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Concert link in end notes, if you want a soundtrack.



BUFFY: You don't ... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you! You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never ... be your girl!
                    Dead Things
 

    Buffy was again dressed in her leather skirt and her now even more tattered fishnets and her army boots. The shirt she’d worn the first night was beyond repair, even with all his safety pins, but the black one worked fine under Nikki’s leather bolero jacket. Spike carefully put his collar around her throat before they headed out, gently caressing her jawline as he did. The collar effectively covered her bite marks, though Buffy wondered if he was actually going to leash her if he thought she might run. He hadn’t taken her out before, unless you counted the roof. Not like Drusilla and her mad doll.

    He held her arm as he walked through the Bowery, taking her quickly through the derelict streets to the CBGB club. Buffy recognized the band tonight. It was Blondie. Early Blondie, of course, no record producer, totally mad and unchecked, and the club itself was packed. It was a long line to get in, and Spike held her tightly before him as they waited. She wondered if he was holding her to keep her from getting away, but he kept nibbling tenderly at her ear, and kissing her jaw just above the collar, so it could just have been fondness.

    Buffy was suspicious. “You’re not thinking of making me watch, are you?”

    Spike turned her in the line and kissed her. He kissed her sweetly, then let his lips travel along her face, kissing her skin, traveling up to her hairline, finally ending with a teasing peck on her nose. “I just want to take my girl out,” he whispered to her.

    Buffy heard way too many meanings in that phrase.

    Spike ordered a couple of beers and found a table in the crowded seating area. Someone else was sitting there already, and Spike picked him up, collected the jacket he had been using to “save the seat for his girlfriend” and dumped him over the low wall into the crowd around the stage. The patron decided it was not worth the argument as Spike sat Buffy down. Spike kissed her deeply – so deeply and so tenderly she was gasping when he’d finished – and then perched on his own chair, against the wall.

    The club was sweltering with the lights and the press of humanity. It was enough to take Buffy’s breath away even without the music blaring. They’d arrived halfway through the concert. Blondie was badly mic-ed, the acoustics crackling and blaring with feedback so bad that the audience actually complained, and the musicians kept checking in with the engineers to see if the sound could be improved. “Kinda loud,” Buffy said over her beer.

    “Not the best place to talk, no,” Spike called back. “This isn’t your music, is it.”

    “Not really, but I kinda like Blondie.”

    Spike raised an eyebrow.

    “My mom liked her. Or, them. Whatever.”

    Spike blinked. “Your mum’s pretty open-headed,” he said.

    Buffy remembered Blondie was not basically pop-oldies at this time, but cutting-edge, raw, and controversial. They’d never been on the radio. Her mother would never have played “Rapture” for her daughter to dance to at the age of five. Buffy was pretty sure that song hadn’t even been written yet. Buffy herself wouldn’t be born for another five years. “Yeah,” she said rather than get into any of that.

    Spike turned back and looked up at the stage. “I love this place,” he said then. “It’s small, but it’s wild, you know? Bit like you, pet.”

    Buffy chuckled. He had no idea. She’d been playing it so soft and so quiet this last week, it was starting to grate on her nerves. She was itching to have a stake in her hand again. She hated to admit it, but just like Spike, every once in a while she really had a need to kill something. She’d been under a lot of stress, and she’d only gotten to dust that one dumb fledgling this last week. It was strange, being a slayer. “It’s a funny thing,” Spike went on. “For such a small club. It seems so much bigger once you get in it. Kinda gets away from you.”

    Buffy shrugged.

    “It gets really crowded. And you’re right, it is bloody noisy. Easy to get lost in here.”

    “I’d noticed,” Buffy said, having to speak louder than she wanted to over Debbie Harry’s intense voice. The song ended, and there was a smattering of applause.

    In the relative quiet between songs, Spike continued, “There are so many people. You know, I think it’d be nearly impossible to find anyone in this crowd, if they didn’t want to be found.”

    “I think you could manage."

    Spike hesitated. “I think it would be easier to get lost here than you’d think,” he said. “Like, if you just stood up, walked through the crowd, you could disappear. Never be seen again.”

    Belatedly, Buffy realized what he was saying. Her lips parted, and she stared at him. He was looking at the table top, refusing to meet her eyes. She wondered if he expected her to jump up and run right then, and he didn’t want to see it. She was stunned. Spike never left victims alive. Never. Not at this stage. If he took someone, he meant to keep them, forever. He might feed slow, it might take days, but they were his. Every one of them gave him their lives, in one way or another. Some might escape, if he was interrupted, but he would never simply let a victim go.

    Beauty and the Beast. He’d just released her from her promise. He had offered her her freedom. He’d given her back her life. All her choices were hers. All she had to do was walk away.

