Nice looong chapter to keep y'all occupied until I remember to post here again... I hope you enjoy it. And those of you who've been missing Spike, yay - he's back. Just remember that his internal monologue isn't always PC.
Spike got drunk. It was an effective strategy, and had always stood him in good stead. Drunk because Xander was impossible.
The vampire wanted a reaction. He wanted anything, any kind of sign that what happened mattered, that he was evil, that he was abominable, that Xander hated him, and he could feel himself wanting to push. Push and prod and break into pieces small enough to control and that could not happen. So Spike made him leave. And when Xander walked away, a calm nod, a flat mouth, and a gait that was smoother than it had been the day before, Spike got drunk. The kind of drunk that left him waking up still reeling, bruised and bloody in the middle of a blast-zone that used to be his flat, half-naked, and wearing one of Xander's dirty t-shirts.
He had vague memories of how that had happened, whiskey-orange flashes before he blacked out completely, of fumbling at the lock, wrenching the door off its frame when it eluded him again and again and stumbling around in boots that felt too big for his feet towards Xander. Towards the smell of him, bittersweet honey and cloves and crushed grass, and found nothing but a bloodstain and a bookshelf that he reduced to splinters.
Spike started at the Bronze. Punishing himself, probably, with terrible synthesized pop music and sticky-sweet teenagers that giggled at each other in clumsy flirtation, playing on his nerves like a hack-saw on harp. He was hit on by a twenty-something, pathetic bleached blonde bit of fluff boozing on a weeknight with all the high school hopefuls; he couldn't imagine touching her without a swell of revulsion backing up in his throat and said something to the effect that had her rushing off in tears. The fact that he took petty pleasure in his ability to hurt her, crippled as he was, only made him hate himself more, so he chugged his beer – cheap, American, and the only kind of alcohol they served that didn't come with a fruit salad attached and left, angry and baffled as to why he'd bothered in the first place.
He found a liquor store next and actually paid for a few slender bottles of paint stripper that he secreted in the pockets of his coat. But a quiet evening at home wasn't something he was at all interested in, even if that meant the ability to drink in peace with the slow determination of a man set on calcifying his liver. So instead he headed towards Willy's and the nastier side of town, contemplatively slurping at the mouth of a flask that held only a passing resemblance to whiskey. It was the hellmouth, was what it was. Before he'd come to this godforsaken town, unlife had been a doddle. He had Dru, and the family, and every night was an adventure. Then he'd got sucked into this pit, Dru was sick and his whole life came crumbling apart, and it kept getting worse but he couldn't fucking leave. Three years he'd been stuck here, or good as, fucking incapable of crossing the border out of town, like he was caught in some nightmarish devil's trap as wide as a city and everything that touched it turned to shit. It had even managed to ruin alcohol, in its way, reducing what was once a pleasant libation to a genuine fucking need – this night at least – softening the edges of the world.
It wasn't even a proper city. Nothing like what he was familiar with – where he'd grown up and what he preferred - where the decent parts of town edged right up against frightening squalor and the shadows had a texture that he didn't dare venture into until after he'd died. It was nothing like any of the thousands of other ghettos and slums he'd hunted in over the years. The bad side of Sunnydale was a few warehouses and a fleck or two of rust. Poverty here was living in a building over 25 years old, or not being able to afford more than a flat, and desperation was a sale at Neiman Marcus. He hated this town. There was no challenge to it, no pleasure in hunting in city that was laid out like a demon resort town where the milling humans were no more interesting than well-bred cows. Even Willy's had the look of a bar trying a little too hard to be as skuzzy as it was, the patina of muck, slime, and demon blood had been carefully cultivated, but despite the horrible pink fluorescent light and the idiot quality of the clientele, Willy served human at a decent temperature and he knew by now not to water down the vodka.
