Warning: There's a fair amount of "fucking" this and that,
but no real harsh language except expletives; there's an extended implied
sex scene, but no plumbing (plumbing -- explicit body parts -- doesn't
interest me).
Old Blood
Nan Dibble
With anybody else, it would have been easy. But Oooooh No, Mr. Bill, this was Spike, so it was freakin' impossible.
He was up and about now, whole minutes at a time, sometimes appearing during catch-as-catch-can schoolday breakfast pillaging, threading among the abruptly silent and wide-eyed SITs, daylight out the windows but no sun yet on this side of the house, pouring glugging blood into the blue mug everybody else now left strictly alone, impassively waiting out the microwave and then gone again, ungreeted unless Buffy happened to be there: standing to listen if Buffy said anything to him, eyes averted to the floor, silent or monosyllabic even then, calling her only Slayer; or after sundown, sometimes out on the back porch, standing likely because if he got down he couldn't yet get up again, smoke drifting because some idiot had pitied him enough to smuggle cigarettes in for him, mayonnaise jar lid for an ashtray, just long enough to finish unless Buffy went out and kept him awhile. Either way, a few minutes' Sighting and then gone again past the basement door Xander had put a big steel deadbolt on. On the outside. Dawn took a certain pleasure shoving the bolt home anytime she was in the vicinity unless she found it already bolted. Once, she tried the doorknob and was surprised and vaguely indignant to realize there must be a bolt on the inside, too.
Present in the house but absent even when you saw him, haunting the corners and staircases like the unwelcome ghost of himself. No window of opportunity for Dawn to deliver her bomb. It was very frustrating.
Then Thursday evening, as Buffy was rounding up the troops for patrol, Dawn onlooking from the stairs, he ghosted up beside Kennedy, who recoiled, and that caught Buffy's eye. Buffy leaned back against the door, going to parade rest with the battleaxe.
"No," Buffy told him, and his head jerked up, finally meeting somebody's eyes.
"Yes," he said. "Got your back--"
"No," Buffy said again, in the "Not discussing this" tone Dawn had come to hate.
Spike edged past Kennedy, and the other SITs backed away, leaving a tablecloth-worth of hallway open between him and Buffy. He shoved both hands through his scruffy two-toned hair and took one "Getting ready to talk now" breath. "I'm fit enough. I can--"
"No. Downstairs. Now," Buffy said, pushing off the shut door and advancing on him. "I mean it, Spike."
He backed a step, then sort of folded in on himself, turning. Retreating down the hall, he quit trying to hide the limp, with Buffy implacably following, battleaxe propped on one shoulder. He shut the door behind him and Buffy set the bolt.
Surveying the SITs, Buffy said, "He's going to be helping you train. Soon. When he's better. Just not yet. He's a member of this team." Having waited the allotted 10 seconds for argument or objection to be ignored or steamrollered, Buffy went through them and led the team out.
Nobody left still home but Willow, making magical stinks upstairs with her door shut. Time for the bomb. Dawn dashed to the kitchen and grabbed the package from its hiding place behind the least-liked soup cans, then back into the hall. After a second to stand and compose, she pushed the bolt.
Dark, below: she flicked the switch, then cautiously descended.
He was pulling himself into two-handed chin-ups on a water pipe or anyway trying to, more hanging than chinning. Spotting Dawn, looking past her, he dropped a little wonky, caught his balance, and came barging right past her, through the kitchen and out the back door. When Dawn got there, he was halfway to the sidewalk.
Dawn took a second to shove the bomb back into concealment, grabbed the spare stake bag kept handy by the door, and went in leisurely pursuit.
The first block, he was limping. By the second, he couldn't hold a straight line but kept going. Third block was it, tipped against a streetlight just to stay upright, looking out into the dark.
"Just resting," he announced, when Dawn came within what would otherwise have been striking distance.
"Yeah, sure." She folded her arms.
He rested some more. His left hand, no longer bandaged, spread against the streetlight pillar: taking a better grip.
"Not interfering," Dawn commented, as a couple of cars went by.
He hung his head. "You should get home. Nasties afoot an' all."
"I'm good." Lifting the bag, she shook it to clatter the stakes, demonstrating. "Just waiting to watch you fall down."
"Got a bet on it, pet?"
No Pet, she shrieked in her mind. No Bit, no Niblet, no nothing, you worthless freaking undead asshole! You left me and didn't even say goodbye!
