Take Heart 9 by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: blurb to come. Think of Spuffy, sex, etcetera, you know the drill;
Author's note: Thanks to Spikejones, aka jonesiexxx for the beta and the blurbing;
Author's website: http://home.planet.nl/~dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk
“I love you so much."
The words hang in the air like a cloud of moths, soft dark wings beating against his face, stifling, frightening, even if he knows he doesn’t need air. Buffy's face looks frozen, and she doesn’t move from where she's fallen, seated flat on her ass with her back against the mausoleum wall. Spike supposes his face looks like that too, shocked out of knowing what to do or feel, leaving just blankness.
Spike sees the pulse in Buffy’s throat inexorably tick the moments away, telling him you can’t turn back time, or swallow words you said. If he lets her live, she’ll always be witness to what he just blurted out. If he kills her, he’ll always regret not having had enough confidence to let her live. Didn't she say something about love, when they were still under the influence of the spell? He'd discounted it then, and he realizes he still can't believe in it.
The moment of decision has long passed. They stare at one another across the chasm of dry turf. It’s a gap much too big to cross, Spike knows that. He wishes he could think of a way to leap across and take her in his arms, love her properly, as he's sure nobody has done yet. Even more, he wishes they were still best enemies, in a comfortable limbo of not quite working together, with all kinds of futures still in the offing. No, scrap both options. He wishes most of all that he could be himself, and that he had killed her just now. He knows how to be that fellow, and it seems best for everyone.
All those possibilities are going nowhere. There’s only one future for him. Buffy's face abandons blankness and starts trying out emotions. They're not good ones and Spike's hearts sinks into the Sunnydale earth and further. He’s never felt this old and hopeless. He pushes himself off the ground and turns away from her. He aches all over from where she hit him; the heart she’s gonna trample on aches even more.
He takes a few steps in the direction of his crypt, but he can’t let go that easily.
“Buffy, I…”
He catches a last glimpse of her as she runs off faster than he's ever seen her go. Of course. What was he thinking? That she would wait patiently until her despised enemy, the disgusting undead creature of the night, was ready to air out the hateful contents of his heart?
His first thought after he’d blurted out those damning words had been that things could get no worse, that he was feeling shittier even than when he’d been first chipped, but he’d been wrong. The look on her face. Such a weird mixture of repulsion fascination and sheer gobsmackedness.
He’s such a fool. What fucking idiot would fall in love with his enemy? Bloody definition of “pathetic.” He’s too bludgeoned by his newly discovered feelings to want to gauge the exact width and breath of them. He wanders dejectedly back to his crypt, but then stands there staring blindly at the sarcophagus.
What’s he doing here? This is not his home. This is just a temporary dwelling, good enough while he was planning on leaving as soon as he could. Good for reminding him he wanted to leave, that he shouldn’t get too comfy or homey. It’s cold and dusty, no amenities, nothing. It doesn’t feel like home. It looks as if no one has been living there for a long long time. Right. How can he ‘live‘ somewhere when he's dead? He’s less than nothing, he’s a demon without talents. He can’t impress her by bringing home a still-warm heart, or a nice dress with a girl in it. His money’s stolen, his affection suspect.
Is the crypt supposed to be good enough for him now? He's not gonna leave Sunnydale anytime soon, he knows himself well enough to see that. When he loves, however hopelessly, he loves thoroughly and persistently, and he doesn't leave the ones the loves easily or lightly. And Buffy didn’t kill him when he was lying there stunned into paralysis. So there’s hope. Well, it’s not like hope-hope. More like an absence of actual refusal. There’s even been absence of actually asking her anything on his part, so that means negotiations haven’t even begun.
These tiny glimmers of not quite utter dejection fail to make him leave the spot where’s he’s rooted. Leave, why would he leave the cemetery? Where can he go? There’s nothing and no one here for him, no friend on whose shoulder he can sob. He didn’t bother with all that, since he was only passing through.
He does have one advantage he didn’t have when he left. He's got wads and wads of cash, so that means he can get properly rat-arsed tonight without giving the wrong people IOUs he can never deliver on. Spike brightens infinitesimally and trudges back out to the graveyard. Booze. The booze calls from the southwest and he goes thither.
Spike spots the girl one block before Willy's Bar and Grill. He melts into the shadows without a second thought and waits for her. His stomach burbles and his cock twitches. He can smell her all the way from over here, rich, heady girl smell, leaking blood all over the place. She walks on fast clicking heels, a little fearful and hasty all alone in the dark. Yummy spice of fear. That'll chase those terrible moments with the Slayer from his head.
