Fic - "Another Sodding Christmas"
It's still my day in the US, right? I was out this evening and we got home a little later than planned.
This is a sort of sequel to my fic of last year and is set in S7 - I have slightly tinkered with the timeline, placing Showtime before the holiday season for the purposes of this story, which follows Buffy's return home with a very battered Spike.
Genfic, really, PG-13 at most, about 1,850 words.
Another Sodding Christmas
Six days before Christmas Buffy brought her vampire back home. She supported him down the steps to the cot still set up as it had been, though the sheets had been changed by Dawn when she’d realised where Buffy went after killing the uber-vamp.
Infinitely gently, Buffy lowered him down onto the bed. He was barely conscious by this time, wincing at every stage but his eyes closed, brows so low they almost covered his lashes, and his teeth gritted to prevent the escape of exclamations of pain.
Once he was horizontal she left him, sending Dawn down with a mug of blood and a straw. Buffy was shaking too much with delayed reaction to her battle and the shock of her discovery of Spike - not that she was quite prepared to admit the latter, even to herself.
Dawn tiptoed down the stairs and paused at the foot, staring at the battered figure on the cot. The smooth planes of his face were marred by purple lumps on his cheekbones and hugs red contusions round his eyes. Long red scars began at his neck and trailed down his chest and under the blue camouflage of the sheets. She dreaded to think what lay beyond that boundary.
She tiptoed closer, but not quietly enough to avoid waking him. A bleary eye opened, then the other, and he grunted. “’Lo, Bit. Got something for me there?”
Dawn pasted a glowing smile on her face. “Yes, I have blood in a mug. I just didn’t want to bother you if you were sleeping.”
Mutely, he extended a hand, taking the mug. On its way to his moth it was shaking, though, so she grasped the base to guide it more accurately, and steered the straw itself between his swollen lips.
He gulped down the entire half-pint, then fell back, exhausted by the effort, paper-thin purple eyelids closed and his skin whiter than ever except where the bruises and cut-marks trailed livid evidence across the surface.
Dawn stood quietly and left him to sleep.
**********
Five days before Christmas Dawn visited him again, once more carrying a mug with a straw. He barely raised his head enough to gulp down the blood, and fell back, exhausted, as soon as the mug was empty. Dawn sat by his side a little while, making empty conversation.
“It doesn’t seem like a year since we did all that Christmas stuff for Buffy. Do you remember? That funny pie with meat in it and salty jelly stuff round the filling. Tasted kinda good really. It would be good to do something like that again this year, do you think?”
No reply. None expected, really. She went back upstairs.
**********
The vampire healing had begun to kick in by four days before Christmas. When Dawn went down to see the cellar dweller, carefully carrying the mug and balancing a plate with some weird spicy onion thing Andrew had insisted on her taking, Spike was sitting up, his back resting against the wall.
“’Lo, Dawn. You lumbered with the feed the vampire run again?”
“If you must know, there was some competition for this job.”
“Yes, of course. The whole house, desperate to pour pigs’ blood into the neutered vamp. I should have realised.”
The bitter edge to his voice saddened Dawn. No point in arguing, though. “If you want to think that, fine. Here’s your blood. And, for some reason, an onion.”
She was surprised at the enthusiasm with which he fell on both her offerings, but less surprised when he fell back, lids drifting down over his eyes. Still a ways to go, then.
**********
Three days before Christmas and he was striding across the cellar space when Andrew carried his blood down to him. This made it easier for him to turn, growling, when the idiot boy called him “Obi-Wan”. Andrew ran up the stairs faster than he’d come down them, and the empty mug remained all night on the floor by the cot, its dregs congealing slowly.
When Andrew told Buffy, she rolled her eyes.
**********
Two days before Christmas, Dawn reappeared with another girl in tow, barely older than a child and wearing a ridiculous hat to hide locks almost and vibrantly-coloured as Willow’s. This girl tentatively moved close enough to pick up the previous day’s dirty crocks and leapt back at least a yard when Spike turned to smile at her.
