Fic update: That Good Night (part 3 of ?)
Jun. 18th, 2006 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowscastHere we go, finally! It's been two and a half months since the last update—eeek. I'm terribly sorry, and I'll try very hard not to let that happen again!
I'd like to thank![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yourlibrarian for beta reading the chapter, and speakr2customrs for dialect-checking and one little pun. And also, I'd like to thank in advance everyone who hasn't given up on this story after I disappeared for two and a half months!
Okay, now the details:
Title: That Good Night (part 3 of ?)
Rating: Still not sure. Definitely R; may go to NC-17.
Continuity info: This is the sixth story in the Fragments 'verse, fitting in immediately after "Before the Time of Dawn." This story is set a couple years post-NFA.
Summary: Spike is human and he's having problems. Meanwhile, Willow has just given birth; Xander and Spike have traveled to Sao Paulo to see her, and so has Buffy.
Warnings: As you've no doubt noticed, I'm not writing this very quickly! If that's going to frustrate you hugely, you should probably wait until it's complete. Also, it's going to be dark. Possibly kinda depressing. Definitely angsty, h/c with lots of hurt. Character death will most definitely be threatened, I'd rather not say what comes of it (though if you're terribly worried, ask me privately).
This update is about 2400 words; the total length now stands at about 8400.
Previous parts are [here].
Chapter Three
News, Friends dubbed into Portuguese, news, talk show. There was nothing worth watching on the fucking telly. Spike sighed and kept on flipping. There was a DVD collection on a bookshelf across the room, but it seemed like too much effort to get up and look it over. The couch was nice and soft, and he was tired.
'Course, that was nothing new. He was always so bloody tired these days. He tried to keep up appearances when anyone was around, but he was on his own for the moment, so he slouched low and kept up his listless flicking. Home renovation show. CSI: Miami with crap dubbing. Some tosser making a salad. Shampoo commercial.
When he got back around to the first news program they were just switching to sports, so he stopped there. He couldn't understand most of the anchor's fast-paced Portuguese, but the video clips were enough to keep his interest.
Everyone else was back at the clinic visiting with Willow and the baby. Spike had begged off, saying he was still knackered from traveling. Which was true, as far as it went—but he hadn't mentioned to Xander that he'd woken up this morning with a sore throat. By now he was shivery and aching and he knew he was getting ill, which was a fucking nuisance. For about the thousandth time, he wondered why Angel had thought turning human would be such a special treat.
Just then, the doorbell rang. So much for his private time. Spike peeled himself off the couch and went out to see who was at the front gate. He didn't bother to put anything on his bare feet; the night was warm, and the stone path from the door to the gate was swept clean and smooth.
Buffy stood waiting with her fingers threaded through the gate's iron grille-work. She backed off to let him open it, and he saw that she was alone.
He wished he'd put his boots on. And yeah, that was an absurd thought, but it was the first thing that hit him when he saw her. He felt strange and vulnerable suddenly in front of her. He was wearing his glasses and his hair was a mess and he had one of Xander's old t-shirts on, and it felt worse than being naked. He wanted his Docs and his punk hair and his duster to pull around him like armor.
He turned around quickly, avoiding meeting her eyes, and started back toward the house. "Where are all the others?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Xander and Oz went to buy some last-minute baby stuff. It looks like Will's going to bring Tara home tomorrow." Buffy sounded tense. Not to be self-centered or anything, but Spike was pretty sure that was about being alone with him.
"You came back early?"
She nodded, a tight, jerky motion that betrayed the turmoil she kept out of her words. "Kennedy's staying with Willow tonight. I figured I'd go out and get a little patrolling in while everyone's busy. Kennedy's been pretty distracted lately, so I offered to pick up the slack." She hesitated a moment, then spoke quickly as though she wanted to get the words out before she thought better of them. "I hoped you'd come along."
"Oh." Just like old times? A bit of fighting, a bit of talking? Only it wasn't so easy, not anymore. "Buffy ..." He hated having to say this. To her, especially. He hunched his shoulders and forced himself. "I'm not strong like I used to be. Can't really do the patrol thing these days."
