Dori's Spikefeed
back to episode 6.13 - Dead Things
Dead ThingsIn Spike's crypt. Sounds of things crashing, Buffy moaning, as we pan around the lower level of the crypt, past the empty bed. More crashing, one really loud groan, and then...silence. Well, heavy breathing. Buffy and Spike are on the floor, lying under one of the many oriental carpets that cover the floor. Spike is flopped out, exhausted, and Buffy is panting, still coming down. "We missed the bed again," she says, a little bit amused. Spike looks toward it. "Lucky for the bed," he says, and she smiles. Buffy sits up a little, notices the rug. "Is this a new rug?" she asks. Spike sits up, leans on his elbows. "Nnnnnope," he says, "Just looks different when you're under it." She laughs. "You know, this place is okay for a hole in the ground," she says, looking around. "You fixed it up." "Well, I ate a decorator once," he says, "Maybe something stuck." Another smile from Buffy. "I've been thinking about doing something with my room," she says, looking playfully over her shoulder at him. "Yeah?" "Yeah. I think the New Kids On the Block posters are starting to date me." He laughs, looks down at her as though he wants to kiss her shoulder, but doesn't. "Well, if you want, I can..." He stops, looks at her, a little surprised. "Are we having a conversation?" He really wants to know. "What?" she says, "No." Not mean; this is Buffy, caught at enjoying something and denying it out of habit. "No," she says again, not nearly as convinced. Then, "Maybe." "Hmm," he says, and she looks at him, trying not to smile. "What?" she says, a little amused. "Well, isn't this usually the part where you kick me in the head and run out, virtue fluttering?" he says. Teasing her. Playing with her hair. "That's the plan," she says, teasing back, not at all serious. "As soon as my legs start working." She smiles, looks down, as though she can't believe she really said that. He gives a tiny laugh, touches her arm, runs his fingers up to her shoulder, suddenly serious. Biting his lower lip. "You were =amazing=," he says, stroking her shoulder. She watches him, wanting to say something, but not sure she should. What the hell... "You got the job done yourself," she says. It's a little grudging, but whoa. She gave him a compliment. "I was just trying to keep up," he says. His voice is low, very intimate. He looks into her eyes. "The =things= that you do." He gives her a wicked smile and slips his hand underneath the rug. "The way you make it hurt in all the wrong places... I've never been with such an animal." He means it as a compliment, but... She pulls away from his touch with a slight gasp. "I'm not an animal," she says, stung. He looks at her, eyebrow lifted. "You wanna see the bite marks?" he says, only faintly teasing. She looks very uncomfortable, and shifts away from him. "You know, it's late," she says, "I should get home before Dawn goes to sleep." Spike lies back down, one arm over his head. "And she's off," he says, disgusted. Maybe at her, maybe at himself for ruining the mood. She ducks underneath the rug. "Have you seen my underwear?" she says, her voice a little muffled, but she's not really angry any more. He lifts his head, looks at her, there under the rug. "What is this to you?" he says, very serious. "This thing we have?" "We don't have a thing," she says, struggling out from under the carpet. "We have =this=. That's all." That's =all=? "Do you even like me?" he asks, raising up onto one elbow. She looks at him, not answering, and he waits, tilting his head just a fraction. Finally she breaks the look. "Sometimes," she says in a small voice. She looks a little afraid of the admission, not knowing what he'll do with it. "So you like what I do to you?" It's barely a question. She can't look at him, doesn't answer, her eyes cast down. She does, but she can't say it. His eyes narrow; he's calculating the risk of what he's about to do. He leans over, pulls a set of open handcuffs from underneath something, holds them up, dangling, in front of her. "Do you trust me?" he says. This is important, and it shows in his face. She looks at him, her eyes huge. After a moment, she answers him. "Never," she says, her voice like a little girl's, and that "never" sounds awfully like "always." At DMP, Tara comes in and Buffy takes a break. She's asked Tara to come there. Tara thinks Willow's done something awful, but Buffy reassures her that Willow's fine, doing better. Tara wants to know why Buffy wanted to see her, and Buffy tells her that it's about Spike. She's rubbing her wrists, not really noticing that she's doing it. "He can hurt me," she says, and suddenly realizes what her hands are doing. She puts them in her lap, hiding them. Tara is worried that the chip has stopped working, but Buffy tells her that it still works--on everybody but her. She asks Tara to check out the spell Willow used, to see if she came back wrong. When Buffy gets home from work, expecting to spend time with Dawn, she finds that Dawn has made plans to spend the night with Janice. Buffy questions