A Bloke's Gotta Try
Ninnik Nishukan
"Gah!"
As she slams the door, he turns in his chair, craning his neck to see her. She has all the tell-tale signs of running; panting and a faint trace of sweat underneath the layer of rain soaking her hair and clothes. A sudden shower began pouring down about three minutes ago, and it looks like the Slayer got caught in it.
She looks agitated, and he briefly wonders if she's here to play a jolly round of Kick the Spike.
She surveys the damage with a pouting scowl, and as he looks at her jacket, heavy with rain, he also wonders if she's gonna shake the water off like a dog.
"Bad day at the office, dear?" He asks, one eyebrow raised.
She glares at him even though his tone isn't malevolent. "I wouldn't even know where to begin complaining!"
He gives her the once-over again. "Not the best of weather for one of your dainty little outfits, is it?"
The glare stays put. "It wasn't even overcast when I left the house!"
He gets up and climbs down to the lower level of the crypt. Huffing, she peels her soggy jacket off, dropping it in a pile on the sarcophagus, and starts stomping her feet a little to try to warm herself up as she hovers uncertainly near the entrance, not exactly sure what he's doing. After a short while he resurfaces and walks over to her, wordlessly offering her a towel. When she gives him a skeptical look, he sighs in slight irritation.
"It's clean." He assures her, and she accepts it reluctantly.
"Thanks," she mumbles, towelling herself off, patting her hair with one end while rubbing her face and throat with the other. "Shit, I bet my make-up's totally ruined." She glances at him hopefully. "You wouldn't happen to have a mirror, would you?" She asks, dabbing at her arms with the towel.
His only answer is a disbelieving look, and she can tell he's biting back a laugh.
The feeling of foolishness only adds to her bad mood. "Guess you wouldn't," she mutters, rolling her eyes, starts pulling her damp hair into the depressing bun she wore at the Magic Box earlier today. She'd even had it curled tonight, and now it's all for naught.
"So, what's with the long face, Slayer?" Spike tilts his head, amused.
"Can you say 'worst day ever'?" She asks sarcastically, handing back the now limp towel, which he throws over a chair.
"Oh. One of those now, is it?" To her slight surprise, he nods understandingly. "Here, let me hang this up for you. Any luck, it'll dry out." He offers, picking up her jacket and shaking it out before hanging it up on an old, dusty coat rack in a corner.
"And anything resembling a radiator...I guess you don't have that, either?" She inquires, less hopeful this time as she rubs her arms, trying to get the circulation going, teeth all but chattering.
Spike shakes his head apologetically. "I have this, though." He suggests, grabbing a blanket off the ratty, old armchair by the TV. The blanket isn't as ratty as the chair, though, and she accepts it gratefully, wrapping it around her back and shoulders. He seems elated at that. "And these, too," He says, starts walking around the room, lighting more candles with a silver lighter from his pocket. "Not much warmth, but it'll help."
When the last candle's lit, he notices her simply standing about, looking uncertain, and he grows a little jittery. Apparently, none of them know what to say in this unusual situation. A sidelong glance tells him that she's gazing up into the ceiling.
"I think you have spiders," She comments finally, wrinkling her nose.
This being the icebreaker, he chuckles. "It's a crypt, luv."
She sends him a 'whatever'-type look. "Couple of swipes with a broom'd send 'em all tumbling down so you could kick 'em out of here." She tells him matter-of-factly.
What is it with women and spiders? "Live and let live, Slayer," He grins wryly, flapping a hand towards the armchair. "Want to sit down?"
She hesitates, but in the end she takes a seat. "Might as well," she says as if by way of explanation. "Gotta wait this storm out, anyway."
He nods, shifts his weight from foot to foot. Fuck, but that woman makes him nervous as a schoolboy sometimes! And now it's not really even sexual tension, but an irrationally strong urge to please, to make her comfortable. If he didn't have his hands in his pockets, they'd be flailing about hyperactively. "Err...was gonna have some tea, you want any?"
She gives him a look that suggests she should be peering over half-moon spectacles at him like some old biddy. "You drink tea?"
He grins suddenly. "Got to uphold those merry old British stereotypes, now don't I?" He says, and goes over to the tumble-down excuse for a kitchenette to make the tea even if she hasn't actually accepted the offer yet. "Can't have you catching any colds now, can we, Slayer?"
"Well, aren't we the perfect little host?" She teases, and he glances over his shoulder just in time to see the first smile of the evening zip across her lips.
"And you haven't even tried my famous quiche yet," he shoots back sarcastically with a scowl, peeved. As he turns back to his task, though, he can't help but to grin sappily, pleased that he made her smile. Bringing two cups of tea over to the chair, one for each of them, he hands her hers and hovers near the chair, sipping the hot beverage.
