Play It Again, Sam. Part 9
First I have to say thank you to spikefan for the lovely card that arrived this morning! :hugs::
I know this is probably not the best time for posting fic, but I thought that people might want a short respite from the christmas rush, so I'm posting anyway! :)
Many thanks to lillianmorgan for betaing! Previouslies here.
Part 9
Standing outside the restaurant, they were wondering where to go.
“Why don’t we go to that demon bar Lorne recommended?” Nina asked.
Riley frowned. “I’m not really keen on demon bars,” he said.
Angel thought for a moment. “It’s nothing like Willy’s, if that’s what you’re worried about. This one’s got less violence than the human ones.”
Sam looked surprised. “Really? The few I’ve seen in South America seemed to exist for that sole purpose.”
Angel chuckled. “You forget that this is LA. I don’t know if Lorne told you, but he used to run a karaoke bar, before he started to work for me. Mixed clientele, but very nice. Has a good nose for these places.”
Sam seemed to make up her mind. “Well, why don’t we go have a look, it’s worth a try, anyway. Right darling?” Riley nodded.
Seeing the blond head at the bar, Angel nearly turned round and out of the door, but it seemed that Spike had already sensed him, and looked over his shoulder at the party.
“Welcome, my ladies and gentlemen. One hopes the evening progressed with full satisfaction on all sides?”
Since the others obviously didn’t know what to make of this, Angel thought he’d better do something.
He walked up to the bar and said quietly, “Spike, could you tone it down just for tonight? And - what’s with the Queen’s english?”
Whiskey-soaked eyes looked at him. “Just been takin’ a little trip down memory lane, mate. How are you doin’?”
Before Angel could answer, Sam came up to them. “Spike, why don’t you come and sit with us?”
Noticing the look Angel sent him, she hesitated a bit. “Only if you want to, of course...”
Spike smiled warmly and got off the stool.
What a girl! She had a problem, she met it head on! He liked her more at every turn!
“Sure, pet. You know, why couldn’t Buffy have had friends like you, all nice and polite. The nicest thing Xander ever called me was probably ‘Dead boy’. Although it might have been a vampire-thing, couldn’t stand you either, Peaches, from what I heard.”
Sitting down at the table, Spike grinned.
“He sure dated an awful lot of demons, considering how demonophobic he was. Although it was nearly worth his insults, just to witness when he nearly ended up as a demon-bride. The dear demon was obviously tempted - but then Xander always had that special something, didn’t he?... You know what I mean!” he said, looking pointedly at Angel.
Thankfully at that moment, Nina, unable to follow the thread of the conversation, looked at Sam and asked, “Didn’t you say that Spike used to date Buffy too?”
Sam smiled: “So he did!”
The two girls, well tuned into each other at this point, turned to Spike in unison.
“So, how did you first meet Buffy?” Nina asked.
“We don’t really want to be nosy,” Sam continued, “but, when are we going to meet someone who dated the Slayer again? And Angel and Riley seem all fed up now. We just want to get a different perspective.”
Spike looked from one pretty girl to the other, and knew he was lost. From the glance he threw at Riley and Angel, they had given up a long time ago, and seemed to have decided that getting drunk was the way to go. Well, he would give the little ladies something to chew on!
Taking a small sip of his drink, Spike leaned back in his chair, and cast his mind back. “Well, it must have been in the Autumn of ‘97, when Dru and I first arrived.”
At the blank looks, he explained. “My ex-girlfriend. She was sick and I hoped that the Hellmouth could restore her. Unfortunately there was a Slayer-problem, and having killed two, I thought I might as well make it three. The Anointed One was dead keen, what with St. Vigeous coming up that Saturday. Supposed to give vampires added strength or some rubbish like that, so it seemed like an opportune time.”
Smiling at the girls, he continued. “So I went to have a look at this Slayer. Found her in The Bronze - the local club - and lured her outside. Set a minion on her, that she despatched in no time. Always a brilliant fighter, she was.”
He stopped for a second to savour the memory. “Anyway, I complimented her on her nice work, and told her I was going to kill her on Saturday!”
He paused again. Had he fallen in love with her that night? There had been something, a connection of some kind... what was that Pylean word Fred has used to describe Angel and Cordy? Kye-something? No, that was the hero bit... ‘Moira’ that was it! ‘The gut physical attraction between two larger than life souls.’
He smiled and looked up at his audience. Sam and Nina were watching him expectantly, Riley was studying him with an odd look on his face and Angel tried to look bored.
“So - what happened on the Saturday?” Sam asked.
