New fic: Touching the Fire
I've been writing all month for the Elysian Fields Artistic Challenge Month. This year it's a banner-based challenge, and there were so many to choose from! In the end I chose this one, by fellow-Brit AlloSpoike
The request included a requirement that Buffy should rescue Spike from a fire. Well, she did that, but it's gone beyond that. A Special Guest Star appears throughout.
So far it's up to four chapters; I hope to get it finished within the challenge month. You know the drill - characters not mine, just playing with them, promise I'll put them back tidily.
Rating: R, veering towards NC-17. Spuffy. Season Six, with the sex and violence that involves.
Chapter One
Grief is exhausting, however little physical activity is involved. You blunder about from room to room, again and again shocked by reminders of what - who - is missing, stunned once more by the hole where the person should be.
In Revello Drive that was, to some extent, a blessing. After dark Dawn struggled her way upstairs without needing to be prompted, went through the childhood ritual of teeth, face, hands, bedclothes and tucked herself up in bed. No-one else was left to do that, kind as Willow and Tara had been when they’d moved into the house to help her, and to help maintain the illusion that her world hadn’t ended when her sister had jumped.
After the others were safely in bed, and only rhythmic breathing sounds could be heard through the closed door, Dawn often surfaced briefly. Dreams of panic and loss shook her awake, or she fell out of soft, comforting dreams in which no loss ever happened, the family was completely intact, including the father Dawn knew intellectually she had never met, but whose kindness, sense of humour and robust games were every bit part of her memories as … and … the names she needed to avoid at all costs if she was to sleep again that night. In the end she would take her own comforter and shuffle along into - the other bedroom, where the thing that wasn’t a person but looked so much like a beloved person, lay recharging so that she - it - could continue the pretence one more day at a time.
Spike knew she had done this more than once, because confession sessions in his dank cellar had revealed much about Dawn’s life now. Some of it she knew she had told him, but this fact, like many others, had simply been deduced, as much from what she didn’t say as from what she did. When he swung by the house after a savage, bloody, dusty patrol, in which no demon or vampire ever had a chance against his own rage and grief, he half-expected her to be in that room, the room he, too, avoided naming. Even so, he entered.
Spike might not have had to breathe, but he enjoyed doing it. Breath meant air to speak, sing, smoke, filling his chest with the semblance of life belied by his unbeating heart. Until he walked into the room, though, he had almost forgotten that breath also meant the ability to smell, to inhale the sweetness of the missing girl, the hair products, shower products, perfumes, all the artificial scents she had applied to herself so routinely. Beneath those, though, even two weeks after she had last been in her room, was that indefinable smell that was her, that he would never forget whether his unlife stretched for centuries into the future or the hours he sometimes felt were the absolute most he could drive himself to endure.
He stopped, one hand still on the door, stunned by the effect such soft, gentle odours could have on him. He’d been here before, of course, when the smells of sex and soldier-boy had dominated. None of that left, thank all the powers, just his girl and his little Bit. Soft teenage snores weren’t massively charming, but they told him she was sleeping soundly now, and not likely to be awake to challenge him. She smelled clean, like new flowers, fresh young life. The other scents would fade all too soon.
His permission to enter the house, brutally taken from him after that incident involving Dru, had been returned, almost the last thing the girl had done before leaving for. Before she went to. Before. Whatever. She’d let him back in. That was what mattered.
She was no longer there, though, nor anywhere else he could reach. And, sweet as it was to see the little one dreaming, from the half-smile on her face of happier times, he really wasn’t the creepy sort of vampire who got his kicks from standing in corners at night watching girls sleep. His skin crawled at the very thought, though he knew of a certain pillock with an under-age girl fetish doing just that, long ago. Not Spike, though. Really not.
The room, with the exception of the two still figures on the bed, was not so different from the time Captain Musclebound had found him going through a drawer. OK, he could admit to himself, not his best hour, or his least creepy, but that was way in the past now, which was another country. He still knew the layout, however, and the exceptional night vision came in handy as he skirted the bed to reach the dresser, on which a random assemblage of childhood things, not quite put behind her, cluttered the smooth wood.