this, but Willow has checked it out, and it's kosher this time. Dawn goes off with Janice, and Buffy takes the gang up on their offer to go to the Bronze. Xander and Anya lure Willow out on the dance floor, but Buffy says she'll sit this one out. She goes to the bar to get a refill, but leaves the cup there, empty, instead, and goes up onto the balcony. She's watching everyone dance, a little sad, not really hearing the music or the noise of the crowd, but she hears Spike, speaking from behind her. "You see," he says, his voice soft, seductive, a little growly, "You try to be with them, but you always end up in the dark." He steps up behind her, close, his mouth near her ear. "With me." He looks down at the Scoobies on the dance floor. "What would they think of you," he says, "if they found out...All the things you've done?" He strokes her arm from shoulder to elbow, using his palm, and her eyes close, her lips part, her breath comes short. "If they knew," he goes on, "who you really were." He touches her, sliding his hand forward around her hip, and she opens her eyes, wide. "Don't," she whispers, pleading, but her eyes are starting to glaze. "Stop me," he tells her, his voice low, right next to her ear, and slides his hand down the outside of her thigh, slowly, fingers splayed. He hooks the hem of her skirt and pulls it up, his fingers caressing her bare skin. It's hard for her to breathe; she closes her eyes as his hand slides further up. Stopping him is not even a possibility right now, because this feels...so...good. He pulls her closer, does things with his hands, watching her face as he touches her, getting off on getting her off, and she moans, leans back against him, eyes still closed, lost in his hands; she's so close to the edge... "No," he says, his voice a rough caress. "Don't close your eyes. Look at them." And she does. They're dancing, and it's like they're all moving too fast, while she's slowed down, just to the rhythm he's setting. "That's not your world," he whispers into her ear as he moves slowly against her. "You belong in the shadows. With me." The breath from his words stirs her hair. "Look at your friends and tell me you don't love getting away with this. Right under their noses..." She says nothing, but she knows she does. And she feels bad about it, but not enough to make him stop touching her... When we die These are the words of the song we hear as: Buffy is patrolling the cemetery, stake in hand, but not at the ready. Spike is in his crypt, shirt open, smoking and putting burba weed in his blood. He stops, lifts his head, sensing something, and then he smiles. Buffy is coming to his crypt. He moves to the door, slowly, listens carefully, puts his hand on the door, down low, as though he were touching Buffy, as though he can feel her through the door. She puts her hand up, touches the door, wanting to go in, but... As her hand touches the door, inside, his hand turns and moves up to where hers rests, and the way the touches the door looks like a caress. He can feel her, his hand moving up her belly... He leans against the door, knees a little weak, and then he can't stand it any more, he has to touch her for real. He pulls the door open, but she's gone. He steps outside, looking for her, listening for her. The song is over, and Buffy is walking away. "Don't think about the evil bloodsucking fiend," she's telling herself. "Focus on anything but the evil bloodsucking fiend..." She hears a scream, looks up to heaven. "Thank you," she says, much relieved, and goes off to see what's going on. There are three robed figures running away, and she tackles one, but when she gets to the ground, there's nothing there; she's alone. She looks around, confused. There's a whooshing sound, and "Katrina" is lying on the ground, crying. Buffy tells her she'll get her out of there, and asks if she's hurt. There's another noise, and the girl is gone. She hears voices, whispering, accusing--"What did you do!?" She covers her ears; the next thing she knows, Spike is lying on the ground in front of her, his mouth bleeding. "Bloody hell!" he says, wiping his lip, "What'd you do that for?" She didn't hit him, she knows she didn't. "Spike?" she says. Where'd he come from? The noise again, and the three robey guys are back, fighting her and Spike, who's now in vampface. She takes one out, Spike snaps another one's neck, and shouts a warning as the last one clobbers her. Then they're all gone, robey guys and Spike, but Spike is walking toward her. "Spike," she says, "what's going on?" She sounds lost and a little frightened. He's not bleeding. "So you thought you could just slip away, then?" he says, coming to stand at her shoulder. "Vampire, remember? I could feel you." And the robey guys are back, in the same fight as before. Spike warns her, she turns to deck the robey demon, but hits Spike instead; the demons are gone. "OW!" he says, lying on the ground, his mouth bleeding. "Bloody hell! What'd you do that for?" "Katrina" runs up, crying, and falls to the ground. Then the demons again, and she and Spike