Spike chuckled. “Well, not much. I’m not known for my patience, and decided to crash parent-teacher night on the thursday instead. It went quite well actually, and I nearly got the better of her, until her Mum hit me over the head with an axe!”
This made the men sit up.
“Joyce hit you with an axe?” Angel asked in disbelief.
“That she did!” Spike said proudly. “Like daughter, like mother. Damn fine woman, Joyce was. Still miss her sometimes. Used to go round for a cuppa and a chat on a regular basis before she died.”
Now they were all looking at him as though he had fallen down from the moon. This was turning out even better than he had expected.
Angel found his voice first.
“Joyce - invited you in for drinks and chats?”
Spike looked at him levelly. “So? Just because she didn’t like you! I didn’t go around terrorising her just because I was evil! As a matter of fact Buffy brought her and the Bit round for me to look after, when Glory threatened them. We watched Passions.”
Sam lit up. “I used to love that,” she said, before realising that Riley and Angel seemed paralysed.
Spike emptied his drink. “So, yeah, that’s how Buffy and I met. Anything else you want to know?”
Sam was thinking, a cute little frown on her face. “So how did you get from wanting to kill each other to dating?”
Spike smiled ruefully. “Never dated her really. But I guess the change was due to the chip.”
Nina looked confused. “What chip? And how could a chip make you fall in love?”
Spike’s face was such a picture of shock, that Angel had to suppress a laugh. Gratefully he gave Nina’s hand a squeeze.
Trying to compose himself, Spike briefly explained about the Initiative, how he was defanged and started working with the Slayer.
By the looks on the girls’ faces, they wanted more, and thinking that it was actually quite a funny story if edited appropriately, he told the story of Buffy’s day from hell - complete with mummy hand - and the ‘date’ that followed.
The girls were lapping it up, while Angel and Riley wore matching expressions of disbelief. Nina and Sam were delighted with the tale and asked for more. So, inwardly sighing, he related a few more carefully selected and pared-down tales from Sunnydale - Olaf the troll, Buffy’s 21st birthday, when they couldn’t leave the house, the kid with the magical jacket and some of the ensuing high-jinks - so they would feel like they had learnt something about life on the Hellmouth and his and Buffy’s ‘relationship’ and stop asking questions.
It was getting very difficult to keep the sex and the pain out.
Listening to Spike, Angel began to feel increasingly ‘wigged’. It was a terrible phrase, but sometimes Buffy’s vocabulary managed to capture things very well. He knew that Buffy had been sleeping with Spike, but there seemed to be more to it. And the way Spike spoke about her - it was like they had some special little world the rest of them knew nothing about.
More telling still, was the fact that he was doing it completely unconsciously, which meant that it had been part of his worldview for such a long time, that he didn’t even notice anymore. Also Angel could tell that there were a lot of things Spike was avoiding, and again he found himself wondering what had happened between the bleached wonder and his first love.
Desperately wanting to change the subject, he cut in. “The Anointed One you mentioned earlier - what happened to him?”
Spike, obviously relieved, gratefully replied. “Well, he was quite probably the most annoying kid I have ever come across - all chanting and rituals and ‘Who shall wear the Master’s mantle?’ Wasn’t pleased when I failed to kill the Slayer, so I made him go for a walk in the sunshine.”
Angel was interested now. “Really? Wasn’t he supposed to have special strength or something?”
Spike grinned. “Yeah, Dru saw power in him, but hey, he was littler than me, so tough luck.”
Angel leaned forward. “Can I ask something else? How did you find The Judge?”
With the conversation steered toward general demon-related issues, Riley was soon joining in.
Sam sighed and looked at Nina. “Can’t leave the job behind, can they? This is like our first holiday in years, and here he is talking about demons! Let’s have some music.”
She turned round in her chair to the jukebox in the corner. “Any preferences?”
Nina smiled innocently. “See if they have ‘Mandy’”.
Spike was on a roll. He’d never thought that he could ever have a good time with Buffy’s two exes, but tonight had proven him wrong. The three of them were now sat at the bar, mainly to get away from the girls, who were bonding with hitherto unseen speed. It was when they had started discussing their respective proms, that the boys had up and left.
Away from the girls, Spike - remembering an earlier ‘misunderstanding’ - had explained to Riley, and at some length, that he had in fact not been ‘The Doctor’! And that this infamous ‘Doctor’ was probably the butt-ugly demon who had promised Spike a great deal of money for harbouring the eggs. Riley, drunk enough to apologise, had then asked what had happened to the real doctor.