"Oh!" Her eyes went wide and she started talking fast, backpedalling and reassuring. "No! No, I mean, I don't expect you to kill anything. I'll be all with the slaying, and you'll be all with the ... the standing safely off to one side."
He covered up his wince with a scathing look. They were back inside now, and he reclaimed his place on the couch. "Well, I can see how I'm crucial to your battle plan, but if you don't mind, I think they're showing The Mummy on channel 28 at seven." He picked up the remote and started flicking, hoping that would drive her away.
He wasn't even sure, himself, why he was being such a prick to Buffy. He knew they had to talk, he wanted to talk with her. Only, he was so fucking tired, and the why didn't you tell me you weren't dead? conversation was going to be so bloody hard. And he didn't want to have to tell her again that he couldn't go on patrol with her.
She planted herself between him and the telly, arms crossed. "Spike, don't act like—" She visibly bit back whatever she'd been about to say, and tried again in a more reasonable tone. "I do need you along, okay? I need you to translate."
"What, so the local vamps won't miss out on the pleasure of your slay-and-quip routine?" He gave up trying to see around her and just rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, Slayer, your stake's a good sight pointier than your wit. Anyway, to be honest, my Portuguese is pretty much limited to asking directions and ordering beer."
Buffy smiled a little—a muted version of her 'ha, I gotcha!' expression. "Good thing that's exactly what I need you to do."
"We're going to a pub?" He perked up a bit despite himself.
She dismissed that idea with a delicate snort. "I meant the asking for directions. Look, Elena told Kennedy a couple days ago that there's been rumors of street kids disappearing in some slums near here—like, more than usual. And a few have shown up dead with neck wounds. The police said it was stray dogs, and, well, it doesn't sound like they care enough to do anything about it."
"They wouldn't." The slums of Brazil's cities had always made for easy hunting when he was here with Dru. It was one of the things she'd loved most about the country—along with Carnival and the bright-feathered birds Spike would steal for her from street vendors.
The favelas at night were truly dark—no electricity, no street lights. Dru would glide along the refuse-strewn streets, humming quietly to herself, peeking into the blackest corners. Spike would follow a few steps behind her, ostensibly on the lookout for danger but mostly just enjoying watching his dark princess at work. She would find an alley or a doorway with one or two ragged children curled up asleep. She'd crouch over them like a loving mother and brush the cheek of one to wake it up. The child would startle in the first moment, maybe even cry out—these were children who lived in constant fear, after all—but after a look into the deeper black of Dru's eyes and a few soothing words of nonsense, the child would stand up of its own free will and take Dru's hand and follow her a little way off. Sometimes the child would whimper when she first sank her fangs in, but that never lasted long.
It was always best to move on quickly—never give the humans a chance to put together the pattern of mysterious deaths. He'd learned that back in the old days with Angelus, and he'd followed the simple rule to keep himself and Dru safe for nearly a century. Spike remembered, now, a time when he and Dru had stayed in one small area of Sao Paulo for more than a week, leaving behind bodies every night. Dru had been in a strange, petulant mood, refusing to move on to another city or even another neighborhood, and Spike, though it made him edgy, let her have her way. Then one night as they were hunting in the favela they turned a corner and nearly bumped into three uniformed police. Spike grabbed Dru's wrist and pulled her into a doorway, and they stood very still. Not that the two of them couldn't kill three coppers easily enough, but then for sure they'd have to pick up sticks and flee the city—maybe even the country if anyone spotted them at the deed.
And Dru had giggled quietly next to Spike's ear. "How many monsters stalk the night, my pet?"
He'd shushed her and tried to make out what the police were up to. They'd woken up a street kid who'd been sleeping wrapped in cardboard behind a couple of trash cans—a boy, from the looks of it, around ten years old, though it was hard to tell through the dirt and the distance. Another five minutes and the kid would've been Dru's supper. "Looks like they're starting to investigate us," he whispered to Dru—he couldn't think of another reason the police would want to talk to a homeless kid in the middle of the night. "Sorry, luv, but it's time to make for greener pastures again."
Dru giggled again. "Wait, and watch. Tick tock."