The first drink was like dinner. Spike slapped two crumpled fifties on the counter and told Willy to keep it coming. He didn't bother with the typical threat, and he didn't need to. The place was busy and Willy was too preoccupied to do his unbelievably annoying obsequious snitch shtick. With Angel gone and the Slayer caught up with the Initiative and, more recently, Glory, the pub had recovered the customers lost by their constantly beating the door in. Now there wasn't the constant threat of the Slayer interrupting the quiet dramas, poker games, and – to Spike's personal horror in a room full of enormous, hairy, ugly, slimy, horned, scaled, and otherwise malformed monsters – romances, it was nearly bustling, and Willy handed him a glass of A-, set bottle of Absolut on the bar, and told him to holler if he needed anything else. That suited Spike fine, and he sat in sullen silence, letting the pub and its denizens heave around him. A pool of quiet stillness while his mind seethed and churned and the blood in his glass dissolved into icy pink tendrils by process of sip and tip1.
He'd come to brood. He needed Xander to hate him so Spike could win him back. He was really damn good at that, reclaiming someone's affections when they wanted to light him on fire, and he thought that he could win Xander over. Maybe. But Xander was different, which made him magnificent, of course. Different and stubborn, and, despite the jokes and the soft California upbringing, not willing to share or even feel his emotions if he could help it. So Spike thought he'd be waiting a long time. But he needed time, he needed distance, the wounds – metaphorical and literal – were too fresh. A soothing balm only worked if the patient could feel it, so he needed Xander to hate him – good, loud, hot, cleansing hate that wouldn't fester and rot like the damp chill of despair – so he could make it better. Maybe. And maybe then he could stop hating himself, a condition unique among his offenses. But fucking Harris… if Dawnie, or Willow, or Spike himself for that matter, ever acquired so much as a splinter, Xander would hunt down the woody culprit and set fire to it. But he would take a sword to the guts and try to walk it off, to convince the world he was fine, he would let it kill him slowly and in agony. Impossible, stubborn, tough, inaccessible, magnificent bastard. He didn't let anything touch him, and Spike was a raving lunatic where Xander was so damn unaffected.
Spike hated that about him. Hated Xander, in fact. Hated that he was, at the core, kind and self-sacrificing, decent and sometimes so gentle and… all of the things Spike privately suspected he was destroying through simple contact. Because if Xander wasn't fundamentally decent… Spike wouldn't care what he was tarnishing, and he wouldn't be having this problem and… Xander wouldn't be Xander. And Spike hated that too, with the kind of circular logic that could only be achieved once he got down past the label, Xander showed him every day that Spike was a monster. And worse, let him be a monster, embracing something he should revile because Xander was just so… damned good at being good and… accepting and… a pain in the arse. And if he wasn't a pain in the arse then Spike wouldn't want him so badly or give a damn at all, and there wasn't enough vodka in the world.
But plenty enough to make him short tempered when a Slinth demon, skin like leathery grey feathers rustling at him, leaned into his personal space, leering and smelling of dust, said, "So… Spike… Where's your bug eater?"
It was the tone, more than anything, that set him off. Smug and slick, with the dull snickering of his cronies behind him, and Spike took a particular pleasure in smashing his empty tumbler against the feathery spines that arced across his forehead. While the slimy little fuck was still reeling, bleeding a sluggish orange, he slipped his coat off, laid it across the bar, nodded to Willy – a promise to show him his own entrails if anything happened to it – and walked out the door.
"Bug eater?" He asked casually when the Slinth staggered out of the bar, clutching his head and swearing bloody retribution. Standing at the mouth of the alley, Spike felt the confident élan laying on his bones as comfortable as the duster that was still lying on the bar. It was like air, the swagger and the sudden looseness in his skin, rolling in his shoulders. It was simple, and it was good. Because he was about to kill something.
Bug eater. Xander would hate that. He would be ashamed because it probably had been true. And Spike might hate him, they might hate each other, but he would never want Xander to feel shame. He was going to kill something, and snagging the wildly swinging fist and dragging the hapless victim of his own idiocy to his very messy demise felt good.
He broke the smart mouth first. Fist crashing against a surprisingly sturdy jaw and again until it was sagging open and wet with blood. Slinthiri were wily, lithe and wiry with muscles like loaded springs and sharp sharp elbows, but Spike backed him into a corner against the dumpster and it became a game of endurance and who had the most leverage. It was ugly, and it lacked finesse, and Spike felt its ribs collapse under his hands, felt its face fall into sloppy rubble; hit and hit until there was nothing left but a sticky grey and orange smear. He was even kind enough to tip the long narrow arms and legs into the dumpster before heading back to the bar and his drink.
