herself_nyc (herself_nyc) wrote in herself_nyc_fic, @ 2008-05-02 08:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | s/b fic, waiting around |
Fic: WAITING AROUND (pt 3 of ?)
Story note:
The action of this story picks up immediately from the conclusion of Some Scenes From The Later Life of Two Heroes. If you haven't read that one, it was a sequel to a longer pair of Spike/Xander stories, which can be read here. The low-down: since her resurrection, Buffy has never aged, and has grown increasingly distant from her surviving adult children and their families. In this far-future fic, after a long lifetime partnered with Xander, Spike has buried him and is at a loose end. He and Buffy have a series of encounters spread out over months, and after averting an apocalypse together, return to London for what might be the beginning of a long-postponed affair. But the morning after, Buffy's not so sure ....
All previous parts of WAITING AROUND are here (locked) or here (open to all).
She had friends. It wasn't like she didn't have friends. True, most of them were the offspring of her original friendsshe seemed to do much better at keeping ties going with Willow's and Giles's and Dawn's than with her own flesh and bloodbut some were people she'd just collected over the years. They were all somehow, if only tangentially, involved with the slayage. She couldn't really deal with people she couldn't be 'out' to. Some were demons, or halfies. They were scattered around on five continents. Not so much good for spontaneous lunch-dates, but she never had to spend a major holiday alone if she wasn't inclined.
Spike snored slightly, his face buried in a pillow. He'd pitched onto the bed in his clothes and passed out almost as soon as she brought him inside, which startled her, because he'd seemed drunk but not that drunk. Now he was out, he smelled rather boozy, but really not bad. Buffy sat propped up beside him, her ankles neatly crossed, sending texts from her phone.
Her eyes were starting to lose focus, the words swimming on the screen, when a hand skimmed into her line of sight and closed around the phone.
"Your whole bloody social life consists of typin' with your thumbs."
She let him relieve her of it, and assumed an air of readiness for whatever he had in mind. Talking. Kissing. Just no more drinks.
Spike got up on his elbows, yawning. He tossed the phone onto the nightstand. "Sorry to be such a bore."
"You're not a bore. C'mon, you're still grieving. I don't judge about that stuff." Xander had been gone a while, but she knew grief had a way of erupting after the fact.
"Least I didn't drool into your pillows." He glanced around at her. "You should sleep. I'll go. Really only meant to say goodbye."
She laid a hand on his back to keep him down. "Stay. Relax. Later there can be sex. And I thought we were going to go over to Paris for a while. Wouldn't you like that? We could find some interesting trouble there."
"Did we say?" He blinked. "Wasn't sure what I was dreamin' an' what ... been a dreamy fellow, lately. You really want to go to Paris?"
"Just stay, Spike. Unless you're hungry. Do you need to feed?"
"Dunno." He squinted. "You never answered my question."
"What question?" Her belly seized up. She knew what question. What she did her best not to think about. What he was out of bounds to ask.
What are you waiting around for?
Or: How many times am I obliged to save the world before I get to check out for good?
Beside her came a familiar crunching sound. When she looked over at him again, Spike was fanged out. She could hear him breathing through his mouth, it sounded like an approaching storm heard underwater.
"Sick of pretendin' to be a man. Would like to wreck this bloody room, an' savage you, an' go out like the great slaverin' beast I ought to be."
He didn't move, and she felt no need to tense. She brought her hand from his back up into his hair, digging into his scalp, caressing him. "You're still drunk. You're tired."
He snarled a little, low in his throat.
Buffy was sympathetic. She had those times too, when she sort of wished she could just be evil. Just use her powers for bad. Just get lost.
She could imagine going out and plucking someone off the street, dragging him back up here, holding him down for Spike to feed on. Someone succulent. Watching him dig in deep, watching him get sated.
Spike reared up onto his hands and knees, shook off her touch. Sprang to his feet. When he opened one of the big sash windows, a cold moist blast of air and traffic noise rushed in, as if the room was a vacuum.
He stared down into the street. "Sorry to be such a bloody bore."
"Would you knock that off?" she said. But he was already gone.
For two days he didn't return her messages. Irked, she postponed her flight. On the third day she went by his flat in late afternoon, when the watery winter sun was setting, casting long shadows in the streets. But he didn't answer the buzzer. She returned later in the evening, and still nothing.
No one at the Council offices had heard from him either.
It was only then that it occurred to her that she'd misinterpreted him. Their last evening, everything he'd said in the cocktail barabout goodbye, about answering the question, swung into a different, far more dire perspective. Had she been so dulled out to the clues he was throwing that she'd missed it? He might've been telling her.
