Title: Hallelujah (Just Breathe)
Author: DiamondTook (diamondtook862)
Medium: Fiction (One shot)
Rating: PG-13
Time: Season 6: During the Dead Things (AU)
Warning: None
Word Count: Just shy of 3000
Thanks to: ever_neutral and ghostyouknow27 for being pretty much the awesomest betas ever in the Buffyverse/Jossverse/Universe. These guys make everything better, fix my commas, and slay all my extra evil adverbs. Also, best characterization discussions ever. :) I wouldn’t be writing fic at all if it weren’t for Alex, and lusciousxander who pushed me over the edge and told me I had crazy things in my head worth putting on internet-paper. Any mistakes are my own, as I’ve fiddled after my lovely betas had their say.
A/N: This is set during the first scene of the DT dream (when Spike comes to Buffy in bed) and goes AU from there.
Summary: “Because I’m a murderer. And I should be punished.”
Hallelujah (Just Breathe)
Remember when I moved in you
The holy dark was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah*
~~
The voices spat at her in the dark. They were harsh. Unrelenting. “What did you do Buffy? What did you do?”
Buffy clutched the sheets closer. She buried her face in the warm cotton of her pillow, trying to block the railing chorus with tactile familiarity. One deep breath, two, as she tried to make them fade into oblivion. If she could sleep, then maybe this all wasn’t real. Maybe she hadn’t just killed a girl; a girl she had been trying to save. Maybe it was all just a bad dream.
“It’s alright, love.”
The bed groaned, sagging with new weight. The covers moved aside and her shoulder was lit with tiny kisses, so soft they were almost a whisper.
“Shh, don’t worry.” Spike’s voice drowned out the railing cries. “It’ll be our little secret.”
His long, slim form slid in beside her, cool skin molding against hers as Spike’s hand caressed her shoulder, following the pattern of the kisses. He caged her in, surrounded her with his body, but she didn’t feel trapped. He slowly pushed the strap of her tank top down and pressed another kiss into her shoulder blade.
The blade of guilt in Buffy’s belly flared white-hot. She turned to face him, wrapped an arm around his neck and poured all her sorrow and frustration into her kiss. She was pulling him into her, consuming him with her mouth. She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to hurt with her. But he couldn’t, so at least she could hurt through him. She could pour herself into him as a potter forms a vessel, molding his flesh like clay.
But kissing wasn’t enough. Buffy rolled them over, pulling Spike closer. It registered then that he wasn’t wearing any clothing. She moved to pull her own top up and over her head, rolling the hem past her breasts and up to her neck.
They surfaced just long enough for the fabric to clear her ears.
“Shh, sweetheart.” Spike spoke again. He soothed her back with long, smooth strokes. “I took care of it. No one will ever know.” He leaned in to devour her mouth with renewed passion. His hands splayed across her shoulders, kneading into the skin as he tried to leach her turmoil away with his lips, bleed it from her like the vampire that he was.
Buffy broke the kiss. “You did what?”
Spike sighed, throwing back his now-ruffled head and bracing against the pillows. “I took care of it. You wanna know the gory details? Or do you want to get back to the snogging?”
Buffy pushed off him, eliciting even further sigh-age. Suddenly she was all business — despite being clad only in lingerie. “Gory details. Now, please.”
Spike settled against the headboard, one arm behind his head.
Buffy crossed her arms over her chest. On second thought, she pulled the covers up to her shoulders, then on third thought, she crossed her arms over the covers too.
Spike eyed her with a raised eyebrow, but Buffy’s agonized frown quickly wiped any sardonic expression from his face.
“Like I said, I took care of it. Hid her — the body – in a place no one would ever find it.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because! We need to tell someone. Someone needs to be told. No one is going to believe us if we don’t have any proof.”
“Why the hell would we want to give anyone proof that you’ve killed someone?” His brow furrowed in frustrated confusion.
“Because I’m a murderer!”
Buffy froze.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as if she were a small woodland creature he was afraid to frighten, Spike inched his hand over Buffy’s, until he’d finally taken her smaller one in his.
Her words were no more than a whisper, but they rang out in the darkness, expanding to fill the space from wall to wall. “Because I’m a murderer. And I should be punished.”
“Yeah, well, so am I.”
Buffy ripped her hand away as if scalded.
Spike pulled her back. He refused to let go. She kicked and thrashed, but he held firm, gripping her shoulders and then her face, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“Buffy.” He seemed afraid she might spit in his face, holding her at arm’s length, elbows locked. He forced her to register every word he spoke. “I am a monster. I am a murderer. You are not.”
She finally managed to break her head away from his grip. Faint bruising bloomed where his fingers had dug into her temples. “What do you know?”
“Hey, I know something about murder. What you did out there tonight? That wasn’t it. You were trying to save the girl.”