Failing to get a rise out of her, he revolved enough to free both hands to get a cigarette out and then lit. The lighter took him four tries. But he got it back into his jeans pocket without dropping it, so extra points for accuracy.
And she got extra points for not budging, letting the standoff build. If he let go the lamp post, he'd go down, and they both knew that. She'd let him. And he wasn't about to move, couldn't move, stuck for forward or backward as surely as a cat too far up a tree and they both knew that too. Her treasured rage became something like serenity as she waited for him to ask for her help, so she could turn him down. She'd wait for daylight, if need be. He got the cigarette to his mouth without quite dropping it and breathed out smoke. He shut his eyes.
"And this was the wrong way, anyway," she informed him, resuming the spoken conversation. The unspoken one of course continued.
"That a fact."
"Yeah. Thursday patrol pattern is the other way, toward Shadygrove. Maybe they forgot to tell you. New rules. While you were...gone. Being crazy. Being tortured. Whatever it is you do for fun these days."
"And that could be, too. Why aren't you with them, then?"
"Oh, I'm useless too, didn't anybody bother telling you that either? Only the freakin' Slayers-In-Training get to go patrolling now. No use wasting training on humans and no need to practice screaming and running away, Xander's got that all covered."
He nodded and didn't say anything, which made her want to hit him. But there was no need for that. He'd fall down in his own good time, and she'd watch. Better without forcing the inevitable. Better enjoying the whole anticipating thing. Let it play out.
Motion, down by the corner. Dawn stuck a hand in the bag, and Spike straightened slightly against the post, both watching. Only a guy in a striped shirt, walking a shaggy little mutt that ignored Spike to growl at Dawn, dragged past on a shortened leash in otherwise silence that might have been embarrassed or indifferent. Hard to tell, with silence.
"'S'not worth it," Spike decided, addressing the cigarette. "Go on home."
"No, I'm good."
If the next something that moved furtively by the corner or emerged from the bushes was a cruising vamp, there was nothing he was going to do about it and Dawn was iffy, merely a human teenager, after all: no kind of Slayer, not even potentially, not the crumb of a chance.
Dawn took a stake out of the bag and flipped it for a proper underhanded grip. Whatever the next interruption was, if it came at her, she'd try to take it down.
She wasn't leaving while he stayed. She was her own hostage. Extra points for that, certain sure.
That he wasn't going to get whatever he'd come out here for wasn't her doing. He wasn't her responsibility. He'd once claimed she was his and she'd believed him. They were going to see about that now.
It felt like poker. She'd seen him and raised.
He folded.
"All right." Spike pitched the cigarette and set a boot on the coal. "Give us a bit of a hand, then."
"In your dreams, Spike. How about I go home and bring some handcuffs? Leave you decorating the curbside? Only two and a half blocks: maybe somebody might notice, coming back from patrol. Not Buffy, though. She wouldn't notice. Wouldn't miss you. Nobody misses you, Spike. Nobody cares. Why did you even bother coming back?"
"Been wondering that myself. On and off. Not like it was up to me, after all. Just go where I'm put, stop until called for....You got it, Dawn: you win. You're right, and she's right, and all of us are bloody right and give us a goddam hand here, you stupid bint."
Dawn smiled like a steel trap. "Oh how can I possibly refuse when you ask so nice? But you didn't say the magic word." She was happy to realize she'd grown while he'd been gone. Taller than Buffy, now. She could look him straight in the eyes, and smile, and then be startled as his eyes shone golden as he let his demon out to play.
She didn't think the demon was going to say "please."
"Have it your own way, then," Spike said: glum demon, barely giving her a flash of fangs.
There were last dregs of strength available to him through his demon. He pushed away from the post, stuck both hands in his jeans pockets, and started slowly back. Shoulders hunched as if against an expected blow, a stake just to the left of center from behind; steps as even as though measured out with leg irons.
As he passed beneath the next streetlight Dawn noticed shiny patches on the back of his black T-shirt. A loose spotted circle, an irregular rosette. Black on black. Invisible again as he crossed the street and she drifted along behind. Chin-ups had been really dumb, then: he'd broken something open. Dawn didn't walk much faster but didn't need to, to catch up, half a block from the house. He was resting again, swaying slightly, unsupported in the middle of the stretch between sentinel street lights. He'd lost game face. In the lights of a passing car, he looked like what he was: a walking corpse. You could see the shadow of the half-face bruise again. He'd shut his eyes.
"You go on. I'll be along," he said. Then his knees gave out.
