full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Destroying Entropy by BuffyMeetsSpike
 
Chapter 5
 
<<     >>
 
Disclaimer: All the characters and recognizable dialog belong to Joss Whedon.
Thanks to the reviewers for all the encouragement!
 
************************************
 
Destroying Entropy: Chapter 5
 
************************************
 
Spike’s arms were starting to get sore by the time Buffy finally stopped sobbing. Embarrassed by her outburst, she sat up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. Spike wordlessly offered her his bandana. “Thanks,” she whispered, blowing her nose. She stood up and turned her back to him, wrapping her arms around herself. “I’m sorry. I’ve got no right to dump all this on you.”
 
Spike rose and gently turned her around. With his hands on her shoulders, he leaned down until he caught her eyes. “Now you listen to me,” he said in a firm voice. “You may have some things to apologize for. There are about three hundred broken noses that I could have done without, for example.” Buffy tried to turn away but Spike held firm. “But you never have to apologize to me for being human and for needing a shoulder to cry on. Never.”
 
Buffy looked up at his blue eyes and saw nothing but concern and tenderness. She stepped closer and rested her head on his chest, realizing that his shirt was soaked with her tears. Their arms wound around each other as she once again whispered, “Thank you, Spike.”
 
After a few minutes, Spike straightened up. “I’m going to go off to get some supplies. Don’t have much in the way of human fare at present.” He pushed an errant lock of hair back behind her ear and continued, ”The loo downstairs is a bit blackened, but I think it still works. Shower definitely works. Make yourself at home, such as it is. I’ll be back soon, ok?”
 
Buffy nodded. Spike slipped into his duster. The sun wasn’t quite down yet, so he made his way toward the stairs to hit the tunnels. “Spike?” Buffy called. Spike turned his chiseled profile her way. “Hurry back, ok?” Spike nodded and disappeared downstairs.
 
Buffy took a candle and went downstairs, picking her way through the rubble to Spike’s makeshift bathroom. He had enlarged it since they started their relationship. He had no use for a toilet, but he had somehow rigged one up for her, mostly to get her to stay longer, she suspected. His shower curtain had been shredded, and his sink had overturned, but as he said, his toilet still seemed operational. She went to the bathroom then made her way back upstairs. She curled up under the blankets he left for her and closed her eyes. Why is he taking care me? she wondered. He could have just laughed at me puking my guts out and left me on the street. I dumped him for God’s sake. So why is he letting me stay? And why do I only feel safe with him again? She contemplated these questions over and over until she drifted into a fitful doze.
 
************************************
 
The Scoobies converged on Restfield cemetery and started winding their way through the tombstones towards the crypts at the back. “Xander, you’re not going to start a big fight with Spike again, are you?” Dawn asked. She wasn’t sure exactly how Buffy currently felt about the vampire in question, but Dawn still considered him a friend and didn’t really want him dusted.
 
“I’m not sure why you’re so worried about Captain Peroxide. Buffy’s the one you should be worried about.” Xander grumbled.
 
“You’re still assuming that Buffy is there against her will, which we have no evidence for,” Tara put in. “If she is there because she wants to be, don’t you think she’s going to be annoyed if you go barging in there?”
 
By this point they had reached Spike’s tomb. “Is Buffy even in her right mind anymore?” Xander cried, flinging up his hands. “She’s been depressed, she just got over that whole ‘Sunnydale is a dream so I should kill my friends’ episode, and she’s been banging Spike for months! Don’t you think this calls for some sort of intervention?”
 
Inside Spike’s crypt, Buffy jerked awake at the sound of Xander’s voice. When she heard him talking about an intervention she decided that there was no way she wanted to face him, or anyone. She scrambled to her feet and practically dived down the stairs, disappearing from view just before the door opened and she heard Willow say, “Spike? Buffy? Anyone here?”
 
Downstairs, Buffy ducked into the tunnel entrance and hid around a corner out of view. She heard the Scoobies’ footsteps on the stairs as Dawn called, “Buffy?” Buffy froze wide-eyed in her corner, seized with a completely irrational panic.
 
“There’s no one here,” said Tara in a puzzled voice. “Did we do the locator spell right?”
 
Willow shrugged. “As far as I know.”
 
Buffy flinched as the sound of someone kicking something echoed in the tunnel as Xander said, “For all we know he’s holding her captive and moved her somewhere else. Why else would she just leave Dawn for a few days with no warning?”
 
“Xander, Buffy’s the Slayer, and she’s an adult. I don’t know why you’ve gone into macho protector mode here,” Tara admonished.
 