His coat hadn't been touched, and there was a fresh glass of warm blood waiting for him; everybody knew Willy always paid a drink to the victor. After that, things got a little hazy. He remembered giggling, at one point, about drinking himself to a second death, and Willy, who had a spare moment about then, wryly, boldly, the little worm, wondering if the blood he was mixing in was the only thing keeping Spike conscious. And there was a vague recollection of the world churning under his feet, and – hah – had he really told a seven foot slab of granite named Borost that its mother named it after a beet dish?
Apparently he had. There was a massive black bruise dappling his shoulder and back, and his kidneys felt like they'd been sloshed around and shoved up to his ribs. For once, he was glad he didn't show up in mirrors. Spike had no idea how he'd made it home, or what time it was, or why, in the name of all that was sweet and unholy, why he was wearing nothing but his boots and one of Xander's god-awful shirts. His head pounded – which was quite a feat because it felt his face had been replaced by a moldy dish towel. A pounding moldy dish towel. And coming to on the living room floor, all he could do was laugh. It wasn't a happy sound, and he didn't let it keep him awake for long.
The word that came to mind was 'mess', though 'wreckage' easily applied. Spike picked through the detritus of his home at first with delicacy and then impatient efficiency, flinging long shards of destroyed furniture and the flapping upholstered skin of the brooding chair into the corner where the remains of the TV sat, gathering all of the mess into a massive pile of broken edges and unidentifiable splinters where he could stare at it. The desire to pick up one of those shards of wood and press it through his belly was almost overwhelming. Honorable death – the Orientals2 called it, and he had laughed at the time, but now he thought he understood. Not that gutting himself with a splinter would actually kill him. It would just hurt. Hurt and hurt and hurt and some part of him wanted that. He didn't. Just gathered the scraps of his dignity around him and moved on. He tried not to think of metaphors and symbols and any other rational – or worse, poetic – explanation for the impulsive destruction, and just set about sorting it out.
There wasn't, he noted, sober and wrung out as an old sponge, much in the way of structural damage. He thought he might need the services of a decent plasterer where the bloody shreds of his fingernails had left long gouges in the paint, but the lathe was mostly intact and he didn't think he'd cracked a stud pushing his fist through an interior wall. There were no fountains, puddles or dripping noises that were the hallmark of damaged plumbing, and no holes in the carpet that couldn't be tacked down – or maybe he'd just have the carpet replaced because the blood was still there, still an accusatory stain in his head like Lady Macbeth's damn'd spot, hidden under heaps of shrapnel. Maybe he'd find somewhere else to live and let bloody Angel deal with it all. But surveying the damage, he thought he'd let himself off lightly.
Could be he'd just been too drunk to do it properly. Sobriety was a bitch. The bathroom, when he ventured in there to clean the plaster dust from the scrapes in his hands and get the taste of three-day-old sock out of his mouth, was pristine. As was their clothes closet, which was convenient because he found the torn scraps of his trousers under the remains of the bed. They offered a reassuring explanation for his odd state of dress; covered in strange brown muck and fit for the garbage, they told him he hadn't done anything with anyone last night, except perhaps disembowelment. It rankled, and rankled that this was important, but he had been… faithful.
And Spike didn't lament the damage to the apartment at all. He had done it, now he was dealing with it, and while it might take a sizeable chunk of the nest egg he'd been nurturing since fencing Dracula's crap, he had the means to fix it, and in the meantime, it was just one more thing for Xander to be pissed about. He told himself it made his hastily generated cover story that much more believable, and refused to feel anything like guilt about this. About things. Not even his things.
Nor Xander's things, which were neatly tucked into the closet, folded and stacked and utterly unobtrusive. His two comic books were on top of his clothes, and there was a sinking in Spike's stomach that had nothing to do with his hangover. He packed it carefully, thick cotton and denim, soft things that felt good against his skin, but cheap; things he'd purchased out of expediency. It all smelled like Xander, it all felt like him, and in a moment of weakness he couldn't keep himself from pressing his face against one of the clean shirts, breathing it in. He felt pathetic, and obsessive, all over the map, and after the last 48 hours he felt as tired and battered on the inside as he looked on the outside. And he was smelling Xander's shirt. It was a mess.