He laid his hand down, the bitten nails almost free of the black polish he had prided himself on in what felt like a different era. The little crochet doily - must have been her mother’s, so not her thing - felt a little rough under his fingertips, the ridges and holes alternating like some sort of relief map. He ghosted his palm across it and drifted up along the miniature mountain of stuff. No other word for it. A naked plastic doll, impossible dimensions of long, long legs, minuscule waist, perky tits and huge painted eyes fell, threatening a cascade, but he caught it, stared briefly and unbelievingly at it, then laid it to one side. There was a teddybear to negotiate, a strange sort of headband with spring-loaded butterflies attached, a bunch of weird hair gewgaws which threatened to rattle. And there, near the top, was his prize.
One hand holding back the potential debris, he used the other to extract the object, his fingers pressing deep into the soft velour. He brought it to his nose and inhaled, more deeply than he had need to, which was not at all, stupid git. He brought his other hand up to join in cradling the precious thing.
Everybody has a toy in their past. Something special, a companion in wild fantasies of war and conquest, a playmate in an empty house, a soothing companion in the dark if things were scary or the dark was intruding. This had been hers. The pale little thing was soft, warm even to his room-temperature touch, with smooth, smooth eyes he knew would be shiny and black, proper piggy eyes in a proper little pig. Mr Gordo.
“Exactly what are you doing here?”
Shit. He’d been concentrating so hard on the stuffed toy he’d missed the little snuffles and stretching sounds that should have warned him the bitty girl was awake. Now he’d have to leave without his treasure. Unless…
Spike didn’t lie to the people he cared about. Few enough of those in nearly a century and a half, of course, but still. Didn’t mean he had to pour out the truth, the full truth. This time, though, it might be worth a try. He and his little Slayerette had a sort of chemistry of their own - it might work.
“Just dropped in after a patrol, pet. Came up to see if you were safe in the land of Nod. Found you in here, saw this stuff, thought I’d take a look. Tha’s all.”
Dawn sat up, meticulously careful to avoid touching the illusion of her sister lying beside her. If you didn’t touch, and didn’t look too hard, you could still pretend it was what it wasn’t. She pushed her hair, long and without even a sign of tangle, back from her face, then swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her chin tilted up and she stared into the vampire’s eyes, just visible in the light from the street lamp outside.
Whatever she saw satisfied her in some way, Spike supposed, for she stood up and reached out her arm. “Give,” she demanded.
He complied, then watched as she unhooked a bathrobe from the back of the door and shrugged it on. That might have been easier to do before she’d grabbed the stuffed pig, but she was not daunted by her struggle, and wrapped it round herself, tying the belt one-handed as if born to it. She jerked her head in the direction of the room’s exit and he followed her out and down the stairs.
In the sitting room she closed the door silently, then switched on a small table lamp next to the couch. “Now tell me the rest of the story,” the intensity of her voiced belied by the breathy whisper in which she spoke. “Do you come here often?”
He couldn’t help himself. For almost the first time since ... in a fortnight ... he grinned, and a quiet chuckle escaped him. “Never expected that chat-up line from you, Platelet, I must say.”
Dawn’s face went pink as she thought through their exchange, then she let out, still as faint as a feather landing, what could almost be called a growl, but Spike thought was adorably closer to a kitten’s purr. Spike felt himself smiling even more broadly.
“Yes, Petal, I do come here from time to time. I made a promise, you see. Said I’d watch over you, defend you, to the end of the earth. Didn’t expect that to come in the way it did, but still feel bound by my promise.”
“It does feel like the world has ended, doesn’t it? You get that. I mean, really get that. Nobody else seems to.”
“It ended for both of us, Dawn. The others, they have their grief too, devastating grief. But it’s not like you and me.”
Dawn eyed him warily. Middle of the night was a good time for hard questions, tricky conversations, if only because it wasn’t so easy to see who was crying and how much. “You really loved her, didn’t you? Buffy said you couldn’t possibly feel love, not without a soul. But I think she was wrong.”