fight. The demons disappear, come back, disappear again. The fight is happening out of sequence; first she's breaking the back of the first one, then they're fighting again, then Spike snaps the second one's neck, shouts his warning, and she turns around right into the fist of the third one. She knocks him back, and somebody grabs her arm; she turns and belts "Katrina" a winding. "Katrina" rolls down a hill, and Buffy goes after her. Spike manages to knock down the last demon, and starts after Buffy. But the demon jumps him, knocking him to the ground. Spike, pissed and in a hurry to get to Buffy, says, "Do you -mind-?" and punches right through the demon's chest and out the back, maybe pulling out its heart as he withdraws his hand. He gets up and goes after Buffy. He finds her sitting beside Katrina's dead body, staring. "Buffy," he says. "She's dead," Buffy replies, in shock. "I killed her." Something is watching them from a hidden vantage point in the trees. It's "Katrina." Spike, sounding worried, says, "We have to go." Buffy hears the sound, but not the sense. "What happened?" she asks. "There's nothing you can do now," Spike says. "We have to go before someone sees you." "What did I do?" "We have to -go-. NOW." He lifts her up and hauls her away. He pulls her a ways from the body, then stops, takes her by the arms. "All right, now listen to me," he says, but she's not. "Buffy!" He gives her a slight shake. "Buffy!" But she's still out of it "She's dead." "It was an accident. "I killed her..." "I'm going to get you home." Finally her eyes focus on him. "No!" He gives her another shake. "I'm gonna get you home, and you're going to crawl into your warm comfy bed and -stay- there," he says, fiercely. "I'm gonna sort this out." He looks into her eyes. "Trust me." She looks at him, confused, and gives the slightest nod. Buffy's in bed, sleeping, but not well. "It's all right, love," Spike says, and gets into the bed. He's naked, and he reaches out to her, caresses her shoulder. She wakes up, and he soothes her. "Shh." He strokes her back, her shoulder. "It'll be our little secret," he says, and kisses her shoulder tenderly, twice. She turns over, reaches up, kisses him. He kisses back, and she takes his face in her hands, rolls them over, and... They're in his crypt, on his bed. She's on top of him, moving, and his arms are stretched over his head. She slides her hands up his arms, and sees that he's handcuffed. When she touches him, his eyes close and his hands, clenched into fists, relax. She throws her head back and... She's handcuffing Katrina, sitting on top of her and pushing her bound hands over her head. "Do you trust me?" she says, and Katrina smiles. Then she grimaces, and Buffy is underneath Spike, coming hard, clutching at his arms. Suddenly, she's knocking Katrina down, and then she's in the crypt again, kneeling over Spike, who's asleep on the floor. She has a stake in her hand, and she lifts it up, plunges it toward his chest... It goes through Katrina's heart. Katrina opens her eyes, and they're clouded over. And Buffy wakes up. At the police station... Buffy is coming up the alley beside the station. Just as she's about to turn the corner, she hear's Spike's voice behind her. "What do you think you're doing?" "The right thing. For once." He comes up, grabs her, pulls her back into the alley, throwing her to the ground. "Sorry, love," he says, "but I can't let you do that." She gets up. "I have to tell them what happened." He looks at her. "=Nothing= happened," he says harshly, frowning. "I killed that girl.." "Demons in the woods, time going wonky--They won't believe you." Okay, this is the Sunnydale PD; he's probably right. "I'll show them," she says, lip quivering. He smiles bitterly. "Show them what?" he says. Gotcha... She looks at him, horrified. He can't mean...? "What did you do?" "I took care of it." And he's obviously not going to say anything else. That is not acceptable. "What," she says through her teeth, "did you do???" He gives her a hard look. "What I had to," he says, spitting the words at her. "I went back and I took care of it. Doesn't matter now. They'll never find her." Two cops come out of the station. "Where'd they find her?" one of them says. "The river," says the other one. "She washed up half a mile from the cemetery." Spike looks up at heaven, as though to say, How could you. "Oh, balls..." The policemen take off for the river in their patrol car. Spike, worried into breathing, tries to calm them both. "There still isn't anything to connect this to you," he says. "It doesn't matter." She's got her Slayer face on; she really intends to do this. He's not going to let her sacrifice herself. "It wasn't your fault." "I killed her." Her jaw is set, and she looks ready to belt him one if he doesn't get out of her way. "It was an accident, it just happened." Why can't she see that? "Nothing just happens." She stalks past him, and he grabs her, swings her around. "You are not going in there," he growls. Dangerous. "I have to do this," she says, pleading with him now. "Just let me