But he knows it won't. That it’ll be the same as yesterday, standing there with the prey ready and quivering before him, waiting for his teeth, and that he won’t want to go through with it. Not with a woman. Not with anyone, if he wants to retain that scrap of hope he has to get at the Slayer.
Spike sags against the brick wall and leans his head back. This is ridiculous. What scrap of hope? He’s got no, he repeats to himself, no fucking chance with the Slayer. Ever. No matter what she said in a moment of delirium. But he can try squashing it for all he's worth, that damn fool part of himself still perks up and insists on reminding him of her ecstatic screams, her odd looks, and most importantly, her noticeable lack of staking. She knows he has no chip anymore. She thinks he's promised not to kill people. Yeah, right.
He looks up, just in time to see the fat arse of his intended victim disappear around the corner. It doesn’t matter, plenty of other women in Sunnydale, or men if he can’t bring himself to kill girls anymore. Hunger threatens him with its sharp claws, but it's not strong enough yet to force him to go seriously trolling for dinner.
Spike shuffles into Willy’s and sags against the bar. After taking one look at him, Willy shoves a bottle his way.
"I guess the chip started working again, Spike?"
Spike only growls in response. The chip is a better excuse than the real answer. No mate, I'm in love with the Slayer and she wants me to stop killing. He can just hear the Homeric laughter that will rise up from the whole of Sunnydale’s demon population. He's fucked, utterly and completely fucked.
Three bottles later, he staggers back to his crypt and passes the spot where he and Buffy fought. He presses his body against the crypt wall he slammed her into, his arms spread wide, rough stone scraping the palms of his hands. His nose picks up the faintest trace of her scent. The stone is cold against his cheek, hard and unyielding against his cock. He should have fucked her when he had her pinned there, forced her to love him, made her look at him again as she did when they were under the influence of the spell.
She did want him, he's sure. Even after the spell wore off, she didn’t look like she always did before the spell, annoyed and disgusted. He didn’t hear her spit and wipe off her mouth. There's opportunity there.
He won’t go up to her house and woo her like a human being would. It's too fucking humiliating. He can just see himself, bunch of flowers in his hand, asking her out to dinner. Yeah, like that will work. The shame of falling for an enemy like that is unbearable and a tear creeps out of his left eye.
Spike groans and rubs his cheeks against the stone again. He needs pain, or a good fight, or best of all, a shag to get him out of this despondent mood. The sad thing is there’s only one person he wants to fuck and she's pretty much unavailable, ever. Imagine the shame of the whole demon community not only knowing he was chipped, but actually dating the Slayer? Even if it could become true, that would be so embarrassing.
His legs give out and he slides down the crypt wall like a slug. Halfway down his nose passes the spot where the Slayers’ arse was pressed against and the scent is stronger there.
“Oh, Buffy,” Spike moans.
When he hears the words whisper along the stone wall in an eerie sibilance he sobers up a little and checks quickly if no one’s looking. That was close.
He pushes himself off from the wall with a sigh. Back to the delightfully decorated crypt it is, then. Almost dawn. The faint light picks up the white rectangle that's lying on the grass at his feet. Hasn’t he seen Buffy carrying it? He picks it up, almost toppling himself with his drunken lack of balance, and gets it at the third try. It’s an envelope, only a little soggy from lying on the ground for hours. Well, maybe it's a good excuse to drop by her house and return it to her.
The crypt is just as dank and unwelcoming as when he left but he has no choice, he has to hide from the daylight. Isn’t life great.
*
The hangover wakes him up, pounding nails of pain in his head. Ow. Hair of the dog would be a good idea, but the bottle next to the sarcophagus is empty. He must have drunk it when he got back, although he has no memory of it. Daylight is still leaking through the crypt’s windows; late afternoon by the angle of it. Why the hell was he dreaming about going to church? He didn't even do that anymore when he was still alive. He spits out the dusty taste of communion wafer and soul.
Something beneath his body rustles when he sits up. He fishes for it and it's Buffy’s envelope. He almost chucks it in petty revenge when he catches a glimpse of what’s written on it. He stares at it stupidly. "Spike' it says, in a girlish round handwriting with a circle for the dot. Buffy’s writing him a note? Dear Spike, I hate you. Please leave town immediately. Well, no. She’s never felt shy before about simply voicing sentiments like that. He turns the envelope over and over in his hands. Good quality white paper, a narrow grey edging. What could she possibly be writing to him? Odd, this.
