Title: The Day that She Met Me
Author: NevermindDaria
Disclaimer: I claim no rights to any of the following intellectual property that has been previously claimed.
Rating: PG
Summary: Spike spends the days following his breakup with Buffy communing with the TV, where he happens upon an eerily resonant music video.
Setting/Spoilers: Set shortly after "As You Were." Makes references to events throughout Buffy and Spike's shared history (seasons 2-6).

Author's Note: This is my first complete fic. I went the way of the songfic to ease myself into the writing of fanfic.
Also note: Stone Temple Pilots' 1999 video for "Sour Girl" featured none other than Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Formatting note: indicates song lyric; // indicates sound byte; (( )) indicates thought.

***

Television. Glorious television. It's all that made him feel evil anymore. It seemed then that the only proof that he was anything other than the Slayer's lapdog was an illegal cable hookup.

The telly was also handy in that it was something Angel would never become so attached to. Spike needed something to make him feel distinctly *not* like the Grand Poof these days, the past 81 hours in particular. He'd spent exactly that much time doing his very best not to feel remorse for being the cause of a human being's self-loathing.

Passions being long over, Spike was forced to look to music television for distraction. He usually stayed away from that rubbish, seeing as it was so void of punks who deserved the title and so glutted with silly little boys in groups of five, but there was truly nothing else on.

He watched the screen flicker for some time without really watching the images. Then suddenly he felt compelled to pay attention to one video in particular. The band called themselves the Stone Temple Pilots, according to the little box at the bottom of the screen, but Spike couldn't be bothered to read anything else, as he was far too busy looking at her.

The actress wandering about alongside who Spike could only assume was the band's frontman commanded both men's attention in a disturbingly similar manner. She was dressed in a flowy black dress that only served to draw more attention to her angular, bony body, and her eyes were hidden behind a sea of dark eye makeup. Still, she held Spike's attention in a way he couldn't understand.

Then the man she danced with began to sing.

She turned away, what was she looking at?
She was a Sour Girl the day that she met me
Hey! What are you looking at?
She was a happy girl the day that she left me

((Bugger. And just when I was having a moment free of brooding.))

As the angsty-looking man with the dark hair sang of the girl who got away, the angsty-looking man with the flaming head of peroxide couldn't help thinking of a girl as well. She was, after all, very sour.

She turned away what was she looking at?
She was a Sour Girl the day that she met me
Hey! What are you looking at?
She was a happy girl when she left me

((Buffy's not a happy girl now. She'll never be happy. She won't let herself be happy. She can leave me as much as she'd like, and she will never be happy. So quit thinking like that girl on the telly is her, you git!))

What would you do?
What would you do if I followed you?
What would you do if I follow?

((Oi, it's gettin dark out, I bet Slayer'll be out soon.))

((But I'm not gonna follow her out there. Bitch'd stake me.))

Don't turn away, what are you looking at?
He was so happy on the day that he met her
//I kill you on Saturday.
Say, what are you looking at?
//I've always been bad, baby.
I was a Superman but looks are deceiving
//Your beauty, effulgent.
The rollercoaster ride's a lonely one
//Not even I can save you now, Spoike.
I'd pay a ransom note to stop it from steaming
//I'll stake Dru for you.
Hey! What are you looking at?
She was a teenage girl when she met me.

Spike allowed himself to think back to his first encounter with his beloved. Buffy's hair had gone through many permutations in the time he had known her, but it had since returned to a style strikingly similar to the short cut that whipped past her shoulders when she'd turned back to ask "What happens Saturday?" ((I shoulda killed her then. Woulda been much more efficient than driving her to such depths of self-loathing.))

What would you do?
What would you do if I followed you?
What would you do if I follow?

The girl got reasons, they all got reasons
//You don't have a soul.

Hey! What are you looking at?
//You can't love without a soul.
She was a happy girl the day that she left me
//You're a thing.
The day that she left me
//This isn't real, but I just wanna feel.
She was a happy girl the day that she left me
//You're a killer, Spike.
She was a Sour Girl the day that she met me
//It's killing me.
The day that she left me
//You always hurt the ones you love, pet.

As the voices in his head subsided, Spike looked in front of him to find his precious telly on its side with the screen kicked through.

((Bloody hell. That bitch has now officially stripped my entire identity from my rotting, flea-bitten corpse. And she's still not happy.))