The Light on the Dark Side of Me
Author: Mykia
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Set the beginning of Season Three, around Anne. After Dru
kicks him out, Spike wanders aimlessly in search of focus. He receives
inspiration when he runs into the Slayer at the last place he expected
to find her—and the last place she expected to be found.
Disclaimer: I don't earn a thing from these wonderful characters.
Part Nine
"What's this?" Buffy eyed her present in
disbelief, holding it away from her body as if it were a snake.
Spike rolled his eyes in exasperation and clenched his jaw. "Are you
being intentionally obtuse? It's a bloody mobile phone, Slayer. A
bloke's going to find it more than a little difficult to save the world
if he's not even in the bleeding loop now, isn't he?"
In one bold move, Buffy recognised that there were no limits to the
weirdness that Spike would stoop to be super-hero vamp. It almost made
her smile. Would have, really, if she wasn't staring down the front
door of her house. The one where her mother might be doing normal,
homey things behind it.
Not for the first time in the past hour since they'd arrived in
Sunnydale and parked in the street did Buffy feel terror ice her veins
and some desperate coward inside of her scream at her to leave.
"Can't we just go somewhere else tonight? I can come here tomorrow and
do the peace-making thing." Her eyes were appealingly wide, and yet
Spike showed no sympathy.
"I'm plannin' to bunk down in a crypt. You're more than welcome to join
me, though I wager it might be cold. Got plenty of warm blood to keep
us toasty, then?"
"Oh, I see how it is," Buffy accused a little loudly, lowering her
voice immediately to a low hiss as a shadow passed by the living room
window inside. "In LA, it's all with the swishy hotels and the...the
seductive massage oils, and here it's the cold, dark, way
less-than-seductive home of the not-so-recently dead. Way to woo a
girl."
Buffy realised too late that Spike could construe that as total
willingness to be wooed, and a blush stole over her cheeks. When she
was brave enough to face him again, he was staring straight at her.
Then he blinked.
"I brought the oils." He buckled under Buffy's look of outrage. "What?
It was a hotel. They bloody beg you to pinch stuff by not having it
bolted down. Now get your ass out of my car and go make happy with your
mum. I've got things to do." His petulant, impatient tone delayed the
difficult part of their goodbye, but it fast came back to taunt the
responsible side of the Slayer.
A shiver inched its way up Buffy's spine, settling into the base of her
skull with an irritating iciness. "I know we've never discussed it,
but—"
"Oh, let me guess. I can't go about saving the world, only to knock off
the meals in the quiet time? I'm not daft, Slayer. Wouldn't put myself
at risk by snacking on the locals while joined with you at the hip."
Not that that was where Buffy had pictured them joined—and her face
flamed red again with the unbidden lustiness of her imagination. She
didn't have much to work with—nothing reality based at least. But there
was enough there to get her mind ticking with possibilities—and she of
course knew the basics.
"Yeah, that was kinda—" She drifted out of the conversation, bordering
on stunned that Spike had apparently given up his on-tap menu, and
being terrified that her mom wouldn't really be happy she was back.
"Look, your mum isn't getting any younger. You want me to come in with
you? She seemed to like me the last time." His cocky grin gave her the
confidence to pick up her bag and put her hand on the door handle,
twisting it slow and light until the catch released and the door
creaked open.
"Do you have a number programmed in here? You know, if I have to call
you for some reason?" She couldn't believe how hard she was shaking,
and that it had more to do with the fact that she wouldn't even have
Spike sleeping at her back anymore. It was an oddity she'd fast come to
cherish.
Spike didn't answer with words. He reached out and took the hand that
held the candy pink phone, flipped it open and scanned the address book
until he came across 'SPIKE' and chose it, waiting for the seconds it
took for his own newest toy—bad in black—to play the theme to Phantom
of the Opera. He grinned as he disconnected the call gently, and held
Buffy's hand.
"Your mum's going to be happy you're back. Probably throw you a party
and everything." He bit his lip as he watched her, his eyes gleaming
with mischief. "I could crash it anytime. All you need to do is call."
And then he kissed her, a sweet devotion to her lips that had Buffy
giving in and craving more. It was so new, so heart-thumpingly innocent
and scary, kind of first-datey but it made her courageous enough to
leave him behind with a tortured release of his lips as she finally
left the car.