    Buffy almost hated to scorn the gift. That he had come even this far was amazing. But she had to turn it down. There was in fact no life for her without Spike, without his blood, without returning where she belonged. As Blondie started up a softer song with a sixties style rolling rhythm, she stood up from her chair.

    Spike turned his head away, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t see her go. His hands were clenched, as if he was holding something down, and he trembled slightly. From his sudden gasp, he did not at all expect Buffy’s hand to touch his cheek, or caress the back of his neck as she turned him back to her, or her warm and inviting body creeping over his on the chair. She knew what she wanted to do. It had nothing to do with seducing him in his current form, nothing to do with wanting to go home. She just wanted him right then.

    “You... are so tender under all that rage,” she told him. “If anyone knew... who you really were...”

    Spike looked about to cry. “Don’t.”

    The word made Buffy gasp. Echos of an earlier time... or a later one. Buffy wondered if she was laying the groundwork for her own memories, twisting Spike in shapes he might not have gone to without her. If her original timeline still existed, the whole moment in the Bronze must have been incredibly heady for him, particularly as she’d said her line perfectly. It meant something different when he said it, of course. When Spike had seduced her in the Bronze, Buffy had been trying to hold on to something – dignity, maybe, or a false illusion about who she was and what she wanted. Right now, Spike was begging her to not to torture him. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold his resolve.

    Though maybe, the evil was an illusion he was holding on to, too.

    She was not Spike, though. She wasn’t actually trying to change him, or make him realize anything. She did not tell him to stop her if he really wanted her to stop. She just wanted to reward this gesture. It wasn’t completely selfless on his part, of course. If he let her go, he could hold on to her forever in a sense, hold on to the idea that she was out there somewhere. Still, she would have been out there, not his. Only her scars and the memento of his collar to show that he had once possessed her. He only told her not to touch him because he knew he’d never want it to end.

    It was still just as hot.

    Her hands went down to his jeans, and she undid his belt, slid down his zipper, and if he hadn’t been hard before, he was by the time she was done with that. He’d already ripped the crotch out of her fishnets, so it was easy to find him, draw him inside. He gasped. The coolness of his flesh was refreshing in the stuffy club. The trick was silence, and to keep all movement subtle. The rolling waltz style of Blondie’s current song was the perfect cover for their actions, and everyone’s eyes were on the singer. No one was paying attention to the vampire and his lover, in the chair in the shadows against the wall, rocking gently inside and against one another to the music. “Ooh’, darlin’ darlin’, watch out if I see you...”

    Spike’s eyes gazed into her, staring with awe, and even though this wasn’t why Buffy was doing this, she suddenly realized she had him. She’d reached inside him, torn him asunder to find the place his soul should have been, and touched it. He was hers, now. Completely and utterly hers. So long as she did nothing to shatter this dream, he’d give her what she needed, do whatever she asked for. All she had to do was walk softly. He hadn’t expected her to stay with him. He had let her go, and she hadn’t gone. No one had ever done that, she knew. His whole life was one of rejection and dismissal, until he’d been cursed with a demon and learned to take what he wanted, break what he couldn’t have, kill before he could be hurt. The vampire in him made him sing with rage, but the man in him was always alone, still crying alone in that alley where Drusilla had murdered him. Until this moment... when Buffy had found him there, buried in the evil and the cold, and brought him inside where it was warm. “Warm and soft, In the flesh. Ooh, close and hot....”

    He surged gently under her, most of their movements invisible to the outside observer, and as the music changed to something harsher, Spike let it take him. He took hold of her hips and pushed her down harder, and Buffy squeezed him, wishing she still had slayer strength and control. He bit his lip, grunting so softly that only Buffy could hear him. Blondie’s mad musical ranting on the stage powered through them. “We sat in the night, with my hands cuffed at my side...”  Buffy kissed him, hard, and he bit at her tongue, her lips, grinding her down atop his swollen flesh. “I know you wouldn’t go. You’d watch my heart burst, then you’d step in.”

    It flared, flowing through them, and he clenched at her hips, bruising them with his vampire strength. He could have broken her bones, but he made himself stop. Buffy leaned closer to him, rubbing her clit firmly against him, her breath heavy and hot in his ear. She couldn’t bite back the cry that rose in her throat, and was glad it got buried in the clash of the music.

    She sat back and gazed down at him. He gazed up at her, his blue eyes blinking in the dim light, such love and such despair. “Now go,” he whispered to her.

    Buffy shook her head, and she felt his cock twitch beneath her again. “I can’t,” she said. She leaned forward again and whispered in his ear. What she said next was over the top, but it currently had the benefit of actually being true. “There’s nothing out there for me. There’s no life without you. Without your flesh, your blood, your heart, there’s nothing. I might as well be dead.”

    She couldn’t see his expression, but she could hear his teeth were clenched as he hissed against her hair. “You will be.”

    She looked into his eyes. “I know it,” she said. She kissed him again, and tried to make him understand. “I knew it before you ever touched me.”

