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
THREE
Spike couldn't recall ever having been so happy.
Well, there was the first early sunlight, wasn't it? out the kitchen window and back door panel, all laid so soft across the grass and the upright bounding hedges: Turner light, Watteau light, and like that. He barely noticed the bloodsmell children twisting past, behind and around him, always so careful not to touch him, flowing out to the yard to start their morning jerks with the brat, that Kennedy-girl--yeah: a few names he had that he could put, that lot, he had her number right enough for all she thought she had his--calling them to it, and the light like silk over them all, so soft, and the clear greens and browns and smooth sliding pink-beiges, red of a car going by out on the road and another blue almost to black, every color a little, like he'd almost forgotten....
The blatbuzz of the microwave recalled him and he retrieved the mug, slowly drank and refilled it, put it back in the microwave and set the blood to heating because that's what was to be done now. Terrible swill but that's what there was, what he had to get as much down as he could every few hours until he was fed up something like proper again and not just a waste of the space and the feed.
Watching a squirrel doing a neat, twisty traverse across the slack of a roof-high cable, he started checking the inner inventory. Amazingly, nothing actually hurt. So long as he just stood there, no pain anywhere. He tried to absorb that unaccustomed benediction until the microwave box said it was time again and he collected the mug.
He was still playing audience for the squirrel that'd almost made it safe home to the big maple in the corner of the lot which Spike considered he had a claim on, all those nights standing under it, good view of the Slayer's window from that one and pity about the elm blight, so many grand old trees gone, when he felt Buffy come in behind him. Click of cabinet opening and shutting, various slides and bangs. Not real coordinated of a morning, his girl. Well, there were worse things.
Still a schoolday, today, he knew that: she'd have to be going, off in a tick, always running two steps late. He'd learned the drill on that, this past week. He set the other mug he'd fixed, terrible kack passed itself off as coffee around here, in the microwave box and pushed the right buttons in the right order and the wonder was he knew how to do that, who recalled when electrical lighting was a nine days' wonder and locomotives, too, and people died of the soot and the clap and consumption, died of a thousand other things nobody died of anymore and hardly worth mention in the morning Times.
Her arms folded across his shoulders: pillowed, no weight, warm. Clean girlsmell, too many mints: toothpaste, mouthwash, and the faintly metallic undertone that was the muscle ointment. She breathed, "Wha'cha watching?" in his ear.
The squirrel had reached the tree and vanished. At the announcing buzz, he took out the mug of coffee and held it for her to take.
She didn't mind that he hadn't answered her, she was good about things like that: no totting up points, no ceremony. "Mmmm," she said against the back of his neck, breathing coffee that smelled much better on her than in the making or the mug, "you smell good--what'cha been doing?"
He chuckled, looking halfway around. "While you were off doin' your bit for God, puppies, and good ol' Sunnydale, Bit fetched me a pint of peach schnapps."
She smiled back at him and made a wry face, all at the same time. "Peace offering?"
"Dare, more like. Went down all right. Least, didn't come back up. Had a good night out of it, anyways. As to the rest...." He thought a moment. "Well, maybe we've got as far as she won't decide to dust me in my sleep. It'll work its way out. Can't take back what's done. She's entitled, and I can take the punishment."
"Good enough, then." Warm hand stroking down his spine--warm, even through the shirt. "How's the back today?"
It took a little to get under his steady refusal to notice, but the hand that had settled on his ass was way past that. Way past noticing. No use talking, saying she wasn't to do that, it could only make them sad: she knew. Some things, knowing didn't help and you lived with them how you could. Bit couldn't help it either and it was much the same thing, he thought: pretty much the same. But he couldn't be what they wanted and likely never had been and there was no use either of them, any of them, pretending different. Besides that, he didn't want either of them to get too attached to him as it would only grieve them the worse when he was gone.
He took it up to the point where he couldn't and beyond that, they had to let him be. That wasn't what he was for.
He loved them both like a fever he'd caught and would likely die of, and that was all right. He could remember being otherwise but not why.
He moved away and reached to put his mug under running water in the sink so none of the children would have reason to complain of him on that account, scraping a thumb along the rim to dislodge a crust dried against it. His back and other things cooled and didn't like it but that was their problem, not his.
Nothing like a month, six weeks of unremitting, educated torture to help you separate out what was what, sort out the confusion about most things. Wouldn't recommend it but he'd take from it what he could, what he could use.