With a puzzled look at his dark princess, Spike had turned back to the scene playing out half a block away. The kid had his hands up, and all of a sudden he broke and tried to run. One of the police tripped him. All three had their night sticks out. They started beating the kid. He screamed and curled up into a ball, and one of the police kicked him. The others followed suit, kicking and beating, until the kid didn't move anymore. Then the police walked away, jostling each other like they were high after winning a football match.
Dru and Spike laughed about it until their sides hurt and they could barely stand up. Then they went and drained the kid. They stayed in Sao Paulo for another month.
Buffy snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Earth to Spike? I said, will you come with me now?"
"Right. Yeah, I'm in. Just let me get dressed." He got up, pushed past Buffy, and made quickly for the bathroom. He slammed the door shut, fell to his knees in front of the toilet, and threw up.
"Spike?" Buffy knocked on the bathroom door. "What's going on? Are you okay?"
He couldn't reply because his stomach was still busy turning itself inside out. He heard the door click open and he realized he hadn't locked it—bugger. He felt Buffy's hand on his back, and he really didn't want her here, seeing him like this.
When he finished puking, she handed him a glass of water. The hand he reached out to take it was shaking so hard that she kept hold of it and helped him rinse out his mouth. After that he didn't resist when she sat him on the edge of the bathtub and got a warm washcloth to wipe off his face. He held his glasses in his clenched fist and closed his eyes and felt like crying, but he would not do that in front of Buffy.
"I'm sorry," she said finally. "I shouldn't have asked you to come on patrol—I mean, I knew you'd been sick and everything, I just didn't think—"
He opened his eyes and grabbed her arm to stop her from dabbing at his face again. "I'm coming with you. I might not have superpowers anymore, but I'm not a fucking invalid."
"Umm..." Buffy frowned. "I never said that. Just, if you're too sick to patrol tonight, no biggie. I'll figure things out on my own."
"It's not that. I just had a—a flashback. Thinking about hunting street kids here with Dru, years ago. It all came back at once, right down to the taste of the blood."
"Oh." Buffy backed off, looking suddenly uncomfortable. "Yeah, I guess that would suck."
"So I'm coming with you."
This time, she didn't argue.
It took him about ten minutes to get properly dressed, including a few minutes sitting on the bed with his head in his hands just trying to pull himself together. The flashback had been intense, and he didn't want Buffy to see how hard it was for him to shake it off.
It reminded him of when he'd first got the soul—the agonizing days spent on the floor of an African cave while his mind broke itself over and over, trying to reconcile a hundred twenty years of murder and mayhem with his newly reinserted conscience. Later, though, when he'd walked among humans he'd always felt the demon part of him coiled and ready to attack, and that had helped him cope; of course he'd killed people, he was a fucking vampire. You didn't see the lions getting all angsty about killing the zebras out on the veldt, did you? It was the natural order of things. The circle of bloody life. Couldn't see why the poofter had spent a century brooding about it.
Since the Shanshu, it'd been different. The demon was gone. There was no part of him that remembered what it meant to think of humans as prey. When the memories of hunting and killing came flooding back, there was no way to make sense of them.
Angel kept saying the Shanshu meant some kind of fresh start, but Spike really didn't see how that could be when every brutal detail of his past insisted on getting play time in his brain. They came up mostly in his dreams, but sometimes, like now, they took over his waking mind.
Xander understood better than anyone else, and Spike wished he were here right now. Not to talk about it—sod that—but at least to have some idea what was going on in Spike's head and maybe provide a distraction. A good fuck went a long way in pushing the unbearable bits back down.
But Xander wasn't here, and besides there were street kids getting killed out there and Buffy needed his help. He pulled on his black jeans and t-shirt, laced his boots, and ran a little gel through his hair. He might feel like shite, but that was no reason to look like it.
"Ready?" Buffy asked when he came out of the room. She'd changed her own clothes for patrolling, switching her pastel sundress for a pair of brown cargoes and a chocolate-colored fitted tee, with a stake just visible tucked into her belt at the small of her back. She was giving him a concerned look, so he concentrated on moving like he had when he was a vampire; a little menace, a little swagger.