“Well since he wasn’t going to pay me, I killed him!” Spike had replied, before ordering another round.
The conversation had then turned to less personal matters, and they were now discussing demon-quirks.
“...and then it grew a new head!” Angel was saying. “So I chopped that off - and then it grew another one!”
Spike sat up. “Oh, like that alien in Men In Black?”
A blank look.
“Never mind,” he huffed and looked deeply into the amber depths of his drink. Practically the same colour as a vampire’s eyes or...
“Riley!”
The soldier slowly turned his head to look at him.
“Remember that time Giles turned into a Fyarl-demon?”
The man chuckled. “That was... ok, that was fun. Buffy nearly killed him you know! It was the annoyed look in his eyes that finally made her recognise him.”
Spike grinned and shook his head.
Angel was looking from one to the other with ill contained wonder. “Giles was a demon?”
Riley, trying to remember the particulars, answered. “Em, yeah, briefly. It was some old friend - Ethan-something? - who wanted revenge. How did you run into Giles, Spike?”
A shrug. “He was hanging out in a graveyard and I met him whilst crypt-hunting. Also I happen to speak Fyarl, so he could ask me for help. I think he took rather well to bein’ a demon - jumped out of the car to give Maggie Walsh the fright of her life!”
He emptied the glass and savoured the burning sensation running through him. “Good times!”
Angel was thinking. “Ethan... do you mean Ethan Rayne? What happened to him?”
A grin from Riley. “I arrested him. Probably still in prison somewhere. Only in Sunnydale, eh?”
He was struck by something and, suddenly serious, asked. “Spike! What happened there? Was it an earthquake or what?”
Spike, wondering whether to switch from Laphroiag to Lagavulin, answered without thinking. “Sunnydale? That was me. Closed the hellmouth and saved the world.”
Riley nearly fell off his barstool. “What?”
Shaken out of his thoughts, Spike belatedly realised what he had said.
“Em, well, there was another apocalypse. The First Evil wanted to take over the world. Long story. In the end I saved the world and died. Don’t want to talk about it.”
Riley emptied his glass. His head was screaming with questions, but by now he was too drunk to care. All he said was, “You don’t look very dead - well except for the vampire-thing”.
A blond head inclined towards him. “Well, I was a ghost for a while...” but Riley’s mind tuned out the voice and his head came to rest on the bar.
Go to part 10
I know this is probably not the best time for posting fic, but I thought that people might want a short respite from the christmas rush, so I'm posting anyway! :)
Many thanks to lillianmorgan for betaing! Previouslies here.
Part 9
Standing outside the restaurant, they were wondering where to go.
“Why don’t we go to that demon bar Lorne recommended?” Nina asked.
Riley frowned. “I’m not really keen on demon bars,” he said.
Angel thought for a moment. “It’s nothing like Willy’s, if that’s what you’re worried about. This one’s got less violence than the human ones.”
Sam looked surprised. “Really? The few I’ve seen in South America seemed to exist for that sole purpose.”
Angel chuckled. “You forget that this is LA. I don’t know if Lorne told you, but he used to run a karaoke bar, before he started to work for me. Mixed clientele, but very nice. Has a good nose for these places.”
Sam seemed to make up her mind. “Well, why don’t we go have a look, it’s worth a try, anyway. Right darling?” Riley nodded.
Seeing the blond head at the bar, Angel nearly turned round and out of the door, but it seemed that Spike had already sensed him, and looked over his shoulder at the party.
“Welcome, my ladies and gentlemen. One hopes the evening progressed with full satisfaction on all sides?”
Since the others obviously didn’t know what to make of this, Angel thought he’d better do something.
He walked up to the bar and said quietly, “Spike, could you tone it down just for tonight? And - what’s with the Queen’s english?”
Whiskey-soaked eyes looked at him. “Just been takin’ a little trip down memory lane, mate. How are you doin’?”
Before Angel could answer, Sam came up to them. “Spike, why don’t you come and sit with us?”
Noticing the look Angel sent him, she hesitated a bit. “Only if you want to, of course...”
Spike smiled warmly and got off the stool.
What a girl! She had a problem, she met it head on! He liked her more at every turn!
“Sure, pet. You know, why couldn’t Buffy have had friends like you, all nice and polite. The nicest thing Xander ever called me was probably ‘Dead boy’. Although it might have been a vampire-thing, couldn’t stand you either, Peaches, from what I heard.”
Sitting down at the table, Spike grinned.