He shakes his head and tears the envelope open. It's been a while since he did that and he also tears the thick, doubled up piece of paper inside. He untangles the torn bits of letter from the torn envelope with clumsy hung-over fingers and holds the two pieces together to read it.
His jaw hinges open with an audible click. He's invited to attend Joyce Marilyn Summers' funeral, 19:00 hours, May 19th. He has no clue what the date is, but it can't have been yesterday because it was later than that when he fought Buffy. Buffy's inviting him to her Mum’s funeral. An evening funeral, especially geared to the sunlight-sensitive? Of all the weird things he never expected, this is a major one. So what's he supposed to do, write back? Rent a suit?
Now he knows how Buffy’s has been spending her time. Dealing with authorities, having old Joyce dug up. Tara too, presumably. He's not invited to Tara's funeral, he notes.
The shock of receiving the invitation has made him appallingly sober. Things aren't exactly looking more hopeful in the harsh light of day, as is their wont. He sinks down on the crypt floor and leans his head against the sarcophagus. She's managed to stump him, all right. He's not going, of course. Who ever heard of a vampire going to a funeral, if not to bury his newest get? He can just see the faces of Giles and the bloody stupid Scoobies if he were to show up. That'll go down well.
He rolls his neck muscles. Still. He can’t deny the invitation has made him feel different. Right hopeful, in fact. He wants to flatten that feeling, scrunch it up and throw it away, but it’s pretty resistant. It can’t do harm to show up. If he doesn’t expect anything, he won’t get his heart stomped on too hard. He's gonna show up out of respect for Joyce, ignore the Scoobies, nod politely to the Slayer and thank her for the invitation. And then leave immediately afterwards, his dignity intact.
Spike snorts. Dignity. Who gives a rat's arse about dignity? He wants the Slayer and he’s damn well gonna get her. He'll lie, cheat and steal to get her. At least all his clothes are black. Oh, what the hell is he thinking. Of course he's not bloody going.
*
He has no trouble at all locating the funeral party. All the parking spaces for hundreds of yards have been taken and it’s a coming and going of cars and people, hearses driving on and off. Right. Someone’s making a bundle out of Adam's yen for destruction. He spots the Slayer and her friends waiting at a freshly dug grave, all dressed up in unfamiliar dark clothing. Buffy's bright hair makes her coat seem even duller and darker. He joins them silently, expecting to remain unnoticed at the rear.
However, Buffy whips her head around as soon as she comes within range of his senses. This tells him something about her sensitivity for vampires. Her pale set face digs soft fingers into his heart and yanks him forward to where she's standing.
"Spike! Thanks for coming," she says softly. "I wasn’t sure you would."
Is it imagination or is there a faint pink in her cheeks now?
"Course I came,” he says, as if he never had doubts.
He wants to slip back to the rear of the small group but her hand sneaks out and grabs his. The heat of it touches him everywhere at once and he stands stock-still, afraid of doing something really weird if he moves, like gibbering or dancing or singing. His thoughts stutter and start, stop and start. I'm not ready! he wants to scream. His whole being yearns to be in his hand, to flow towards her and to touch her. If he weren't so conscious of people watching he'd sink to his knees right here and now and worship her.
He's doomed, utterly and completely doomed.
He forces himself not to look back, but he can feel the Scoobies' beady eyes bore holes in his back. They’re mentally staking him over and over and over, he just knows it. Ungrateful sods. He’s saved their stupid little lives, hasn’t he? Might have been under duress, but they don’t need to know that. He should have prepared for this instead of telling himself he wasn’t going to go to the funeral at all.
The ceremony takes forever. He doesn’t really hear the words, but he can sense every pulse of blood in Buffy's hand, which seems to be growing warmer and warmer in his. He's gonna go up in flames if it lasts much longer. Her hair stirs softly around her face, her eyes hidden in shadowed hollows cast by the lights that have been set up in the cemetery. She stares straight ahead and doesn't give him one look the whole time, but her hand clings grimly to his and he can measure her desperation by the strength of her grip. He remembers what it's like to lose a mother and strives to give her the support she needs through his fingertips.
Buffy steps forward to put a flower on the coffin. She doesn’t let go of his hand, which is pretty damn awkward. Stroke of good luck that he pinched a rose from another fresh grave just now. It’s the wrong message in the flower language, at least for Joyce, but none of these hatchlings here will know that.
At last, the service ends. Spike tries to slip his hand from Buffy’s, to melt away into the darkness like a proper creature of the night, but she tugs him mercilessly toward the brightly lit parking lot. He really doesn’t want to go. He’s no good at stuff that can stand the daylight.