"Let's go, pet," he said, tilting his head towards the door. "Just like old times."
Continued in Chapter Four
I'd like to thank
yourlibrarian for beta reading the chapter, and speakr2customrs for dialect-checking and one little pun. And also, I'd like to thank in advance everyone who hasn't given up on this story after I disappeared for two and a half months!Okay, now the details:
Title: That Good Night (part 3 of ?)
Rating: Still not sure. Definitely R; may go to NC-17.
Continuity info: This is the sixth story in the Fragments 'verse, fitting in immediately after "Before the Time of Dawn." This story is set a couple years post-NFA.
Summary: Spike is human and he's having problems. Meanwhile, Willow has just given birth; Xander and Spike have traveled to Sao Paulo to see her, and so has Buffy.
Warnings: As you've no doubt noticed, I'm not writing this very quickly! If that's going to frustrate you hugely, you should probably wait until it's complete. Also, it's going to be dark. Possibly kinda depressing. Definitely angsty, h/c with lots of hurt. Character death will most definitely be threatened, I'd rather not say what comes of it (though if you're terribly worried, ask me privately).
This update is about 2400 words; the total length now stands at about 8400.
Previous parts are [here].
News, Friends dubbed into Portuguese, news, talk show. There was nothing worth watching on the fucking telly. Spike sighed and kept on flipping. There was a DVD collection on a bookshelf across the room, but it seemed like too much effort to get up and look it over. The couch was nice and soft, and he was tired.
'Course, that was nothing new. He was always so bloody tired these days. He tried to keep up appearances when anyone was around, but he was on his own for the moment, so he slouched low and kept up his listless flicking. Home renovation show. CSI: Miami with crap dubbing. Some tosser making a salad. Shampoo commercial.
When he got back around to the first news program they were just switching to sports, so he stopped there. He couldn't understand most of the anchor's fast-paced Portuguese, but the video clips were enough to keep his interest.
Everyone else was back at the clinic visiting with Willow and the baby. Spike had begged off, saying he was still knackered from traveling. Which was true, as far as it went—but he hadn't mentioned to Xander that he'd woken up this morning with a sore throat. By now he was shivery and aching and he knew he was getting ill, which was a fucking nuisance. For about the thousandth time, he wondered why Angel had thought turning human would be such a special treat.
Just then, the doorbell rang. So much for his private time. Spike peeled himself off the couch and went out to see who was at the front gate. He didn't bother to put anything on his bare feet; the night was warm, and the stone path from the door to the gate was swept clean and smooth.
Buffy stood waiting with her fingers threaded through the gate's iron grille-work. She backed off to let him open it, and he saw that she was alone.
He wished he'd put his boots on. And yeah, that was an absurd thought, but it was the first thing that hit him when he saw her. He felt strange and vulnerable suddenly in front of her. He was wearing his glasses and his hair was a mess and he had one of Xander's old t-shirts on, and it felt worse than being naked. He wanted his Docs and his punk hair and his duster to pull around him like armor.
He turned around quickly, avoiding meeting her eyes, and started back toward the house. "Where are all the others?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Xander and Oz went to buy some last-minute baby stuff. It looks like Will's going to bring Tara home tomorrow." Buffy sounded tense. Not to be self-centered or anything, but Spike was pretty sure that was about being alone with him.
"You came back early?"
She nodded, a tight, jerky motion that betrayed the turmoil she kept out of her words. "Kennedy's staying with Willow tonight. I figured I'd go out and get a little patrolling in while everyone's busy. Kennedy's been pretty distracted lately, so I offered to pick up the slack." She hesitated a moment, then spoke quickly as though she wanted to get the words out before she thought better of them. "I hoped you'd come along."
"Oh." Just like old times? A bit of fighting, a bit of talking? Only it wasn't so easy, not anymore. "Buffy ..." He hated having to say this. To her, especially. He hunched his shoulders and forced himself. "I'm not strong like I used to be. Can't really do the patrol thing these days."
"Oh!" Her eyes went wide and she started talking fast, backpedalling and reassuring. "No! No, I mean, I don't expect you to kill anything. I'll be all with the slaying, and you'll be all with the ... the standing safely off to one side."