"Jeez, how many pounds of sugar did you use, anyway?" Buffy complains about the tea even as she keeps on drinking it, and he smiles beside her.
"Won't harm you any, pet." He assures her, chuckling.
"You shoulda asked me if I take sugar, like a good, polite Englishman." She pouts, burrowing further into the blanket, leaning back, clutching the warm enamel of the cup, both her hands wrapped completely around it, soaking up heat.
"Now you do," he tells her rudely, grinning as she tries swatting his arm, just out of reach, almost spilling her tea. "Fancy some telly?"
"Sure." She shrugs, settling back again, secretly enjoying being pampered. Blanket, tea, comfy chair, TV; what's not to like?
He sits down on his haunches in front of the TV, switching it on. When he gets up, turning back to her, he sees her patting one arm of the chair in invitation. He doesn't attempt to conceal his puzzlement at her wish, and she sighs. "Come on."
Sitting down gingerly, he turns his attention to the TV, trying to ignore the way his elbow nearly brushes her shoulder.
After a few minutes of viewing, she can't take it anymore. "What the hell are we watching?" She blurts out, baffled.
"Passions," He tells her absently, already descending into his usual Passions-trance.
Something dawns on her. "So this is Passions," she says slowly, both eyebrows resting near her hairline. She shakes her head sadly. "Now I finally have some insight into how you came to be so twisted." She says sagely.
Snapping out of the world of Passions, he looks down at her. "You kidding? This is great!"
"Angels! Angels!" One woman screams on-screen, holding a knife to the other woman's throat. Suddenly a monkey comes to the rescue, jumping on her back and stabbing her as they both tumble down the stairs.
"Yeah," Buffy says drily, "I see your point."
Spike quickly faces the facts; Buffy is growing bored, and if Buffy's bored, she's gonna leave, and if Buffy leaves, he's missed his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So he should really be changing the channel. Besides, he's already seen this episode like three times.
"All right, have it your way," He grumbles, crouching down again to change the channel.
As he's flipping channels, she squeals as her eye catches a flash of bright colours and wacky sounds. "Ooh! Ooh! Cartoons! Change it back, change it back!"
He gives her the same look she gave him just a minute ago. "This is better than Passions?" He asks her in the same dry tone she used on him, but still he complies, indulging her every whim. Because for a moment there, her eyes lit up with the child-like glee Dawn's eyes sometimes holds.
She sticks out her tongue at him, clutching her mug of tea. "My day's been way too generous with the suckiness, so the least you could do is let me watch some damn cartoons."
"Never had you pegged for a cartoon kind of bird, Slayer." He looks side-long at her, smiling from his perch on the chair's arm.
At that, she seems to grow slightly embarassed at her own childishness, feeling the sudden need to defend herself. "Only when I'm feeling a bit pooped." She bites her lip, a slightly wistful look stealing over her. "Mom used to do this, you know." She says out of the blue. "Give me tea and a blanket and turn on the 'toons when I'd had a particularly rough day."
"Decent lady, your mum." Spike murmurs in agreement.
Buffy nods, looking down. "Sometimes I think she understood the slaying better than I thought. Like, she knew exactly what I needed." She glances up at him. "You don't have much time for pampering when you're...well, me."
Spike keeps quiet, uncertain as to whether he's made her sad or if she's pleased by the things he's done for her just now. You never know, with Buffy, and besides, it's always a tender subject to be reminded of the dearly beloved that aren't with you. Some are happy for the memories, and some can't handle it at all.
"Maybe the entire day won't suck, after all." She tells him in the roundabout way she usually adopts in the few instances when she can't avoid complimenting or thanking him.
He smiles; so no damage done, then. "You're welcome, luv. Least you should get for saving the world on a regular basis is a cuppa." He mumbles, looks at her trying not to look at him. In the end, she glances up and a small grin zooms across her face. They turn their attention back towards the TV.
"That is so not believable." She comments as they watch a cartoon warrior slash his way through an army of robots. "I mean, it's seems too easy, you know? They zoom in on his face and it's all 'tching tching thud' and then they go back to widescreen mode to show off the piles of defeated enemies." She throws her hands up in exasperation. "Hello! How did he manage to get rid of, like, thirty robots in five seconds? It's no wonder they can't show us what actually happened!"
Spike nods in agreement. "An' that's not even the worst part-- did you ever see a single drop of blood on this show? How believable is it that all his enemies are soddin' androids? Even all-powerful evil couldn't manufacture all the 'bots this bloke goes through every bloody episode. It's all this kiddy-friendly mush, is what it is. Ruins the plot every time." He shakes his head. "Besides, what would a 'bot do with the bounty on Jack's head? Treat himself to an oil change?"
Buffy lets slip a giggle at this, but completely misses the pleased smirk on the vampire's face.