“You’re coming with us, right Spike?” she says.
Spike wants to say no, but Xander saves him from that mistake.
“What? Spike? What for? And what's with the handholding, Buffy?” Xander asks.
Spike sees Buffy stiffen and feels her hand get a degree or so hotter. Bloody tosser, badgering Buffy about who she wants around after her Mum’s funeral. Doesn’t he see she’s this close to falling apart?
“Spike’s my…ally and he’s gonna be with us in the Scooby meeting!” she says.
“Buffy, unless there’s some compelling reason, I’d really prefer not to have him in my home,” Giles complains.
Xander practically skips closer to Giles and favors Spike with a triumphant smile. “That clear enough, bleach boy? Nobody wants you.”
Spike stands taller and walks up to Xander. “Buffy wants me.” He deliberately drawls out the word “want” and Harris nearly implodes. “Buffy invited me. That means I’m coming, don’t it? Buffy ’n’ me are mates.”
“Okay. ’Buffy,’ you and ‘mate’ in the same sentence? Major squick,” Xander says.
Spike rolls his eyes, and checks out Buffy's face, to see if she notices his admirable restraint
“Really, Buffy, Spike in my car!” Giles says. “It’s new. He wrecked the old one, if you recall.” He polishes his glasses and mumbles, “Although why anyone should pay attention to my needs now when they never have in the past….”
“Get over it already,” Buffy says. “That old thing made us late for an apocalypse, if I remember correctly.”
Her glance strays back towards her mother’s grave. “Less talk. More getting away from this place.”
Her face is pale and tight and there’s a faint wobble in her chin. In retrospect, Spike is appalled the Scoobies are her only support at this time. Doesn’t she have any family? Where’s her Dad? He grasps her hand firmly. He has a lot of experience causing grief. That should be a big help in consoling and supporting her.
*
In the car, Spike gets to be squashed in between Willow and Buffy, since both Giles and Xander refuse to sit next to him.
“Grow up!” Buffy tells them sharply. “He's on a mission of redemption. Cut the man some slack.”
“Man? Man?” Xander starts, his voice taking on that higher pitch and faster rhythm he gets when he’s going to spew vitriol.
“Leave him be, Xander,” Giles says warily. “We owe him the opportunity to try and reform, just as much as anyone else, I suppose.”
Spike reckons Giles is shutting Xander up for Buffy’s sake, not because he believes in vampire redemption. But as long as it muffles Harris, he doesn’t much care.
It’s full and toasty in Giles’ little red car, two warm girls cushioning him from Giles’ abrupt and angular driving style. Buffy squeezes his hand and he squeezes back before he can check himself. Events are going faster than he can track. He wasn’t prepared for handholding and Scooby-inclusion, and Harris’ taunts glide off his skin as they always did. He gets distracted by the scent rising from Buffy’s hair. He buries his face in it and sniffs appreciatively. Willow turns a reproving eye on him.
“Hey. Funeral, not ten minutes ago. No big deal to you, maybe, but for Buffy …”
Ta ever so for the buzzkill, witch, Spike thinks, but then Buffy catches his eye. She looks pinched and miserable. She’d never ask, but she needs something from him and he bends over to kiss her. The taste of her mouth makes him forget the dull service, the strange scariness of pretending to be a good guy, the bumpy ride. When he touches her, he knows the world through her senses, and he doesn’t think sitting in a car with human beings is strange, or the prelude to an orgy of blood.
Buffy’s heart patters with faint nervousness under his hands and he burrows under her clothes to get closer to its fascinating rhythm, seeking her warmth like a small blind animal, but just then it skips and starts thumping loudly, as do the hearts of everyone else in the car.
Spike reluctantly disentangles from her lips and looks up. The cause of the Scoobies alarm is easy to spot. A big gray-and-blue splotched hand is splayed against the side window, the body attached to the hand looming up, tall in the dark shadows below the traffic light. The rotting face that descends to peer into the car is clearly not that of a law-abiding citizen of Sunnydale, or even a vagrant offering to wash the windshield. Its milk-white eyes, the only thing they can see of its face, glow eerily in the darkness. Xander is whimpering and trying to climb into Giles. A stench creeps into the car even with the windows closed.
Giles’s hands grip the steering wheel until his knuckles go white but he doesn’t step on the gas to speed off for some reason. His right foot stutters and sends the engine revving pointlessly in a nerve-wracking rhythm.
“Stop flooding the engine and drive!” Spike yells to Giles over the loud whining of the car, but the lights are red and is it that Giles can't make himself break the law, even if self-preservation dictates it?.