He flinched. Hearing her name spoken still hurt. The past tense hurt a lot more. But he had promised to look out for the girl, and that meant being straight with her. As straight as he could be with himself at least.
“I love her. Now, then, in the future. She didn’t believe me; well, that’s my stupid fault, innit? I only went and found the worst, creepiest, most moronic way in the world of trying to tell her. ‘S no wonder it freaked her out. Worried yer Mum too. She was good fun, before. Never spoke to me again after. Should have kept my bleeding mouth shut. Should have offed Dru and that stupid bint Harm when I had the chance. Not as a bribe, mind. No buying love for Spike. I get that. Now. No. Should have done for them because it was the right thing to do.”
It was rare to hear him talk at such length. More than one taboo name there, too. Dawn swallowed. “So. What’s the soul for? I don’t even know if I have one. Just a ball of glowy light, with no purpose left. That’s me.”
Spike shifted and gripped her chin. “None of that now. Look at me.” She obeyed. “You have a soul. You have a beautiful, perfect soul, because you were made by the monks from her. You carry the blood of Summers women. Strong, proud, beautiful and chock full of soul. Never forget that. Never.”
Dawn was startled by the intensity in his voice. “So what is it then? Why does it make all the difference?”
“Cursed if I know the answer to that, sweetling. Just know that not having one makes me not good enough somehow. Like a piece is missing, but I can’t see where it’s missing from, or what it looks like. But I do know you are good. And ensouled.”
They fell silent. Each of them was struggling to absorb what they’d said. Neither was making a good job of it.
Dawn shifted herself on the couch and shifted the subject. “So, the explanation. You. In a bedroom here. With a stuffed pig. Gonna explain why?”
He groaned, very quietly. Bloody tenacious these women. “What I said. Did a patrol, bumped off a fair few nasties, dropped by here to check everything was all hunky-dory.”
“And the pig?” Christ. She wasn’t going to let that drop, was she? “It was hers. Important to her. Back in the day I remember Angelus joking about it. Right nasty he was, the bloody pillock. Said she loved it, handful of plastic and fake fur as it was. He had plans to rip it to pieces in front of her at one point, before getting all apocalypse-mad and dropping the idea. Dunno why it mattered to the prick quite so much. Just that it mattered to her.”
“And?” Really not giving up, was she?
“And I thought.” He sniffed. Choked back what was definitely not a sob. Definitely. “I thought if I held it. Stroked it, even. That I could feel just a little bit closer to her. That’s all. Even thought you might not miss it. Always the stupid one, me.”
Dawn’s face was wet. Her memories of the little pig weren’t real. She had never stolen and hidden it when she was seven, or pulled one of its eyes off so Mom had had to do a quick repair before Buffy got home from school. But she remembered these things happening. In a way they had. She rubbed the arm of her bathrobe across her face, dragging most of the dampness away.
“I think you need to have him.”
He jerked his head up, his eyes wide. Yes, his face was wet too, his eyes brimming. She’d guessed right.
“I think you did - do - love her. I think you need something special of hers to keep next to you. I have this whole house. Every bit of every room hurts, but I am surrounded by her. All the things she used, all her clothes and photos. I can spare one little toy pig.”
There was painful hope in his eyes. “You really mean that? I thought of nicking it. Never thought you’d give it.” He swallowed hard. “I’m such a jerk. You’d think at pushing a hundred and forty I’d know better. But yes. Yes please. If you can bring yourself to be without him, I’d really, really like to have him.”
Dawn hugged the toy, hard and long. Then, with infinite gentleness, she laid it in his arms. “Take it home, Spike. Cuddle it if you need to. Be close to it.”
He could scarcely speak to thank her. Clutching the velour stuffed toy as if it was the most priceless thing in his world, which in a way it was, he scurried home.
A scurrying master vampire is not something you see every day or night. He looked more vulnerable, running with his head down, both arms hugging the tiny pig to his chest. Dawn stood at the door and watched till he was out of sight. Then she sighed and went up the stairs.