“Yeah, I’m sure my trying matters so much to her right now.”
“And how many others have you saved, Buffy? Hundreds? Thousands? What’s one mistake in the lot of them?”
“Mistake?” Spit flew from her lips. “Like, two points off on your algebra test, Miss Summers?”
Spike wiped his face.
“That wasn’t a mistake, Spike. That was a revelation.”
“A revelation? Of what, that you missed your calling? Should have taken to knocking off innocent girls instead of us nasty bloodsuckers at age fifteen? Ought to have let me know sooner, pet, I could have helped you out in that department.”
Buffy turned white as ash. “No. A revelation of the fact that I’ve been so busy screwing the undead that I let someone die on my watch. The fact that I was so absorbed in trying not to come to your crypt for a round of bait and tackle tonight that I was thankful when I heard that girl scream for help. God, I was thankful!”
She threw her arms up into the air. The sheet fell to her waist, forgotten.
Spike sat rooted in his spot.
“My friends brought me back to be the Slayer, and I can’t even do that right. All I can manage is to flip burgers and do vampires. So yeah, Spike. Tell me I’m the big damn hero. Tell me I deserve to get away with murder. Tell me how I can sleep at night. Ever. Again.”
Buffy didn’t realize she was gasping for breath until her speech was done. She stilled. “Besides, like you said, what’s one girl matter in the scheme of things, anyway?”
Spike reached for her, trying to melt the frost that permeated her body.
She jerked away. “Stop. Stop trying to help.”
Spike flew back as if he’d been punched, and then Buffy realized he had been. She lowered her fist and watched him wipe away a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.
His face morphed into a bitter mask. “Fine, go fall on your sword of righteousness, like I give a bloody damn! Weave flowers in your hair and drown yourself in a river, singing your crazy songs. Go burn yourself on a fucking funeral pyre, for all I care.”
“Are you done with the over-the-top references to literary suicide?”
“No, I’m bloody well not! Buffy, you tell anyone about this and they’ll take everything. You think you hate flipping burgers? Try pounding steel for car plates and having nothing to look forward to but supervised monthly visits with one pissed off little Bit. You looking for a little martyrdom? Might as well take a chance on my fangs right now.”
Buffy pulled the sheet back up to her neck and gripped it tightly. “Oh, so that’s what you wanted? Don’t tell me, Spike. You were just waiting for your one good day.”
“My — my one good what?” Spike spluttered. “Buffy, that was metaphorical. I’m trying to save you from a life of misery, not eat you for dinner. Can’t you take a little hyperbole?”
“Oh, I’m sorry if I can’t take a little hyperspace bypass from the resident creature of the night lurking in my bed, ready to kill me in my sleep.” Buffy turned to get up, but Spike’s arm on her shoulder stopped her.
“Wasn’t lurking, love. Came here to make sure you were tucked in all safe in your beddy-bye like we agreed.” He spoke earnestly, keeping a slight but firm pressure on her shoulder. “And as for killing you in your sleep – I’ve had plenty of chances before.”
Buffy tamped down the taunts about the stakings-in-sleep she could have accomplished herself during those ‘chances.’ Exhaustion was creeping into her bones. “I know.”
“So trust me, love.” Spike pulled her back in, settling her under the covers once again. “I know you say you don’t. But we both know it’s not that simple.” His hands reached out to caress her wrists, but faltered when she pulled them away. He released a weary breath.
Buffy folded her body into a compact ball, the sheet pulled around her like a shield. She tucked first one leg, then the other, under her chin, until she was curled up with her arms hooked under her thighs. She refused to look at him.
Spike settled on his side, facing her huddled form. He wrapped his arms around himself and dug deeper into the mattress and pillows, tugging the blankets away from her in the process. She clutched them more tightly in defense.
Long minutes later Buffy gradually unfurled her body and relaxed her grip, turning to face outward. She let her foot slip down to nudge one cold toe: acknowledging, testing the waters. She felt a soft bump as her knee bent with the pressure of another leg behind it. It was better to know where he was, anyway. Easier to avoid him when dawn broke.
~~
Buffy felt safe, and warm. Buffy felt at peace.
She was surrounded by soft, snuggly blankets and strong, even snugglier arms. She was exactly where she wanted to be. There was no sound to be heard except her own quiet breathing. It was too early for the signs of the neighborhood waking, too late for Sunnydale nightlife.
There was a nose pressed into her shoulder, right where her neck met her body, and two legs were integrated with hers to form some sort of upside down Hindu goddess– one between her own, the other curved over her knee. She was very solidly, very comfortably, spooned.
Sometimes she thought of phrases like ‘the world stood still’ and thought that clichés existed for a reason – because at some point they had been true experiences and just because so many people had had them didn’t make them any less real. And she had experienced this stillness a precious few times in the last months. It was one of the reasons she kept coming back, and, frankly, the main reason she ran away so quickly. She didn’t come just for the sex – she came for the moments after, when the world didn’t exist and her virtue was intact, and all that remained was her and Spike. Connected.