He made himself put the shirt down, zip the bag closed, and walk away. When the sun went down, he would go hunt up the Slayer and hand it over. He didn't want anything to do with her, or any of them at the moment, if it wasn't family, if it wasn't Xander, he didn't want anything to do with anyone. He didn't want to part with it either, but Harris would need clothes. After two months, even Red had consented to donate his clothes to the Goodwill, and all that Xander had owned was gone. He hadn't meant for this to happen. Spike hadn't seen until now that everything Xander owned now fit into a short black duffle.
Not that Spike owned much more, but he had never been one for collecting useless gadgets or status symbols. Just CDs he liked until he didn't any more, sparklies until he lost them, a handful of old ribbons maybe, but an actual person should have more. Instead, the clothes were about all that was worth keeping. The books were in decent shape, he hadn't had the presence of mind to rip more than one or two apart, but they were Angel's anyway and he wanted to be rid of them. By rights, he should give the books back to the bastard – let them clutter up his life for a change. And it might be nice to see him again. Spike suffered a quick thirty second delusion where he met the man that had been sire and was welcomed; a warm embrace, a sympathetic clasp on his shoulder, and that old twinkle of mischief that promised to take his mind off things for a while. But it was only a delusion because that man hadn't existed for a hundred years, and he, William, had gone soon after, reinventing himself again and again. Adapting. And he'd once been foolish enough to believe that vampires never changed. Idiot.
Still, probably a meeting with Angel would be marginally less traumatic than his reunion with Dru, even if the Irish sot hadn't forgiven him the business with the Mozart and the pokers yet. Might be nice, for a change, to have a drink with a man as completely fucked as he was, who knew what it was for the beast to be chained, and – god help them both – who had slipped the leash on occasion. For very much the same reason, if Spike recalled.
But it would probably be horrible. Two sad old bastards drinking scotch and moaning about the… Christ, teenagers they'd left behind them. And that could go on – quite literally – forever. No thank you. Scotch had never been his drink anyway, and Angel could have his share of the brooding and moping. Spike would do what he had always done. He would walk off the bender – next week some time – and work like hell to get back to some kind of normal. Or whatever passed for normal. But normal was painfully evasive. Normal was taking, and having, and feeling pretty fucking satisfied about it until he wanted the next thing. Normal was not feeling like a pile of three-day-old disease ridden rubbish with a heaping dose of gut twisting anxiety on the side. Normal was fucking confusing.
What he wanted wasn't normalcy. It wasn't wanting and taking it was… having. And normal, the normal he wanted, the existence he had made the grave error of taking for granted was having Xander. Who smelled good, and who was kind, and who hated him. Because he'd never been very good at wanting without… loving. Which was ridiculous.
He loved him. It was hell. It was impossible. It was certainly something he refused to admit to himself because… it was Xander. But he loved him. And Spike liked love; he wanted to wallow in it, to wrap himself in it and breathe it all in. Wanted only to see his lover laugh, to enjoy his company. To woo him with gestures of affection, the amateur knight errant, but there the image he'd been crafting fell apart. Because Xander was no Lady Fair, and Spike's affection was far from chaste. He wanted to woo, yes, woo and coax and coerce to the impurest lust, until he could touch him with impunity - stroke the smooth warm column of his throat, squeeze the muscular swell of his arse… and doubted he ever would again. His carefully constructed fantasy popped like a soap bubble under the weight of its own impossibility. But by all the saints he'd been taught to fear, he was still in love.
He doubted Xander would be appeased by a beating heart. Not that he could have provided one anyway – it was all the chip's fault. All of it. The violence of having consummated his desire – his and none of it Xander's – and he hated that. The chip and Glory and being helpless and afraid and so very vulnerable, reaching so hard for a state of wild abandon and a brush with the sublime in simple skin. The fear and the helplessness, the horrible vulnerability that came with having any objects of affection. His presence in Sunnydale at all. It was all the chip, it was all Glory, it was all… him.