That he was ready to end it. To dust.
My God, Buffy thought, would he do that?
The mere idea was a kidney punch.
No. No. NO.
It made her furious enough to go on the hunt. She hit London's more venerable vampire haunts, the sorts of places Spike would've known all his unlife, where he'd be known, or known of. But no one she asked, or leaned on, or beat up, had seen William The Bloody.
The search ate up the next few nights, let her postpone the potential for her own grief, which meanwhile splashed up into her consciousness at odd moments, corrosive and foul as a midnight reflux.
Fuck you, Spike. FUCK YOU, you stupid vampire.
She tried to focus instead on the baby twins. Two little girls with scrunched up faces: Daisy and Rose O'Connor. Their photo was on her little screen all the time, it was turning into a talisman. She told herself she ought to fly to them. She liked Joey's wife, and Joey's wife liked herprobably she'd be happy for some help. Diaper-and-burping duty, it could be good, Buffy told herself. Good to spend some time with the people whose world she'd just saved.
Spike, you unutterably selfish bastard. How dare you seduce me and then just check out? HOW DARE YOU?
She kicked at his door, and the wood shattered against her foot.
"Shit." She hadn't meant to do that.
"Oi. What're you doin?"
Spike's flat was a ground floor in an old house, part of a Regency row, with its own entrance beneath the front steps. He stood now on the other side of the iron area paling, looking down at her from the pavement. The streetlamp above him tinged his pale hair orange, like his head was on fire. His hands were sunk deep in his leather pockets, and a cigarette dangled from his lip.
"Me? Where have you been?"
"Bender," he said, with the same inflection that he'd say down the shops. Swinging open the gate, he descended to her. "Thought you'd gone home."
He had his keys out; she followed him inside. He knelt to look at the broken wood. "Will need a whole new door."
When he straightened up, she met him with a roundhouse punch.
His head snapped back like a rubber bulb; blood shooting from his nose.
The heel of his hand jammed up against his nostrils, he gave her a narrow-eyed stare, eyes glittering gold. "What the fuck?"
"That's to show you I care, since there seems to be some misunderstanding on that front!"
"For beatin' my face in? Remember when you used to!"
"You can be such a turd," she muttered, yanking his hand down, tugging him towards the bathroom. "I can remember that too." She added, just because she knew it would hurt him, "I often wondered how Xander lived with you all that time. I really did."
Spike snarled. She started to dab at his bleeding nose with some toilet paper, but he pushed her away.
"Me? I'm a bastard?"
"You must've seen my messages. You could've at least sent me a text so I'd know you weren't dead."
"Chucked my phone in the Thames."
She wondered if the bender was still in progress. But he didn't smell drunk, and he was clean, except for the blood that now spattered his clothes. She itched to hit him again. She could picture just really getting into it. Make a wreck of the place, like he'd wanted to the other night, before jumping out the window.
Spike seemed aware of that danger; when he went for her, it was demon-fast, pinning her against the wall, his mouth on hers sharp and abrupt as a slap, his knee coming up between hers with pre-emptive force.
She shoved him off so hard he tumbled backwards; hearing his head crack against the lino, she winced.
He sprang up with a snarl, fanged out and grinning like an evil puppet. "Come on then!"
"You really want to bust up the place?"
"Be most excitin' thing that ever happened here in warty old watcher's flat. Might as well. But fair warning, you're gonna spread 'em for me when your beat-down's done."
Crude much? But that wasn't what bothered her. "I'm not administering a beat down to you."
He cocked his head, his eyes bright like an animal's. "No? Thought you were."
"Spike"
"What else you been doin' since you came to London with me?"
Again her perspective reeled. It was like a gut-kick that took the breath out of her. She turned against the counter, staring at the tea and sugar boxes there, waiting for the spin to stop.
Whoa.
"I haven't been paying enough attention." She turned back to him then, and was relieved when, after a few tense seconds, he let the game-face go. But his blue eyes were dark, half-shuttered. Full of suspicion. "I can be so stupid."
She'd gone so long without the very thing that drove Spike's spirit, that she was capable of not even seeing it anymore.
A whole lifetime with Xander, their days and nights intertwined. Hardly ever apart for more than a few hours at a time. And now that was all over, and he'd been trying to pretend ever since that he wasn't left limbless.
She'd thought his offer, better club in with me, was off-hand. She'd heard it as being for her, a thrown bone she could catch or let drop at will. What else could it have meant, since it seemed so clear he wasn't in love with her any more than she was with him?
She'd entirely missed that he'd been counting on her to stay close.
Buffy went to him, laid a hand on his arm. "Spike, I didn't mean to slight you."
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