"Sorry," she said to him. "Sorry."
"No harm, love. Not gonna do you like that anymore."
"I know. I don't mean to. Just kinda sneaks up on me, too."
Best he thought, not to say anything. Best not to begin.
"Back's some better," he reported, setting the mug at the side of the sink, "all the little nobbly bits settlin' down to their job. No outright gaps I can feel. Should start stirrin' 'em around, they've got lazy. Train a little with you, if you like? Should be able to stand a bounce or two. Then you could judge how the rest of it has got on. After the school lets out? 'Bout ha'past three?"
"Oh god, what's the time?"
Spike stood aside so she could do the usual dash of grabbing herself a couple of those anemic revolting fake pastries out of a box and gulping the last of the coffee, poking her hair for stray wisps except of course the ones she'd put there on purpose, and making a general kerfluffle of herself. Deep turquoise skirt today, an almost Aegean blue; white silk shield-front shirt with brass shoulder buttons; ballet-style pumps, white, because it'd be impossible to exactly match the blue and near wouldn't have done at all.
Catching his eyes regarding her, she stilled, almost on tiptoe, then started nervously patting folds. "All shipshape--?" she asked.
"--and Bristol bloody fashion. Never better. Get on with you." Following as she sprinted for the front because he always followed because she always liked it when he did, he called, "Oi! Training, then?"
"If I can, sure, and if I can't I'll cell you, is--" Her eyes followed his pointing finger to the hall table, saw the cellphone standing there in its charger base. She grabbed the phone, waggling it by way of thanks, then hauled the front door open and was gone.
He wandered back to the kitchen. The light had begun slanting in, casting an oblong brilliant rectangle across the front of the refrigerator. More spilled in when one of the children whose name he hadn't yet got down burst in and sprinted for the upstairs bathroom, throwing him a wide, spooked glance in passing even though he'd left her plenty of space to get safely by. Outside kitchen door still standing agape as she'd left it. Likely set her elbows on the table and talked with her mouth full, too. Raised in a barn, the lot of them.
Even though the strengthening light lifted all the colors into something incredible (like the contact high when you'd just eaten a flower person, his mind sardonically supplied), the kitchen had become what in law was called an attractive nuisance--beautiful and deadly. He turned away. He knew his limits. And what he was for.
While Spike stood irresolute in the hallway, considering which would be the best thing to start with, Harris barged through the front door in his work kit, maneuvering an armload of 2 x 4s and carrying a bucket.
"Hey: Evil Undead!" Harris said, letting the bucket thump down. "As long as you're upright, lend a hand with this."
Spike glanced at the timber, estimating weight, then leaned aside and shouted loud enough to carry through the gaping kitchen door, "You: pup. Get yourself in here."
Harris' turn would have to wait. Spike wasn't going to jeopardize a chance at a training session, let alone tonight's patrol, for the likes of that.
Within a minute, the pup came trotting in, all puppy sweat from the session of jerks with all the girls and nice as a peach underneath, which Spike had no intention of telling anybody. Spike spread a hand and rotated the puppy's hopeful head in the correct direction, then gave him just enough of a push. "Don't want you. Harris does. Go make yourself useful."
Dru would have liked the puppy. She'd have had him for dessert.
For pudding, Dru's voice in his mind corrected and Spike checked around himself a second to make sure everything was as it should be, no phantom Drusilla seated on the steps for instance, all crazy, luscious, and savage, needing to be seen to. Not this time. Not with all the wards in place. So no present problem on that score....
Having juggled and then dropped the load of boards because the puppy hadn't the sense to catch hold as it tipped, Harris stood with hands on his hips, gazing murder at Spike, which bothered Spike not at all, but he didn't have to let Harris catch him smiling so he turned away first. Be awhile, he expected, before the whelp was going to let done be done in respect to Spike's having had his woman: only natural, wasn't it. But no need to get the whelp's back farther up about it than it was. He'd see to Harris in due course. No use bolloxing it up in advance just because he could.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The line of verse singing itself in his head reminded him. He climbed the stairs, aware of the laxity of muscles too long unused, taking his time. He was past the worst of it: all the major bones had healed. The injuries merely to flesh had already sealed themselves. That was how it always was: heal from the outside in. It was disuse, as much as anything, slowing him now. Needed to get himself stirring, make some use of the daylight hours. As good a chance as any, he thought, to start seeing to the witch, without the brat drooling all over her.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
He had a healthy respect for the witch but none whatever for the brat and truth be told, he thought the less of Willow's taste, not to mention her good sense, for taking up with the bint, considering that Tara had been one fine, choice lady. Never would have said no to that.
