Words for the Girl : B/S
Title: Words for the Girl
Series: Birthday fics, moscow_watcher
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence
Setting: Not Fade Away
Word Count: 2,082 words
Disclaimer: Angel the Series was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: When asked how he was going to spend his last night on Earth, no one believe him when he told them "poetry reading."
I knew her well, or as well as could be.
Golden, beautiful, young, and caged.
Destiny burned her and happiness spurned her,
But I saw her smilin’.
She saw me, too, or said she did,
Though my road would end in fire,
Though I cut her deep, made her hurt,
Though I did nothin’ but make her cry.
It turned out that reading poetry dictating your newly incestuous, newly vampiric mother’s vampiric and incestuous ways didn’t go down well, even in the seediest of bars. Between street gangs and biker gangs, he would have expected that at least one of them would have had the good decency to recognize the little dash of humor there was to be found when putting the stake to your own mother, especially when she was asking for one and you were giving her the other.
Well, now, that thought was more disturbing than he would have expected.
She hit me then, like a fire axe.
Burned a church around me.
I couldn’t walk, so torn was I,
And later learned I was blind.
‘Twas love, what pointed out my love,
Love and bitter betrayal.
Pains of loss were but aches of freedom,
Waxy through the bottom of a bottle.
Rhymes turned out to be less important than he would have originally believed, and it was but a certain level of dedication to his earliest works that he had managed something effulgent. There was the one bloke sitting up front with tears in his eyes, though whether it was his current work or remnants from his previous one, Spike didn’t care to know. There weren’t a lot of things that could make grown men cry-it felt a little like he was starting to cover all of them tonight. One way to spend your last night on Earth, at the very least.
My love was war-I did not know!
I followed her in circles.
Might I find my love, my love?
Or will this end in blood?
I need not breathe, but I lost my breath,
Her mercy, or perhaps impatience.
Her blade on my kind, I existed still,
For better or for worse.
‘Til hunger pains took me,
Weakness dropped me.
She saw me through naught but a scowl,
But I was not the same man.
Yet I was still not a man,
Not yet, not then.
A monster, more, violent and cruel,
And just a spark of something more.
There was a shape in the corner, in the back. And he didn’t know what it was, but just looking at it made him feel irritated. Rotund bottom, and branching lines at the top, like some kind of hardwood, fat-trunked tree. It almost made him want to hop down off the stage and run across the room and punch the bird-stealing bastard in the-
It hit me then, like a fire axe.
Fried my tomb around me.
I couldn’t think, so lost was I,
Because no longer was I blind.
Do you see my love, my love?
In my unbeating heart?
Would you see me differently,
If I could change for you?
She could not, and she did not try,
But she did spare me a thought.
She trusted me, dark thing I was,
And ever would still be.
I climbed, she climbed, I fell, she fell,
But she proved less durable.
I rose up, yet she did not,
She gave herself to the world.
He cleared his throat. He specifically did not think about her torn knuckles, or her torn fingers, or the thousands of times he saved her, even if he didn’t do it when it counted. He didn’t think about all the ways he could have gotten back up that spire, owing all to his enhanced constitution, and he didn’t think of the weeks when the world was without her.
Instead, he glared at that shape in the corner, which shifted almost nervously. He didn’t stop reading-that wasn’t about to happen. Not when he had the audience eating out of his hand like this.
Yet the world would not turn without her,
And back, she came, to me.
But not for me, and not for them,
And not for herself, either.
For no good reason, her rest aborted.
No reason, that is, but humanity.
I had none, which served me well,
When she looked deader than I.
‘Not fair,’ said she, ‘this awful place.
Sharp and bright and loud.’
She had seen a better place,
Better, for its lack of me.
Yet the world still turned, with her in it,
Even if she wished it not.
Her mind was closed, her body not,
Her warmth did fight my cold.
Someone in the front cleared his throat and shifted forward eagerly in his seat. He thought it perhaps above himself to chuckle and roll his eyes at this point, considering the subject matter, but he did it anyway. Despite the rapt attention, it still earned him a little light laughter in the room.
The shape in the corner shifted again, moving a little closer to the exit, but it didn’t disappear entirely.
It couldn’t last, this lovely thing,
Not a man, was I.
