He's the light in her fridge (2/?), by dutchbuffy2305

Pairing: Faith/Spike

Rating: R

Author's note: Sequel to His voice is like a Mars-bar

Author's website:

Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305@yahoo.co.uk

Cleveland weather is like Spike's mood, wet snow and wintry cold one day, back to fall the next. He's not exactly stopped moping and drinking, but at least he does it in her company, and even has been known to come with on patrol. Right now, Faith's lower half is enjoying the brief return of good weather on the porch of their house. Faith sits on the ancient swing seat, her bare legs nicely warmed by the slanty rays of the late fall sun, with Spike behind her, playing with the parts of her body the sun can't reach. He's mostly an ass kind of guy, but as the sun is claiming it for now, he satisfies himself with her breasts.

"Woohoo!" the train yells as it screeches past on its way to Chicago. "Woohoo!"

"This is a good place, you know," Faith remarks. "If you need to leave in a hurry, you could hop on a train to anywhere."

"Not leaving," Spike says.

"Yeah, well, but if you wanted to you could. No need to feel cooped up."

"Why are we talking about leaving? Our work is here. We guard the Hellmouth." Spike is getting irritated.

"I want you to feel free-"

Spike jumps up, depositing her upside down on the swing seat. "I don't want to feel free! Why the hell d'you think I would I leave you? I was with Drusilla for a hundred years!"

"You left Buffy!"

Spike shrivels like a punctured balloon and collapses on the seat. "Yeah. Well."

Faith needs to make him feel better. "Hey, my bad. You didn't really, Buffy gave you to me. She wanted me to take care of you."

Spike explodes off the seat again and is standing over her in game face before she can even blink. Good guess would be she just made it worse.

"What the fuck? She fucking gave me away like a sodding present? What is it with you bitches! Can't you leave me alone to decide my own fate?"

The door slams. A flake of paint drifts slowly down from the porch ceiling, landing at Faith's feet. Oops.

Faith knows she should let Spike alone, but it's getting colder so she goes in anyway. The moment she enters the kitchen, Spike leaves it. She can hear him stomp up and down the wooden boards outside. What can she say to him to make things better? If she goes back on the porch, he'll just go back inside again. She compromises by opening a window and staying silent. She smokes a cigarette, belly firmly wedged against the radiator, upper half hanging out of the porch window. This way she can keep an eye on her angry vampire, who's pacing up and down the length of their porch as if he wants to make a groove in it. If he were Bugs Bunny, the planks would be on fire by now. He's smoking moodily and flicking the ashes in the direction of the sun, which is taking its fucking time about setting out here. Unlike in California, where night slams down like a blackout shade, the sun is doing very much a fade-out thing, like an aging jazz-singer who doesn't know when to stop. He's on his third cigarette by now, and when Spike has decided he needs to go out and can't, it makes him cranky.

Faith loves watching the slideshow of emotions on Spike's face. They should use him for these Special Ed classes for difficult kids, where the teachers think that kids don't know about emotions and need help to identify them. Faith remembers them with active hatred. She and her peers – because they sure weren't friends- really didn't need help to identify anger or disgust. Please. That's the only emotion they saw around them most of the time. They should have shown love, approval, and amusement, maybe, so they'd recognize them when they saw them. Faith could use some help in identifying some of the things she sees on Spike's face. Is it love when he looks at her with a half smile and a tilt of his head? Or is it indulgence, like you'd show a bouncy but clueless kid?

The sun reluctantly pulls in her fat ass behind the horizon and it's as if the temperature drops fifteen degrees. Faith has to admit that fall here is pretty, but she could do without the cold. If she manages to hang onto a job for more than one day, she's going to buy some clothes, because her Sunnydale tops aren't pulling their weight around here.

Spike, predictable for once, flicks his cigarette butt away, jumps over the porch railing and heads towards his bike. He's back within the hour. Faith, who's been not watching the busy TV, a blanket tightly wound around her body, lets out a breath and loosens her cocoon. Thank God there isn't going to be a repeat of the dragging Spike out of bars thing, because that was really getting to her. Spike comes in. He closes the drapes and lights the dozens of candles, something Faith always forgets, without saying a word. He plops down next to her and roughly pushes her face into his neck. Faith hugs back hard. Spike looks at her, breathes out with a puff and puts his forehead against hers.

"Mine," he says against her lips.

"Yours," Faith agrees.