He tapped on the door. Could have walked right in: once he was into a house he had the whole of it, attic to basement; but he wasn't inclined, out of respect for Tara. And even respect for Joyce, Buffy's mom, whose room it had been until she'd had no more need of it. Always knocked. And knocked again when he got no response, warily judging the likelihood of a big patch of sun about three feet off making a sudden jump at him.
"Red, it's me. All right if I come in?"
He heard her voice but not the words and decided to take it as permission.
He had about eighteen inches of clear floor before the sunspace started. Dust motes shone in the air. All the windows were shut. The witch, in a nubby grey robe and thick white socks, sat cross-legged on the bed, tapping away at the laptop. Her rich auburn hair stuck up in stiff tufts in all directions like a really cheap wig.
"What," she said.
Spike made the experiment of sitting back on his heels in the clear space. Nothing gave way. "Wonder if you might have such a thing as a spare notebook I could have."
She reached into a nearby bookcase, grabbed a green notebook, and held it at arm's length, all without removing her attention from the screen.
Spike looked at the notebook, looked at the sunspace, and stayed put.
Eventually the witch noticed she was still holding the notebook, glanced around, saw the problem, and pitched the notebook to flop and slide far enough that he could set cautious fingertips to the spiral spine and draw it in.
Spike continued to stay put. After a time the witch noticed that too and lifted her head, frowning a question. Give her another year and she'd have permanent lines bracketing her mouth and that same crease stuck between her eyebrows.
"Pen," Spike mentioned.
"Oh!" Tipping far forward, face nearly to the mattress and ass in the air, she rooted in the folds of a blanket and produced one and flipped it in his direction. He caught it on the fly, which was pretty good, considering, but she'd flopped back and was staring at the screen the instant the pen left her hand.
"Red," he drawled, choosing the tone very carefully, and got a flashing What now? glance he immediately disengaged from. "Have I done something to piss you off?"
"What? Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that, I never--" Her whole face collapsed and she started babbling, waving like a disjointed maniac at the screen, him, the window, the middle of the air, blah, blah, blah bad search results, blah, blah, blah indeterminate parameters, blah, blah, blah search criteria, Spike nodding just like he caught more than one word in ten.
Good to know the girl he'd known and mostly liked was still someplace within that brittle shell.
When the words ran dry and she sat gaping at him blankly, he asked, "You got a library card?"
She took up about two feet of slack in her jaw. All the features readjusted, just like that, just like magic, and he was facing a redheaded gamine barely older than the Bit, endearingly awkward except for the shrewd eyes that finally were seeing him. "Why: you wanna borrow it?"
The bright skepticism he put down to habit, didn't take it personally. He wrote a line on the pad and thought a moment. Writing another, he said, "Had some things running through my head. Know what they are but can't sort the order--"
"I know, I know! Happens all the time, me, I mean, and don't you just hate it when that happens?"
Upon consideration he added a third line, then tore the page off along the perforation and held it out. "I'd bring it to you, but...." He nodded toward the drifting dust motes hanging in the sunshine.
"Oh, sure, right, no problem!" She hopped off the bed and skidded in her socks to scoop the page from his hand. Bright in the sunlight, she stood reading it. Lost into attention and her own head, utterly forgetful of the vampire at her knees.
She had no physical fear of him. None at all. Nobody else except Buffy herself and the Bit, of course, had such an absolute lack of wariness of him.
Disengaging from the scan, she cocked her head at him. "They're all poetry," she mentioned as if happily surprised the puppy had done a trick.
Spike could put up with being considered cute. "Well, yeah. They are. Not real heavy to carry" (his hands described minute dimensions) "except for that one anthology, there," he said, as though that were an important argument. "Can't very well stroll in there, get 'em my--"
"Yeah, excess flaminess factor, I get that. Sure, Spike, I'll get 'em for you. But if there are any fines, you know, I'm way no with the fines--" She emphatically waved the no with both hands, smearing it out of the air.