Of course he had changed. Of course he had been made to love. First Dawn, then Buffy in her way, then Xander in a way that defied belief and only underscored the inappropriateness of a relationship because he'd always believed that he would only ever adore one person with such fervor. And one day, the chip would come out. If any of them lived that long. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world. But when the sun went down, he thought he would be up to imbibing an appreciable fraction.
The sewer was dank and airless, sticky with warmth, even in late February. Humans were disgusting. His head hurt, his guts felt like mash, and he was fairly sure his kneecap had come away from…whatever little bits were keeping it in place, but he felt good. His skin was finally fitting right. He had a course of action. It was probably fucking stupid, but it was something to do at least. Spike cleaned himself up with no small effort, scrubbing the blood and week-old gel out of his hair, wrapping one of the infinitely convenient Ace bandages around his knee, and digging his last clean shirt out of the closet, and slipped through the wall and into the sewer system, on his way to meet a man.
Not Xander, who was really the only man he ever thought about, and often enough that he despaired of himself. And not Angel, who, irritatingly, flickered across his mind a lot since Dru had blown through town. He'd called the night before, drunk and angry and likely incoherent; Angel had been a prick, muttering something about the seam of madness in his family and what the hell was he doing raising people from the dead, but he put up with half an hour of Spike's bitching and moaning about Xander Harris and the associated baggage, which was something. It was a change from lurking outside the Summers' house, hiding in the lee of the wide tree there and dropping butt after butt until the Slayer gave him crap for littering. Mocking him. And finally, because he was that pathetic, inviting him in for a cup of tea which he declined because booze was a much better prospect.
But he was done with that now. Tired of grieving. Tired of being so angry, tired of seeing Buffy pity him, and really tired of pickling in his own skin. So he had a plan. And the plan required a trip through the bowels, pun unfortunately intended, of Sunnydale to a man who could fix it. For a price, of course, but he'd happily pay it later to be better now. Maybe.
The air down here was close, and he was unbelievably glad he didn't breathe. It smoothed out a few hundred yards away from his destination, cleaner air cut by a huge thrumming fan that rattled the floor. It wiped away scent tracks, changing the air currents, muffling noise, and effectively obscuring the nearby chamber. Even then, the door was hidden. Only those who knew it existed knew how to find it. It was the work of a cautious mind, perhaps even paranoid, and Spike could respect that kind of discretion. Sometimes it didn't pay to advertise.
He didn't look around, absolutely confident that nothing had followed him because his nerves were singing arias in anticipation, and he kept his attention on the door. He knocked three times, paused, knocked twice more, and the door swung open on silent hinges, spilling golden light into the blue gray tunnel for only as long as it took for him to step through. It clicked shut behind him, quiet and final.
The room was bright and friendly in that way of bookish affluence, cluttered with odds and ends from bygone eras. Books and scrolls and an astrolabe, like the study of a man who never did get to go adventuring. But the room, he suspected, was as carefully detailed and deliberate an image as his hair or the chipped black polish on his thumbs. In its bones, the room was something very different.
Any decent demon mecca held a room like this. He didn't know if there was a family who ran them or a series of likeminded individuals; if they were really unique spaces or if they weren't all the same room connected somehow by space and time through clever spell work; he didn't even know if what he saw in the room was really there or was some illusion crafted for the benefit of his sub-conscious, helping him see what he expected to see. What he did know was that at a certain point in their lives, demons with… potential found their way into a room and there they met the magic man.
Spike received his invitation decades ago in what was once the red-light district of Saigon city. He'd gone, fueled by his own curiosity and Dru's rabid glee, but he was a simple creature at heart and hadn't required any of the available services. Opening doors, locking them away, tugging on the tapestry threads that made the universe; Dru had been in a kind of eldritch ecstasy, humming about the strings and the world behind the mirror glass. It all went a bit over his head at the time. He only knew this one was here in the tunnel because he made it a habit to know in anticipation of the day he'd need more than cunning to survive on the hellmouth.
But he wasn't exactly comfortable.
"William of the house of Aurelias," said the man, who was stoking the fire when he came in.
It was hot and tight in the room, like a gloved fist around his chest, and the air was sweet with bergamot and toasted bread. "What's up, Doc?"
He got a raised eyebrow for his trouble, "It's not often I receive royalty."
Spike thought about his family, snorted, "Well that's some cause for celebration, then."