Dawn plumped down on the cot, which creaked alarmingly. Spike looked over her right shoulder, pointedly finding the washing machine fascinating. Dawn was not fooled.
“You’ve been down here days now. Why won’t you come up?”
“Don’t see as how I’m fit company for the likes of you and the bitty slayerettes, pet. I’m best off down here, licking my wounds in the dark.”
Right. Self-pity, ugly in anyone, is particularly unattractive in a vampire.
“Spike, I know you were badly hurt. But I can also see you’re getting better now. Why not come upstairs this evening? No sunlight, nothing to hurt you.”
“Just a pack of baby slayers. Nah, pet. I’ll stay here awhile longer if it’s all the same to you.” He closed his eyes and slumped down into the cot. The audience was clearly over.
**********
The day before Christmas, Dawn tried another tack. She went down alone, with no mug, no blood, no food. Spike glanced up at her and stared at his feet.
“Nice to see you, Bit. Gotta do some serious brooding here, though, so if there’s no food around for old Spike I’m best off left to myself.”
Dawn swept the sheets off the bed and off Spike, revealing, as she’d suspected, a pair of jeans below the naked torso. She sat down firmly next to him.
“I can see your wounds are closing up nicely now. So, how about a Christmas Eve trip upstairs to join the merry throng? There’s eggnog.”
“Bloody hell, Dawn. Never could stand that stuff. It’s slimy and sickly. Mulled wine, now, that could have tempted me. Not this modern crap, though.”
Dawn sensed an opening. “You mulled wine? When? With Drusilla?”
“Dru? No. She’d sometimes sprinkle cinnamon on her food while it was still alive, but mulled wine was too much effort for her. She liked to drink hot, direct from the artery. No, I’m thinking of when I was a boy. My old Dad used to have a metal thing he shoved in the fire - a boot, he called it - and he’d put the poker in it till it was glowing, then, hiss, straight into the wine or the cider. None of your pansy Yankee cider, mind you - this was the real stuff, scrumpy they said had a dead dog dissolved in it, mace and allspice floating in it. Or there was the punch he made, when his gentry friends visited, gin and lemons and lumps of sugar broken off the block with special cutters. Fragrant, it was, and he’d give me a taste, even when I was little.”
Relieved to have persuaded him to reminisce, Dawn encouraged Spike to talk. Some of it made little sense to her, stories of servants and mummers, yule logs and plum puddings, but some sounded oddly familiar.
After half an hour she felt she’d gleaned enough and told him she had to go. An expression of weariness and resignation passed over his face. “That’s fine, luv. You go. I’ll be fine down here by myself.”
So she went.
**********
On Christmas Day, Buffy went down into the cellar and stood, sizing up her vampire, for several minutes. He lay, eyes determinedly closed, as still as the dead. Which, of course, he was.
Buffy strode across to the cot, grabbed one edge and jerked it upwards. The rear edge hit the floor, followed almost at once by a heap of bedding and a very-much-awake vampire.
“What in buggering hell are you doing, Slayer!” he roared.
“Waking you up. I’m tired of waiting, Spike. It’s beyond time you came upstairs and joined the rest of the household. You don’t need to feel sorry for yourself in Technicolor any more.”
“What?” Spike jerked to his feet, brows corrugating and fangs starting to descend, “That’s bloody rich, that is! I spend God knows how long being tortured by your nemesis of the year, and this is the best you can do? Don’t come near me for days and then accuse me of self-pity? Just where do you get off, Buffy? You’ve had enough?”
“I have been busy, Mr Self-Righteous. I’ve had nests of those Bringers to clear out, that whole tunnel complex to seal off so your pal the First can’t use it any more!”
He glared at her and advanced a step, both hands clenched. “I see. So busy you couldn’t check in on the flotsam and jetsam you rescued, I suppose? Sorry to be an inconvenience, Slayer. Guess I’d best just stay here, out of your way, then.”