The big sloppy shape taps the window and makes sounds at them. It looks as if he taps the window but he only squishes, and one finger falls off.
“Giles!” Harris squeaks.
Giles is finally released from his insane law-abidingness when the light turns green and he shifts to drive. The car bucks and jumps ahead, leaving the zombie standing on the curb. Spike cranes his neck to see it better as they drive off, but the tall portly figure lifts his hands in a frantic, hopeful wave, not threatening at all but rather saying, hey, you forgot to pick me up!
The figure dwindles quickly in the patchy glow of the street lights. Is he imagining it or is it joined by one or two others at the last moment before it disappears from sight?
“What was that?” Xander asks. “Did you see what it was, guys?”
“You were the closest,” Buffy says practically. “Looked like a zombie to me.”
“Hey, I know from zombies,” Xander says, scrabbling back to normalcy. “Scary, scary guys. Giles, do you know if Adam drafted zombies in his demon army?”
It beats Spike why Xander is asking Giles and not him or Buffy. He wasn’t there, after all. The drive sinks back into the unremarkable, only punctuated by the white flashes of uneasy Scooby eyes swiveling over to check him and Buffy out. He can’t say he’s feeing perfectly unconcerned himself, actually. It feels bloody strange to have his arm slung around Buffy. What does it mean? Does she think he's her boyfriend now? Christ, they will have to talk. He dreads that talk even more than the upcoming Scooby meeting, for which he mostly anticipates boredom and ineffectual sallies from Buffy’s not so sweet little friends. He can’t do this, he’s fairly sure. It was easy to become a bad guy, long ago, because everybody knows about wrong, even if they’re a little shaky on what’s right. Going the opposite direction is a whole different vibe. He hasn’t the slightest clue how to do just about anything.
Giles’ apartment is untouched, if dusty and smelling of garbage that should have been thrown away a week ago. The surroundings are disturbingly familiar to Spike. It’s not that long ago that he was lying here chained in the bathtub, being fed blood through a straw by a far less sympathetic Buffy. Her neck, though, looked pretty good to him even then. He remembers the red top she wore, mocking his hunger with its very color.
Buffy’s tugging at his arm, looking at him strangely. "Spike, what's with the game face?" Her voice is businesslike, the vulnerability of a moment ago gone, no trace of it in her set mouth and sharp look.
Oh. He realizes he's vamped out and growling low in his throat. For a moment, he can’t quite remember what he's doing here and why he's not tearing these people’s throats out, but the warm little hand on his sleeve brings him back to reality. The things a man does for love. Gut-wrenching, stomach-heaving, migraine-inducing madness it is. Can love possibly be worth all this? Will he look back on these moments and regret them? He can’t see any other outcome, yet he's unable not to go through with his. Love has him by the short and crinklies all right. The present incarnation of Love tugs at them hard enough to make him wince and indicates a chair.
He sighs and swaggers over to it, pointedly taking a different chair to the one she indicated. He's not anyone’s lapdog, not even hers. Yet, a nasty little voice whispers, you’ll be sorry. Yeah, yeah, he knows this. Of course he’ll be sorry. This can never end well. Doesn’t mean he can walk away from it.
Giles begins with his usual waffling and polishing of spectacles. “Well then, Spike,” he says and coughs genteelly. “Buffy tells me you’re willing to throw in your lot with us. Become a warrior for the good, as it were.” Giles looks at Spike over his spectacles. “You expect us to take you at your word? Explain to me why we should.”
As Spike has, in fact, been troweling on the lies, he doesn’t immediately have an explanation ready. He does mean some of it, as he can’t see a way to eat people without the Slayer knowing about it.
Buffy intervenes for him. “Giles, being good is new to him. He’ll get used to it.” She beams like a schoolteacher whose delinquent student racked up an unexpected A. “You would have been proud of him; you should have seen the way we worked together. It was awesome. He had my back all the way, and it was so great to have someone working with me who can take care of himself.”
She sees the looks on the Scoobies’ faces. “Not that I didn’t always… Coz, you’re all totally behind my back.” Her eyes pop. “Not behind my back in the sense of … you’re all also taker carers. You’re caretakers! … Oh…” She glances at Spike for help.
Spike doesn’t bother to hide his guffaw. The Slayer and him have so much in common that he didn’t know about before, lack of tact being a grand example.
The Scoobies exhibit unease each in their own way. Willow wiggles her whole body, readying herself for a speech, but Xander attacks without thinking.
“Buffy. Stop. Think! So Spike has superpowers, big whoop. He doesn’t have a soul.”