He laughed, Spike breathed out. The man, Doc, was almost a painfully ordinary figure in a fussy brown bespoke suit and wire rimmed glasses. He had the placid face of an accountant, painstakingly innocuous, and it made Spike – a man concerned enough with appearances that he was freshly trimmed, bleached, and gelled in preparation for this meeting – very nervous. In certain circles, only a creature who was truly confident of his capabilities dared to look so human, so mundane. "Please come in. Have a seat, what can I do for you?"
"I'm not… entirely sure," Spike managed respectfully. There was no sense in pissing off the magic man; he could practically taste the power from across the room. Neutral, but only as long as he stayed polite.
"But you do have an objective in mind, I'm sure. People so rarely come to see me without one. Please, have a set. Tea?" Spike nodded his assent, sinking into a creaking leather chair that reminded him of the one in his father's study. Firm, comfortable, and only just starting to crack at the edges. He was handed a cup of earl grey, which explained the bergamot at least, and was given the time to doctor it before Doc spoke again. "There's still nothing to be done about your implant, I'm afraid."
"No, that's… Thank you, that's not why I'm here." Doc shot him a shrewd look, then smiled tightly. Spike sighed, and even he could admit it was dramatic, cards on the table. "I seem to have resigned myself to the bloody thing. No, I need something of a less… technical nature."
"I see. Perhaps if you explained the nature of your… desires?"
"It's a feeling," Spike said bluntly, distancing himself from the conversation as much as possible. This was a mistake, probably. The whole universe and its infinite wonder presumably at his disposal, and what he wanted was nothing to do with fixing his head or getting rid of the hellbitch who had watchers knocking down his door, it was this. Selfish, irrational, and overwhelming. "I want it to go away."
"A feeling?"
"Yes. A feeling, an emotion even."
"Interesting." And apparently it was, because he made a reedy 'hrm' noise that had Spike itching to defend himself, his demon. "And I suppose that articulating this feeling any further is…"
"Difficult."
This time, the grin was wolfish. "Difficult, yes. I see."
"Can you help me or not?"
"Oh, it's likely I can, but not without further information. Do you know what I'm asking?"
Spike knew.
It was common enough practice among empaths and witches, but something he would bet money Red and Glinda would never dare to touch. This world made him nervous, he wasn't a man with secretive plans, he wasn't the type to mystic up a potion in some room and let it cause his chaos for him – Spike was a creature of physical gratification, always looking for the crunch, and without Dru here, swirling incense and laughter around him, protecting him with her brand of intuition, Spike was leery. It wasn't fun anymore. Doc handed him a blank slip of paper, about the size of a post-it note.
"How much?"
"Three drops. No more, no less."
Spike nodded, and slipped into the demon long enough to nip through the skin at the base of his right thumb, letting the blood well and pat-pat-pat on the paper in a little triangle. He caught the fourth drop on his tongue, wiping the little knick clean and washing the burnt aftertaste of second-hand blood that had been sitting in his veins for too long away with the tea. He held it out for the man to take, but didn't let it go right away. He didn't know what Doc was, exactly, but he was a demon, and a magic maker, and for a moment the paper and his blood were suspended on their held gaze, half threat, half tacit understanding. "I will be taking this back from you when you're through with it."
"Such caution in one so young," and Spike let the paper go.
He leaned back in the comfortable chair, legs splayed, hand resting idly on his belly, eyes half-hooded by their own lids, and tried to affect the very picture of comfort, but he watched with interest as the appropriately named Doc examined his blood. He sniffed it first, gently hooked nose a mere fraction of an inch away from one of the quickly gelling droplets. After a few moments, he peeled away one of the points on the triangle, tearing through the rough square of paper with care and precision, and placing it gently on his tongue like the sacrament. Spike couldn't stop the shudder of unease that ran through him, or the smirk that followed.
Finally, Doc gathered some supplies to him, a fat creamy candle on a black plate, a slender book of matches, and a pitcher of water and a clean white towel that came from nowhere Spike saw because he was busy watching the hand that held his blood. Doc struck a match and lit the candle with ease, slender fingers going about practiced work. He held the paper over the flame until it caught, breathed in the smoke and held it, then snuffed the flame, paper, blood, and ashes in his hand, rubbing it into his fingers.