He covered up his wince with a scathing look. They were back inside now, and he reclaimed his place on the couch. "Well, I can see how I'm crucial to your battle plan, but if you don't mind, I think they're showing The Mummy on channel 28 at seven." He picked up the remote and started flicking, hoping that would drive her away.
He wasn't even sure, himself, why he was being such a prick to Buffy. He knew they had to talk, he wanted to talk with her. Only, he was so fucking tired, and the why didn't you tell me you weren't dead? conversation was going to be so bloody hard. And he didn't want to have to tell her again that he couldn't go on patrol with her.
She planted herself between him and the telly, arms crossed. "Spike, don't act like—" She visibly bit back whatever she'd been about to say, and tried again in a more reasonable tone. "I do need you along, okay? I need you to translate."
"What, so the local vamps won't miss out on the pleasure of your slay-and-quip routine?" He gave up trying to see around her and just rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, Slayer, your stake's a good sight pointier than your wit. Anyway, to be honest, my Portuguese is pretty much limited to asking directions and ordering beer."
Buffy smiled a little—a muted version of her 'ha, I gotcha!' expression. "Good thing that's exactly what I need you to do."
"We're going to a pub?" He perked up a bit despite himself.
She dismissed that idea with a delicate snort. "I meant the asking for directions. Look, Elena told Kennedy a couple days ago that there's been rumors of street kids disappearing in some slums near here—like, more than usual. And a few have shown up dead with neck wounds. The police said it was stray dogs, and, well, it doesn't sound like they care enough to do anything about it."
"They wouldn't." The slums of Brazil's cities had always made for easy hunting when he was here with Dru. It was one of the things she'd loved most about the country—along with Carnival and the bright-feathered birds Spike would steal for her from street vendors.
The favelas at night were truly dark—no electricity, no street lights. Dru would glide along the refuse-strewn streets, humming quietly to herself, peeking into the blackest corners. Spike would follow a few steps behind her, ostensibly on the lookout for danger but mostly just enjoying watching his dark princess at work. She would find an alley or a doorway with one or two ragged children curled up asleep. She'd crouch over them like a loving mother and brush the cheek of one to wake it up. The child would startle in the first moment, maybe even cry out—these were children who lived in constant fear, after all—but after a look into the deeper black of Dru's eyes and a few soothing words of nonsense, the child would stand up of its own free will and take Dru's hand and follow her a little way off. Sometimes the child would whimper when she first sank her fangs in, but that never lasted long.
It was always best to move on quickly—never give the humans a chance to put together the pattern of mysterious deaths. He'd learned that back in the old days with Angelus, and he'd followed the simple rule to keep himself and Dru safe for nearly a century. Spike remembered, now, a time when he and Dru had stayed in one small area of Sao Paulo for more than a week, leaving behind bodies every night. Dru had been in a strange, petulant mood, refusing to move on to another city or even another neighborhood, and Spike, though it made him edgy, let her have her way. Then one night as they were hunting in the favela they turned a corner and nearly bumped into three uniformed police. Spike grabbed Dru's wrist and pulled her into a doorway, and they stood very still. Not that the two of them couldn't kill three coppers easily enough, but then for sure they'd have to pick up sticks and flee the city—maybe even the country if anyone spotted them at the deed.
And Dru had giggled quietly next to Spike's ear. "How many monsters stalk the night, my pet?"
He'd shushed her and tried to make out what the police were up to. They'd woken up a street kid who'd been sleeping wrapped in cardboard behind a couple of trash cans—a boy, from the looks of it, around ten years old, though it was hard to tell through the dirt and the distance. Another five minutes and the kid would've been Dru's supper. "Looks like they're starting to investigate us," he whispered to Dru—he couldn't think of another reason the police would want to talk to a homeless kid in the middle of the night. "Sorry, luv, but it's time to make for greener pastures again."
Dru giggled again. "Wait, and watch. Tick tock."