She gave less than what I sought,
I took more than she could give.
Will you be my love, my love?
The Almirena to my Rinaldo?
Can’t I take a little more,
Surely no more than you’ve given me?
‘Twas wrong to take, this thing I took,
I knew it then and know it now.
So I left, a line to burnin’ sands,
To find something to return.
I found it, though it burned me so,
Burned a pit deep in my chest.
‘Twas gone so long, I had forgotten,
The way it roiled and hurt.
Will you accept my love, my love?
Now I’m less a monster, more a man?
Love has flayed my form anew,
All that remains is crying William.
Yet Will I’m not, for he’s long dead,
And still a monster am I.
Dark begets dark, as I ever knew,
Though I pretended otherwise.
I had changed, but she had, too,
For she was smilin’ again.
They went my way-I did not know!
Not all gifts must be returned.
It could not last-it never does,
This thing we’d made ourselves.
Another time and place, I wonder what
It might have been.
Love me for my love, my love,
Even as I’m burnin’.
It’s in my heart, burnin’, beatin’,
‘Round my neck and seethin’.
Now she’s gone-not dead, but gone,
For our time was fleetin’.
She never knew-not true, she did,
Which is all I could’ve wanted.
A man I am, due to my love, my love,
A gift I can’t repay.
A woman you are, as ever you were,
My wrongness did not change it.
Carry with you my love, my love,
For soon I’ll be burnin’ again.
More fights for you, just one for me,
On this, my dyin’ day.
There was no guitar riff to announce the end of a work of poetry, and he was well enough out of practice that he wasn’t sure he knew how to communicate that fact. Instead, he just stacked his note cards together and tucked them in his jacket pocket, and he was halfway off the stage by the time the crowd got it.
There was cheering-there was no doubt about the cheering. Even as he made it down the steps, shouldering through the congratulating bikers immediately in his path, he could barely make out one shout of approval over another. He saw that shape still, though, making a beeline now for the entrance, and it was two seconds later that Spike was kicking the doors all but down, letting them swing open into the warm air outside.
The air felt wrong. Of course it felt wrong, because the world was about to go very wrong. Apocalypse business and all that, yeah? The world could only end one, in all fairness, even if it could try a thousand times.
He could smell it-that familiar smell. That smell that made him want to punch a bastard in the mouth, and Spike was down the side alley like lightning, spotting his quarry before it could even realize that the alley ended in a dead end.
Un-buh-luddy-lievable.
The chaos demon cleared his throat, looking awkward in his cheap suit and his antlers spanning at least three feet up and out, a bottle in a paper bag in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other.
“Um. Hey, dude.”
Spike grinned, tonguing his canines and taking a few steps toward the tall demon. Despite the clear size difference, it shrank back, pressing in a little tighter to the chain-link fence keeping it boxed in.
“Hey, uh, great job on that reading,” the demon went on. “You-you really know how to jerk on the heart strings.”
“Nice o’ you to say, Roger Price,” Spike drawled, taking position at the center of the alleyway-perfect spot to keep the demon from darting past-and tugging his lighter out of his pocket. “Never thought I’d see your pretty jowls again.”
“Heh, aha, ha, that’s, uh-funny. You’re a funny guy.”
It couldn’t have been anymore deadpan than if the chaos demon had actually been a dead pan. Spike lit one of his last cigarettes and took a long draw, barely even feeling the change as he put on his game face.
“So,” Spike went on, blowing out a puff and grinning darkly, “what’s a chaos demon like you doin’ in a dive like this?”
“Oh, you know,” the demon said, looking everywhere but at him, “I thought I’d drop by the Hellmouth. Um, see if there were any goods to get in on while I was doing the tourist thing. Did you know it’s a big crater now?”
“You don’t say.”
“Yeah, awful, I know. So much for my cut of the blood of seven virgins, but, uh, what’re you gonna do?”
“What, indeed?”
The demon swallowed hard and took a harder sip of the bottle in one hand before glancing back at the fence nervously. All fairness, he could probably tear through in just a second or so, with well enough time to get lost before Spike could catch up to him. Still, Spike had always prided himself on being able to intimidate, and intimidated, the chaos demon was.
“So, you know, I thought I might drop by here, see if there was anything fun to do.”
“And?”
