1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18
Nan
RATING: R
Effulgent Spike (and Buffy, and Dawn, and everybody) belongs to Mutant Enemy and Joss Whedon, to whom be all praise. I promise to return him only slightly battered, in chains, looking sexy as hell. No profit is intended--only more SpikeJoy for everyone.
At the Bronze, Dawn looked for an opportunity to tell Spike what she’d learned while channeling Harriet the Spy. But she couldn’t seem to find a good moment. First Spike and Xander (who couldn’t hold a grudge more than an hour if his life depended on it) were playing pool. When one or the other scratched, they started clinking the two halves of handcuffs together before the other one started his turn. She thought Spike began it, since Xander was only a fair pool player and Spike routinely sharked for drinking and cigarette money and therefore hardly ever scratched unless he intended to. But the clink-and-change rotation gradually got more even because Spike had a waaay head start on the drinking and it wasn’t too long before he was having trouble finding the table.
If all you were allowed to drink was Cherry Coke, you might as well take mental notes on how the four people you loved most in the world behaved while getting thoroughly plastered.
For one thing, conversation went downhill real fast. Buffy was down to single syllables within an hour, and then intermittent giggling fits. It was about then she decided the great thing would be dancing with Spike. And Dawn had to give him points for restraint, not to mention coordination (which for him was about the last thing to go). Despite Buffy getting allll over him, somehow his staying on his feet and not quite letting anything vital get unbuttoned or unzipped made it still dancing. Although that style of dancing would normally have roused a general shout of “Get a room!” (a tradition at the Bronze, which had no rooms) a special providence seemed to be watching out for Buffy and Spike tonight: when the yell came, it was some other semi-disrobed panting couple who were left standing alone and (probably) embarrassed in the middle of the dance floor, under the swirling prismatic lights from the glitter ball.
The Bronze was, after all, a teen hang-out. Grown-ups handled things with less fuss, more style. And kept dancing.
“C’mon,” Dawn said to Willow, who’d been doing her own sidelines note-taking, watching the room wistfully between strawberry daiquiris and trying to look bright and chirpy whenever she remembered or she thought somebody might be looking. “Let’s dance.”
Willow resisted her pull, surprised, like she’d been caught at something. “No, honey, you don’t have to, it’s OK—”
Dawn yanked at Willow’s arm again. “C’mon. It’s in the rules: you gotta have a good time or the Bronze Happiness Police come down on you and make you eat soggy pizza rinds all night. Take it like a woman.”
And the Bullying-Dawn Charm worked its magic yet again. They danced. Dawn knew she wasn’t what Willow wanted in her arms, but at least she had the right number of Xs and Ys and Willow loved Dawn and Dawn loved Willow, though not that way and anyway Dawn didn’t even love any guy that way so it represented excellent practice and a learning experience and gave them both something to do.
When she spotted Spike and Buffy wandering slowly toward the back door, Dawn danced Willow toward the pool table and successfully made the exchange, grabbing Xander’s braceleted hand, shoving Willow’s into it, and declaring, “Your turn, Xander,” leaving them blinking at each other uncertainly because although the Bronze didn’t have rooms it did have an alley.
But it was a false alarm. When Dawn banged out the back door maybe three steps behind them, Spike was holding Buffy up and solicitously patting at her shoulder while she threw up.
Noticing Dawn in a kind of dim way, Spike explained, “Your sis had to, come over all unwell y’see, an’—”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
Watching Buffy barf seemed to Dawn the cue that the fun part of the evening was over. She went inside and called a cab. No way was she getting into a car driven by any of these people tonight.
They dropped Xander at his apartment. Reaching home, as second-most-sober, Willow volunteered to help Buffy get upstairs and horizontal while Buffy kept insisting she was fine, was fine, and trying to sit on the stairs. That left Dawn to see to Spike, which was OK. It wasn’t if she didn’t know how.
Drunk, Spike was a long distance away. Light years. He heard you, eventually: it just took awhile for the words to reach him, and anything he said was probably in response to something you’d said five minutes ago.
He didn’t need pushing, just maybe steering, and tonight not even that. With Dawn following along, he got as far as the basement door but hung up there immovably: thumbing the raw wood where it was broken.