“Oh no you don’t, Mister. You want blood? You come and get it. You want company? Come upstairs and look for it.” Buffy turned on her heel and strode to the stairs, followed by an intensely angry vampire.
Still cursing, a range of exotic British language which was probably even worse than it sounded, though thankfully it meant little to almost everybody in the house, he climbed the stairs and stalked through the door and into the main room, ready to throw himself moodily down on the couch.
Waiting for him, however, was Dawn, a long glass of hot, scented, spicy wine in her hand. She guided him to the stuffed chair, where a mound of brightly-wrapped parcels waited for him. On a stool next to them was Buffy, a huge smile on her face. She was holding a plate, covered in oddly familiar delicacies. Where in hell did she find pork pie in Sunnydale?
“Happy Christmas, Spike!” A general chorus - for some reason six little girls not much older than Dawn were smiling at him too. The witch and the builder boy were grasping mugs of that disgusting eggnog stuff, but if it made them happy…
There was a tree. It had a strange mixture of decorations, from what must have been ornaments crafted by Buffy and Dawn in their childhoods to the red, half-burnt candles he remembered sorting out the previous year. There was sparkly tinsel.
He allowed himself to relax for the first time since beginning his slow recovery process. They actually did want him, part of their Christmas, or “Holidays” as these gormless Yanks insisted on saying.
As he gazed higher, to the top of the tree, he finally felt it was Christmas. There, at the very top. Amongst stars and glass bauble, the perfect finishing touch. There, on the final pinnacle, impaled on the topmost branch, a stick rammed up its arse as was right and proper, was the Angel.
Suddenly, all was well with his world. Peace on Earth was all very fine, but this was symbolic. And right. For the first time in a month, Spike smiled.
**********
Many thanks to sueworld2003 for maintaining this comm, and to all the writers, artists, creators, helpers and readers who make it such a good, festive experience. Comments feed my muse and are as crack to me...
This is a sort of sequel to my fic of last year and is set in S7 - I have slightly tinkered with the timeline, placing Showtime before the holiday season for the purposes of this story, which follows Buffy's return home with a very battered Spike.
Genfic, really, PG-13 at most, about 1,850 words.
Another Sodding Christmas
Six days before Christmas Buffy brought her vampire back home. She supported him down the steps to the cot still set up as it had been, though the sheets had been changed by Dawn when she’d realised where Buffy went after killing the uber-vamp.
Infinitely gently, Buffy lowered him down onto the bed. He was barely conscious by this time, wincing at every stage but his eyes closed, brows so low they almost covered his lashes, and his teeth gritted to prevent the escape of exclamations of pain.
Once he was horizontal she left him, sending Dawn down with a mug of blood and a straw. Buffy was shaking too much with delayed reaction to her battle and the shock of her discovery of Spike - not that she was quite prepared to admit the latter, even to herself.
Dawn tiptoed down the stairs and paused at the foot, staring at the battered figure on the cot. The smooth planes of his face were marred by purple lumps on his cheekbones and hugs red contusions round his eyes. Long red scars began at his neck and trailed down his chest and under the blue camouflage of the sheets. She dreaded to think what lay beyond that boundary.
She tiptoed closer, but not quietly enough to avoid waking him. A bleary eye opened, then the other, and he grunted. “’Lo, Bit. Got something for me there?”
Dawn pasted a glowing smile on her face. “Yes, I have blood in a mug. I just didn’t want to bother you if you were sleeping.”
Mutely, he extended a hand, taking the mug. On its way to his moth it was shaking, though, so she grasped the base to guide it more accurately, and steered the straw itself between his swollen lips.
He gulped down the entire half-pint, then fell back, exhausted by the effort, paper-thin purple eyelids closed and his skin whiter than ever except where the bruises and cut-marks trailed livid evidence across the surface.
