Words: 607
"The day you suss out what you do want, there'll probably be a parade. Seventy-six bloody trombones." - Spike, Once More, With Feeling
The sun was shining way, way up high in the sky, and, as the noisy singing of birds flowed down into his crypt, Spike glared at the ceiling from his bed. He would be stuck there for the day, thanks to a bad batch of blood that the butcher—not the hospital, because the hospital has to bloody use all the blood for medicine, Spike thought grouchily—had given him, effectively pinning him down with stomach cramps and a headache. Besides, even if he could get up, Spike could not have gone outside to shut the songbirds up, because of the sun, despite his usual disregard of the danger.
"Going to bloody kill him," Spike groaned viciously into his pillow before shutting his eyes and sleepily muttering, "Suck him dry."
When he woke up the next day, blissfully pain-free, Spike noticed that the previous morning's noise, was not only still there, but getting louder and more intense with each minute.
"Slayer'll take care of it," Spike voiced his thoughts as he moved toward his makeshift shower. "No way these stupid songbirds are natural."
When more time had passed, Spike, fed and watered with new blood and Weetabix, took the sewer route to Buffy's house to see that was going on. To his immense surprise and annoyance, the sound was present even in the sewers.
Spike was flaming under his raggedy blanket when he ran into the Summers house. The kitchen was empty, so he had no qualms about throwing his blanket on the floor and leaving it there. Spike made his way into the living room, but found no one there. With a shrug, knowing that he wouldn't get caught, he slowly and silently walked up the stairs. All the doors except for the one to Buffy's room was closed.
"Now this is just way too easy," Spike sniggered to himself and walked in.
By now, he was resisting the urge to clamp his ears shut. The noise had escalated from simple birdsong into a deafening roar of a whole, albeit strange, orchestra.
What he found inside was not what he expected. Buffy was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling.
"Pet?" he said when she didn't react to his presence. "Slayer?"
"You know," Buffy didn't respond to him, directing the strange passion of her words at the ceiling. "I think I've figured it out."
"Figured what out, luv?" Spike wondered, part of him seriously considering the fact that Buffy had finally gone insane.
"What I want," Buffy's matter-of-fact tone was accompanied by a swell of sound, almost the beating of drums and the squeak of clarinets.
"Enlighten us, why don't you?" he moved from the door and sat in the armchair near Buffy's bed.
"I. . ." Buffy's hands moved behind her head and rested there, the rest of her not changing position.
Spike waited for her to continue, but she didn't. The music quieted somewhat, the drums, clarinets, and flutes no longer present in the melody. Buffy opened her mouth and, as she did that, the steel sound of a wind instrument started.
"You. . ." Spike grew impatient, but Buffy sharply looked at him, glowering him into silence.
"I want you."
And the sound grew almost deafening, swell after swell. Trombones entered the melody, followed by bursts of the drums, flutes, trumpets, and clarinets. But soon they were all gone, and what was left was a simple, yet powerful pattern of entering trombones, roar after roar.
And as the seventy-sixth trombone entered the parade, Buffy sat up and kissed Spike fully on the lips, the rest of the world disappearing to their love.