With a puzzled look at his dark princess, Spike had turned back to the scene playing out half a block away. The kid had his hands up, and all of a sudden he broke and tried to run. One of the police tripped him. All three had their night sticks out. They started beating the kid. He screamed and curled up into a ball, and one of the police kicked him. The others followed suit, kicking and beating, until the kid didn't move anymore. Then the police walked away, jostling each other like they were high after winning a football match.
Dru and Spike laughed about it until their sides hurt and they could barely stand up. Then they went and drained the kid. They stayed in Sao Paulo for another month.
Buffy snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Earth to Spike? I said, will you come with me now?"
"Right. Yeah, I'm in. Just let me get dressed." He got up, pushed past Buffy, and made quickly for the bathroom. He slammed the door shut, fell to his knees in front of the toilet, and threw up.
"Spike?" Buffy knocked on the bathroom door. "What's going on? Are you okay?"
He couldn't reply because his stomach was still busy turning itself inside out. He heard the door click open and he realized he hadn't locked it—bugger. He felt Buffy's hand on his back, and he really didn't want her here, seeing him like this.
When he finished puking, she handed him a glass of water. The hand he reached out to take it was shaking so hard that she kept hold of it and helped him rinse out his mouth. After that he didn't resist when she sat him on the edge of the bathtub and got a warm washcloth to wipe off his face. He held his glasses in his clenched fist and closed his eyes and felt like crying, but he would not do that in front of Buffy.
"I'm sorry," she said finally. "I shouldn't have asked you to come on patrol—I mean, I knew you'd been sick and everything, I just didn't think—"
He opened his eyes and grabbed her arm to stop her from dabbing at his face again. "I'm coming with you. I might not have superpowers anymore, but I'm not a fucking invalid."
"Umm..." Buffy frowned. "I never said that. Just, if you're too sick to patrol tonight, no biggie. I'll figure things out on my own."
"It's not that. I just had a—a flashback. Thinking about hunting street kids here with Dru, years ago. It all came back at once, right down to the taste of the blood."
"Oh." Buffy backed off, looking suddenly uncomfortable. "Yeah, I guess that would suck."
"So I'm coming with you."
This time, she didn't argue.
It took him about ten minutes to get properly dressed, including a few minutes sitting on the bed with his head in his hands just trying to pull himself together. The flashback had been intense, and he didn't want Buffy to see how hard it was for him to shake it off.
It reminded him of when he'd first got the soul—the agonizing days spent on the floor of an African cave while his mind broke itself over and over, trying to reconcile a hundred twenty years of murder and mayhem with his newly reinserted conscience. Later, though, when he'd walked among humans he'd always felt the demon part of him coiled and ready to attack, and that had helped him cope; of course he'd killed people, he was a fucking vampire. You didn't see the lions getting all angsty about killing the zebras out on the veldt, did you? It was the natural order of things. The circle of bloody life. Couldn't see why the poofter had spent a century brooding about it.
Since the Shanshu, it'd been different. The demon was gone. There was no part of him that remembered what it meant to think of humans as prey. When the memories of hunting and killing came flooding back, there was no way to make sense of them.
Angel kept saying the Shanshu meant some kind of fresh start, but Spike really didn't see how that could be when every brutal detail of his past insisted on getting play time in his brain. They came up mostly in his dreams, but sometimes, like now, they took over his waking mind.
Xander understood better than anyone else, and Spike wished he were here right now. Not to talk about it—sod that—but at least to have some idea what was going on in Spike's head and maybe provide a distraction. A good fuck went a long way in pushing the unbearable bits back down.
But Xander wasn't here, and besides there were street kids getting killed out there and Buffy needed his help. He pulled on his black jeans and t-shirt, laced his boots, and ran a little gel through his hair. He might feel like shite, but that was no reason to look like it.
"Ready?" Buffy asked when he came out of the room. She'd changed her own clothes for patrolling, switching her pastel sundress for a pair of brown cargoes and a chocolate-colored fitted tee, with a stake just visible tucked into her belt at the small of her back. She was giving him a concerned look, so he concentrated on moving like he had when he was a vampire; a little menace, a little swagger.
"Let's go, pet," he said, tilting his head towards the door. "Just like old times."
