Whispers in a Dead Man's Ear, Part 5
The look on Buffy’s face when he’d walked in the door had been well worth the six-pack of beer cost of admission. She certainly hadn’t expected to see him at her birthday party; then again, she hadn’t expected that he would even know about it. And he wouldn’t have, not without the chance meeting with Willow and the stammered attempts at conversation that had resulted in her inadvertent invitation.
Of course he’d known it was her birthday. That was something he’d known for years. Know thine enemy, know thine enemy, know thine enemy; it had been drilled into his head for years under Angelus’ tutelage. Then, when she’d become more than an enemy to him, or at least something different, he’d had an entirely different reason to remember, even if she’d never know that he did. Even if she’d never let him acknowledge it, not without making him pay for his temerity in demonstrating the feelings of a heart that surely couldn’t have any.
He was here now, though; had been here for hours, and had managed precious few moments with her in that span. He wasn’t honestly certain why he’d come, except that he hadn’t seen her since her Florence Nightingale routine and he wanted answers. Clues, even. Hell, all he really wanted was to see her face again, to try to see what all that had meant to her, because he still wasn’t sure he knew what, if anything, to make of it. The week alone had been what he’d needed in so many ways, but he knew better than to believe that he could stay away from her for long. Moth, flame. A century or more of thinking he could defy it, and he was a damned poetic cliché after all.
He should leave, just walk right out the door and into the night. Leave Clem to the unexpected fun he seemed to be having, find a bar, get royally pissed and get some pretty little thing with a fixer-upper complex to keep him warm for the night. He wouldn’t, of course. What he would do was more of what he was doing—smoking in the kitchen, being careful to hold the cigarette under the exhaust fan and to exhale the smoke as much in that direction as possible. All the while studiously avoiding any thought that involved how very, very whipped his actions made him appear. He was being thoughtful; far more pink lungs than black in this house, after all, and consideration…
*Consideration, hell,* he thought, pushing off the kitchen counter and turning for the back door. Enough waiting for her to come around, for her to decide he was worth talking to. Enough waiting on himself to get the balls to go and lure her away. Enough of this charade.
“Leaving so soon?” Buffy asked, tone laced with just enough disappointment to stay his feet. “Or were you just going outside to smoke that cigarette that’s not supposed to be lit in this house?”
He raised a brow at the dig, at the humor that tinged the scolding where once reprobation would have had full reign. “Well, well, an’ the princess makes time for the commonfolk. Not every day I get the pleasure of one of your stature keepin’ me company.” He turned towards her, noting with no small amount of satisfaction that she looked unsettled, unsure. “Least, not unless she’s gone an’ gotten some little achey she needs taking care of. Wouldn’t be that vibrator Willow gave you that you’re hidin’ behind your back, now would it?”
“It’s a massager. And no,” Buffy answered, flushing deeply and shifting her hands in front of her, revealing two bottles of beer and a plate of cake.
“Strange combination you got there,” Spike remarked blandly, taking a long drag of his cigarette and following it with an equally long exhale directed towards her.
Buffy coughed as she put the bottles and plate on the counter, waving one now-empty hand in front of her. “God, Spike. I know you have manners somewhere in there.” When he merely smirked in response, she reached over and took the cigarette from his hand, taking it to the sink and running water over all of it but the filter before handing it back to him with a sweet smile. “Maybe the water can help with the stink. Why don’t you light it and we’ll see.”
“You bitch.”
“I’m not the one breaking house rules I’ve known for years, now am I? What do you think Mom would’ve done if she’d caught you smoking in here?”
“Probably asked me nicely to put it out, which I would’ve done. I’m sure whatever it was would be a damn sight classier than what you just did. Certain she’d be thrilled by you treatin’ a guest like this.” He knew it was a low blow, but he didn’t care. He had a week’s worth—more, if he was honest—of frustration to exorcise, and he’d take whatever openings he got.
“You’re not a guest, Spike, you’re a crasher,” she shot back angrily, taking a paper napkin from the stack on the island and beginning to sweep potato chip crumbs off the counter into it.
He grabbed her arm, spun her, pinned her to the counter. “And now we’re down to it, aren’t we. You didn’t want me here. Care to tell me why?”
“Let me go, Spike.”
“Gladly.” His fingers unwrapped from her wrist and he stalked back to the stove, lighting another cigarette along the way and taking a deep inhale before turning to meet her glare. “Question on the floor. ‘s all yours, Buffy.”