Juggling bag and stake, Dawn wasn't quite slow enough to let his head hit the pavement. Dammit, she thought, her own knees folding, flinging the stake wide and out of the way, dammit all to hell! She was as big a total hopeless loser as he was. Couldn't do it. Couldn't just watch. Kneeling on the sidewalk with a hundred and sixty maybe pounds of unconscious vampire sprawled, head and shoulders, across her lap. Maybe less. He'd dropped a lot of weight, she saw now, since last summer. Bones showing clear, as if he hadn't fed properly in months. Thought pig's blood was just about as disgusting as she did. Drank it anyway because it was that or starve.
Stupid hopeless helpless useless vampire!
Only about a minute before his eyes fluttered open, vague at first, then focusing. "Well, that was educational."
Dawn was vibrating with fury at him, at herself. She was not going to cry. Not going to cry.
"Time you found out," he murmured, "you got limits. Same as everybody else. Same as me. Some things, you just can't make yourself do, no matter how you want to. Might as well learn on me as anybody." After a few seconds he added, "At least there's that: I can serve as a bad example. So not a total waste."
"Get off me. You're bleeding on my second-best slacks."
"Oh, can't have that, send you Anne Klein ripoff hell for that, certain sure." He got himself as far as sitting, so she could scramble to her feet. "Give us a hand, then," he said again, not looking at her, arm lifted, calmly waiting.
She could leave him there. Leave him for the returning patrol to find, they'd never miss him, so close. Get him in all kinds of trouble with Buffy. Except that she couldn't.
"I hate limits," she shouted, hands fisted at her sides. "I hate souls." She felt as if she were about to explode. Then she felt better, remembering the bomb.
"No argument here on that. Just how it is."
"Shut up. Just shut up." Grabbing his extended arm at the elbow, she hauled, and he came, and she was remembering how Buffy had brought him home not quite a week ago. She ducked and pulled his arm across her shoulders, no point anymore pretending she wasn't going to do this, so no point doing it badly. She put her other arm around his back below the wet, seeping patches and latched her thumb into one of the belt loops. She waited for him to contribute some wiseass remark but he didn't, just took one crosswise schottische step trying to correct the lean, so she braced and shoved them both forward, going with the stumbling schottische steps when she had to, straightening when she could, zig-zagging slo-mo between the lane markers of curb and hedge.
She hated it that he'd asked her help and hated that he accepted it. This was so not right. He wasn't supposed to let her treat him like this, not that he didn't have it coming, but he always, always went down fighting, what'd goddam happened to him to make him like this?
Passing the last hedge, they hit grass: home stretch. She demanded, "What is it, the frelling soul that makes you so goddam pitiful even I can't stand it? Is it?"
"Like as not." She felt him shrug. "When you suss it all out, you tell me. Don't have a clue, personally."
Approaching the back of the house, he pulled away a bit, and she let him sag down onto the porch steps.
"Go inside now, there's a good girl."
"Make me."
In the middle of lighting another cigarette, he cocked an eye at her. "Go inside, Dawn. You're not to be out here with me."
"So what are you gonna do: faint on me? Been there, y'know. So non-scary."
He got the cigarette lit and the lighter stowed away. "Not safe. Can't help it. Need a minder, every minute. You stay wide of me, Bit. I mean it. After awhile I'll get myself downstairs, all chained up proper again. That'll be all right then. Safe as houses. Talk then, if you want."
"What makes you think I want to talk to you?"
"Or not. Just saying. Just get yourself inside where you belong. Where nothing can get at you."
"I'm not scared of you!"
"Well, I know that, don't I? Never have been, never will be. But what you haven't yet thought out is that don't make me safe, Dawn. I would be for you if I could. Never hurt you if I could stop myself. But sometimes I can't. Don't know what-all I do then. Still trying to recall. Got a few pieces but not enough, not all. Holden Webster. Silly git. Never did know his name. He's accounted for. Slayer did for him. Don't know the other names. No proper introductions, visiting cards, tear out the throat then open someplace handy, wrist, arm, no matter, hold 'em breathing long enough to get it down them. Not exactly social, that."
Dawn sank down on the step too. "You've been killing."
He was looking out into the back yard, that seeming safe edge of the night, past where the light of the windows fell. There were crickets. "That I have, pet. And that's not all I've been doing."
