The Heartstone Part Seven

 

Seven

Spike slept the sleep of the dead.

Buffy didn’t.

Sleep eluded her, coming in fits and starts but never quite settling into rest. With Spike’s eyes closed and his consciousness switched off, she was lost again in that impenetrable darkness she’d glimpsed when Tara’s spell had knocked him out.

All the time she was awake she was aware that she wasn’t alone in the blackness. Spike’s head was a crowded place; something primal lurked deep within and it was awake, watching her, hating her with all its being, loving her all the same. Her Slayer senses prickled at the presence of the demon, but she knew it wouldn’t harm her, not now, so she tried to put her concerns out of her mind; they might be reluctant roomies for a while, but they weren’t going to get chatty any time soon – however much that might have relieved the tedium.

Because she was bored. It felt like Spike had slept for an eternity and with no chance of getting to sleep herself, she had little to do except look at the back of his eyelids, apart from the interruptions of his dreams, of course, and they were a whole new level of disturbing. They leaked through from his subconscious, filling the darkness with colour and Buffy discovered just what it was that a nightmare dreamt of.

Her apparently.

In all sorts of ways. Even in his deepest sleep they played out the same moves they made in waking. Dreams twisted and erotic, passionate and angry, where they fought and fucked as one being, fused at lips and loins. Dreams where he saved her. Dreams where he didn’t. Dreams of blood and death and danger. Dreams of flames. Dreams where he killed her still. After those she couldn’t wait for the blackness to return.

But his gentler dreams disturbed her most, the ones that laid out his hopes in embarrassing detail. Holding hands as they strolled along a starlit shore, he fed her poetic lines that made her swoon – as if she’d swoon for anybody! When she brought him back to her house to make love in her bed on a carpet of rose petals it was soft and moving, without the bumps and scrapes of their usual carnal tussles. It was all romantic nonsense they could never share. They couldn’t be companions sharing their lives together in some white picket fence fantasy. What kind of vampire wanted all that?

Spike was consumed with her, immolated by a love that raged like furnace over a deep guilt over her death that had still not faded away. She wished he’d wake up. The intensity of his feelings was too strong and they were making a large dent in her good mood. He loved her. Really loved her and not with some empty demon obsession that mimicked the real thing – though that was certainly there. She was everything he had in the world. And she would have to take it all away.

He really needed to wake up.

Fortunately, Spike only slept a few hours, woken by the sound of the motor-mower trimming the grass of the cemetery outside. A bleary eye opened first, braving consciousness as an advance party for the rest of his body. Trusting that all was well and that the horrors of his pounding hangover were only on the inside, his other eye joined its partner staring out over the lower level of the crypt.

He was waiting for her to speak, but Buffy didn’t know what to say. She’d had a front seat in the IMAX cinema of his subconscious and every feature was all about her. What could she say to him?

Hi! she said, a little too lightly. It was all she could manage, especially as her own head was a little worse for wear.

He moaned and smothered his head in his pillows.

You can’t escape me that way, she teased.

“I can’t bloody escape you at all,” he muttered, his voice muffled in duck feather.

His words cut through the light mood she was trying to create. I thought you always wanted me around?

“It’s not the same. You know that.” With a heavy sigh, he excavated his body from the bedding and heaved himself out of bed. “Can’t do anything without you knowing.”

Buffy now knew exactly what Spike got up to. If the latter part of the previous night had been any indication, after pestering Tara, there’d been a lot of fights in back alleys and drinking in demon bars until the impending dawn had started to prickle at his skin. And what had he been doing going to Tara anyway…?

What’s going on? With you and Tara?

Spike furrowed his brow as he reached for his jeans. “Nothing’s going on, pet. Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Buffy didn’t believe that for a minute. You were flirting! It was getting all sexy and… and… everything!

He chuckled and buckled up his belt. “Just a bit of fun, Buffy. Red’s girl has a sense of humour.”

You went all horny and stuff. Despite herself, Buffy pouted. Just as well he couldn’t see her.

“She’s a pretty girl. Got great tits.” He pushed his feet into his boots with an angry shove. “And she’s sweet to me.”

