’d missed something while she was busy damning their relationship in her head.

“You tossed something into the audience?” she asked dumbly.

His smile fell and he blinked at her.  “You weren’t listening, were you?”

“Uh, yeah, I was…er…kind of.  I missed that last part is all.  I’m sorry, Spike, what did you throw into the audience?”

“My…”  He sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.  “Lot harder t’ say the second time around.  It was my wedding ring.”

Buffy’s eyes went wide.   She had not been expecting that at all.  “Oh.”

“Oh?  That’s all you’re gonna say?”

“I- What do you want me to say?  I mean, two minutes ago I thought you were telling me that you decided to get back together with Dru and-“

Spike let out a bark of laughter so loud that it made her jump.  She watched him for a few seconds, rolling in his own private joke and then she got mad.  Her arms crossed over her chest and she sent him an angry glare.

“It’s not funny, Spike!  I thought you were breaking up with me.”

That only made him laugh harder.

“You’re an asshole,” she snarled as she got up to leave, but she didn’t get very far because his arm curled around her waist and then she was falling backwards onto the bed.

She fought to get loose, her arms flailing, legs kicking out, but he held on tightly.  Before she knew what was happening, she was flat on her back and Spike was straddling her hips as he secured her wrists with on hand.

“You are a stupid bint,” he told her.

“I am not!  I’m not stupid and if I knew what a ‘bint’ was, I’m pretty sure I could say that I wasn’t one either.”

Spike shook his head.  “You must be stupid if you think I would break up with you and crazy if you think I’d ever willingly go back to Dru.”

“Yeah?  Well, I know that now!” she shouted lamely.

He watched her, suspicion clouding his eyes.  “Do you?  Gotta say jumpin’ to that conclusion in the first place makes me wonder.”

“Hey,” she replied.  “I’m not the one who was married for twelve years and completely devoted to a lunatic.  It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that you might-“

“The soddin’ hell it isn’t!  Buffy, I thought we were over this nonsense about me wantin’ other women.”  His anger melted and was replaced with a non-expression.  “Bugger.  We weren’t supposed t’ fight about this.  Never expected that you’d think I was breakin’ things off with you.”

“Oh, so now it’s all my fault, right?  Because we’re fighting?”  Buffy started to struggle again, bucking her hips up to throw him off of her.  He wasn’t going to blame this on her!

“Buffy.  Stop.”  His voice was soft, strained and when she looked up at him she figured out why.  His eyes were rolled up and his bottom lip was caught between his teeth.  He was turned on.  Whoa.

All at once, she went still, except for the heavy movement of her chest as she breathed in and out.  It took him a while to calm himself, but once he did, he slid off of her and sat up.  He grabbed her wrists and helped her upward as well.

“What I meant was that I hadn’t expected that reaction an’ I’m kinda at a loss for what t’ say,” he clarified.

“Well, what reaction were you expecting?”

He shrugged.  “Dunno.  I s’pose I thought you’d be mad because I’d kept it for so bloody long.”

Oh.  She rolled that idea around in her head.  There wasn’t any anger, though, mostly just curiosity and maybe a bit of sadness for him.  He had been carrying that ring around for years and years and years, but it hadn’t meant happiness for him or fidelity or a reminder of mutual devotion.  If anything, it had only served to keep him painfully aware that his marriage was much less than perfect.

“The last time I saw my dad, he gave me a stuffed pig named Mr. Gordo.  I knew that I would probably never see him again.  That was one of the saddest days in my life, watching my dad walk away from us, but I still kept that damned pig.  So, what I am trying to say, Spike, is that I understand why you kept the ring.”

“So, you’re not mad then?”

She shook her head.  “Nope.  Not even a little bit.”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll make the person who got it very happy, though I hope they sell the soddin’ thing.  Probably do more good that way,” Spike remarked.

“How much was it worth?  A couple thousand?  It was pretty fancy.”

His eyes darted towards the ceiling.  “Uh, yeah.  Couple thousand.”

“Spike?”

“Really wasn’t worth much at all now that I think about it.”

“Spike.”

“Fifteen hundred tops.”

“Spike!”