Normal TV-watching and making out activities resume. Faith tries to gauge why she feels better than before. Because he returned? Maybe, but more likely because he got mad and blew up, like he used to. Yeah. Pissed off is alive, withdrawn is dead inside. He's dead enough already.

*

The moment Faith steps outside she knows this evening will be different. The chill November air is awash with strange wispy scents that spell magic to her. Demons. She tries to walk fast through the thick layer of snow, but although her new fur boots keep her feet warm and dry, they don't give her speed. Spike says they make her look like the Sasquatch, which Faith cheerfully ignores.

"Ever fucked one?" she asks.

Spike has to admit he hasn't.

"I rest my case," Faith says.

The boots make big round tracks. The fresh air, on the edge of sunset, is making her giddy, and she has some fun writing "Faith loves Spike" in the snow, jumping like a maniac to keep the words clear of her tracks. When she's done, the last rays of a garish purple twilight make the snow gleam lilac, and the holes she made in it seem black. It probably looks really nice from the top of a tree. Sasquatches have bad handwriting, which is way too huge for ordinary human beings to read. Maybe Spike could fly over it in his bat-shape and be struck by a sudden bolt of love. But no, Star Trek reruns were more appealing than patrol with Faith. No progress on the love front. Maybe Quark will teach Spike about true love. Probably not.

Faith sighs and moves on to Restfield Cemetery. Jeez, is there a Restfield in every fucking town in the U.S.? No need to win over the customers with inventive names, after all. The scent of demons is stronger here. It is nice that the cemeteries her are well lit; she spots them from afar, three greeny blue shapes huddling over a grave. This is going to be fun. Cleveland Hellmouth, located in one of the less wealthy suburbs, has shown a disappointing lack of activity so far. Maybe this is it. Faith is very much in the mood to kick some demon ass, because her demon asshole at home is still trying out the stiff upper lip thingy, which anyone could tell you is a bad trait in boyfriends.

Faith hurls herself at the first demon, who's been dumb enough to take point. As the fluffy boots hit him smack in the middle she hears a satisfying crunch of bone. One down. She rolls on her back, flips up and is ready for the next one. This is really hitting the sweet spot. How nice of these demons to be here just when she really needs to vent some frustrations. She hollers out a premature victory yell when she mashes her hands through an eye and straight into mushy demon brain. Three down. It's premature, because there is suddenly another blue green brother connecting his giant fist with her nose. She flies over the tomb and lands badly.

Oops, she thinks. There were four. My bad. She doesn't think she could flip up, so she crawls up and just manages to be standing when the two demons storm her. Two? What the fuck? She hears a rustling from behind and there's three more. This is not good. Faith whirls around and discovers she's miscounted again. Seven. A sneaky feeling crawls up from her stomach to her throat. That must be what fear feels like, she thinks distantly, before concentrating hard on staying on her feet and staying alive. But really, the odds are so much against her that there's no point in even fighting. A kick lands in her back, shooting fire straight up into her skull and she smashes hard with her face in the snow. Snow, for all its fluffy whiteness, is nasty and gritty when you fall on it. She thinks of getting up and killing another couple of demons, but that is as far as she gets. Her body is not cooperating with these plucky scrappy thoughts and goes on strike.

The demons are talking amongst themselves while they turn her over and start opening her up. It seems they all want the privilege of killing her. One of them is even from England. Who knew there could be British demons? She can tease Spike with it when she gets back. Oh. She won't, she realizes. Well, Spike won't miss her too much. Now he can grieve over Buffy and drink himself to death in peace. And fuck the rest of the female population of Cleveland.

Tears pool from her eyes and freeze her lashes to the snow, so she must be lying on her belly again. She's feeling very sorry for that girl lying brokenly in the snow. All alone. Unloved. In a circle around her are the green motionless bodies of giant dead demons. A black shape is picking his way around them. Ah, that must be the boyfriend, who came galloping in to kill the demons and rescue the heroine. She hopes he'll feel sad over the girl, but you never know. She doesn't look like a girl who deserves to be loved. She is small and unworthy, lying face down in the snow, wearing these really ugly hairy snow boots.

"Faith! My Faith...please wake up. Please don't be dead."

Saying please is enough to make people return from the dead? Not likely. Faith scoffs at please. He's really gonna need some bigger guns to do that. Magic maybe.

"Please, Faith. I know I shouldn't have loved you so soon, but I just can't hold on to her memory. And she didn't love me anyway."

"Yes, she did," Faith says, but she doesn't want to open her eyes yet.