“Of course I don’t have a sodding soul,” Spike snaps. “Don’t want the bloody thing. Had one once, didn’t do me a damn bit of good. I saved your sorry arse without the benefit of a so-called soul, and I didn’t hear you complain when I brought you back to life.”
“What? Back to life? I’m not dead. Buffy, say I haven’t been dead!” Xander yells.
Buffy makes an apologetic face. ”Um, actually, yeah, you were. It’s a long story. Spike and I carried your spirits, or stuff, around for days, and then we brought you back to life.”
Giles forgets to worry his glasses for once. “Buffy, why haven’t you told us this before? Was I dead too?”
Giles pats his sweater, as if to test the solidity of his flesh and then actually takes hold of his wrist to check his pulse. After a stunned pause, Willow and Xander follow suit. Giles falls back into his chair and rakes his hand through his sparse hair. “Buffy. From the beginning. We were dead?”
Buffy makes anxious eye contact with Spike. He knows exactly what she means, namely, shut your great big gob and let me tell the story, but he's not sure he's going to mind her. Depends on her tale, doesn’t it? He wants his rightful share of glory, is all.
“What’s the last thing you remember, Giles? You remember getting weak and sick because I was all powered up and we couldn’t find Adam?”
Giles nods.
“Then I started having weak spells. You thought it was because you three were draining my energies now to stay alive, because being super-Buffy had used up yours. I put you up here in the basement to keep you safe. The last thing you told me was to kill you,” Buffy says.
Willow and Xander gabble and squeak, but Buffy pays them only cursory attention. Spike supposes there is no way to soften this.
“Then I went to find Spike,” Buffy continues. “He was the only person who I knew would help me.”
“What? Help you?” Spike blurts out. “Were you insane? I hate you! You’re my enemy!”
Her wounded stare and a triumphant snigger from Xander bring him back to the present and he subsides. “Well, yeah, I mean, that was what I thought then. Go on, Buff.”
“’Buff,’” Xander mumbles. “’Buff.’ We’re all nick-namey, now huh? What next – ID bracelets?”
It hasn’t gotten through to Harris what Buffy and him have been up to, Spike reckons. He looks forward to rubbing his nose in it at some future date.
Buffy takes a deep breath. “Then Spike, um, we killed you and the spell didn’t end but got stuck in Spike. And me. Then…”
There’s a loud banging on the door. The Scoobies freeze. Spike jumps up and strides to the door, glad to be moving again. Sitting about and keeping track of those half-truths makes him twitchy. Before he can open the door a key clicks in the lock and the zombie they saw on the way over falls over the lintel. He makes a burbly, incoherent sound and points at Giles.
“Whine!” the zombie bellows. “Allowis! Whine!”
He stumbles more than he walks, at each step barely regaining balance on his uneven legs. He's dressed in what looks like to have been tweed once, but he doesn't have shoes on. Leg bones protrude thorough the grayish blue of his big long-toed feet. The zombie approaches Giles, stretching out his slimy hands as if to throttle him. He changes course at the last moment and lunges for Giles' glasses. The zombie shoves the glasses haphazardly on his owns head, puncturing an eyeball in the process and then grabs Giles in a bear hug.
While they all stare at the zombie’s floundering, the door is still open and Spike is the first who whips his head around to the source of new shuffling sounds. Two more zombies scramble in, accompanied by a sickeningly sweet, marshy stench. By now Spike has a pretty good idea what they are and it’s confirmed by the tatters of red hair on the head of the smallest zombie. Oops. Magic has consequences even on dead bodies, it seems.
Buffy meets his eyes in complete understanding. “Spike! What do you do with a zombie? Salt?” Spike nods and takes a leap at the kitchen counter.
“Chop off their heads!“ he shouts and rolls over the counter into the kitchen, destroying Giles’s drinks tray and teapot in the process. He opens alls the cupboards in a frantic search for salt. What does a salt container look like? He has no clue and it takes longer to read all the tins and bins in Giles’ messy kitchen. He takes quick look over his shoulder and sees Buffy tearing off an arm from zombie Willow.
At last there’s a rectangular box telling him ‘Salt’ in bright red letters and he rolls back the same way he came, over the counter, to avoid Giles and the zombie who block the entry to the kitchen. He runs for Xander and his zombie, who seems to be giving Harris a French kiss. Talk about auto-eroticism… Harris’ eye movements are frantic and his face is taking on an unusual pallor. It’s not an erotic kiss; there must be some kind of sucking of life force going on.