She stared pointedly at his hand, rolling her eyes when he pointed to the exhaust hood. “You’re not even going to pretend to be civilized, are you?”
“Figure one of us is doin’ all the pretending one place can stand. Anyone else starts tapdancin’ to keep up a good diversion, floor’s gonna fall in.”
Buffy crossed her arms in agitation. “Can we not, right now? It is my birthday, and my friends are in there…”
“And I’m in here. With you. Funny how it always seems to work that way.”
“You know what, enough of this. Drink your beer, smoke your cigarettes, stink up my house and do whatever else it is you want to do, while I go back and try to bask in some sense of normalcy on the hell that is usually my birthday.”
“You’re not going anywhere until you’ve answered me,” Spike said, voice low and even as he remained standing by the counter. “Wait a mo. ‘Drink my beer’? What beer? All my beer’s out there, likely bein’ consumed by Captain Staypuft and his sidekick, the plank-layin’ prettyboy.”
“Oh my God, will you ever grow up?” Buffy groaned. “A hundred years, and you still act like you’re twelve. That beer, Spike.” She pointed at the bottles on the counter.
“Hundred twenty-one, not countin’ the human years as change besides. And you brought me beer.”
“So?” The challenge was fully present in her expression, though it seemed to waver in her voice.
“You want me gone so you can make like a happy socialite, but you brought me beer?”
Buffy didn’t answer, merely stared at her hands where they lay against the counter.
“What in the hell is going on here, Buffy?”
Then came that voice again, still little-girl lost, still sweeping him away despite its fragility. Damn it all.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes didn’t move from their examination of her fingers.
For the millionth time, he was left wondering how she did it, how she managed to make herself look so small. Fate of the world on her shoulders, and sometimes she looked like she could barely hold her own weight.
Spike grunted softly, shaking his head. “Would’ve thought the earth would shake, first time I get honesty from you.”
“What do you want from me, Spike?” Buffy hissed, hands raising from and then slapping back onto the counter. “Things were… I thought things were okay after the other night. Or getting there. I tried. And then you come here and act like nothing’s wrong and you’re all ‘ooh, Buffy’ this and ‘muscle cramp candle-blowing’ that and I think things might be all right, so I come in here and you’re all moody and demanding and I don’t know what you want.”
“Maybe I don’t know either, Slayer. Maybe I’m tired of being the one you come to for all the bloody answers.” He took a deep breath, lowering his voice from the attention-drawing register it had been approaching. “I know I want something other than what I’m getting, but damned if I know what that is.” His words were as close to the truth as he had allowed himself to travel. He knew enough to shield himself from the unfettered desires of his heart; as long as he kept his yearnings nameless, it was harder to be disappointed. He had learned those lessons more than a century before.
“Then how am I supposed to know, Spike? Maybe what you’re getting is all I have to give.”
They stared at each other for a long minute, postures and faces screaming stalemate; ‘where do we go from here?’ was an even murkier question than it had been the night of their first real kiss. The air grew stifling, and while Buffy was the first to look away, Spike was the one who broke the silence.
“It’s one step forward, two back with you, Buffy. You can come to me an’ play pretend that something’s changed, bandage me up and act like you give a damn, and I’m still just bloody fool enough to believe it. Believed it right up until I heard all about this little occasion from the witchlet.” He tossed his cigarette into the sink and took a step towards her. “You don’t want me here, that’s one thing. You thinkin’ even now that I’m not man—no, wait—that I’m not being enough to deserve to hear about it from your own mouth, that’s another. Another damn thing you can’t seem to decide, at the end of a very long list.”
“I wasn’t… God, Spike,” Buffy sighed, sitting heavily on one of the island’s stools. “I wasn’t pretending. You think that was easy for me? To go there and face you, face what I did? To apologize?”
“So you said sorry, Buffy, an’ the world didn’t end. In the grand scheme, it doesn’t change a damn thing.” Her indignant stare and the squaring of her shoulders were noted but went unremarked upon as he forged ahead. “What of that sorry did you mean? Sorry that you hurt me, or that you sullied your precious self to do it? That you bruised me, or bruised your ego? Or do you even know…”
“Stop it, Spike. I told you I was sorry, and I’m not going to sit here and grovel and write you a list of why. Read something into it. You’re good at that.”
“Not a lot of time for the readin’ lately, what with you taking up all my waking hours fucking me blind.”