“Look, if she was here, she’s gone now,” said Willow, trying to keep the argument from escalating. “Let’s just go home so we’ll know if she calls.” They trooped out, and Buffy heard the crypt door slam behind them. Losing control of her legs, she sank down onto the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees and shivering. You can’t hide from them forever, said the practical voice in her head. Watch me, she thought bitterly. No matter what I say, Spike’s evil, I’m crazy, and they get the last say in what I do. I’m done. She couldn’t come up with a good reason to do anything other than sit curled up on the floor, so she stayed, rocking slightly in the blackness.
 
*****************************************
 
Spike had emerged in the parking garage of the Sunnydale Mall. There was a convenience store there that yielded some drinks, some energy bars and other snacks, and some of Buffy’s favorite shampoo. In another store he found a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, to give her a change of clothes. Not what he would generally choose to see her dressed in, but he judged that comfort was needed above all in this instance. He ended his shopping trip in a candy store, where he bought a simple box of chocolates. Having dealt with years of Drusilla’s issues, he knew that clothes and comfort food went a long way toward soothing the female soul. Granted, Drusilla’s idea of comfort food tended to be a tender young schoolchild, but the principle was the same.
 
By the time he finished the sun had gone down, so he took off through the town toward his crypt. He deliberately cut through several cemeteries on the way, setting down his bags to dust a few fledglings when they arose. Might as well take care of patrol while I’m at it. No telling when Buffy’ll be back in action. He was alarmed by Buffy’s reaction to all this. When she had come back from Heaven she had been silent, withdrawn, and depressed, but she was still able to function somewhat, and go through the motions. Now she was fleeing from her friends, and this helpless, uncontrollable sobbing was like nothing he had seen. Even when her mother died she had somehow kept it mostly together, if only for Dawn’s sake. But now she seemed utterly crushed.
 
He staked another fledgling, lit a cigarette, and picked up his bags. More than anything else, he wanted to go to Harris’ house and make him pay for reducing the Slayer to this state. Should probably check on the bint first, I guess, he sighed. He found he was having flashbacks to his long years of caring for Drusilla. Angelus had utterly destroyed Drusilla through his systematic psychological and sexual torture. Even after she was turned, Angelus had occasionally reduced Drusilla to a quivering, huddled mass, just because he was bored. Spike had always been there to hold her while she raved and screamed at the stars after Angelus had used her until she bled and passed out from the pain. The experience had left Spike with a deep distaste for rape. Didn’t seem much point in sex if the woman wasn’t getting off on it. Half the pleasure for him was in making his partner writhe and scream in ecstasy. It had been a matter of pride for him that he had managed to have a willing partner every time he had wanted one. He had persuaded and seduced women, but never forced one. And yet here was Harris, a card carrying member of the White Hats, doing just that, to someone he ostensibly cared about. To add to the unreality, Buffy once again turned to William the Bloody for solace. Makes no fucking sense, none of it.
 
Spike arrived at his crypt to find the door slightly ajar. He frowned and entered cautiously, all of his senses stretching out and ready for danger. He saw no one, but caught the faint scent of the Scoobies. He had spent enough time around them to recognize the scent of herbs that clung to the witches, the fruity scent of Dawn’s favorite lip gloss, and Xander’s male musk. “Buffy?” he called. She wasn’t upstairs, and he wondered if the gang had persuaded her to come back home. Probably got her to put on her ‘Everything’s Fine’ mask again and skip off back to denial land with them, he mused. But he realized that her unique scent was still strong on the stairs, so he softly descended to the lower level.
 
His former bedroom was pitch dark, and he vamped out to see more clearly. He followed the trail over to the tunnel entrance, where he picked up the rapid hammer of Buffy’s heartbeat. “Buffy? It’s me. You ok?” he said.
 
“No,” came a small voice. “I’m not ok.” Spike entered the tunnel and found her, once again curled on the floor and huddled into a corner.
 
“Come on out of there, love. No one here but us.” When she didn’t respond, he gently but firmly tugged on her shoulders until she got to her feet, then led her carefully through the basement and up the stairs. In the candlelight of the upper level she looked paler than ever, and she seemed tiny and lost in Spike’s armchair. Spike handed her a bottle of water and her prescription bottle, and busied himself with putting a few things away while she took the pills and drank. He knelt in front of her and pushed the hair away from her face. “Tell me what happened, pet.”
 
“They were here. Looking for me,” she muttered. “Xander thinks you’re holding me hostage, or that I’m crazy or something. Willow did a locator spell trying to find me.”
 
“So you hid from them?” Spike said quietly.
 
Buffy nodded miserably. “I can’t win. They’re not going to believe me, or you. I can’t win.” She shook her head helplessly and kept repeating, “I can’t win. They won’t let me be. I can’t win.”
 