Dawn stood quietly and left him to sleep.
**********
Five days before Christmas Dawn visited him again, once more carrying a mug with a straw. He barely raised his head enough to gulp down the blood, and fell back, exhausted, as soon as the mug was empty. Dawn sat by his side a little while, making empty conversation.
“It doesn’t seem like a year since we did all that Christmas stuff for Buffy. Do you remember? That funny pie with meat in it and salty jelly stuff round the filling. Tasted kinda good really. It would be good to do something like that again this year, do you think?”
No reply. None expected, really. She went back upstairs.
**********
The vampire healing had begun to kick in by four days before Christmas. When Dawn went down to see the cellar dweller, carefully carrying the mug and balancing a plate with some weird spicy onion thing Andrew had insisted on her taking, Spike was sitting up, his back resting against the wall.
“’Lo, Dawn. You lumbered with the feed the vampire run again?”
“If you must know, there was some competition for this job.”
“Yes, of course. The whole house, desperate to pour pigs’ blood into the neutered vamp. I should have realised.”
The bitter edge to his voice saddened Dawn. No point in arguing, though. “If you want to think that, fine. Here’s your blood. And, for some reason, an onion.”
She was surprised at the enthusiasm with which he fell on both her offerings, but less surprised when he fell back, lids drifting down over his eyes. Still a ways to go, then.
**********
Three days before Christmas and he was striding across the cellar space when Andrew carried his blood down to him. This made it easier for him to turn, growling, when the idiot boy called him “Obi-Wan”. Andrew ran up the stairs faster than he’d come down them, and the empty mug remained all night on the floor by the cot, its dregs congealing slowly.
When Andrew told Buffy, she rolled her eyes.
**********
Two days before Christmas, Dawn reappeared with another girl in tow, barely older than a child and wearing a ridiculous hat to hide locks almost and vibrantly-coloured as Willow’s. This girl tentatively moved close enough to pick up the previous day’s dirty crocks and leapt back at least a yard when Spike turned to smile at her.
Dawn plumped down on the cot, which creaked alarmingly. Spike looked over her right shoulder, pointedly finding the washing machine fascinating. Dawn was not fooled.
“You’ve been down here days now. Why won’t you come up?”
“Don’t see as how I’m fit company for the likes of you and the bitty slayerettes, pet. I’m best off down here, licking my wounds in the dark.”
Right. Self-pity, ugly in anyone, is particularly unattractive in a vampire.
“Spike, I know you were badly hurt. But I can also see you’re getting better now. Why not come upstairs this evening? No sunlight, nothing to hurt you.”
“Just a pack of baby slayers. Nah, pet. I’ll stay here awhile longer if it’s all the same to you.” He closed his eyes and slumped down into the cot. The audience was clearly over.
**********
The day before Christmas, Dawn tried another tack. She went down alone, with no mug, no blood, no food. Spike glanced up at her and stared at his feet.
“Nice to see you, Bit. Gotta do some serious brooding here, though, so if there’s no food around for old Spike I’m best off left to myself.”
Dawn swept the sheets off the bed and off Spike, revealing, as she’d suspected, a pair of jeans below the naked torso. She sat down firmly next to him.
“I can see your wounds are closing up nicely now. So, how about a Christmas Eve trip upstairs to join the merry throng? There’s eggnog.”
“Bloody hell, Dawn. Never could stand that stuff. It’s slimy and sickly. Mulled wine, now, that could have tempted me. Not this modern crap, though.”
Dawn sensed an opening. “You mulled wine? When? With Drusilla?”
“Dru? No. She’d sometimes sprinkle cinnamon on her food while it was still alive, but mulled wine was too much effort for her. She liked to drink hot, direct from the artery. No, I’m thinking of when I was a boy. My old Dad used to have a metal thing he shoved in the fire - a boot, he called it - and he’d put the poker in it till it was glowing, then, hiss, straight into the wine or the cider. None of your pansy Yankee cider, mind you - this was the real stuff, scrumpy they said had a dead dog dissolved in it, mace and allspice floating in it. Or there was the punch he made, when his gentry friends visited, gin and lemons and lumps of sugar broken off the block with special cutters. Fragrant, it was, and he’d give me a taste, even when I was little.”