“Oh! Well, there’s a pretty big triumvirate with holdings here, so I managed to work out a deal with some of their underlings. Some Circle of the Black Corn, or something like that.”
“You mean Thorn?” Spike asked incredulously. The chaos demon raised the skin where he would typically have eyebrows before grinning and chuckling to himself.
“I thought that sounded weird!” he said, shaking his head and taking another draught. “I swear, slime in the ears? Makes it hard to hear sometimes.” He sighed, still shaking his head, and then apparently remembered that he was staring down an angry vampire whose girlfriend he had stolen this one time. “So, uh, what’s going on with you?”
“Well, there’s a pretty big triumvirate with holdin’s here, so I’m gonna go about killin’ them and everyone who works with’em.”
The chaos demon had enough time to blink before Spike crossed the distance between them and took hold of one of its antlers and kicked it in the chest. The antler snapped off, and the chaos demon yelped in pain.
“I knew a girl, once,” Spike went on while the chaos demon stumbled away clumsily. “Made me a better person, she did. A person, at the very least. All that not caring turned into a little caring, so now, here I am, givin’ a damn what happens to this old world. And for more’n the meals on legs, you see?”
“I see!” the chaos demon squealed. “I’m sorry I stole your girlfriend!”
“My wha-oh! Ha! That’s-no, that’s fine, mate, best thing that ever happened to me, really.”
The demon blinked, standing up straight with one hand still clamped over the bleeding stump where its antler used to be.
“It-it is?” he asked.
“Damn straight, Bullwinkle,” he said.
He turned, holding up and admiring the dismembered antler, before turning a wicked grin back on the chaos demon.
“Now, be a good little bad guy and bend over.”
That was about as obliquely Buffy/Spike as it could be and still be Buffy/Spike. Still, it's a first, and it's far from my standard fare, so it took me longer than it should have.
And now, whatever I write, be it narrative or breakdowns like this, I have to force myself not to do it with poetic rhythm ticking away in my head.
Happy belated birthday, moscow_watcher.
Really, really hope you liked it.
All the best.
Poetry is a game of loser-take-all.
-Jean-Luc Godard
Series: Birthday fics, moscow_watcher
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence
Setting: Not Fade Away
Word Count: 2,082 words
Disclaimer: Angel the Series was created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All characters, places, and events are the property of the aforementioned and Twentieth Century Fox.
Summary: When asked how he was going to spend his last night on Earth, no one believe him when he told them "poetry reading."
I knew her well, or as well as could be.
Golden, beautiful, young, and caged.
Destiny burned her and happiness spurned her,
But I saw her smilin’.
She saw me, too, or said she did,
Though my road would end in fire,
Though I cut her deep, made her hurt,
Though I did nothin’ but make her cry.
It turned out that reading poetry dictating your newly incestuous, newly vampiric mother’s vampiric and incestuous ways didn’t go down well, even in the seediest of bars. Between street gangs and biker gangs, he would have expected that at least one of them would have had the good decency to recognize the little dash of humor there was to be found when putting the stake to your own mother, especially when she was asking for one and you were giving her the other.
Well, now, that thought was more disturbing than he would have expected.
She hit me then, like a fire axe.
Burned a church around me.
I couldn’t walk, so torn was I,
And later learned I was blind.
‘Twas love, what pointed out my love,
Love and bitter betrayal.
Pains of loss were but aches of freedom,
Waxy through the bottom of a bottle.
Rhymes turned out to be less important than he would have originally believed, and it was but a certain level of dedication to his earliest works that he had managed something effulgent. There was the one bloke sitting up front with tears in his eyes, though whether it was his current work or remnants from his previous one, Spike didn’t care to know. There weren’t a lot of things that could make grown men cry-it felt a little like he was starting to cover all of them tonight. One way to spend your last night on Earth, at the very least.
My love was war-I did not know!
I followed her in circles.
Might I find my love, my love?
Or will this end in blood?
I need not breathe, but I lost my breath,
Her mercy, or perhaps impatience.
Her blade on my kind, I existed still,
For better or for worse.
‘Til hunger pains took me,
Weakness dropped me.
She saw me through naught but a scowl,
But I was not the same man.
Yet I was still not a man,
Not yet, not then.