go." Doesn't she see? How can she not know this? "I can't. I love you." She stares up at him, her lip trembling. "No," she says, her eyes begging him to agree with her, just this once. "You don't." Bloody hell. She still doesn't want to believe it, after everything they've been through? He's sick to death of her denying it. "You think I haven't tried not to?" he says, hurt in every taut line of his body. Unaccountably, that pisses her off. "Try harder," she says through her teeth, and belts him across the alley, into the wall. She turns and starts for the station door. But he's right there, with a burst of vamp speed, and tosses her back into the alley. He looks at her, still in vampface, but calm. "You are not throwing your life away over this," he tells her. Not while there's unlife in his body... "It's not your choice," she says, fiercely. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" he says. Her determination to do this stupid thing makes no sense to him. "A girl is -dead- because of me." One girl. "And how many people are alive because of you?" he says, desperate to make her understand. "How many have you saved? One dead girl doesn't tip the scale!" She looks at him, not understanding why -he- can't get it. "That's all it is to you, isn't it?" she snaps. "Just another body." He heaves a big sigh. "Buffy..." That's not it, why can't she give him more credit? She throws a punch. He blocks it easily, and the next blow, but the third one lands in his gut, and he doubles over. "You can't understand why this is killing me, can you?" she says, near tears. "Why don't you explain it?" he gasps. She lands a kick to his chest, a right cross to his jaw, and he takes it. "That's it," he says. This is progress, maybe. "Put it on me, put it all on me." He blocks a hard kick to his groin. "That's my girl..." "I am NOT. YOUR. GIRL." With the last word, she delivers an uppercut that knocks him on his ass. She's on him immediately, pinning him down. Punch to the face. Again. He lets her. "You don't," another punch, "have a soul." She's ranting, now. Trying to convince herself that she's really talking about him. "There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside." She punches him again. "You," whack, "can't," whack, "feel," whack, "anything real. I could never be your girl!" She punches him again, again, and he can't hold the vampface. Another punch, to his bruised, bleeding, swollen human face, and another, another, another, another, a flurry of blows landing like anvils on his face, enough to kill a mortal man, and one final one that rolls his eyes back in his head. Maybe her arm gets tired, or maybe she finally runs out of anger, but at last she sees him. Really sees what she's done to him--his right eye is swollen shut already, he's bleeding from his broken nose, from a cut on his cheek, from the wound on his mouth which has broken open from where she hit him accidentally in the fight with the demons. Horror fills her face as she realizes what she's done, and she pulls back from him. "I..." she says, perhaps about to begin an apology, but the magnitude of how she's hurt him stops her words. He tries to look up at her, tries to smile. "You... always hurt the...one you love, pet," he says, forgiving her already, and she backs away from him, unable to believe what she's done. She's gone out of his field of vision, and he looks up, trying to locate her. "Buffy?" he says, but she doesn't answer, but walks past him, her face set in determined lines. He rolls over painfully, bracing one hand on the filthy pavement. "Buffy?" he says again, but she ignores him and goes into the police station, leaving him sprawled bleeding in the alley. Much later, after she and the Scoobies have figured out that Warren is behind the murder, Buffy is in her house, talking to Tara. Tara tells her that there's nothing wrong with her, she just came back changed on a cellular level, enough to confuse Spike's chip, but not enough to change who she is. she isn't wrong. Buffy is freaked that she didn't come back wrong, and asks Tara to check again. When Tara tries to reassure her, she says, "This can't be me. Why do I let Spike do those things to me?" She's crying, devastated to think that she's done all those things with Spike without being wrong. Tara asks her if she loves Spike; Buffy can't answer, looks terrified even at the prospect of having to think about it. "It's okay if you love him," Tara says, trying to reassure her, "he's done a lot of good and he does love you. And...and, Buffy, it's okay if you don't love him. You're going through a really hard time, and you're... Buffy looks up, stung. "What?" she says, "Using him? What's okay about that?" "It's not that simple," Tara says. "It is," Buffy sobs, "It's wrong. =I'm= wrong." she says, her face crumpling, "Tell me that I'm wrong, please..." She's openly sobbing, now. "Please don't forgive me," she cries, laying her head in Tara's lap, and Tara tries to comfort her as she keeps begging Tara not to forgive her... -- |
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