Two sets of furious, wounded eyes met and held.
“Maybe I should give you back your free time,” Buffy said finally, voice brittle with cold and something else, crackling just beneath the surface.
“Never do it. Then you’ll have to spend your time fixin’ yourself instead of coming round askin’ me to tell you nothin’ needs fixing. It’s work you don’t want to do.”
“Fuck you, Spike.”
“With your friends right in there? Guess I was right about that kinky streak after all.”
Spike watched dispassionately as Buffy pulled a fist back; he refused to react, instead cocking a brow and standing steady, unflinching. “Prove me right, Slayer. Show me you’d rather fuck or fight it out than talk.”
Her arm dropped to her side, the fury leaching from her eyes, slowly replaced by horror and disgust. “I can’t… I can’t do this. Not anymore.”
“Finally squeamish then, are we?”
“Yes, Spike. Yes, I’m finally squeamish. I’m sick of having to be what everybody wants, and I’m sick of not being what anybody needs. I’m sick of having to push myself to the edge of everything to feel anything, and I’m sick of being here. In this world. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Oh, for—” Spike growled, stalking away from her and retrieving out another cigarette. “Not a bloody word about this, Slayer,” he demanded, twirling the cylinder between his fingertips. “Not even a look. We’re goin’ over the same old tune, I get to pick my accompaniment.”
Buffy raised both hands, clearly unwilling to debate the point. She watched him as he smoked, her expression expectant, until she finally realized that he had no intention of speaking. Her face shifted slightly, expression becoming pinched, clearly annoyed; she had taken the four long steps to the hallway door before he broke his silence.
“And where are you going?”
“Out there. You know, where all the sound is coming from?” She backed up a step and stared hard at him. “As much as I’d love to stand here all night trading meaningful glances and reading the tobacco leaves for clues to what you’re thinking, I’m starting to hear the siren call of cake and actual conversation.”
“We both know it’s not the talk that you come to me for, pet. Not for long months now.”
“And you expect me to believe what, that you care about that? That you’re bothered by all the sex? You were quick enough with the groping and the comments tonight, Spike.”
“What else will you let me say to you, Buffy? What else gets heard?” Her mouth snapped shut, and he slumped against the counter in faux relaxation, taut musculature and tense posture giving him away. “So you’re breakin’ with precedent, coming to me for conversation. What is it you’d like me to say to you? Want me to tell you I’m sorry that they brought you back? That as much as I’m sure you hate me for it, I can’t really regret that you’re here? That the world is cold and cruel and you got a raw deal, all told?”
Spike shook his head, watching the cigarette burn down, the ash accumulate. “How many times have you heard it all from me, Buffy? Everything I could say that you’d call comfort has been said, an’ it’s not helped, so I’m reachin’ a point of diminishing returns on the repetition. Only thing you haven’t heard, you aren’t going to want to hear, an’ I want to keep it in about as bad as I want to let it out. So for the first time in a very long life, I’m calling discretion the better part of valor.”
“What if I want to hear it?” Her tone was both petulant and defiant, but it fell on deaf ears.
“You can trust me when I say that you don’t. It’s just some of that honesty that you hate.”
“I don’t hate honesty.” Buffy flushed as she looked away from him. “I hate your honesty.”
Spike nodded, rueful smile twisting one corner of his mouth. “Course you do. ’Cause mine doesn’t coddle you. Want a secret, pet? Honesty that doesn’t burn is just half-truths wrapped up in swaddlin’ clothes to make them look like somethin’ you’d want to hold to your bosom. Real honesty does the same; only difference is that it shucks off the blanket an’ sticks a knife in your chest while it’s there.”
“Eww to the visuals. Only you could turn cuddling imagery into a slasher flick.”
“Call it an esoteric sort of skill.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Tell me.”
Spike looked away, then turned from her and stubbed out his cigarette against one of the sink’s metal walls. He looked out the window above it, studiously avoiding her seeking gaze as reflected by the glass and the darkness, and asked instead, “What do you think this last week has been like for me?”
“What?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably.