    He closed his eyes and tilted his head to the ceiling in emotional torment. “Why won’t you go?” He kissed her, holding her head to his as if he could somehow bind her there. Then he glared at her. “I could hate you for it,” he said. “I could kill you right now.”

    “Then do it,” Buffy said. “But I’m not leaving you.”

    Spike lifted his hands and placed them on her throat, over her collar. She knew he could snap her neck, strangle the life from her, probably rip her head right off. Instead, he kissed her again. “Damn you, bitch,” he whispered when he was done. He pulled her close and buried his head in her shoulder, her hair, and held her tightly. “Damn it to hell.”

    Buffy just held him, all the way through the next song. He was breathing hard, like he was in a fight. She kept her arms beneath his jacket, rubbing at his back, holding him close. His scent was so familiar. It was time. “You trust me enough to let me go,” she finally whispered in his ear. “I could go to the cops, I could set fire to the lair...”

    “Yeah,” he said quietly.

    She pulled away and looked down at him. “Spike,” she said, holding his eyes with hers. “Please. Couldn’t you trust me enough to–”

    “Boss?”

    “Bloody hell!” Spike tensed under her as one of his minions appeared less than a foot from them in the thick of the crowd. His hand shot out past Buffy and grabbed hold of the boy. Buffy didn’t recognize him, his game face off and looking human, but he had to be a minion. “I told you wankers never to come in here!” he snarled.

    “Yeah,” the minion said. “Unless we found out.”

    “What?” Spike’s tension no longer seemed enraged. A flare of energy seemed to have charged him – suddenly he seemed anxious.

    “Her name’s Nikki. Nikki Wood. And we have her apartment.”

    Spike stood up, spilling Buffy to the floor. Spike caught her before she fell, and arranged himself, making sure he was zipped. “Spike?” Buffy began.

    “No time,” he said. He plunged into the crowd, pulling Buffy behind him as if her arm really was a leash. When he burst out of CB’s, he turned and faced down his minion. “Danny, take the girl back to the lair. My lair. Treat her like a lady, mate. And this is important, if she’s harmed in any way–”

    “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m dusted,” Danny said.

    Spike closed in on him. “No,” he said evenly. “If this girl gets so much as dirty while in your care, I’ll hang you from the ceiling in the corridor... and give you to Drusilla. To play with.

    The vampire’s eyes went wide, and he gulped. “Absolutely, boss, not a scratch. I swear it.”

    Spike half zipped his jacket as he looked up at the sky. “Give me the address, quick.”

    The minion rattled it off. It was accurate; Buffy recognized it. “Spike–”

    “Gotta go, love,” he said low. He kissed her warmly, but did not linger.

    “Spike!”

    He was already off. Buffy watched him go, striding quickly off into the night, on the prowl.

    The music drifted out the door, and Buffy clenched her fists. She wished it would stop. Spike was such a poet. He’d brought her here to complete the circle. CBGB was to be the beginning and the end, a closed chapter in his life, and instead death had reared its ugly head and gotten in between them, again. She had been so close. So god damned close! He could have taken her out back, and she’d have been home within the hour. “Sick at heart and lonely, deep in dark despair,” Debbie Harry sang relentlessly. “When you want her only, tell me where is she where?

    Was this it? Was Spike about to kill Nikki? Was there anything she could do? She already knew there wasn’t. A few drops of rain started to fall. Buffy stamped her foot. God bloody damn it! And if he came back hot from killing a slayer, he would not be in a generous mood. He’d be in his heartless, soulless, I’m-a-god mode, and she’d be back to fucking square one trying to reach him. She cursed under her breath.

    “Are you – ah – ready to go, ma’am?” Spike’s minion asked.

    Buffy glanced at him. He looked incredulous, as if he’d been asked to treat a Chihuahua with deference, but he was obeying. Buffy thought about just leaving him and following Spike. God dammit, causality and morality and nature were all tangled. She knew she couldn’t save Nikki. She knew she couldn’t even keep up with Spike in her current form. Even if she took off, Spike would get to Nikki first, so she couldn’t even warn the slayer. And as far as the timeline went... she knew she shouldn’t. “Fine,” she muttered. She turned and headed back toward the vampire’s lair. “And I know, if I could have her back again, I would never make her sad,” Blondie sang behind her as the rain started to fall in earnest.  “I got a heart full of soul. I got a heart full of soul...”

 


Chapter End Notes: The actual Blondie concert, on April fourth 1977, in all its gritty reality of crappy acoustics, unruly audience, and unimpressive wardrobe, can actually be seen in its entirety on YouTube – so if you want to witness in real time the concert Spike and Buffy are having a couple of important moments in the middle of, the link is below.  The three songs mentioned are In the Flesh, (S)Ex Offender, and Heart Full of Soul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bkJKhs8Ln0
 
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