He drove off as soon as she stood at the door and Buffy had to smile at
his refusal to be her crutch, or allow her somewhere to run to if she
chickened out. She frowned. At least, she hoped that's why he'd gone,
though she really should make more of an effort to remember that he was
still evil and probably had left through nothing more sinister than
thoughtlessness.
And before she knew it, her mom was opening the door and hugging her,
and months of misery just washed away.
~~~~~
It was awkward.
This settling-into-being-a-dependent-thing after being on her own for
so long? Not as easy as it would seem. Unpacking the few things in her
bag, Buffy felt like each of her possessions no longer belonged where
it had lived only mere months earlier. That she no longer belonged
where she
had lived only months earlier. She'd found new places for her things,
had even made room in her apartment the few days that Spike had been
with her for his duffle bag of grunge. Though he had hair care
products. Expensive ones.
The point was, in her mind she'd grown up in between the sleazy slaps
on the ass at her place of work, and that massage that blew her fuses
back at Spike's hotel room. She felt like she'd outgrown so
much—possibly even her friends—and the thought of facing it simply
terrified her. She was seventeen, almost eighteen, and had supported
herself after the most devastating experience of her life. And while
she'd made some really suspect decisions regarding allowing Spike so
much potential power in their sort-of relationship, they'd been her
decisions to make. The realisation that all of her decisions from now
on would return to the initial passage through the friend-filter was
suffocating.
What were they all going to think of Spike being back and not so much
with the killing them? How would they deal with her reappearance like
she'd only been away at her dad's for the summer? Would they even want
her back after what she'd put them all through with her Angel heartache
and misjudgement?
Would Giles?
Buffy felt chilled thinking about it and reached for a cardigan. Funny,
she hadn't even missed this outfit when she'd rarely had the chance to
change out of her uniform. And this shade of blue? So did not match
Spike's uniform of black if they were going to be the slaying superhero
duo of the Hellmouth. She needed something sleeker, clingier and
sexier. And now she just needed a quick trip to the nearest
psychiatrist to explain to her why she was thinking of dressing
appropriately to fight alongside the evil undead.
Creeping down the hallway, Buffy felt almost scared to ask permission
to go out and find her friends. Finding her mom beating a hole into her
bedroom wall really should have clued her in to the repressed anger
simmering under the surface, but she had to wait for the subtle barbs
pointed straight at her in conversation.
Tiptoeing over the eggshells in the hall, combined with the racket of
the hammer, meant that Buffy had surpassed the unnecessary test for
stealth and she felt a flush of guilt as she made her mother jump and
twirl in surprise.
"I-I guess I just got used to all the quiet while you were gone." And
even if it wasn't meant to, it made Buffy feel small and wrong. Joyce's
smile went nowhere near to clearing up the discomfort. "But, it's no
problem."
Buffy nodded, her gaze following the hideous decoration her mother was
covering the hole with and wondered if she'd be needed to slay it at
some point. The teeth alone gave her the heebie-jeebies and she just
knew it was the kind of thing to give Xander nightmares.
"Uh, look!" The mask dangled on the hook and began an inventory of the
room. "It's, uh, Nigerian. We got a very exciting shipment in at the
Gallery." Joyce looked around at the few other bare spots on her walls
and implied they'd be the perfect places to hang some of the scarier
pieces of the collection. "I, um, thought I'd hang a few pieces in
here. It cheers up the room."
Well that explained why Buffy never allowed her mom to take over
decorating her space. "It's angry at the room, Mom. It wants the room
to suffer." Although, it was more than possible it was just tapping in
to Buffy's natural gloomy energy that she hadn't been able to repress
since walking through that door earlier in the evening.
The uneasy smiles segued seamlessly into the uneasy inquiries about her
current destination. She almost wished she'd left the cardigan in her
closet and decided to not brave finding her friends. She badly wanted
to postpone this feeling that everything she'd done since sleeping with
Angel was wrong on a scale of one to 'end-of-the-world' disastrous for
just that little bit longer. Or for years—whichever she could get away
with. She reneged on the slaying, offering some witty quip to try and
end the awkwardness and refusing more food in an effort to just get out
of there.
