Disclaimer: self-explanatory. For the rest, the beginning
and ending lyrics belong to Bush and 'Glycerine', a beautiful and strange
ballad that's quite possibly my favorite of any song I've ever heard.
Summary: As she felt the music build around them, felt his arms tighten, his
hands touching the hot skin of her back, Buffy knew she'd been right to never
dance with Spike before. Season 6-ish,
kinda vague. Semi-songfic to 'Glycerine', but not really.
Column of Fire
By Rashaka
must be your skin that i'm
sinking in
must be for real cuz
now i can feel
and i didn't mind
it's not my kind
not my time to wonder
why
She wasn't
sure how it had started, but now they were dancing.
For real. Real dancing, with Spike. Not dancing with kicks and punches, not
dancing with words— dancing with the touches and the looks and the music. Just… dancing.
There are so many words to
describe dancing, she thought.
Sometimes you float, sometimes you swirl, sometimes you bounce, and
sometimes you just sway. Dancing with Spike was none of those things. It wasn't the tragic gentility and soft
forbidden whisper of dancing with Angel, and it wasn't the warm, give-and-take
of dancing with Riley.
Dancing with Spike was like
dancing with water, dancing with fire.
It was fluid, rippling, and every touch seared even as it soothed. The feel of it could wash over you like the
embrace of the tide, comforting and smooth, or it could carry you away, spin
you around and scald your skin until the heat became too much and you feared
being burned alive from just being so close.
It was relief and it was
tension, locked together where foreheads met, cheeks brushed, and hands
caressed. Dancing with Spike wasn't
just dangerous or safe, forbidden or desired; it was all those things, but
above all it was wicked. Intoxicating. Fascinating. Hot and cold and more electric than any contact she'd known.
As she felt the music build around them, felt his arms tighten,
his hands stroking the hot skin of her back, Buffy knew she'd been right to
never dance with Spike before. This closeness,
this strange intimacy of movement with him was the unbreakable addiction, the
drug that trapped you with one taste.
This was why Drusilla kept returning for him. This was why Harmony had put up with his terrible treatment of
her. With Spike, it was all the
same—the dance, the fight, the lovemaking.
He gave everything of himself, and demanded everything in return.
No words were spoken between them, yet emotions are anything but
silent.
Buffy thought they might be in a
crowd of people, but she couldn't tell.
She didn't want to open her eyes to find out; the thought of breaking
the spell was unimaginable, unwanted.
She could feel the other dancers around them, sense the humans and
monsters alike, hear their laughter or their whispers or the movement of their
feet on the club floor. Like everything
else they were far away, and she and Spike danced alone in a column of fire in
an ocean of sound. Flamboyant intensity
was a way of life for Spike, she reflected, and when she'd taken his hand to
dance, some part of her must've known it would be different.
Perhaps if he had offered to
dance with her months ago, she wouldn't've had to wake up each morning with an
increasingly shorter list of reasons to go on living. She could have woken up instead with a clear goal: go to the
Bronze, and both lose and find herself in his arms, dancing till she was back
again in that place where the world disappeared and everything made sense.
When the dance ended, as such
things always did, when she turned from his marble chest and jagged blue eyes
to look into the gaping faces of her friends, Buffy shuddered at the words he whispered
hotly in her ear.
"You still dance well, pet. As well as the night I met you."
His fingers untangled themselves
from her hair, his breath left her neck, and his presence drifted, sinking into
a crowd of strangers, and the safety of anonymity among the masses. Her freedom, her hope, and her need to be
alive drifted away with him.
After her eyes lost him to the
throng, she turned to face the battle line.
She knew they would have things to say, that was a given, but their opinion
on the subject no longer held sway with Buffy.
They had taken away her first paradise because they thought to save her—she
would not let them make the same mistake twice. This new paradise was hers to choose, and no one's to judge.
If they pressed, she could
always lie. She could always say it was
just one dance.
i needed you more
when we wanted us less
i could not kiss just
regress
it might just be
clear simple and plain
that's just fine
that's just one of my
names
..