"But the soul-- So you did lie about it! I--"
"Didn't lie. Wouldn't lie, anything else but not about that. Soul makes no difference, seems like. Soul has a nap and things proceed. Chip, that makes no difference neither. No impediment. I don't have a good handle on it yet but something's got its hooks in me deeper than I can figure, deeper than I know how to change. Not my own dog anymore, Niblet. Maybe never was, but I thought I was.... Guess I know whose, but haven't yet found a way to slip the leash. Don't know how to go about it. Need somebody to watch, be a minder, keep an eye on me, see I don't do something I'd...regret. Till that's different, you stay clear of me, all right? Cause if I ever hurt either one of you again...."
He didn't say what he'd do, but Dawn knew. From that summer. Before. When they'd each been pretty much all the other had and both fairly desperate-crazy a good part of the time. Remembered talking about it, talking him out of it, hitting him hard, crying or hurting herself until he had to give it up and tend to her. Dancing him away from it any way she could, any way she had to, because the alternative would be beyond bearing. It was understood now between them, no discussion needed. He'd take a walk in the sunshine. A little way. And then be gone.
Time, thought Dawn, suddenly remembering, for the bomb.
She went into the kitchen and was groping behind the cereal boxes when the back door squeaked and he passed behind her, leaning on the countertops: headed toward the basement. Limping so bad now his whole body hitched, skewed, and hesitated with each step. Her hand found what she wanted. She called, "Don't bolt it."
"All right."
She waited a minute for the noise that would mean he'd fallen down the stairs, but it seemed that had gone all right. As an afterthought, she poured a mug of blood, heated it in the microwave, then stuck the package under her arm and carried the mug downstairs. He'd put the light on for her and was settling onto the cot, awkwardly reaching around for the second manacle. Chains in the wall behind him. Dawn blinked, watching him fasten the second cuff around his wrist, then ease back, let go of something he'd been holding tightly.
She hadn't believed him about the chains. She didn't like watching him lock himself into them so matter-of-factly, with not just resignation but relief.
So he'd meant it, about not being safe. She could do anything to him now and there'd be nothing he could do about it. And he couldn't do anything to her, and was uneasy until he'd made himself sure of that. Not right. Couldn't be right.
She held the mug out and he said "Ta," and took it with both hands, spilling only a little with the shaking and on the cement it didn't matter. Didn't even bother to make a face, drinking. Not worth the trouble. His hair was in the bad stage between short and long. Only the ragged ends were white. The rest was a lighter, sandier color than she would have expected. Slightly curly at that length and untended. He'd always cared how he looked. Vainest guy she'd ever known, every detail considered and chosen to make exactly the impression he wanted. Now he didn't. Not worth the trouble. Now he lived someplace way back behind his eyes and didn't give a damn what the neighbors thought. If he even noticed that the neighbors were there.
Beaten down, quiet, no bounce left to him, so different. Give us a hand, then.
But with all the flash discarded, more simply himself: realer than she remembered or would ever have thought he'd be. She'd never thought of him as a thing, never once; but neither was he a man. A person, though: absolutely. Vampire person. Vivid alert blue or fulvous, dangerous golden, a person lived behind those changing eyes. And was himself changed practically beyond all recognition.
The realization that she no longer knew him was both disquieting and also like something still, spinning, balanced like a top. She wondered if the quiet she felt coming off him was something to do with the soul or was only another side effect of giving up.
"So what's that, then?" he asked presently.
"What's what?" she retorted, knowing he'd notice, waiting for him to ask.
"Whatever you got so unsuccessfully hid behind your back, pet: that what."
She whipped it out of its sheath, its bag, and presented it within six inches of his nose. Then she watched his face click through the layered realizations.
Click: pint bottle of liquor.
Click: full pint bottle of liquor.
Bottle of liquor underage Dawn had somehow finagled for him. Click.
Bottle of cheap-ass horrible freaking peach schnapps. Click.
Bottle of cheap-ass horrible freaking peach schnapps with metal cap unsealed, then retightened: it had been opened. Click.
He set the bottle on his knee and considered her, and Dawn was positive he was wondering if maybe she'd put something in it. Vomiting spell with ingredients from Anya, maybe. Or just enough rat poison.
"I spit in it," Dawn informed him blandly.
"Oh, if that's all." He unscrewed the cap and warily smelled the contents.
They both waited to find out if he was going to taste it. Horrible cheap-ass fucking peach schnapps.
"Right, then," he said, and upended the bottle and didn't stop or set it down until he'd finished it all. It wasn't like he had to breathe or anything. After the last swallow he made the face he wouldn't waste on the disgusting pig's blood. "You know what that is?" He gestured with the bottle. "That's horrible cheap-ass fucking peach schnapps, that's what that is. God, that's awful. Pinch me something decent next time, pet. Jesus God, that's appalling." He made a different face.
