13.
Buffy sat in her bedroom filling two cardboard boxes she found in the basement. She put in Spike’s favorite books, CDs and his CD player. A few other items she thought he might like found their way into the boxes. The duster? Buffy stared at it, folded haphazardly beside their bed. No. She wasn’t finished with it yet.
The following evening Spike waited anxiously for her return. He wanted to pick up where they’d left off. Wrangling with her was a bit of all right. It took away the uncertainty he felt and gave him something to look forward to. One look at the box of goodies in her arms, however, and those thoughts receded to the back of his mind. What was all this stuff? He looked on with amusement as Buffy brought in two boxes and set them down. A quick glimpse of the contents revealed some familiar book and CD titles. She left for a moment and then returned, dragging in the cot.
Giles vetoed cigarettes and a television. They could be used as possible weapons and were also fire hazards. Buffy chose not to argue the point.
Soon curiosity got the better of him. Spike pulled out a flat box of chocolate covered cherries from one of the boxes. He flashed her a quick glance and then ripped open the box, greedily sampling a confection. Sickly sweet syrup drizzled over his tongue as a gasp of something close to ecstasy escaped his throat.
“You’ve got a lot to learn about torture, little girl,” Spike slowly licked the syrup from his lips. “This is positively homey.”
It made a cozy enough setting. Spike draped himself on the cot and stuck an expression of coy invitation on his face while sucking suggestively on another chocolate cherry bomb. It was fun pushing the Slayer’s buttons, and what luscious buttons they were. Buffy paced for a moment and then sat down, determined to tell Spike something of the past that had been taken. Indecision hit Buffy like a fist. Before she realized the implications she launched into an explanation of the Initiative. In the absence of something to stake or squish, Buffy wasn’t the best at thinking on her feet.
Needless to say, the details of that narrative met with an incredulous response from the cot. As Buffy spoke, each successive, dispassionate detail prompted a series of sputtering and agitated sound effects. Even the decadent delights of chocolate did nothing to sweeten the tale she revealed to him. Finally he interrupted.
“This is too ridiculous to believe. Hollywood wouldn’t even go for a plot like that. You’re telling me I had a fucking government issue chip in my brain for almost four years? Couldn’t hunt? Couldn’t bite? Those Initiative fucks made me a bloody eunuch?!” Buffy blushed slightly at that remark.
The prospect of finding out a past he did not recall, nor particularly want, filled Spike with dread. It didn’t sound like he’d been much of a vampire in Sunnydale. Unable to hunt? How did he manage to survive? Was it by taking table scraps from this girl’s fingers?
The idea of being helpless filled him with a sense of nauseating repulsion. A vampire was the hunt, the kill, a shadow in the night. A predator. Not this thing she was describing, something neutered and made weak. He’d become a demonic Blanche DuBois, relying on the kindness of strangers. It was enough to make him sick. A sudden overwhelming feeling of insecurity threatened to engulf him. He discarded the chocolates.
“Oh, I get it,” he began, the truth of her words solidifying before him. “It was some kind of sympathy for the neutered vampire. All it took was snip-snip,” Spike pantomimed the action with his fingers, “and you zeroed in on some pity sex? That’s great, that’s fucking great.” Table scraps and pity sex, that was what William the Bloody had been reduced to. Good thing the memory had been removed, Spike didn’t want it. He didn’t want any of it.
“No. It wasn’t like that. We didn’t– Not until later.” Okay, maybe she should have started somewhere else. Explaining the whole chip thing was a bad beginning. Buffy cut to the chase. “Something altered the chip’s response. It stopped working on me. That’s when we first–“
“It stopped working on you?” Spike blinked as those words sunk in. A glimmer of light faded fast. “You’re telling me that I could have killed you — the Slayer — with no brain shattering pain and I didn’t? Jesus, tell me I tried at least. Slayer?!”
Buffy shrugged. “We fought but you had a different agenda. We both did. You wanted something else…”
Something else. Was that what was resonating deep inside him? The ache that came and went?