“Spike, it’s OK,” Dawn started, but wasn’t surprised that didn’t get through to him. He continued inspecting the basement door, experimentally pushing so it moved on its hinges. Then suddenly he backed off from it. His head bumped the slanted underside of the upstairs staircase and he went down, straight down, pulled his knees up against his chest, arms wrapped around them, sitting as small as he could. Spooked: frightened.
Dawn sat down next to him and took his arm, patted his hand. “What’s the matter?”
After the time lag, he looked around at her, then gestured at the open doorway, the broken door. “’S broken. ‘S not safe.”
Dawn looked at it and realized he was right. No way to bolt it now from either side or even shut it. If he got downstairs and chained himself up, he’d be entirely defenseless and he wasn’t too drunk to know it.
Any vampire who’d survived as long as he had, and got blind drunk as often as he did, must have a kind of instinct to get into a safe place, a place where the sun couldn’t find him, before collapsing.
“You’re OK here,” Dawn tried to reassure him, but he wasn’t taking that in, hadn’t heard her yet.
“Can’t,” he muttered, still rigidly distressed, “crypt’s broke too, no chains, can’t….”
That was when Dawn caught the other horn of his dilemma. He wasn’t worried only about being safe himself: he was scared to death he might start hallucinating and hurt someone else. Not just be safe but make himself safe.
Not my own dog anymore, she thought.
He might be crazy, at least part of the time, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Spike. Spike, listen. Listen to me now.” She tugged at his arm, poked him, until at last his blurred attention came around to her. “Spike, it’s OK. I’ll see to you. Nobody’s gonna get hurt.”
“Get the chains, Bit.”
“Can’t, Spike, they’re bolted to the wall, remember? But you’re OK. You’re OK.”
“No,” he said, and dropped his face onto his folded arms and started crying.
Although she searched hard, Dawn could think of no answer to the puzzle, nothing that would make it right. He was right to be scared. Remembering invisible Dru chatting with him in that slaughterhouse he’d made of Willy’s, she couldn’t help being a little scared too.
If things were to suddenly go all pear-shaped and bad, nobody could stop Spike but Spike. And he wasn’t sure in his heart anymore he could always do that.
Dawn pushed up against the wall, skipped to the kitchen door, then returned and settled beside him again. “Look. Look what I got.” When he roused enough to lift his head, she showed it to him: a solid foot of pine sharpened to a needle point. His eyes went large and started to change. Dawn grabbed him around the back and held him hard. “Any dumbass can stake a vamp, Spike. It isn’t the strength: it’s knowing how. I’ve done it. You know I’ve done it. But I won’t. Unless you make me. I’ll do you if I have to. You listening to me here? I’m your minder tonight. And tomorrow we’ll get Xander to come fix the door and it will be OK again.”
She kept talking, a steady stream of words, until at last she felt the tension in him slacken and he was leaning bonelessly against her.
“Promise?”
“Certain sure,” she said.
Just like that, he was asleep.
Dawn slid a little aside until her back was braced more comfortably in the corner. Spike tilted with her, not stirring, no longer drawn up tight, stretched out on his side. She continued to hold him, feeling his occasional indrawn breath. He did too snore!
Sometime later, she woke up and found Willow, barefoot in a fuzzy robe, regarding them, eyebrows crinkly in concern.
Pushing her hair out of her face, Dawn checked that Spike was still OK and asleep, then explained in a whisper, “He gets terrible nightmares sometimes, sleeping drunk.” Which was true: she’d intended to stay with him all night anyway in case of the Awful Dream. And in case he woke up thinking he was still wherever Buffy had brought him back from, with nobody to tell him what was real and make him believe it.
Concern-face fading, Willow said nothing for awhile, considering them. Then she whispered, “I’ll get some pillows.”
Dawn must have fallen back asleep because the next thing she knew, she had an afghan around her shoulders and a pillow at her back, and Willow was perched opposite on more pillows at the side of the basement door. A tiny magical glow burned in the middle of the air.
Seeing Dawn rouse, Willow held out her hand and whispered, “I can take that now.”
Realizing Willow wanted the stake, Dawn blinked muzzily. “No, we’re good. I promised.”
“All right, baby. Whatever you say.”
That was how Buffy found them in the morning. Because when the noise of two or three SITs arguing upstairs over bathroom rights awakened Dawn, she was clasped in Buffy’s arms. Clear-eyed and solemn, Buffy squeezed her and kissed her head. Then for a few minutes they all sat in unspoken communion watching over Spike’s sleep.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18