My day already! It’s so great to have this comm moving on into its second decade.
My offering today is a fic set at the end of S6. Spike has a long way to travel, and lots to think about. Think, not brood. Definitely.
Title: Steps on a Journey
Rating: R (Mostly for Spike-language and mention of rape.)
Length: 1,654 words
Steps on a Journey
All the way to the docks he knew exactly why he was going to Africa. Bitch was going to get what she deserved alright. Once he had the chip out he’d lose any motive to pussyfoot around. She liked it rough. Look at that time when she was invisible – practically ripped him to shreds, darting in and planting a new bruise or a new scar as readily as a kiss. Or that time they ended up under the rugs. That had hurt so good, and she hadn’t complained at all the little nasties he did to her either.
So all the bullshit after the bathroom was just that. His girl took him when she wanted him. The number of times he’d heard the breakup speech was beyond silly. And every time she’d come back for more. Every. Fucking. Time.
So, trip to Uganda, the long way round, find the demon, lose the chip, come back, give her the seeing-to of a lifetime and all done. Back to the status bloody quo, but this time she’d know what she’d been missing.
No, it was NOT bloody brooding, OK? He just had time to think a little, go over the evidence, ask himself a few pertinent questions. If he didn’t much enjoy the answers, whose bloody fault was that?
So, point one. Dawn told him Buffy was suffering because she’d seen him and demon-girl at it on the table. Shouldn’t have been such a voyeur then, should she? He was a free agent. She’d bloody told him that enough, without smoothing the edges or sweetening the pill. Bad enough the perpetual teenage brat thought he had the right to complain without the Slayer thinking she had too.
Point two, then. If Buffy was upset, stands to reasons she cared. Cares. Present tense. Anyway, vampire with no soul here. Couldn’t care about her being upset with him if he tried. Really.
Right.
So, yes, there had been thinking. Helped by the vodka. Stood to reason they’d need something to help them get through the endless meaningless days. Explained a lot about Chekhov and his so-called comedies, and those novelists who wrote the doorstops back when he was young. This was the country for brooding, which they did in spades. Not him, mind you. Bad enough watching them. Nobody was going to get him reading – OK, OK, rereading if you must – those interminable books.
So he did think about it. The girl, who never did make up her bloody mind about anything that mattered. The little one who wound him up good and proper by reporting back on what the girl was feeling. Enough to make any bloke think he was still in with a chance, right?
The further away he got, though, the less convincing he sounded, even to himself. He might not have a conscience per se, but he knew what the word “No” meant. Always did, even back in the days when that just made it more fun to ignore it. And he had to recognise that the girl had meant it.
She’d been tired, battered. She just wanted a bloody bath for Chrissake. And what exactly ever possessed him to think the bathroom floor was the right place for a kiss and make up scene?
No. Once more, Spike, he had to face up to it. Sodding awful timing.
What was a bloke to do but replay it all? The times she’d just taken him without asking, like that first time in the house that fell down, or the invisible time or that one time inside the crypt tomb. The times he’d talked her into it, ‘til she’d taken over and rode him to exhaustion, or that time he took her while she was watching all the brats down in the bar. The times she’d looked at him, that was all, till he was hard and aching for her and just being in the same room hurt so sodding much. That one time when she kept wanting him to tell her he loved her; that worked so well when Captain Cardboard turned up.
All those times, and he knew he was no more than a battery-free vibrator to her, a way of getting off without doing all the work herself. Like the rattling of those bloody trucks had finally shaken some sense into him. What sort of fool was he to think it had ever meant anything to her, the act itself, beyond a nice, cool way to scratch her itch? A nice relationship that was no relationship because in a real relationship you had to care for the other party’s feelings as well as your own, and every time, every sodding time he’d talked about his feelings it had been a thwack about the lugs and off out of it.
So who had he been trying to convince that last time before he left town? Her? Hardly. He knew damn well there was no feeling there to start with. He wanted her to know there was a connection, oh yes, oh Christ yes he did. But he knew there wasn’t, and hopes raised by the Bit telling him she was hurt should never have translated into an attempt to prove how much she loved him.
Bloody fantasist. As bad as when he cured his dear old Ma. That had worked so well too.
Perhaps he should just stay in Egypt, move in with a nice, quiet mummy perhaps. What was the point of losing the chip? It could never turn him into the sort of bloke a real girl could love. Should never, for that matter.
The things you do for love.
It had to be love, right? A creepy obsession wouldn’t have sent him half-way round the world. Farther, if you went the long way. And bloody hell it had been a long way.
When the railway dumped him in Sudan he’d tried hitching lifts, but drivers had a nasty habit of wanting to keep going in daylight. Oh yes, game face usually persuaded them to stop, no need even to bring on the headache, but that had meant spending too many days in shitholes even the bandits didn’t want. From Khartoum he had a stroke of luck, if you can call days spent in the back of a military truck lucky. Even better, once he was finally south of Sudan the driver went for a piss leaving the engine running. Poor sod.
Where did that come from? Sympathy for a bugger he didn’t know from Adam? Was he turning into bloody Peaches?
The long hours of night driving on roads you wouldn’t honour with the name of a cart-track, they gave time for thinking. Thinking, bumping and swearing; there was a reason they called this bit ‘the road to hell’, and it wasn’t just the heat. He couldn’t get the bloke he’d thieved the truck from out of his head. Just like the chip, then. But if he cared about some stranger, what did that say about him? Just another lunch basket wasted because of the chip? Couldn’t be.
Vampires with souls brooded. He had no soul. Ergo, no brooding. Intensive cogitation, that was all. And thoughts of exactly what he was going to show that Slayer of his. No chip so he could beat her up? He could do that anyway. Memorably, even. Cue an hour or so of pleasant memories of bruises got and given, lapping her blood and his from scratches and cuts, skin scored by nails dragging in reckless passion. Good times.
So, no chip meant what? He could feed again. On the witches or Dawn. A big, big no to that one. Not even the ungrateful boy who threw away his best chances. So what was the bleeding point?
He was never going to be like Fangs ‘n Forehead. He could promise himself that. So why did the idea of a soul scare him so much? He’d not fed off people, much, for years, so giving that up would be no bother. So, shiny new soul, good idea, OK? Yes, she’d take some convincing, but it ought to work, impress the girl.
As he turned off the so-called highway he decided he’d thought it through enough. He knew the demon he was thinking of could do the job, or would after a bit of pressure. He didn’t want to be the sort of bloke who’d give up persuading a girl to have sex just because she cried and fought back.
No. He wanted to be the sort of man who would never want that in the first place, worthy of her.
And no brooder.
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Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/549207.html