“Slayer, listen to me,” Spike ordered. He didn’t have thrall, but when he allowed his voice to grow low and stern it was nearly the same. Buffy found herself meeting his earnest eyes. “Right now, you are exhausted and still half in shock. You’re going to make yourself ill if you don’t get some decent rest and give yourself a break. You need to get some sleep, that’s an order.”
 
Buffy realized that Spike had a point. She nodded again, and stood up, accepting Spike’s arm around her shoulders as he led her to her sleeping spot. He saw that she was settled and comfortable, then started to pick up his coat to go back out. Got a score to settle with the Whelp, he thought.
 
“Spike?” Buffy said. “Where are you going?”
 
Spike paused. “Have some business to take care of, Slayer.” He wasn’t sure, even now, how she would feel about him pounding the living crap out of Xander.
 
Buffy hesitated, biting her lip. Then in a barely audible voice she said, “Could you stay? Please? Just…  don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to be alone.”
 
Spike’s demon howled in his head, wanting desperately to find some way to make Xander pay. But the William side of him couldn’t deny her. He could no more turn his back on her pleading eyes than he could go sunbathing tomorrow. He put his coat back on the nearest sarcophagus and sat down to take off his boots for the night. He started trying to get comfortable in his armchair when Buffy said, “Spike?”
 
“Yeah?”
 
Another hesitation. “Could you just… hold me? Just until I fall asleep?” She blushed, embarrassed but desperate in her need for comfort.
 
Spike took a deep breath. How’s this gonna end then? She wakes up and kicks you in the teeth again? Scoobies bust in and dust you for her own good? Haven’t you had enough of being yanked around yet? But despite all his inner fears, he found himself blowing out the candles, padding softly over to where she lay and sliding next to her under the covers. He had left his clothes on, as had she, and he gently wrapped his arms around her as she nestled her head into his chest. Despite his misgivings, a large part of him reveled in the soft warmth of her, and he listened to her heartbeat until they both fell asleep.
 
************************************
 
Dawn arrived home with Willow and Tara, and ran straight up to her room, slamming the door behind her. She threw herself on her bed and squeezed a pillow tightly. Her head was in a total whirl. Why would Buffy run away? She seemed like she was getting better. We were actually talking together for the first time in months. Where did she go? What happened to her? The teen ran all the scenes of the day through her mind again and again. Xander was acting weird. Had he really… done what Spike said? Dawn turned over restlessly. Even if nothing happened, what if some demon got her when she was drunk? I guess she called, so she’s still alive, but where is she? She hugged her pillow tighter and worried her stomach into knots.
 
*******************************
 
Tara and Willow watched Dawn run upstairs with concerned looks. “She’s pretty upset,” Willow observed needlessly.
 
“She’s had a rough day. Let her be for a while,” Tara answered. Tara got herself a drink and sat down on the couch. Willow joined her and rested her head on Tara’s shoulder. “Willow, did Xander tell you anything more about what happened?”
 
“Not really,” Willow sighed. “He said he they both got really drunk. She told him all about her and Spike. I get the impression he wasn’t too thrilled to know about it.”
 
“Sometimes I think he forgets that he’s not Buffy’s keeper,” Tara observed quietly. “He spends an awful lot of time worrying about what Buffy does.” So do you, she added silently. She was glad to be back with Willow, but Willow still seemed to see Buffy more as a fix-it project than as a human with her own agenda. The guilt of pulling Buffy out of Heaven had sent Willow into some sort of hovering overdrive where Buffy was concerned, and Tara didn’t think it was good for Buffy or Willow.
 
“He’s really messed up right now,” Willow defended him. “He feels bad about Anya, he feels bad about not being there for Buffy, and he’s always found Spike irritating. He needs some cool down time to figure himself out.”
 
“True,” Tara conceded. “But we can’t let him go charging in there and hurting Buffy more by acting without thinking. Buffy and Spike had something, and I think they still have something, or could, if we weren’t all jumping down her throat and judging her for it.”
 
“But I thought they broke it off with each other,” said Willow.
 
“Perhaps. But did she do it because she wanted to, or because she thought we wanted her to?” Tara asked pointedly.
 
Willow mulled that over. “I guess we’ve all been off in our own worlds for so long that I don’t know what the answer to that is. Seems like we’re due for a long talk after she gets back from wherever she went.”
 
“Do you think Xander could have hurt her?” Tara asked after another silence.
 
“I just can’t imagine Xander hurting Buffy. I just can’t,” Willow replied. She knew that Xander could lose his temper, and sometimes he said things that he regretted later. She knew that he had a way of trying to downplay the consequences of his actions, like with the whole dancing demon thing. But she just couldn’t conceive of anything he could do to Buffy that was so bad that she wouldn’t want to come home.
 