The sound of her voice lulled him as she continued. It soon dawned on Spike that his gut did not ache. In fact, it rarely ached when she was in the room. It was as if the ache was her absence, her essence inside him. He knew that he should feel far more disturbed about that possibility than he actually did. Spike couldn’t remember the last time he’d been genuinely disturbed.
He was a vampire. He knew his lot, his place, and his ultimate fate. He was the other. An alien entity to this deliciously warm and fleshy girl in his midst. He should be thinking about draining her body and feeling her strength flow down his gullet warming him, making him whole and powerful, feared and fearless.
Making him king again.
Instead, his mind swam uncontrollably with thoughts of pleasuring her. Licking and sucking, thrusting and tasting. Having that sweet flesh beneath him or above him because he knew she was already inside him. In his gut, his throat, his dreams. It was a powerful sensation and it made him feel powerful. His tongue thrummed at the possibility of licking her neck.
He hadn’t even thought of draining her since she’d brought him the pails of water and fresh clothes. That’s when he saw her trying to suppress her desire for him.
Her desire. For him. Spike knew she wasn’t faking that.
The memory of her scent hit him like an eighteen wheeler. There was the furtive little eye maneuver as well. It was almost shyness; but Spike knew slayers, she was like him, a killer. Shyness had no part of that equation, and yet, she had shown him shy eyes burning for him.
Thoughts of Drusilla also ambled through his mind. Mostly, Spike recalled her betrayals. How she had made him a cuckold time and time again. It was beneath a vampire to feel such things but that was how he felt. Angelus told him almost from their first acquaintance that Drusilla would never be his. She followed her pleasure and Angelus. Spike rebelled from day one against propriety and expectation; but first and foremost, against Angelus.
Spike followed the girl. Spike followed the love. Spike followed the pain.
He needed a pack of smokes, he could use a stiff drink, and he wanted to wrap himself around this slayer and shag her for a week straight for starters. The delicious perversion of that desire hardened him to distraction. He licked his lips absently. Vampire candy, that’s what this girl was. She’d taste so sweet. The scent of some fruity gloss she’d shined her lips with made him tingle. His cock practically stood at attention in his jeans.
Buffy continued talking, oblivious to the fact that he’d stopped listening to her. Spike sat in silence looking at her shiny tempting lips while he brushed his thumb over his lower lip. A few brief pauses led to longer ones. Maybe she’d told him too much. It was a complicated tale after all. Buffy licked her lips nervously.
A kaleidoscope of sexual fantasies churned through Spike’s mind. He lost his chance. He should have had her back against the wall, stripped and squawking in sweet release. His mind stuck on that scenario as he stared through her, held tight by his own imaginings. Any self-respecting vampire would have pounded her senseless and drained her by now, or at least attempted something like that. He didn’t want to jump on her like a rutting, rabid dog. He wanted– Spike’s mind staggered to a halt. What kind of vampire was he anyway?
From his perspective it had been a long time since his last sexual experience. It was with Drusilla and he wouldn’t have classified it as a particularly helpful scenario. He’d agreed to play Big Bad Daddy and Naughty Baby Dru. She’d enjoyed herself but it had left him feeling sour and sullen. Ghosts of Angelus always turned his stomach. It had only been Drusilla since those paisley painted chicks at Woodstock and that was a lifetime ago. Besides, there had been some serious narcotic assistance in that case. His memory of that allegedly groovy episode was vague at best.
Human and a slayer? He wouldn’t last ten seconds with the erections he’d been having just thinking about her.
Buffy stood at the door with a look of concern on her face. Spike snapped to attention when he realized he was growling. Shit.
“I’ll just go then and let you absorb what I’ve said so far…” That wouldn’t take long. He hadn’t paid close attention to her speech beyond the highlights. Shit, he was doing it again. “…over your stuff. There’s more at the house. Anything you want, I can bring it.” She paused at the door.
“Slayer…you sure they took out all of that chip?”