“He sure dated an awful lot of demons, considering how demonophobic he was. Although it was nearly worth his insults, just to witness when he nearly ended up as a demon-bride. The dear demon was obviously tempted - but then Xander always had that special something, didn’t he?... You know what I mean!” he said, looking pointedly at Angel.
Thankfully at that moment, Nina, unable to follow the thread of the conversation, looked at Sam and asked, “Didn’t you say that Spike used to date Buffy too?”
Sam smiled: “So he did!”
The two girls, well tuned into each other at this point, turned to Spike in unison.
“So, how did you first meet Buffy?” Nina asked.
“We don’t really want to be nosy,” Sam continued, “but, when are we going to meet someone who dated the Slayer again? And Angel and Riley seem all fed up now. We just want to get a different perspective.”
Spike looked from one pretty girl to the other, and knew he was lost. From the glance he threw at Riley and Angel, they had given up a long time ago, and seemed to have decided that getting drunk was the way to go. Well, he would give the little ladies something to chew on!
Taking a small sip of his drink, Spike leaned back in his chair, and cast his mind back. “Well, it must have been in the Autumn of ‘97, when Dru and I first arrived.”
At the blank looks, he explained. “My ex-girlfriend. She was sick and I hoped that the Hellmouth could restore her. Unfortunately there was a Slayer-problem, and having killed two, I thought I might as well make it three. The Anointed One was dead keen, what with St. Vigeous coming up that Saturday. Supposed to give vampires added strength or some rubbish like that, so it seemed like an opportune time.”
Smiling at the girls, he continued. “So I went to have a look at this Slayer. Found her in The Bronze - the local club - and lured her outside. Set a minion on her, that she despatched in no time. Always a brilliant fighter, she was.”
He stopped for a second to savour the memory. “Anyway, I complimented her on her nice work, and told her I was going to kill her on Saturday!”
He paused again. Had he fallen in love with her that night? There had been something, a connection of some kind... what was that Pylean word Fred has used to describe Angel and Cordy? Kye-something? No, that was the hero bit... ‘Moira’ that was it! ‘The gut physical attraction between two larger than life souls.’
He smiled and looked up at his audience. Sam and Nina were watching him expectantly, Riley was studying him with an odd look on his face and Angel tried to look bored.
“So - what happened on the Saturday?” Sam asked.
Spike chuckled. “Well, not much. I’m not known for my patience, and decided to crash parent-teacher night on the thursday instead. It went quite well actually, and I nearly got the better of her, until her Mum hit me over the head with an axe!”
This made the men sit up.
“Joyce hit you with an axe?” Angel asked in disbelief.
“That she did!” Spike said proudly. “Like daughter, like mother. Damn fine woman, Joyce was. Still miss her sometimes. Used to go round for a cuppa and a chat on a regular basis before she died.”
Now they were all looking at him as though he had fallen down from the moon. This was turning out even better than he had expected.
Angel found his voice first.
“Joyce - invited you in for drinks and chats?”
Spike looked at him levelly. “So? Just because she didn’t like you! I didn’t go around terrorising her just because I was evil! As a matter of fact Buffy brought her and the Bit round for me to look after, when Glory threatened them. We watched Passions.”
Sam lit up. “I used to love that,” she said, before realising that Riley and Angel seemed paralysed.
Spike emptied his drink. “So, yeah, that’s how Buffy and I met. Anything else you want to know?”
Sam was thinking, a cute little frown on her face. “So how did you get from wanting to kill each other to dating?”
Spike smiled ruefully. “Never dated her really. But I guess the change was due to the chip.”
Nina looked confused. “What chip? And how could a chip make you fall in love?”
Spike’s face was such a picture of shock, that Angel had to suppress a laugh. Gratefully he gave Nina’s hand a squeeze.
Trying to compose himself, Spike briefly explained about the Initiative, how he was defanged and started working with the Slayer.
By the looks on the girls’ faces, they wanted more, and thinking that it was actually quite a funny story if edited appropriately, he told the story of Buffy’s day from hell - complete with mummy hand - and the ‘date’ that followed.
The girls were lapping it up, while Angel and Riley wore matching expressions of disbelief. Nina and Sam were delighted with the tale and asked for more. So, inwardly sighing, he related a few more carefully selected and pared-down tales from Sunnydale - Olaf the troll, Buffy’s 21st birthday, when they couldn’t leave the house, the kid with the magical jacket and some of the ensuing high-jinks - so they would feel like they had learnt something about life on the Hellmouth and his and Buffy’s ‘relationship’ and stop asking questions.
It was getting very difficult to keep the sex and the pain out.