There's a very unmanly gasp from the demon asshole right above her. There's a warm feeling spreading in her middle. Happiness, Faith thinks, but checks anyway with her hands, because of the eyes not opening thing. Shit. It's warm and wet. No happiness for Faith of course. She remembers this from movies. The hero confesses his love too late, or when the heroine's just been killed trying to fend off the wolves who wanted to eat the baby. No, that's not right. That was a dog, and the prince accidentally killed it. Spike would never kill her. He might see her die though if he doesn't get her to a hospital soon.

Her eyes still won't open. She can feel he's carrying her, which is mucho nice. It makes her feel like a princess. It's a bit like cheating, though. Deathbed confessions and such. She has to tell him that she loves him, just before she dies, in case she hasn't. That way he would hold on to her memory and grieve over her forever.

"I love you, Spike."

"I know, sweetheart. And the Sasquatch lady does too. She wrote it in the snow for me with her sodding big feet. A Bigfoot poem."

Faith tries to laugh. It gurgles weirdly in the wrong place.

His voice sounds off. Very hoarse. She shouldn't have made him go out in this weather, he's gonna catch a cold. She's a bad girlfriend. If she could open her eyes Spike would probably look really beautiful right now.

He reads her mind. A soft warm cloth trails gently over her lashes, unfreezing them. Faith opens one eye. Spike licks off her frozen tears with his lips, which are bright pink with cold, and looks at her with a feeling in his eyes that makes her so gooey inside that she shuts them again hastily. She doesn't want to cry. She doesn't think heaving sobs are going to do any good to those bits of her she saw hanging out just now.

From between her lashes she can see the moon shine on Spike's face and she's very glad to have something so beautiful to look at in her last moments. Maybe she'll see Buffy in heaven and they can compare notes. I had him last, she thinks.

She's warmer now. She hears murmurs and she wishes Spike wouldn't jostle and prick her so hard. She feels two Spike hands on hers, and the pricking and hurting still goes on. The snow comes up to meet her, marshmallow soft this time, like snow should be, and well, that's it then.

When Faith wakes up she feels really crappy. It's too hard to even open her eyes. Frozen shut again, she guesses. Maybe Spike would lick them open again if she asked, but it's still systems down. Her hand feels as if someone is holding it. Perhaps she could wiggle her pinkie a little? She's rewarded with what distinctly feels like a kiss on that same hand, and a voice murmuring something soft in her ear. She can't make out the words, but it was definitely a British accent. Faith decides that this is enough exercise for today and drifts off again, feeling very satisfied.

When she wakes up again she's in a hospital and Spike's sleeping in a chair next to her bed. His face is all lopsided from leaning on his hand, and he has terrible hair. Popcorn hair is what Faith calls it, all pale yellow exploded curl-shapes on his head.

She moves her head, and it works, even if the room goes all smeary like an overexposed action photo. Maybe she should try sitting up. She can't, but it does wake up Spike. He looks all rumpled and dazed, and he tilts his head at her so sweetly.

"Popcorn head," Faith says in a scratchy voice.

"Butter me, salt me, eat me," Spike says.

His voice is not up to its usual grade of chocolate either. Maybe a muesli bar, with lots of hard bits and gritty grains. She would eat him. Later, when she can move more than just her head.

"I fucked up," Spike mutters against her hand.

"Which fuck-up do you mean exactly?" Faith asks unthinkingly and it hurts to see him flinch and bow his head. "I didn't mean you fuck up a lot! I mean, the fight or the Buffy-shaped bitch in the bar?"

He opens his mouth and closes it again, looks down at his hands. Clears his throat. "Well. Both. And everything. I should have been there for you. I should bloody well remember, you know, as I called it originally. A Slayer needs a family and friend to beat the odds."

Faith is ashamed. "I don't have a family," she whispers.

Spike shakes his head. "Rupert sent you here on your own. Shouldn't have taken it. Should've held out for a witch and some extra muscle."

Faith's chin wobbles. "I thought you were going to be my muscle," she says. She can barely squeeze out the sound past the lump in her throat.

Spike wriggles his body as close as he can through the tangle of red and white tubes and puts his cheek next to hers. "I'm not leaving you, my sweet… Gonna stick to you like a burr."

"What's a burr?"

"City girl! It's a seed, like living Velcro."

"Yeah," Faith agrees sleepily. "We're gonna stick together like Velcro. Are you the soft or the prickly side?"

"We'll take turns, my little thorny one."

Spike's love is a little like a radiator. White and hard and ridged to the touch, but it keeps her warm like nothing else does.

TBC