Her mistake. Her acid remark came naturally, but she regretted it almost as soon as she’d said it because she could feel how deeply it stung him.

“Right. I’m all yours, Buffy.” He reassured her, then added sadly, “Guess you already know that.”

I’m not jealous, she couldn’t help it, if she let herself give in, this… thing they had would go too far and she’d never be able to finish it. Don’t even think that.

He shook his head. “Yeah, right.”

Buffy lapsed into a sulky silence. He’d only been awake for a few minutes and she was already annoyed with him. He climbed up through the gap in the crypt floor and grabbed a shirt from the top of the sarcophagus. Thin slivers of afternoon sun shimmered through the grimy windowpanes, but they barely penetrated the sepulchral gloom and he avoided the patches of dappled light almost unconsciously while he puttered around.

Once dressed, Spike lazily scratched his chest through his shirt and sauntered over to the fridge. The contents were minimal; a few bottles of beer and a large jar of blood, starkly bright against the clinical white panels. The demon inside him became fidgety with a rising bloodlust. It was no longer a passive, watchful presence skulking in the back of his head, it was him and it was hungry.

Although the demon’s hunger made her uncomfortable, Buffy thought nothing of it when Spike pushed aside the beers and reached in for the jar, she seen him eat tons of times, but as he poured the fresh blood into a mug, reality dawned on her. She was going to have to drink it too.

No! No way are you doing that! She started to panic.

“Got to eat, Luv,” he shrugged and kept on pouring.

But you can’t with me here!

Spike lent on the fridge door. “Can you actually stop me?”

Spike, this is hard enough.

Spike sighed and shoved the mug back into the fridge, slamming its door after it. He fished a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket instead.

Not those either. Buffy had had enough of smoking the night before when she’d been too drunk to protest. Her chest, at least she thought it was her chest, already felt raspy. Obviously, if they were going to share a body for much longer, she would have to mark out some important boundaries.

Spike threw the packet across the crypt and growled, “Can’t smoke, can’t look at a pretty girl, can’t even eat. What can I bloody do then? ”

Spike… she said soothingly, but he was now too annoyed to listen.

He paced across the crypt and back. “No. You’ve been abusing my good nature all along…”

You haven’t got a good nature. She snapped. If he couldn’t be reasonable, then she wouldn’t be either. You’re evil! You do actually remember that?

He sighed, stopping to rub his forehead as his sharp stab of anger abated. “All the sodding time.”

Buffy could feel his hand tremble, without the blood his body was weakening, almost imperceptibly but the difference was there. They wouldn’t get anywhere if he didn’t have his strength and right now, on top of all her other problems, she really didn’t want to deal with a hungry, nicotine-deprived vampire.

Spike. I’m sorry. You do what you need to do.

He snorted bitterly. “Thanks, ever so.”

He didn’t wait for her to change her mind. He scooped up the cigarettes and lit one as he retrieved the mug of blood from the fridge and placed it in the microwave. Buffy waited apprehensively through the countdown as the mug circled the microwave hypnotically; she hoped she wasn’t going to be sick, because she had no idea how that was going to work out with the current body-sharing arrangements.

Ding!

“Time’s up.”

Spike opened the microwave door and picked up the mug. It was warm against his hands and it filled the crypt with an intense, meaty aroma undercut with a hard metallic tang. Buffy steeled her nerves; people ate gross things all the time, she could do it just this once.

But she stalled as he lifted it to his lips. It’s not human is it? I absolutely draw the line at that.

“Don’t worry. Finest porker, pet.” Spike’s tone was civil, but inside him, the demon, nearly insane with bloodlust, snarled restlessly. No wonder Spike was tetchy.

For her sake, Spike didn’t savour the blood, knocking it back in a few big gulps, but it still made her gag as it went down; there was no disguising the grossness of the taste. When he was finished, the demon quieted, sated for the moment, but it was the reaction of Spike’s body to it that really amazed her. She could feel the warmth of the nourishment rushing along his arteries and veins, filling each part of him with a lusciously warm flush. He felt stronger; more awake, more alert and, just for a moment, he even felt alive.