But the second the cold air hit her face, she felt like crying tears of
defeat. This felt so wrong—like everything had lived on without her and
it wasn't just Angel she'd discarded from the Hellmouth, but herself as
well. She couldn't even think why she was out looking for Willow. The
ease of a 'best friend' relationship was gone and Buffy didn't know the
first thing about approaching a group of people she'd skipped out on
without even a goodbye. She couldn't explain her actions to
herself—only knowing that she'd needed to get away rather than be
forced to tear herself apart between the looks of censure for not
killing Angelus sooner, or the ones of sympathy for losing her
boyfriend along with her innocence.
Just as she was calculating the distance between where she stood and
the still open bag on her bed, Buffy felt the weight of a heavy,
leather-clad arm drape across her shoulders.
"Thought you'd be off schmoozing with your mates, not dragging your
bottom lip along the footpath."
He was here, out in the night and near to where the card-carrying heart
beating humans all hung out. Dread shimmied the length of her nerves
and Buffy stiffened under his loose embrace, knowing his dietary habits
was a thing she should be diligently questioning him on, but she was
too desperate to hold onto the one thing she'd known so solidly in
recent days.
"Hey," she began, hardly daring to look up in case she spied a speck of
blood at his mouth, robbing her of the comfort of having him at her
side when she was too scared to face anything else. Spike had been
largely responsible for directing her home, had encouraged it and given
her the strength to return to her mom, but did she have to go further
than that and renew her old life completely? "I thought you were out
looking for somewhere to stay?"
"Was. All set up in a very comfy crypt with a view. Just out and about
for a little nourishment before bedtime." His arm didn't tense,
remaining relaxed. He was oblivious to her turmoil.
The decisions he was forcing on her were making her crazy. On some wild
urge, she was back home—her desperation to get away from him backfiring
when said vampire bundled her up in his car and acted as her chauffer.
How could she focus on how evil he was when he kept doing sweet things
to disarm her? Like buying snack food because her belly rumbled, or
providing a scruffy blanket that smelled far too much of scorched flesh
for her peace of mind, but which kept her warm while he had the windows
down to air out his smoke?
But she couldn't let him kill and then discount it because he was
saving more lives than he was taking. She couldn't take the
responsibility of bringing him to her family and friends, only to have
him eating them behind her back.
With tears in her throat, and dread making her feel light-headed and
body-heavy, Buffy stopped their strolling pace and turned to stare
straight into eyes flickering with a jovial spirit.
"Use me." Her tone was loaded with sacrifice, but if she'd known just
how much of herself she'd seemingly offered, she wouldn't have remained
the light, easy colour of health.
Spike did his recognisable head tilt and Buffy's breathing became a
little more laboured. "Rather not, pet. Not really into meaningless
sex. If I was, I'd go for some bimbo vamp I could stake before she
annoyed me to death."
The mention of sex brought the mistaken meaning of her words right out
into the open and Buffy's eyes opened comically wide. "Bite me, moron.
I meant you could use me to feed from if it will keep you from snacking
on the citizens of Sunnydale."
She didn't realise how much she had actually thought the possibility
had merit—and for reasons other than saving the lives of people she
didn't know—until he declined.
"No."
There was dumbfounded silence, and then Buffy took a step back and let
Spike's arm fall from her body. She felt humiliated and rejected—and
cold—and as far as it was from the first time, the experience wasn't
any easier to accept. It was totally obscene, but Buffy felt like she
was going to cry and Spike was the last person she wanted seeing her
tears.
"I think you should go." Her voice was crackly with the strain of
trying to hide her disappointment, and Buffy took another protective
step backward.
"Just hold on a bleeding minute, you presumptuous bint. I'm not gonna
use you like some cow. The ONLY way I'll bite you is if I'm draining
you dry or fucking you raw. No middle ground—nothing to prove.
Besides," he taunted, taking a step closer to her very accurate statue
impersonation. "I got me some take-out." And he held up some blood bags
that could have come from nowhere but the hospital—complete with blood
type stickers on them.
She was stunned into stupidity. "You aren't eating people?"
Spike stalked closer, resting his hand on her shoulder and bending down
to her eye level. "Let me say this slowly, just so you can understand.
I know you can't let me live if I'm hanging around, knocking off the
produce while I'm trying to save the herd. Give me some bloody credit,
woman!"
Buffy blinked, and all she could see was a blood bag with no neck
hanging from it, and his lips, and she'd never been so hungry or
relieved in her life. "Oh," she gasped and collapsed in his arms.
He hugged her tight, an absurdly happy grin on his lips.
And then Xander burst around the corner.