“Do you think it didn’t drive me halfway to barmy, stayin’ away from you? Not knowin’ where anything stood, but staying back to give you time and space to try to think it out? To give me time and space to try to figure just what the hell’s happening here? Do you think I know any better than you what all this is, what it means? So there I was, waiting for bones to knit and cuts to heal and some sort of bolt from the blue to come and straighten out the rest of this. And all the time, sittin’ in a room that smelled like you and wearing bandages you’d put on me, there was nothing on my mind but you.” He turned back to face her. “Spent so damned much time needin’ to see you, knowing and telling myself that staying the hell away is the better plan; god, Buffy, you’re not the only one who’s a slave to this.”
“I’m not a slave to anything.”
“Except lust and your own self-pity.” At Buffy’s shocked, angry glare, he shrugged. “’s not like I’m not sayin’ what you tell yourself every time you’re with me, is it?”
“Stop. Just… stop acting like you know what’s in my head.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.” The word proclaimed a certainty that was belied by the tremor in her voice.
“Then explain us. If they all came toddling in here asking what was going on, what would you say?” Her mouth snapped closed, and Spike shook his head. “Look, Buffy. I’ve spent the last week—longer, even—thinkin’ about nothing but this. I’m not sayin’ I know your mind better than you, though I think sometimes I might. Think I spend more time in your head than you do, though; that much is certain.”
Color flared in Buffy’s cheeks as her shoulders squared angrily. “You arrogant— How can you say that? I spend all my time thinking. I can’t stop thinking. You know that.”
“Don’t doubt that you’re thinking, love, but your head’s not where your time’s being spent. Not really.”
“Then enlighten me,” came the tightly-spoken demand.
Spike shrugged mock-casually and leaned back against the counter. “Truth of it is, your head never left your grave.” He watched as his words registered, as her eyes widened, and then continued. “It needs to, Buffy. You’ve been in there long enough.”
Buffy’s mouth worked silently, mouth opening and closing as her hands tensed and released on the counter’s edge. She looked almost surprised when she began to speak, like she hadn’t thought it possible to push words past whatever barrier they’d met. “You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t,” she accused, gaining anger and momentum with each word. “You wanted to come back when you died. You just left the grave behind and never looked back, but I can’t do that. I didn’t get to come back to some sort of shiny new world, where everything was new and I had some better place in it. It’s the same damned thing for me, Spike, and it’s already killed me twice. What else is here for me?”
Spike watched her, saw the all-too-rare fire flaring behind her eyes. “So what about what you told Dawn? ‘The hardest thing in this world is to live in it’? You tellin’ me you’re not up to that task?”
“I’m telling you that I shouldn’t have to. I should be done. I was done.” Her voice broke, shoulders slumping as she dropped to one of the stools.
Spike had to force himself to hold back, to resist the impulse to reach for her and take her into his arms. She would have taken the comfort—eagerly so, most likely—but he wasn’t quite done. Whether he was determined to finish for her sake or for his own, he wasn’t sure.
“What if it wasn’t you that was meant to be done, Buffy?” he asked softly. “We know it was you as went off the tower, but we both know it didn’t have to be. Maybe it was Nibblet who was supposed to die all along.” He shook his head in response to her shocked stare. “I’m not sayin’ I like the thought, but it’s the truth. Maybe you going off that tower interfered in her destiny. She’s a ball of energy got shoved in a child, Slayer. Maybe half her problem these days is that she feels wrong walking this earth same as you, but more so because she was never meant to.”
“Did you have all these revelations in the hour between Jerry Springer and Passions?” she asked snidely, eyes wounded but expression hard. “I can’t believe you’re saying… what are you saying? That Dawn should have died? I trusted her to you, and now you’re saying this…”
“Had my ‘revelations’ in the three bloody days I couldn’t get near the sodding television because it was up a set of stairs I did well to fall down gettin’ to the bed, and in the four after it when I couldn’t focus on anything else.” His tone matched hers in latent fury. “And I’m not sayin’ the Bit should’ve died. Hell, Buffy, if you don’t know anything else about me by now, you know I’d have my heart ripped out before I’d let that happen. Didn’t have to be Dawn, could’ve been someone else, just as simple. I tried to save you both an’ only managed one. Maybe you were both supposed to die, or all three of us, or just me, takin’ a header at the right time but takin’ Doc out with me. Maybe all this wrong really is my fault—suppose that would make you feel better? Or maybe we all did wrong, maybe we weren’t supposed to save the world—maybe it was the end’s time to come, and we were too damned egotistical to believe we were meant to sit this one out.”
“So what are you telling me, Spike? That I died for nothing?” She blinked back furious tears as she glared at him. “That’s really shitty comfort.”