“You alright?” he asked, smacking his lips.

Yes, she replied in a small voice. That was disgusting.

“Human is better. This stuff tastes dead.” After a last mournful look at the bottom of the mug, he dumped it on the sarcophagus and sank down onto his chair. He inhaled a thoughtful drag from the cigarette and flicked the ash onto the ashtray balanced on the chair’s arm. “It’s not like you to apologise.”

I didn’t. You just imagined it. Buffy didn’t like the direction the conversation was heading. She tried to concentrate on the taste of the cigarette while she thought of a way to change the subject; at least the bitter taste took the blood flavour away.

Spike stared up at the ceiling. “It’s going to be like that is it?”

Get used to it. So what are we going to do all afternoon?

“Thought we could go for a nice stroll together and have a picnic on the beach, but it’s still a bit on the bright side,” he said with a large portion of sarcasm.

Ha. Ha. What do you usually do? What did you do with Harmony? Buffy let the question hang for a second as she realised what she’d said. No, please don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know.

“You wouldn’t,” he groused. He glanced over to the door. “Can’t go out. I reckon it’s the usual.”

The usual?

He picked up the TV remote and switched on the TV, getting settled with his feet up on his footrest. “Passions is on in a minute.”

You’re going to watch soaps all afternoon? She asked with horror.

“I need to catch up. It’s either that, or…” He put the TV on mute. “We could just have a meaningful chat. Talk about us for a bloody change.”

Yay! Passions it is then!

Prior to her impromptu coach trip of the Sierra Nevadas, Zelda hadn’t been in Sunnydale long, but the few weeks she’d spent preparing in the town had been plenty of time to build up a decent knowledge of the dynamics of the local scene. If there was something you needed to know, a bar was the place to ask, the seedier the better.

Sunnydale’s Demon bars weren’t the sort of establishments humans could frequent for long and survive, but it was many years since Zelda had considered herself anything like a regular human being. She walked in with the supreme confidence of someone who knew they could fry any one of the occupants into ash with merely a glance, even if this time she was faking it. She took a seat by the bar and ordered a drink, all the while keeping an eye out for a likely source of information amongst the dive’s rag-tag clientele.

As she waited for the drink to be mixed, she stretched, getting the last of the travel stiffness out of her weary muscles. The sooner she got her magic back the better, then she would only have to click her fingers to go where she wanted to go. More importantly, the sooner she freed Arda, the sooner she could leave this dump of a town.

“Hey, honey. You come here often?”

Zelda winced at the lame chat-up line, but smiled at the group of vamps in full bumpy forehead mode that had gathered around her, obviously waiting out the daylight hours drinking rather than in their dens. One, a black guy who seemed to fancy himself as a sharp-dressed Miami Vice type, leant casually against the bar beside her. Tubbs appeared to be the leader of this little band.

“Often enough,” she said. “I’m looking for a vampire…”

“I guess you found him.” The vamp leaned in closer, a grin full of fangs dangerously near her neck.

Unfazed, she continued. “Punk type, blond hair. English.”

“You mean Spike,” Tubbs said contemptuously as he pulled back in surprise. “You must be new in town.”

Tubbs grinned at the other vampires. They sniggered in deference.

“He’s a traitor. Kills his own kind,” one said.

“I hear he bangs the Slayer,” added another with a giggle and a nervous glance at his boss.

“The Slayer?” Zelda shook her head in disbelief. The noisy ho was the Slayer! Oh how fucking perverse. “So where does this Spike hang out?”

“You don’t want to be bothering with him,” Tubbs told her. His eyes dropped to her carotid and he drooled, narrowly missing her shirt. He put a hand on her arm and stroked it caressingly. “We’ll be much better for you.”

Zelda wrinkled her nose in disgust and pushed him away. “Thanks, but no. I have some unfinished business with this Spike.” She drank her drink in one quick gulp, then grabbed Tubbs by the collar, sparks of magic snapping from her fingers in warning. Dumb vamps like this wouldn’t see through the bluff to realise she couldn’t conjure much else. “But you will tell me where he is.”

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/170692.html