After a while of comfortable silence, she glances up at him. "You wouldn't have anything to drink that's, like, stronger than tea, would you?"
He grins.
The Slayer.
Strong. Fast. Agile. Clever. Resourceful. Ruthless. Deadly. Feared by vampires across the globe.
Seriously can't hold her liquor.
As Spike watches her empty the contents of her stomach on her own shoes, he can't help but feel slightly disappointed. He'd thought they'd get sauced, yeah, beat some heads, maybe dance a little, maybe even get a quick snog in if he was lucky, but that was just the trouble. It is a general rule that Spike's luck isn't worth shit.
She got drunk, embarassed him in front of his poker buddies and afterwards she gave him a lecture about how much fun she wasn't having with him, and that had kinda hurt. If there was one thing Spike knew he was good at, it was having fun. Then of course, there had been the pathetic excuse for a demon in the goofy boxer shorts, and when the Slayer fell on her ass after a brief, embarassing fight, she wouldn't even accept his hand so he could help her up.
How did they get from a cozy evening with tea and telly and an actual friendly conversation at his crypt to a brassed off, sick Slayer dry-heaving in a dirty alley outside a sleazy bar?
The bottle or two of whiskey and tequila currently being recycled by the Slayer would do well by way of explanation.
"Spike?"
"Mm?" He asks absently, contemplating their predicament. What should we do with the drunken Slayer (early in the morning)?
"I think I could use that help getting up now." She mutters.
"Right you are, Slayer." He moves towards her, taking her shoulders in his hands to help her up. She whimpers with the contact, as if her stomach can't handle being moved even that little.
"Ooh," she groans in complaint when he sets her on her feet. "I think..." She trails off vaguely.
"...therefore I am?" He finishes with a quirked eyebrow when it becomes apparent that there won't be anymore to that sentence for a while.
Buffy shoots him the drunken version of her trademark 'Spike-is-being-annoying' kind of scowl. "I think...I think you're gonna hafta carry me."
"Wouldn't look good to the Women's Lib Movement." He grins.
"Being carried...by a man is a woman's right, g'dammit..." Buffy mumbles, clutching his arm threateningly. Or, it would be threatening if her grip wasn't as weak as that of the kittens currently scampering away for freedom inside the bar.
"Suit yourself." Spike shrugs.
Buffy grins blearily, happily. "Give me a piggyback."
He stares at her. "You're still after my last shred of dignity, aren't you?"
Buffy laughs. "Nope. Already grabbed that, like, waaay back."
Too bloody right, Spike thinks, shaking his head sadly at himself. "Hop up, little girl." He says, folding his hands behind his back so she can climb up. She climbs his back like a hyperactive kid climbing a tree, and even knees him unintentionally in the small of his back once or twice. He bites his lip to keep from hollering in pain.
When she's finally settled down, though, it's a different story. Apparently she's tired, because she slumps against his back, her breasts squishing against him until they're flat against his duster. He's hooked his hands under her knees to keep her up, and she's holding on with her arms around his neck, her cheek and nose resting against the bare skin on the side of his throat.
This is torture for him, and he wonders if she knows.
"I don't feel so good," She breathes into his skin.
"If you're gonna throw up again, tell me first." He warns her. "Don't think sick washes out of leather very easily."
"No, I'm just...kinda queasy...and dizzy..." She groans, digging her nose into the nape of his neck like a rabbit burrowing a hole to hide in.
"That'll be the Slayer healing kickin' in and doing its job of sobering little drunken Slayers up." He explains patiently, trying to ignore her soft assault on his skin. He bites down a groan of his own.
"I hate whiskey."
"Figured as much when you made the wrinkly faces."
"And tequila."
"Shouldn't have had it straight from the bottle, luv."
"And...and I hate Slayer healing." She pouts.
Spike chuckles. "Vampire healing isn't any funnier once you run out of booze."
Buffy presses her cheek to the coolness of his neck. "This is kinda helping, though." She muses. "Like a vampire-sized icepack." She giggles. "You should, like, rent yourself out to people with hangovers. You'd make a fortune."
He swallows, wants to ask her so bad if maybe she wouldn't feel better if he stayed with her, in her bed, offered up all the cool vampire skin she could want. He can't, of course, but if only she'd ask, he wouldn't mind holding her hair back if she had to retch some more, wouldn't mind fetching her drinks of water and rubbing her stomach until she felt better, anything she wanted. He wonders, sometimes, if she really has put some spell on him and turned him into something even more helpless than a chipped vampire, something that'll walk on his knees behind her until the day she dies, without ever getting anything in return.
When he thinks that, though, usually he'll just go out and kill something or break something to keep from going nuts, if he's not nuts already, to keep him from feeling like he's wasting his life, like he's mortal and he's looking at only a few more years or even months even though he knows he's got forever.