Comments are loved and nurtured like my own babies.
The request included a requirement that Buffy should rescue Spike from a fire. Well, she did that, but it's gone beyond that. A Special Guest Star appears throughout.
So far it's up to four chapters; I hope to get it finished within the challenge month. You know the drill - characters not mine, just playing with them, promise I'll put them back tidily.
Rating: R, veering towards NC-17. Spuffy. Season Six, with the sex and violence that involves.
Chapter One
Grief is exhausting, however little physical activity is involved. You blunder about from room to room, again and again shocked by reminders of what - who - is missing, stunned once more by the hole where the person should be.
In Revello Drive that was, to some extent, a blessing. After dark Dawn struggled her way upstairs without needing to be prompted, went through the childhood ritual of teeth, face, hands, bedclothes and tucked herself up in bed. No-one else was left to do that, kind as Willow and Tara had been when they’d moved into the house to help her, and to help maintain the illusion that her world hadn’t ended when her sister had jumped.
After the others were safely in bed, and only rhythmic breathing sounds could be heard through the closed door, Dawn often surfaced briefly. Dreams of panic and loss shook her awake, or she fell out of soft, comforting dreams in which no loss ever happened, the family was completely intact, including the father Dawn knew intellectually she had never met, but whose kindness, sense of humour and robust games were every bit part of her memories as … and … the names she needed to avoid at all costs if she was to sleep again that night. In the end she would take her own comforter and shuffle along into - the other bedroom, where the thing that wasn’t a person but looked so much like a beloved person, lay recharging so that she - it - could continue the pretence one more day at a time.
Spike knew she had done this more than once, because confession sessions in his dank cellar had revealed much about Dawn’s life now. Some of it she knew she had told him, but this fact, like many others, had simply been deduced, as much from what she didn’t say as from what she did. When he swung by the house after a savage, bloody, dusty patrol, in which no demon or vampire ever had a chance against his own rage and grief, he half-expected her to be in that room, the room he, too, avoided naming. Even so, he entered.
Spike might not have had to breathe, but he enjoyed doing it. Breath meant air to speak, sing, smoke, filling his chest with the semblance of life belied by his unbeating heart. Until he walked into the room, though, he had almost forgotten that breath also meant the ability to smell, to inhale the sweetness of the missing girl, the hair products, shower products, perfumes, all the artificial scents she had applied to herself so routinely. Beneath those, though, even two weeks after she had last been in her room, was that indefinable smell that was her, that he would never forget whether his unlife stretched for centuries into the future or the hours he sometimes felt were the absolute most he could drive himself to endure.
He stopped, one hand still on the door, stunned by the effect such soft, gentle odours could have on him. He’d been here before, of course, when the smells of sex and soldier-boy had dominated. None of that left, thank all the powers, just his girl and his little Bit. Soft teenage snores weren’t massively charming, but they told him she was sleeping soundly now, and not likely to be awake to challenge him. She smelled clean, like new flowers, fresh young life. The other scents would fade all too soon.
His permission to enter the house, brutally taken from him after that incident involving Dru, had been returned, almost the last thing the girl had done before leaving for. Before she went to. Before. Whatever. She’d let him back in. That was what mattered.
She was no longer there, though, nor anywhere else he could reach. And, sweet as it was to see the little one dreaming, from the half-smile on her face of happier times, he really wasn’t the creepy sort of vampire who got his kicks from standing in corners at night watching girls sleep. His skin crawled at the very thought, though he knew of a certain pillock with an under-age girl fetish doing just that, long ago. Not Spike, though. Really not.
The room, with the exception of the two still figures on the bed, was not so different from the time Captain Musclebound had found him going through a drawer. OK, he could admit to himself, not his best hour, or his least creepy, but that was way in the past now, which was another country. He still knew the layout, however, and the exceptional night vision came in handy as he skirted the bed to reach the dresser, on which a random assemblage of childhood things, not quite put behind her, cluttered the smooth wood.