He slides the last few feet on his knees and almost tosses a handful of salt over the zombie’s head, but then changes his mind and wrenches at the thing's legs first. It's too much fun to see Harris writhe in fear and disgust under the besotted thing's onslaught. He takes his time about pulling off the rest of its limbs and only uses the salt when he finally gets bored. The zombie dissolves into smelly lumpy goo.
"Looked like you were having fun, Harris. Good kisser, was he?” Xander shoots upright with a gasp and immediately starts throwing up, trying to dislodge the zombie soup from his shirt at the same time. He only ends up smearing his hands with the sticky ooze.
“Great, Harris, just great. Vampires have really sensitive noses, you know.”
"Spike, shut it, unless you want me to ralph on you!"
Spike checks out Willow.
"You okay, Buff?"
Buffy is holding her own. She has methodically removed every limb from the zombie, and is now wrenching at the head. He expected no less. Giles then.
Giles and his zombie are lurching around near the kitchen entrance, mouths locked together, reeling dreamily in a circle as if they’re slow dancing. Spike looks on for a few moments before upending the salt container over the zombie's head. It’s tougher than Xander’s zombie, or it’s become stronger through its frantic kissing of the new Giles, and it breaks apart in big chunks. The head lands on the floor with a wet thunk; the eyes look up at him with reproof behind Giles’s glasses. A good thing the mouth has already dissolved, or it would no doubt start preaching at him.
Spike lifts a boot to stomp it into jelly. Giles grabs his arm and wheezes out, "My glasses, stop, don't damage my glasses."
Spike bends over and fishes the slimy glasses out of the softening head. One eyeball is speared on the tip of the ear piece. He hands it to Giles and then stomps down hard. The skull dissolves with a satisfying splat. Giles gingerly peels off the soft gooey eyeball and gets out the inevitable hanky. Spike wonders if he’s happy to finally have good reason to clean the damn things.
Over at Willow's body, Buffy's still having trouble with the Willow-zombie. It's now just a head, but it stubbornly clings to Willow's mouth and Buffy can't exert a lot of violence without either squashing or slicing Willow in the process. Spike offers Buffy his remnants of salt and she accepts it gratefully. The bodiless Willow-zombie turns to a translucent jelly and Buffy peels it off Willow's face with a wet plop. Willow is deathly white, with a red ring around her mouth where the zombie has been sucking her life away.
Buffy helps Willow up and they stagger back to their respective seats. Spike gets a brilliant notion and goes to find Giles's secret stash of good Scotch. He returns triumphantly with the bottle and five glasses.
"Here, people, to rinse away the taste of rotting flesh."
Buffy makes a face. "Don't say that, Spike. Seeing it was bad enough."
Giles throws his back in one gulp. "Thanks, Spike. Just what I needed."
Buffy refuses with a heartfelt 'ew', but Xander takes a glass with alacrity and drinks until his eyes water. "I didn’t think I was ever gonna say this without gagging, Spike, but you saved my life. Thank you."
Willow gargles and spits with hers, which is a damn waste of good booze.
Buffy looks at him with more feeling than he's gotten all evening, in spite of her grimly clinging on to him. An actual slow smile dawns on her face and Spike feels an answering smile tug at the corners of his mouth willy-nilly. He goes away to another place for a bit until he regains a sense of self and realizes he must have been sitting motionless with a silly grin on his face for minutes on end. He puts his careless face of cool back on hastily and hopes the Scoobies were too relieved and shaken to notice.
"Buffy, I hope you can tell me what those creatures were and why they were after us?" Giles asks.
“I don’t have a good feeling about that, Buffy," Willow says worriedly. "My zombie was kinda wearing my hair and my clothes. Did that outfit look as bad on me as it did on her?"
"Well, yeah, I guess those would be your old bodies," Buffy says hesitantly. "I was just about to tell you that we killed you?"
Spike is deeply grateful for her skating over his role in that. He suspects the Scoobies would never forgive him for that, even if they were meant as acts of mercy.
"You guys died. We buried your old bodies. We tried to save Riley, but it didn’t work. Adam turned him into a cyberdemon and he couldn’t take our magic."
"That was the body previously known as Xander? And this is some new body? Oh man, Buffy, I really didn't need to hear that," moans Xander.
"What magic was that, Buffy? I'm confused now," Giles says.
"Spike and me were still sort of bound together by the enjoining spell," Buffy says. " And, I don’t know why… Maybe because Spike’s a vampire, but we could do magic. Together we were stronger, we had powers like Willow, we could think like Giles and feelings like Xander.”