It's the futility that does it to him, he reckons, how whatever he does, whatever he throws at her and her Superfriends it seem to bounce off them like rubber and stick to him like glue. He's turned into a nance, a lonely nance, pacing around in his crypt, feeling more and more directionless with each passing day, actually sensing the passing of time for the first time in his miserable un-life.
It's all about limits, being mortal, and that's what they've given him. The first limit was the sodding chip, of course, forced upon him by her bloody boyfriend Captain Whitebread and his army pals, but the rest of it...well, that's his own fault. It's his own fault for falling in love with the Slayer; she's made it painfully plain to him on several occasions that she didn't exactly ask for it. And then there was the fact that he actually started caring. About Buffy, about her little sister and even a little bit for the Scoobies, including the only piece of merry old Blightey left in Sunnyhell, the ex-librarian, re-instated ex-Watcher Rupert Giles. Spike has saved his life too many times to count, and even the annoying little whelp Harris. Rupert is a decent bloke, who cared fiercely enough for his Slayer to stand up against the dreaded Council of Wankers, but Harris, who's only shown him anything even resembling kindness on one or perhaps two occasions, shouldn't be on his list of people he cares even remotely about. They've given him limits.
They've involved him. He cares, he even feels a bit of compassion-- and hell, if he isn't starting to form his own shaky set of moral principles, like 'it's wrong to kill the Nibblet even if the chip comes out' and other things along that line.
Limits.
Is it any wonder he's started feeling like he isn't immortal anymore, like at any moment it could all be blown away, when he surrounds himself with Buffy the Righteous White Hat and her Band of Buggered, all fragile, stupid human beings, probably all due an early death? What is he even doing here, with them, why doesn't he leave?
"I'm sorry I yelled." Buffy says suddenly, and he's struck dumb with surprise. "It was...it was a bad ending to a pretty nice evening, really."
"Is that right?" He asks tentatively, holding his dead breath.
She nods. "Everything before the whiskey was nice." She tells him quietly, leaning her head on his shoulder. "This is nice too. It's like being on board a ship, the way it rocks me up and down..." She yawns into his skin. "Ooh...sleepy..."
Sometimes, though...sometimes he knows exactly what he's doing, and why. Sometimes it seems absolutely worth it. Sometimes it seems like he's got forever to win her over.
Rupert Giles has seen some strange things in his forty-odd years of life, including the Hellmouth opening on more than one occasion with all that such an event brings, but a drunken Slayer being given a piggyback ride by her vampire ex-nemesis has to rate as the strangest.
Spike watches him stare at them for a while before the shocked silence becomes too much. "She's completely plastered." He grunts.
"Thank you for stating the obvious." Giles says snippily, rather embarassed for being struck with a brief case of muteness.
"Um...Hi, Giles." Buffy yawns, still clinging onto Spike's back. A Watcher's scowl is not a pleasant thing to see when you're drunk and just waking up from a little nap on a vampire's back. She ducks her head down, hiding from her Watcher's eyes.
"What on Earth have you given her to drink?" Giles snaps, agitated.
Spike shrugs casually, which is a hard thing to do when you've got a wriggling Slayer on your shoulders. "Was more of a case of what she took to drink. Besides, how was I supposed to know the Slayer was such a lightweight?"
"Hey!" Buffy protests, wrestling herself free from his hands, sliding down from his back and shoving him a little for good measure. "I'm not used to straight-up, hard liquor! I get totally drunk on beer!"
Spike sends her a saucy grin at the mention of 'straight-up' and 'hard'. "Yeah, it takes a while to get used to--"
She elbows him sharply in the ribs, cutting him off. So much for nuzzling his neck.
"Lightweight." He repeats, nodding sagely.
Giles sighs impatiently. "If you're quite finished with your antics-- Buffy, get inside." He puts a hand on her back, shoving her gently but firmly inside the hallway before turning to the vampire. "Spike, while you have my gratitude for bringing Buffy home, I trust there won't be a repeat performance of this?"
Spike chuckles. "Reckon I've seen enough Slayer vomit to last me a few months, Rupert."
Giles scoffs; or maybe it was a choked laugh, he can't quite tell.
As he turns to leave, Buffy leans over Giles's shoulder. "'Night, Spike!" She calls after him.
Spike turns and sends a brief smile her way. "'Night, Buffy."
Yeah, sometimes it's sort of worth it.
Sometimes it feels like he's got forever.
Author's note: Just my little version of that old Buffy fanfic cliché-- what happened before Buffy and Spike started drinking, and how did she get home? I'm not sure whether I'm going to post any other Buffy fics here, as none of my other Buffy fics are done, but we'll see. Please read and review:)