He laid his hand down, the bitten nails almost free of the black polish he had prided himself on in what felt like a different era. The little crochet doily - must have been her mother’s, so not her thing - felt a little rough under his fingertips, the ridges and holes alternating like some sort of relief map. He ghosted his palm across it and drifted up along the miniature mountain of stuff. No other word for it. A naked plastic doll, impossible dimensions of long, long legs, minuscule waist, perky tits and huge painted eyes fell, threatening a cascade, but he caught it, stared briefly and unbelievingly at it, then laid it to one side. There was a teddybear to negotiate, a strange sort of headband with spring-loaded butterflies attached, a bunch of weird hair gewgaws which threatened to rattle. And there, near the top, was his prize.
One hand holding back the potential debris, he used the other to extract the object, his fingers pressing deep into the soft velour. He brought it to his nose and inhaled, more deeply than he had need to, which was not at all, stupid git. He brought his other hand up to join in cradling the precious thing.
Everybody has a toy in their past. Something special, a companion in wild fantasies of war and conquest, a playmate in an empty house, a soothing companion in the dark if things were scary or the dark was intruding. This had been hers. The pale little thing was soft, warm even to his room-temperature touch, with smooth, smooth eyes he knew would be shiny and black, proper piggy eyes in a proper little pig. Mr Gordo.
“Exactly what are you doing here?”
Shit. He’d been concentrating so hard on the stuffed toy he’d missed the little snuffles and stretching sounds that should have warned him the bitty girl was awake. Now he’d have to leave without his treasure. Unless…
Spike didn’t lie to the people he cared about. Few enough of those in nearly a century and a half, of course, but still. Didn’t mean he had to pour out the truth, the full truth. This time, though, it might be worth a try. He and his little Slayerette had a sort of chemistry of their own - it might work.
“Just dropped in after a patrol, pet. Came up to see if you were safe in the land of Nod. Found you in here, saw this stuff, thought I’d take a look. Tha’s all.”
Dawn sat up, meticulously careful to avoid touching the illusion of her sister lying beside her. If you didn’t touch, and didn’t look too hard, you could still pretend it was what it wasn’t. She pushed her hair, long and without even a sign of tangle, back from her face, then swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her chin tilted up and she stared into the vampire’s eyes, just visible in the light from the street lamp outside.
Whatever she saw satisfied her in some way, Spike supposed, for she stood up and reached out her arm. “Give,” she demanded.
He complied, then watched as she unhooked a bathrobe from the back of the door and shrugged it on. That might have been easier to do before she’d grabbed the stuffed pig, but she was not daunted by her struggle, and wrapped it round herself, tying the belt one-handed as if born to it. She jerked her head in the direction of the room’s exit and he followed her out and down the stairs.
In the sitting room she closed the door silently, then switched on a small table lamp next to the couch. “Now tell me the rest of the story,” the intensity of her voiced belied by the breathy whisper in which she spoke. “Do you come here often?”
He couldn’t help himself. For almost the first time since ... in a fortnight ... he grinned, and a quiet chuckle escaped him. “Never expected that chat-up line from you, Platelet, I must say.”
Dawn’s face went pink as she thought through their exchange, then she let out, still as faint as a feather landing, what could almost be called a growl, but Spike thought was adorably closer to a kitten’s purr. Spike felt himself smiling even more broadly.
“Yes, Petal, I do come here from time to time. I made a promise, you see. Said I’d watch over you, defend you, to the end of the earth. Didn’t expect that to come in the way it did, but still feel bound by my promise.”
“It does feel like the world has ended, doesn’t it? You get that. I mean, really get that. Nobody else seems to.”
“It ended for both of us, Dawn. The others, they have their grief too, devastating grief. But it’s not like you and me.”
Dawn eyed him warily. Middle of the night was a good time for hard questions, tricky conversations, if only because it wasn’t so easy to see who was crying and how much. “You really loved her, didn’t you? Buffy said you couldn’t possibly feel love, not without a soul. But I think she was wrong.”