Listening to Spike, Angel began to feel increasingly ‘wigged’. It was a terrible phrase, but sometimes Buffy’s vocabulary managed to capture things very well. He knew that Buffy had been sleeping with Spike, but there seemed to be more to it. And the way Spike spoke about her - it was like they had some special little world the rest of them knew nothing about.
More telling still, was the fact that he was doing it completely unconsciously, which meant that it had been part of his worldview for such a long time, that he didn’t even notice anymore. Also Angel could tell that there were a lot of things Spike was avoiding, and again he found himself wondering what had happened between the bleached wonder and his first love.
Desperately wanting to change the subject, he cut in. “The Anointed One you mentioned earlier - what happened to him?”
Spike, obviously relieved, gratefully replied. “Well, he was quite probably the most annoying kid I have ever come across - all chanting and rituals and ‘Who shall wear the Master’s mantle?’ Wasn’t pleased when I failed to kill the Slayer, so I made him go for a walk in the sunshine.”
Angel was interested now. “Really? Wasn’t he supposed to have special strength or something?”
Spike grinned. “Yeah, Dru saw power in him, but hey, he was littler than me, so tough luck.”
Angel leaned forward. “Can I ask something else? How did you find The Judge?”
With the conversation steered toward general demon-related issues, Riley was soon joining in.
Sam sighed and looked at Nina. “Can’t leave the job behind, can they? This is like our first holiday in years, and here he is talking about demons! Let’s have some music.”
She turned round in her chair to the jukebox in the corner. “Any preferences?”
Nina smiled innocently. “See if they have ‘Mandy’”.
Spike was on a roll. He’d never thought that he could ever have a good time with Buffy’s two exes, but tonight had proven him wrong. The three of them were now sat at the bar, mainly to get away from the girls, who were bonding with hitherto unseen speed. It was when they had started discussing their respective proms, that the boys had up and left.
Away from the girls, Spike - remembering an earlier ‘misunderstanding’ - had explained to Riley, and at some length, that he had in fact not been ‘The Doctor’! And that this infamous ‘Doctor’ was probably the butt-ugly demon who had promised Spike a great deal of money for harbouring the eggs. Riley, drunk enough to apologise, had then asked what had happened to the real doctor.
“Well since he wasn’t going to pay me, I killed him!” Spike had replied, before ordering another round.
The conversation had then turned to less personal matters, and they were now discussing demon-quirks.
“...and then it grew a new head!” Angel was saying. “So I chopped that off - and then it grew another one!”
Spike sat up. “Oh, like that alien in Men In Black?”
A blank look.
“Never mind,” he huffed and looked deeply into the amber depths of his drink. Practically the same colour as a vampire’s eyes or...
“Riley!”
The soldier slowly turned his head to look at him.
“Remember that time Giles turned into a Fyarl-demon?”
The man chuckled. “That was... ok, that was fun. Buffy nearly killed him you know! It was the annoyed look in his eyes that finally made her recognise him.”
Spike grinned and shook his head.
Angel was looking from one to the other with ill contained wonder. “Giles was a demon?”
Riley, trying to remember the particulars, answered. “Em, yeah, briefly. It was some old friend - Ethan-something? - who wanted revenge. How did you run into Giles, Spike?”
A shrug. “He was hanging out in a graveyard and I met him whilst crypt-hunting. Also I happen to speak Fyarl, so he could ask me for help. I think he took rather well to bein’ a demon - jumped out of the car to give Maggie Walsh the fright of her life!”
He emptied the glass and savoured the burning sensation running through him. “Good times!”
Angel was thinking. “Ethan... do you mean Ethan Rayne? What happened to him?”
A grin from Riley. “I arrested him. Probably still in prison somewhere. Only in Sunnydale, eh?”
He was struck by something and, suddenly serious, asked. “Spike! What happened there? Was it an earthquake or what?”
Spike, wondering whether to switch from Laphroiag to Lagavulin, answered without thinking. “Sunnydale? That was me. Closed the hellmouth and saved the world.”
Riley nearly fell off his barstool. “What?”
Shaken out of his thoughts, Spike belatedly realised what he had said.
“Em, well, there was another apocalypse. The First Evil wanted to take over the world. Long story. In the end I saved the world and died. Don’t want to talk about it.”
Riley emptied his glass. His head was screaming with questions, but by now he was too drunk to care. All he said was, “You don’t look very dead - well except for the vampire-thing”.
A blond head inclined towards him. “Well, I was a ghost for a while...” but Riley’s mind tuned out the voice and his head came to rest on the bar.
Go to part 10