“Yes. I saw the procedure. It was completely removed. Why do you ask?”
“I think maybe they slipped something else in me ’cause there’s something in my gut. I can’t really explain it, but I feel it.” His palm circled under his ribcage. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what it is.”
His soul.
Buffy’s eyes squeezed shut. Pain and joy and fear jostled within her. No words, only a trembling smile.
It had to be his soul.
“OI!” Spike jumped to his feet with alarm. “What the fuck is it? And don’t give me some line. You’re a poor liar, Slayer. That much I do know.”
Buffy attempted to speak, but her throat was empty. The anxiety level in the room rose higher.
“TELL ME!” he yelled and clenched his fists.
“That’s your soul.”
Spike exploded, kicking one of the boxes across the room. “GET OUT! OUT! YOU FUCKING BITCH! OUT!” In a flash he yanked open the door, pushed her through the barrier, and slammed it shut. Buffy leaned against the outside of the door and despite the raging sounds she heard coming from the cell, she couldn’t help but smile.
His soul.
Spike paced and ranted, too incoherent with rage to think clearly. “FUCKING BITCH…FUCKING CURSED ME…FUCKING SLAYER…FUCK!” He slammed his foot into the wall only once. The sharp crack of snapping bones ended that kind of demonstration. He howled and winced. This is what he knew, what he was, at least pain was understandable. Black and white. Straightforward. It calmed him somewhat and forced him to sit.
A soul? How could that be?
A soul was a curse, a punishment. What the gypsies saddled Angelus with. A soul meant he’d never be accepted among demons again. He’d be tainted, a pariah among his own kind.
Fuck, he’d be Angelus.
How the bloody hell did this slayer infect him with a soul? Even as his mind waged the battle, a now familiar thrum gentled him from within. He wasn’t prepared for that now familiar sensation to soothe him. He needed to roar and rip it from his gut, from his chest. The more his consciousness railed against what he considered an alien invasion, the stronger he felt its presence within him.
William had a soul. William cared. William fretted. William poured out his flimsy soul into couplets and quatrains and iambic precision. It didn’t make sense. The gypsies made Angelus weak. They made him grovel. If he had a soul, why didn’t Spike feel that way?
He didn’t feel cursed or anything remotely punitive. Further, he hadn’t felt even the slightest compulsion for verse. At least that was a bright spot. If this was supposed to be torture, then somebody got his wires crossed. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all. It felt vibrant and vigorous. No, he felt vibrant and vigorous, like he was part of something bigger than he was.
How could that be? Curses were meant to destroy but this felt like the warmth and richness of blood on his tongue that made him feel something other than dead. That’s what this weird continuous sensation was: other than dead. The specter of that knowledge was more frightening than anything he’d faced in the past.
Eventually, he focused on one of the boxes she’d brought in. He’d kicked it on its side earlier, spilling its contents with a clatter. Now in a calmer frame of mind he saw the CDs that had tumbled from its depths. He reached out and pulled it closer. It was filled with his music. He looked upon his beloved friends: Sex Pistols, The Clash, Television, Lou Reed, The Ramones, The Velvet Underground, The Who, and Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, his only clear musical memory of Woodstock. The titles went on: Patti Smith, Cream, Tom Waits, Chet Baker, German Cabaret music from the thirties, early jazz recordings and nineteenth century British troubadour songs. It was nothing less than a selection of everything he’d ever liked. Even the guilty pleasures were there, things a modern punk wouldn’t be caught dead knowing about, let alone owning.
This was what the Slayer brought him, the soundtrack of his existence.
The sensation in his gut throbbed, permeating his entire being. Spike gasped in exhausted confusion. He grabbed The Ramones, put the disc into the player and the earpieces in his ears, then he cranked “I Wanna Be Sedated”. True enough. Spike pressed the repeat button and flopped back on the cot. A while later he switched to “Anarchy in the UK”. Eventually, he fell asleep with Lou Reed’s “Berlin” echoing in his ears.