"Understood. Thanks." He concentrated on getting up without using his hands: should be a doable trick. Pretty much made it, except for dropping the pen. And bending straight down to get it wasn't likely a trick he could yet do. But there was no need: it sprang up from the floor and Willow was holding it out to him, blink and there.
Spike considered it, suddenly a good deal warier of the witch than she was of him. She just kept smiling. And it was a good smile--not like she had a clear picture in her head of how he'd look without his skin.
"Thought you weren't doing that now."
"Thought you weren't eating people anymore," she riposted calmly. "Sometimes, we surprise ourselves, right? So: books. Poetry books. Cabin fever starting to get to you?"
"No," Spike said, letting the word go long. "When just standing up is the high point of your day, there's still a ways to go before boredom sets in."
"You look better," she offered.
"Can't always go by looks." Spike gently picked a dust bunny off her hair and presented it to her. She swapped it for the pen. Except for making a sour-smiling face, she didn't seem annoyed.
That seemed the best way to leave, so he did, pleased on the whole with the encounter. If you wanted to make a connection with somebody, do them a favor. Failing that, have them do you one.
He'd coaxed several smiles out of the witch, and waked her up a bit, and she hadn't taken his skin off for it. She now had an actual reason to leave the house, which he understood she hadn't done in at least a week. Pry her away from the brat at least for an extra hour or two because he doubted Willow Rosenberg could get within touching distance of a whole bunch of books in bright bindings, solid and satisfactory to the hand, all squared up in rows like a perfect dream of order, pictures and secrets and lies better than truth, and not collect twice as many for herself as the ones she got for him.
He knew that about her because he knew that about himself. So, easy enough to make the jump and figure the best way of seeing to her.
He'd found it absurdly easy to split the Scoobies and set them at each other's throats, some years back. So far, he judged that weaving them together again, patching all the broken places, and linking them as a solid wall around the Slayer shouldn't be all that hard either. Harris, he could handle Harris well enough when all the rest had been attended to....
Besides, he wanted the books.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
Roethke, he knew. But there was a line he couldn't retrieve, that continued to itch at him like the insane zodiac he'd been told was what had been cut into his back, at least the number was right, 12, but no symbols or characters Buffy could recognize, which in itself didn't mean a whole hell of a lot. He doubted she'd cracked a book since her resurrection. More for direct action, his girl. He didn't know if the marks on his back were the same as on his chest and abdomen or different. And no idea what any of them meant, of course--could be anything from the Mark of the Beast to Eat at Joe's. A mirror would obviously be no help; he wasn't real enthusiastic about the idea of stripping down for Willow; Rupert might be tolerable, whenever he happened to show up again. Would not be pleased to find him here again, would Rupert. And there'd be the Leonard Cohen anthology since there was no way for him to get music into the basement, at least not at any kind of volume, and the Cohen should be good, didn't need music if you had that. He'd decided he was off music and back to words. Scraps of things, a couplet or a stanza announcing themselves in his head out of noplace, cadenced and precise, was bloody astonishing and brilliant, he thought. Hell of a lot better than 99% of the crap he'd had erupting in his head lately.
Defend him against not-Dru, maybe. And not-himself, who derided what he'd become and had such a lame line of patter. Worthless lazy git. And the rest of the whole bleeding carnival of persuasive masks he'd refused to put any trust in, any belief, throwing words back at it, any old words, scraps of poetry and song at first while his voice held, then anything that connected and helped shut the voices out because he couldn't move his hands and something had been done to his back, Miss Flyte and the birds, yeah, that's another one that should go on the list: Dickens. Taste of home despite all the silly-buggers melodrama. Bleak House, was it?
And at the foot of the stairs he stopped because the sun was sparking rainbows from a shard of broken glass that'd likely come in with Harris' steel-toed size elevens and the lumber. All quiet inside again, Spike settled between two steps and watched jewels bloom and fade against the wallpaper until the sun lifted higher and the show was done.
He was no longer in that place: she'd come for him. He'd known she would, and she had. This was real, and not that other.
He needed nothing more or different than that. He could barely contain it. It sufficed completely. In proportional response he'd give himself away by handfuls, buckets, or boxes man-sized long and shoulder wide. He was giving himself away already.
Cisterns contain; fountains overflow. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
At least he'd gotten himself a proper soul with no stupid happiness
clause.