After a moment, when the man swallowed and dumped half the pitcher of water into his palms, wiping smears of the black mess away into the towel, Spike asked wryly, "That sting?"
"Every time." The man grinned at him, shook his stinging hands, and finished cleaning up with clinical efficiency. "You have had an interesting year, William the Bloody."
Spike snorted, "Understatement."
"The first drop is for the past." Spike was informed without having asked. "Second drop is for the present – what you want right in this moment – third drop is for insight."
"Not the future?"
"No." Spike shrugged, magic was not his field. "No one can know that, not even your estimable paramour. Well, former." That had been unnecessary. "But there are… flashes. Guidance, if you know what to listen for."
"And I take it you do?"
"I don't scorch my fingers for nothing." Spike wasn't about to break the silence that followed that little show of sarcastic bravado, and finally, Doc chuckled. "It's highly unusual for a vampire to feel guilt. Love, in your… species, happens often enough, it's twisted, narcissistic at best, but it does happen. And grief, you make children, you have families, and really, you're all so… fragile. But guilt. You're a race of maniacal sociopaths, you're not wired for anything like guilt."
"Gee, thanks Doc. That's really flattering."
"It's certainly very interesting. Please don't misunderstand, I'm not judging. An emotional dearth can be very… useful. I simply wonder if it's the curse of Aurelias, some lingering effect of your sire's soul…. Interesting."
He pronounced all four syllables, and Spike was tired of the speculation. "Can you fix it, or not?"
"I can."
"So…"
"Bring me a broken gem and a wooden bowl. A feather from a chicken and the jawbone of a mouse."
Fucking magic. Spike didn't understand it – respected that it could turn him inside out, yes – but he had to be skeptical. "That's it?"
"That's it."
"Bits of stuff? The jawbone of a mouse?"
"Chalk it up to symbolism." The man in the suit shrugged, then sighed because Spike's whole body language was muttering "No" in derisive font. "Look, you feel guilty because you did something wrong." He flinched, hating to have it so easily confirmed by someone impartial by reputation. "But you only feel guilty because of your… shall we call it affection? The guilt can't be erased or assuaged by a spell, but love… is like a light in a room. It can be dim, it could be comforting… it can be dazzling, but it's there or it isn't, simple as that. Everything that light touches is… true. Little things, a smile, a quiet tune while the coffee brews, the shape of his hands while he's holding something precious…"
It was as though Doc was reading his mind. Or worse, like the man had reached up through his guts to squeeze his heart because he knew him, knew Xander, and Spike was shot through with fear and with agony because Spike loved those things that were being laid bare so callously, loved them, and he felt exposed. But the man kept talking, and it only took a moment to realize he'd moved off Spike and onto something else entirely, "The curve of her neck, and her pleasure at a gift… the way she'll shape the world…"
"Scuse me?"
He shook his head, clearing it, and Spike thought he saw, for the briefest moment, something terrifying, something resentful and… old. "It's a light." The old thing repeated, his human face slipping back into place without so much as a seam. "We're just going to turn it off. And this… bit of stuff, as you put it, will make it happen – a hand on the switch, if you will."
"That's almost poetic of you, Doc."
"I speak the language of my clients."
Spike didn't flush because he had no heartbeat, but he felt his face turn to stone. "I do this, the guilt goes away?"
"You do this, the love goes away. Light turns off, you can't see the ugliness anymore. No more reason for guilt."
The thought of it was revolting. He'd clung to love for as long as he'd been alive, since before he'd died and long after. He loved being in love, doting on Drusilla, giving everything he was because it was the purest thing he'd ever known. Throwing it away was revolting. But he would never have that here, he'd destroyed it with stupid demonic impulsivity, and maybe if he did this thing, if he gave it up, he could finally leave. He couldn't say yes, but he couldn't say no either. "I'll think about it."
Spike set aside his empty teacup and pried himself out of his chair, smoothing down the duster around his hips and nodding, finally, at his host, who nodded back. "A broken gem, a wooden bowl, a feather from a chicken, and a mouse's jawbone, don't forget."
"No." A bit of stuff, and it could all go away. "I won't forget."
Until next time...