"Drank it, didn't you?"
"Might as well, why not? Better than nothing. Besides, you took all the trouble to spit in it, least I could--"
Their eyes met, and they both started laughing and couldn't stop. Dawn had to sit on the floor, convulsing and choking, slapping the cement. She wet herself, and of course he knew she had and that set him off even worse. He couldn't find anything to do with his hands until he settled for yanking at the chains, howling his head off. But that wasn't enough. Bending, he curled himself into a ball, the chains curved around him, as tight as he could, head bent against knees and arms wrapped behind his head, and it wasn't laughter anymore.
Dawn started to lean up, levering herself to reach, and just like that he was staring at her and she'd never seen his eyes do that, wide and golden and stark in his human face, tears still running down his cheeks.
"Don't," he said. "Don't you come near me."
She sat back, obedient: out of reach. Because he meant it. It was important to him.
If he could tolerate and enforce the limits upon himself, so could she.
He rolled onto his back, gradually unclenching, letting his knees unbend and stretch flat. His harsh gasps of breathing softened into hiccupping clicky spasms, then into silence.
"Done me good, that time," he said after awhile, and she had no trouble knowing what he meant. Doing somebody meant something quite different in Brit-speak: anything from murder to sex and everything between that left a victim. "Done me bleedin' marvelous. Gimme time, I'll think of something as nice for you, love. Haven't had--"
His head lifted and he pushed up onto an elbow. After a minute she heard it too: the thundering herd returning, girly screeches and chatter, the bang and clash of mishandled weapons going back into the chest.
"Did you think to bolt the door, love?"
"Exactly how stupid do I look?"
"Best not to say if I want to keep friends with you an' all. Not if I want to ask you a favor."
Looking around, Dawn found the gold gone from his eyes. He was sitting up again on the edge of the cot, his hands neatly folded on his knees. Best behavior pose. Or maybe the schnapps was beginning to get to him.
Terrible stuff: she'd tasted it to make sure. An insult even to offer. And he was desperate enough, and yet calm enough within himself, to take even that. It wasn't possible to humiliate him anymore: they both knew that about him now.
Dawn still hadn't quite made up her mind which of them was the biggest pathetic loser. She thought she still had him on points but it was hard to know how to score intermittent insanity. She wondered what it would take to back him into a place where he'd drink a rat.
"There's a thing," he said. "Have I got it right, you don't go patrolling anymore."
She nodded, then shrugged to say how completely that didn't matter.
"Right, then. What I want.... Listen. Ask. If they staked any vamps tonight, the last few nights, last couple of weeks. If, if any of them had a chat first, like. Like that Holden fucking Webster. Any that seemed to have the least sodding clue what they're bloody well doing, idiot fledglings, just come blundering at you without a thought in their cement fucking heads, all fangs and Rrrr, it's a pure mercy staking that lot, you see? Any not like that."
Dawn nodded again to show she was listening, but what she was actually doing was watching his hands. They were moving again, dancing to his voice the way they always had and were supposed to, making shapes and punctuation in the air, precise visual counterpoint to the swoops and stops of phrasing.
"Fledges, mind." His leveled finger instructed her. "Not some clapped-out sodding relic like me or Peaches. Not like that. The new ones, that's all. Last month or I s'pose six weeks, at the longest. They may not know the difference, those chits, but you do, love. Find out for me. Any like that. Can't look for myself: she's right, I got to get a whole lot better before I'm fit to set foot outside without a keeper, I'd only be in the way. A distraction.... So you find out for me, will you? And if they did, if there were any, get me the best description you can. Will you do that?"
Dawn thought about it. "Names?"
"Don't care about the names. No use to that. Never knew 'em, wouldn't know 'em now, and they don't come at you with labels. Unless you catch one fresh-risen and the gravestone handy and all. Don't care about the names."
She thought about asking, Spike, why did you go out tonight?
But she didn't. She figured that she knew.
So instead, she inquired carefully, watching to read his signs, "Can I ask Buffy?"
"No need of that. They'll say, and you'll know, and no need to bother the Slayer about it." The hands were back on his knees, demurely folded.
Dawn understood: No telling Buffy. Check.
No problem there: it wasn't as if they were apt to have anything resembling a conversation in the next thousand years.
I want to show you the world!
Yeah, sure.