A monster, more, violent and cruel,
And just a spark of something more.
There was a shape in the corner, in the back. And he didn’t know what it was, but just looking at it made him feel irritated. Rotund bottom, and branching lines at the top, like some kind of hardwood, fat-trunked tree. It almost made him want to hop down off the stage and run across the room and punch the bird-stealing bastard in the-
It hit me then, like a fire axe.
Fried my tomb around me.
I couldn’t think, so lost was I,
Because no longer was I blind.
Do you see my love, my love?
In my unbeating heart?
Would you see me differently,
If I could change for you?
She could not, and she did not try,
But she did spare me a thought.
She trusted me, dark thing I was,
And ever would still be.
I climbed, she climbed, I fell, she fell,
But she proved less durable.
I rose up, yet she did not,
She gave herself to the world.
He cleared his throat. He specifically did not think about her torn knuckles, or her torn fingers, or the thousands of times he saved her, even if he didn’t do it when it counted. He didn’t think about all the ways he could have gotten back up that spire, owing all to his enhanced constitution, and he didn’t think of the weeks when the world was without her.
Instead, he glared at that shape in the corner, which shifted almost nervously. He didn’t stop reading-that wasn’t about to happen. Not when he had the audience eating out of his hand like this.
Yet the world would not turn without her,
And back, she came, to me.
But not for me, and not for them,
And not for herself, either.
For no good reason, her rest aborted.
No reason, that is, but humanity.
I had none, which served me well,
When she looked deader than I.
‘Not fair,’ said she, ‘this awful place.
Sharp and bright and loud.’
She had seen a better place,
Better, for its lack of me.
Yet the world still turned, with her in it,
Even if she wished it not.
Her mind was closed, her body not,
Her warmth did fight my cold.
Someone in the front cleared his throat and shifted forward eagerly in his seat. He thought it perhaps above himself to chuckle and roll his eyes at this point, considering the subject matter, but he did it anyway. Despite the rapt attention, it still earned him a little light laughter in the room.
The shape in the corner shifted again, moving a little closer to the exit, but it didn’t disappear entirely.
It couldn’t last, this lovely thing,
Not a man, was I.
She gave less than what I sought,
I took more than she could give.
Will you be my love, my love?
The Almirena to my Rinaldo?
Can’t I take a little more,
Surely no more than you’ve given me?
‘Twas wrong to take, this thing I took,
I knew it then and know it now.
So I left, a line to burnin’ sands,
To find something to return.
I found it, though it burned me so,
Burned a pit deep in my chest.
‘Twas gone so long, I had forgotten,
The way it roiled and hurt.
Will you accept my love, my love?
Now I’m less a monster, more a man?
Love has flayed my form anew,
All that remains is crying William.
Yet Will I’m not, for he’s long dead,
And still a monster am I.
Dark begets dark, as I ever knew,
Though I pretended otherwise.
I had changed, but she had, too,
For she was smilin’ again.
They went my way-I did not know!
Not all gifts must be returned.
It could not last-it never does,
This thing we’d made ourselves.
Another time and place, I wonder what
It might have been.
Love me for my love, my love,
Even as I’m burnin’.
It’s in my heart, burnin’, beatin’,
‘Round my neck and seethin’.
Now she’s gone-not dead, but gone,
For our time was fleetin’.
She never knew-not true, she did,
Which is all I could’ve wanted.
A man I am, due to my love, my love,
A gift I can’t repay.
A woman you are, as ever you were,
My wrongness did not change it.
Carry with you my love, my love,
For soon I’ll be burnin’ again.
More fights for you, just one for me,
On this, my dyin’ day.
There was no guitar riff to announce the end of a work of poetry, and he was well enough out of practice that he wasn’t sure he knew how to communicate that fact. Instead, he just stacked his note cards together and tucked them in his jacket pocket, and he was halfway off the stage by the time the crowd got it.
There was cheering-there was no doubt about the cheering. Even as he made it down the steps, shouldering through the congratulating bikers immediately in his path, he could barely make out one shout of approval over another. He saw that shape still, though, making a beeline now for the entrance, and it was two seconds later that Spike was kicking the doors all but down, letting them swing open into the warm air outside.
The air felt wrong. Of course it felt wrong, because the world was about to go very wrong. Apocalypse business and all that, yeah? The world could only end one, in all fairness, even if it could try a thousand times.