“My feelings are having a major wiggins as off now. Coz being inside Spike’s head? There might be Spike-cooties inside me now. Essence of dead vampire," Xander says.
"Trust me, Harris, your disgust can’t be bigger than mine at the thought of you lot cavorting around in my noggin," says Spike.
Giles leans forward with a new glint in his eye. The three glasses of Scotch might have something to do with it too, of course. "You know, Spike, perhaps I’ve been discounting your change of heart too abruptly. You’ve been carrying three souls around for days. We might have been, in fact, we probably were, the influence that turned you towards good. Or, well, stopped you doing evil."
Spike snarls. "No sodding way. I don’t have a soul. I have not been contaminated in any way. I regurgitated you lot and that's it. Nothing left, no magic, no soul, no nothing."
He grabs a pencil from the coffee table and puts in on his palms trying to levitate it. "See? Doesn’t work. No magic left."
He doesn’t mention how he gets a flash of uncomfortable shyness and frustration. It’s how he remembers Willow feeling.
Willow grabs it and makes it do somersaults. "Mine’s still working. Whew."
"New jewelry, Spike?" Buffy says, in a very calm voice, spelling danger to Spike.
He checks out the thick gold chain around his wrist, which is plainly in view on his wrist because he had to show off his lack of magic. Trust a woman to remember he didn’t have it before. He falls into her big green eyes, staring at him with incipient doubt and he can’t find the right lie to explain how he got it.
"Buffy,” Giles rescues him unknowingly. “I'm still concerned about our former bodies. It's a bit of a pity you and Spike destroyed the zombies just now. I'd have preferred to study them to see if they could be revived. I don't feel quite at ease in this flesh."
"Exactly!" Willow chimes in. "How can we be sure we're really us? We could be like completely different people and how would we ever know? What about our DNA? And my fingerprints? My dental records? We could be total mismatches with each and every one of them. Our whole lives could take a different course from here on!"
Yeah, well, so what?
"Nothing we can do about it, or any of you. Things went pear-shaped and you’re bloody lucky we saved you at all," Spike says.
Giles gives him a subzero glance. "Buffy?" he asks.
Spike glowers and tries to remover his hand from Buffy's. No way is he going to suffer this kind of indignity, not even for her. Buffy gives him a raised eyebrow and his thorns turn into quivering bramble jelly. He sinks back into the couch, speechless, paralyzed with lust and love. He's so whipped. When did that a happen?
"Spike's right," Buffy says, and Spike glows. He catches Xander’s surprised, cynical glance on his face and he tries to remember if dismembering was in or out. Out, he thinks. Pity.
Buffy gestures to the rotting heap of zombie assorted on the tile floor. "By all means go research the gross pile of zombie goo. I don't know why there were three of them. We tried to bring back your old body, Giles, but you weren't yourself. Well, maybe your personality was, but you were still a dead, rotting icky body. We put you back in Spike's head and we used the Riley leftovers to make new bodies for you all."
"I’m leftovers? I was just getting used to liking the me I was. Good old Willow. Now I’m sloppy seconds Willow!”
"I hate it when these nasty little factoids keep coming out. The ones you forgot to mention the first time you told the story? Or the second time?" Xander says.
"I just…I just didn’t want to hurt you guys, " Buffy says sharply. "You didn’t really need to know you were made of one third of the Riley blob, or that Spike…."
"You were right, Buffy," Xander says, "I really didn’t need to hear that."
Xander bolts for the bathroom again and Willow's face is tinged with green, which goes really well with her hair and eyes.
"Buffy, what if we fall apart? What if we start to rot away, like the zombies, only not like them because we'd be conscious the whole time?"
"Really, Buffy what were you thinking?"
"You'd rather be dead?" Buffy says. "Too bad I didn’t get the memo in time. Feel free to kill yourselves, don’t mind me. I'm just a girl who tried to save her friends. And gee, I even thought I succeeded. How totally dumb of me not to get that I really failed. "
She stands up, quivering with anger, but Spike knows that tears are hard on its heels. He stands up too and slides his hands around her elbows, supporting her unobtrusively.
"Spike? Outside, now.”
Spike follows Buffy, but before he exits, he slides his eyes over the stricken faces of the Scoobies. Xander, just emerging from the bathroom, still pale and sweaty, Willow on the verge of tears, Giles flushed and feverishly trying to alter the strength of his prescription glasses. They enter the cool lamp-lit courtyard but Buffy doesn’t stop. She strides off angrily, only the energy she expends in keeping the furious pace preventing her from sobbing.
TBC
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