Relieved to have persuaded him to reminisce, Dawn encouraged Spike to talk. Some of it made little sense to her, stories of servants and mummers, yule logs and plum puddings, but some sounded oddly familiar.
After half an hour she felt she’d gleaned enough and told him she had to go. An expression of weariness and resignation passed over his face. “That’s fine, luv. You go. I’ll be fine down here by myself.”
So she went.
**********
On Christmas Day, Buffy went down into the cellar and stood, sizing up her vampire, for several minutes. He lay, eyes determinedly closed, as still as the dead. Which, of course, he was.
Buffy strode across to the cot, grabbed one edge and jerked it upwards. The rear edge hit the floor, followed almost at once by a heap of bedding and a very-much-awake vampire.
“What in buggering hell are you doing, Slayer!” he roared.
“Waking you up. I’m tired of waiting, Spike. It’s beyond time you came upstairs and joined the rest of the household. You don’t need to feel sorry for yourself in Technicolor any more.”
“What?” Spike jerked to his feet, brows corrugating and fangs starting to descend, “That’s bloody rich, that is! I spend God knows how long being tortured by your nemesis of the year, and this is the best you can do? Don’t come near me for days and then accuse me of self-pity? Just where do you get off, Buffy? You’ve had enough?”
“I have been busy, Mr Self-Righteous. I’ve had nests of those Bringers to clear out, that whole tunnel complex to seal off so your pal the First can’t use it any more!”
He glared at her and advanced a step, both hands clenched. “I see. So busy you couldn’t check in on the flotsam and jetsam you rescued, I suppose? Sorry to be an inconvenience, Slayer. Guess I’d best just stay here, out of your way, then.”
“Oh no you don’t, Mister. You want blood? You come and get it. You want company? Come upstairs and look for it.” Buffy turned on her heel and strode to the stairs, followed by an intensely angry vampire.
Still cursing, a range of exotic British language which was probably even worse than it sounded, though thankfully it meant little to almost everybody in the house, he climbed the stairs and stalked through the door and into the main room, ready to throw himself moodily down on the couch.
Waiting for him, however, was Dawn, a long glass of hot, scented, spicy wine in her hand. She guided him to the stuffed chair, where a mound of brightly-wrapped parcels waited for him. On a stool next to them was Buffy, a huge smile on her face. She was holding a plate, covered in oddly familiar delicacies. Where in hell did she find pork pie in Sunnydale?
“Happy Christmas, Spike!” A general chorus - for some reason six little girls not much older than Dawn were smiling at him too. The witch and the builder boy were grasping mugs of that disgusting eggnog stuff, but if it made them happy…
There was a tree. It had a strange mixture of decorations, from what must have been ornaments crafted by Buffy and Dawn in their childhoods to the red, half-burnt candles he remembered sorting out the previous year. There was sparkly tinsel.
He allowed himself to relax for the first time since beginning his slow recovery process. They actually did want him, part of their Christmas, or “Holidays” as these gormless Yanks insisted on saying.
As he gazed higher, to the top of the tree, he finally felt it was Christmas. There, at the very top. Amongst stars and glass bauble, the perfect finishing touch. There, on the final pinnacle, impaled on the topmost branch, a stick rammed up its arse as was right and proper, was the Angel.
Suddenly, all was well with his world. Peace on Earth was all very fine, but this was symbolic. And right. For the first time in a month, Spike smiled.
**********
Many thanks to sueworld2003 for maintaining this comm, and to all the writers, artists, creators, helpers and readers who make it such a good, festive experience. Comments feed my muse and are as crack to me...