He could smell it-that familiar smell. That smell that made him want to punch a bastard in the mouth, and Spike was down the side alley like lightning, spotting his quarry before it could even realize that the alley ended in a dead end.
Un-buh-luddy-lievable.
The chaos demon cleared his throat, looking awkward in his cheap suit and his antlers spanning at least three feet up and out, a bottle in a paper bag in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other.
“Um. Hey, dude.”
Spike grinned, tonguing his canines and taking a few steps toward the tall demon. Despite the clear size difference, it shrank back, pressing in a little tighter to the chain-link fence keeping it boxed in.
“Hey, uh, great job on that reading,” the demon went on. “You-you really know how to jerk on the heart strings.”
“Nice o’ you to say, Roger Price,” Spike drawled, taking position at the center of the alleyway-perfect spot to keep the demon from darting past-and tugging his lighter out of his pocket. “Never thought I’d see your pretty jowls again.”
“Heh, aha, ha, that’s, uh-funny. You’re a funny guy.”
It couldn’t have been anymore deadpan than if the chaos demon had actually been a dead pan. Spike lit one of his last cigarettes and took a long draw, barely even feeling the change as he put on his game face.
“So,” Spike went on, blowing out a puff and grinning darkly, “what’s a chaos demon like you doin’ in a dive like this?”
“Oh, you know,” the demon said, looking everywhere but at him, “I thought I’d drop by the Hellmouth. Um, see if there were any goods to get in on while I was doing the tourist thing. Did you know it’s a big crater now?”
“You don’t say.”
“Yeah, awful, I know. So much for my cut of the blood of seven virgins, but, uh, what’re you gonna do?”
“What, indeed?”
The demon swallowed hard and took a harder sip of the bottle in one hand before glancing back at the fence nervously. All fairness, he could probably tear through in just a second or so, with well enough time to get lost before Spike could catch up to him. Still, Spike had always prided himself on being able to intimidate, and intimidated, the chaos demon was.
“So, you know, I thought I might drop by here, see if there was anything fun to do.”
“And?”
“Oh! Well, there’s a pretty big triumvirate with holdings here, so I managed to work out a deal with some of their underlings. Some Circle of the Black Corn, or something like that.”
“You mean Thorn?” Spike asked incredulously. The chaos demon raised the skin where he would typically have eyebrows before grinning and chuckling to himself.
“I thought that sounded weird!” he said, shaking his head and taking another draught. “I swear, slime in the ears? Makes it hard to hear sometimes.” He sighed, still shaking his head, and then apparently remembered that he was staring down an angry vampire whose girlfriend he had stolen this one time. “So, uh, what’s going on with you?”
“Well, there’s a pretty big triumvirate with holdin’s here, so I’m gonna go about killin’ them and everyone who works with’em.”
The chaos demon had enough time to blink before Spike crossed the distance between them and took hold of one of its antlers and kicked it in the chest. The antler snapped off, and the chaos demon yelped in pain.
“I knew a girl, once,” Spike went on while the chaos demon stumbled away clumsily. “Made me a better person, she did. A person, at the very least. All that not caring turned into a little caring, so now, here I am, givin’ a damn what happens to this old world. And for more’n the meals on legs, you see?”
“I see!” the chaos demon squealed. “I’m sorry I stole your girlfriend!”
“My wha-oh! Ha! That’s-no, that’s fine, mate, best thing that ever happened to me, really.”
The demon blinked, standing up straight with one hand still clamped over the bleeding stump where its antler used to be.
“It-it is?” he asked.
“Damn straight, Bullwinkle,” he said.
He turned, holding up and admiring the dismembered antler, before turning a wicked grin back on the chaos demon.
“Now, be a good little bad guy and bend over.”
That was about as obliquely Buffy/Spike as it could be and still be Buffy/Spike. Still, it's a first, and it's far from my standard fare, so it took me longer than it should have.
And now, whatever I write, be it narrative or breakdowns like this, I have to force myself not to do it with poetic rhythm ticking away in my head.
Happy belated birthday, moscow_watcher.
Really, really hope you liked it.
All the best.
Poetry is a game of loser-take-all.
-Jean-Luc Godard