Her hand drifted down to stroke his fingers where they linked around her waist.
Even if she could never, ever admit it. He’d take it as far more than the crumb that it was.
Funny that she could get this feeling with him, even without the prerequisite funny business.
Funny business.
A burning thought, like a lamp through a heavy fog, penetrated her mind.
Last night.
Her nails clamped down suddenly on Spike’s smooth wrist. She let go just as quickly, afraid she might wake him. Afraid she might ruin everything.
Last night really happened. It had to have. She was still there. Spike was still spooning her, in her bed, in the twilight hour. And she’d still killed a girl last night.
Buffy slipped from the bed in silence and out into the hall, barely making it to the bathroom in time to fill the toilet with the contents of her stomach. She bent to the floor, knees shaking, as another spasm hit her. The second round surprised her, so a little brown bile slopped over the edge of the toilet seat onto the floor as she choked, and she hurried to wipe it with toilet paper when she could breathe again.
Eventually, when her stomach had emptied itself, Buffy stood up on wobbling legs and leaned against the sink with both arms. She stared blankly at the mirror. She hadn’t been sick like that since her mother. Not counting the hangover, at least. This was really, honestly sick, so sick in your heart that it came out your throat. Guilt and horror and loss that throbbed in your gut and just wouldn’t go.
Buffy brushed her teeth as quickly as possible, avoiding her own gaze in the mirror. She cleaned up the bathroom and herself, and returned to her room.
Spike was still asleep.
His hand was stretched out as if reaching for her; leg fallen at an awkward angle without hers to prop it up. She allowed herself a half-smile as she gazed at him, then turned to her dresser and the task of finding clothes without awaking sensitive vampire ears.
Fortunately – or not – clothes finding went off without a hitch. Buffy was dressed and ready to throw her life away in no time.
She tiptoed over to the far edge of the bed. The swath of Spike’s back, revealed where the sheet had slipped away, seemed as vast and pale as the desert in the morning sun. She wanted to trace it with her fingertips: to map its rocky contours and crevasses until she would know him even if she were blind. Until she could recreate him in her mind and never know doubt.
Instead, she contented herself with a soft swipe of fingers through the hair behind his ear, a brush of lips against his temple, and then she was gone.
~~
Spike felt a whisper and a gentle kiss, and turned to grasp more tightly at the empty bedclothes. Finding no one, he wrapped his arms securely around himself.
He didn’t wake up.
~~
A streak of light began to singe Spike’s hand where it clung to his bare ribs. He leapt from the bed, startled by the smell of smoke.
“Bloody hell!”
After a bit of flapping and flopping, all that remained was an acrid smell and a mild second degree burn.
Spike looked around the room, confused. He would have thought Buffy would kick him out first, it being her territory and all, not the other way around. It couldn’t be that late – he eyed the clock. The two little zeroes in the eight o’clock sign eyed him back. Then it dawned on him.
She was gone.
Bloody, buggering hell!
She fucking tricked him. She’d lured him into her bed, told him she trusted him (by omission, of course), and then she bloody fucking tricked him! And she hadn’t even seduced him. She’d let him take care of her, be her hero, let him into her bed and her body, even without the sex. They’d had their best bleeding night yet, perfect morning, and she’d fucking left him.
Hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye, leave a note. Of course not. Would have ruined the joke. He glanced around the room, looking for something, anything that said she was still there, that she hadn’t gone in the early watches of the night while he slept in the sweet comfort of her bed. She must have slipped out sometime in the early morning, before daylight. Now it was too late. She’d thrown herself on the funeral pyre.
Spike wanted to cry, he wanted to scream and break down and collapse in that bed and never leave because it was hers and couldn’t he have that at least? If she had to go away forever? But he knew he couldn’t do that, not if there was a chance, so he got up and pulled on his jeans and his coat and his Big Bad attitude, and he went downstairs.
Dawn and Willow were sitting in front of the TV, grimy tear tracks running down their faces. They didn’t even bat an eyelash when he sank down beside them.
The voice of the newscaster filled his ears.
“At 4:30am today, Sunnydale resident Buffy Summers confessed to the murder of an unidentified female victim, whose body washed ashore in an undisclosed location earlier this evening. Miss Summers refuses to give police coherent details, but it appears there is enough evidence to link her to the crime. Sources say that Miss Summers is mentally unstable, and has a history of mental illness, and will be evaluated by the authorities on that basis. She is currently being held in Sunnydale Memorial Hospital’s Secure Psychiatric ward, and is awaiting trial.”
~~
*Hallelujah – cover by Rufus Wainwright
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/423483.html