He flinched. Hearing her name spoken still hurt. The past tense hurt a lot more. But he had promised to look out for the girl, and that meant being straight with her. As straight as he could be with himself at least.
“I love her. Now, then, in the future. She didn’t believe me; well, that’s my stupid fault, innit? I only went and found the worst, creepiest, most moronic way in the world of trying to tell her. ‘S no wonder it freaked her out. Worried yer Mum too. She was good fun, before. Never spoke to me again after. Should have kept my bleeding mouth shut. Should have offed Dru and that stupid bint Harm when I had the chance. Not as a bribe, mind. No buying love for Spike. I get that. Now. No. Should have done for them because it was the right thing to do.”
It was rare to hear him talk at such length. More than one taboo name there, too. Dawn swallowed. “So. What’s the soul for? I don’t even know if I have one. Just a ball of glowy light, with no purpose left. That’s me.”
Spike shifted and gripped her chin. “None of that now. Look at me.” She obeyed. “You have a soul. You have a beautiful, perfect soul, because you were made by the monks from her. You carry the blood of Summers women. Strong, proud, beautiful and chock full of soul. Never forget that. Never.”
Dawn was startled by the intensity in his voice. “So what is it then? Why does it make all the difference?”
“Cursed if I know the answer to that, sweetling. Just know that not having one makes me not good enough somehow. Like a piece is missing, but I can’t see where it’s missing from, or what it looks like. But I do know you are good. And ensouled.”
They fell silent. Each of them was struggling to absorb what they’d said. Neither was making a good job of it.
Dawn shifted herself on the couch and shifted the subject. “So, the explanation. You. In a bedroom here. With a stuffed pig. Gonna explain why?”
He groaned, very quietly. Bloody tenacious these women. “What I said. Did a patrol, bumped off a fair few nasties, dropped by here to check everything was all hunky-dory.”
“And the pig?” Christ. She wasn’t going to let that drop, was she? “It was hers. Important to her. Back in the day I remember Angelus joking about it. Right nasty he was, the bloody pillock. Said she loved it, handful of plastic and fake fur as it was. He had plans to rip it to pieces in front of her at one point, before getting all apocalypse-mad and dropping the idea. Dunno why it mattered to the prick quite so much. Just that it mattered to her.”
“And?” Really not giving up, was she?
“And I thought.” He sniffed. Choked back what was definitely not a sob. Definitely. “I thought if I held it. Stroked it, even. That I could feel just a little bit closer to her. That’s all. Even thought you might not miss it. Always the stupid one, me.”
Dawn’s face was wet. Her memories of the little pig weren’t real. She had never stolen and hidden it when she was seven, or pulled one of its eyes off so Mom had had to do a quick repair before Buffy got home from school. But she remembered these things happening. In a way they had. She rubbed the arm of her bathrobe across her face, dragging most of the dampness away.
“I think you need to have him.”
He jerked his head up, his eyes wide. Yes, his face was wet too, his eyes brimming. She’d guessed right.
“I think you did - do - love her. I think you need something special of hers to keep next to you. I have this whole house. Every bit of every room hurts, but I am surrounded by her. All the things she used, all her clothes and photos. I can spare one little toy pig.”
There was painful hope in his eyes. “You really mean that? I thought of nicking it. Never thought you’d give it.” He swallowed hard. “I’m such a jerk. You’d think at pushing a hundred and forty I’d know better. But yes. Yes please. If you can bring yourself to be without him, I’d really, really like to have him.”
Dawn hugged the toy, hard and long. Then, with infinite gentleness, she laid it in his arms. “Take it home, Spike. Cuddle it if you need to. Be close to it.”
He could scarcely speak to thank her. Clutching the velour stuffed toy as if it was the most priceless thing in his world, which in a way it was, he scurried home.
A scurrying master vampire is not something you see every day or night. He looked more vulnerable, running with his head down, both arms hugging the tiny pig to his chest. Dawn stood at the door and watched till he was out of sight. Then she sighed and went up the stairs.
Comments are loved and nurtured like my own babies.