Spike growled with frustration, followed his impulses and walked to her, grabbing her by the shoulders. “I’m not saying anything of the sort, damn it, if you’d just hear me. You saved the bloody world, Slayer. You did it, regardless of what was supposed to be or meant to be or the thousands of things we’ll never sodding well know. And what I’m saying,” he continued, lowering his voice and sliding his hands down her arms, “is that you need to get your head out of the thrice-damned ‘maybe’s and ‘could’ve been’s and ‘should be’s and into the world you gave your blood to save, Buffy. Regardless of how you wish it, you’re livin’ with all you’ve got, and it’s high time you got back to it.”
“I don’t know what to…” She wrenched from his grasp and dropped her head into her hands, shoulders trembling under the burden of emotion. “I don’t know how to…”
Spike said nothing, only placed a tentative hand on her back; when she didn’t shrink or jerk away, he moved his hand in small, comforting circles, unsure as to what else to do. It was strange that the comfort was no easier to give now than it had been a year before; the thousand kisses and clinches should have taken them to some new level where these touches were automatic, but neither he nor she really knew even now how to console. All they could do was muddle through, give and take as best they could and hope they somehow stumbled across a median along the way.
He’d said too much; he’d known it as the words tumbled out and had seen it reflected in her eyes, but it was all there between them now. Try as he might to soften the sting, what happened next was out of his hands; the thought was accompanied by the ruthless ignoring of the voice inside that told him none of this had ever been in his control.
Buffy’s shoulders went rigid, the fingers she’d pushed through her hair growing stiff as her body tensed beneath his hand. Silently, Spike dropped his arm, stepping back and putting space between them, fisting his hand uselessly and then shoving it into his pocket for lack of a better occupation. Without a word, Buffy stood and walked to the sink, turning on the faucet and splashing water on her face. She stared into the window, distant and unfocused eyes slowly gaining clarity. Spike studied her reflection, watching the change and bracing himself for what was to come.
She looked towards where his reflection should be, the gaze she was directing unerringly towards a form she couldn’t see holding him frozen. When her voice came, the words were nothing like he’d expected.
“Do you want to play cards?”
“Do I want to what?” He didn’t know whether to be angry, hurt, or confused; unconsciously, he seemed to have settled for some healthy mix of all three.
“Play cards. I don’t remember… I can’t remember what you taught me the night of the mummy hand and much liquor. Maybe you could teach me again?” She turned towards him, twisting her hands in the dishtowel she was holding, clearly anxious.
Spike’s eyes narrowed as he watched her fidget, listened to the hammering heart rate, noted the color suffusing her cheeks. “Did you not hear a word I said? What are you playing at, Slayer? What is this?”
Buffy sighed, setting the dishtowel aside. “It’s me getting back to it, Spike. Life as I formerly knew it, which includes time spent in crowded rooms making small talk and being social butterfly Buffy.”
“You mean it’s your chance to go out there and stall until you can come up with some sort of argument as to why things don’t really need to change, why everything is exactly as you think it is an’ Spike’s wrong again.” Wry humor took some of the harshness from the words they both knew were all too accurate.
Something very close to self-deprecation tipped up the corner of Buffy’s mouth, but the expression was quickly smothered. “It’s your chance to spend time with me, doing something normal.”
“Like friends?” he asked, hating the hope he could hear in his voice, even as he resigned himself to it. After everything—fighting and tentative friendship and fucking and each step in between—he still found himself grateful for and clinging to the slightest crumb. Seemed it wasn’t only Buffy that traveled back a dozen or more feet for every inch of forward progress.
“I don’t play cards with my enemies.” She frowned for a moment, then amended her statement with a hint of a smile. “Unless I’m drunk and can simultaneously free kittens. Then it’s called philanthropy.”
He cocked his head and studied her carefully, sighed inwardly, then chuckled and swept his arm outwards in a gesture of invitation. “Then hand me a deck, an’ we’ll go. I’m shufflin’, though. Sun’s too close to rising to chance fifty-two card pickup, an’ you’ve got the most perpetual case of butterfingers I’ve ever seen.”
“I do not,” she retorted as she walked through the doors into the living room. “I am nothing but grace and purpose.”
“You’re getting there.”
A soft smile was shared for an instant, and then they rejoined the party, finding a bit of bare floor on which to play at both cards and normalcy.
Whispers in a Dead Man's Ear Main