“I hope you’re right,” Tara sighed, and she turned on the TV.
 
********************************
 
Anya was nearly done cleaning up the Magic Box when there was a slight noise and a puff of smoke. “Good evening, Anyanka,” said Halfrek as she brushed off her dress and straightened her sleeves. “Have you given any more thought to the whole ‘vengeance for Mr. Harris’ thing?”
 
Anya leaned on the counter with her chin in her hands. “No. Spike was here last night looking for some spell to forget his relationship troubles. We got drunk together, and one thing led to another, and…”
 
“You didn’t!” gasped Halfrek gleefully. “Now that’s my Anyanka. No better revenge than to find somebody new. And somebody new that he detests? Masterful. But how did Xander find out?”
 
“This,” Anya grumbled, hauling up the camera from under the counter. “Someone who has it in for Buffy has been spying on her all over the place. The others found the camera feed while Spike and I were… engaged. Xander was here last night trying to kill Spike, and then apparently he went off to sulk and drink. I guess Buffy went after him and got drunk too, and now she’s missing. Not sure what’s up with that.”
 
“You don’t think they…?” Halfrek said suggestively.
 
“Buffy would never do that in a million years. Xander’s been carrying the torch for her since high school, but I can’t see Buffy going along with that. I mean, come on, if you’ve been sleeping with various supernaturally enhanced beings like William the Bloody for years, then why on earth would you go for…”
 
“Ah, William,” Halfrek interrupted thoughtfully, shaking her head. “That really wasn’t one of my best days.”
 
“Ok, Hallie, spill,” said Anya. “You obviously have met him before; you recognized each other at the Party that Wouldn’t End. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that for weeks. What’s the story?”
 
“I spent an awful lot of time in London in the late 1800’s. Those repressed Victorians had all sorts of Justice needs. They were all so prim and proper and uptight that someone could shoot their mother and their response would be, ‘Oh dear, how troublesome’.” Halfrek rolled her eyes at the memory. “I had been hanging around one particular crowd for a while, dispensing justice as needed, when this mousy little poet started making moon eyes at me. I didn’t think the poor thing needed to fall for a justice demon, so I did my best snooty Victorian upper class bitch act and shut him down.”
 
Anya’s jaw dropped. “Spike had the hots for you? When he was human? What happened?”
 
Halfrek blushed slightly. “He went off in a huff, ran into a certain well known female vampire, and… well, you know the rest.”
 
You drove him into getting turned by Drusilla?” Anya was floored at the random series of coincidences.
 
“It was an honest mistake! I didn’t want to blow my cover, and I didn’t want to just vanish and have him get all freaked out! I thought he would get over me and find someone suitable.” Halfrek shook her head. “I guess it all worked out in the end. He seems much happier as a vampire than he ever did as a human.”
 
“Except for lately,” Anya sighed. “Between Buffy dumping him and Xander wanting him dead, he’s not really having an easy time of it.”
 
“Hmm,” mused Halfrek. “I’ll have to see if there’s something I can do for him. I probably owe him one. “
 
**************************
 
Xander went back home and closed the door behind him. He surveyed the wreck of his apartment and thought about cleaning it up, then decided fuck it. I’m the only one here, and right now I don’t care. He saw that there were still a couple of shots of JD in the bottle. He picked it up, and stared at it for a moment. I really shouldn’t. But after another moment he sighed and polished it off anyway. He tossed it in the trash and threw himself onto the couch.
 
The whiskey had burned going down, then turned into a somewhat pleasant warmth. But when he closed his eyes the warmth faded into a mangle of mental images. I kissed her. She pushed me away. I kissed her again. She went down. She was laying there so still, like some kind of centerfold. She didn’t do anything when I undressed her. Wouldn’t she have kicked me or something if she hadn’t wanted it? He kept playing the scene in his mind. He remembered her warmth, the taste of her neck. She said to stop, his conscience spoke up. But she didn’t fight me, he shot back. She couldn’t possibly have been too drunk to fight! She’s the Slayer! Even drunk she should have been able to kick my ass if she wanted to! His brain couldn’t find a satisfactory way out of this dilemma.
 
Then there was the question of where she had gone. Had she really just taken off for a couple of days? Was she mad at him? Mad at Spike? Did she go all vigilante on whoever was spying on her? If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he was highly disappointed that Buffy hadn’t been chained up in Spike’s basement. The more he thought about the bleached blond vampire, the more he wanted to see him dust. The bastard had dared to touch Anya. His Anya. And what was it with Buffy and the freaks? Didn’t she learn from Angel, and to some extent Riley, that she should try to find some semi-normal guy? Angel nearly killed them all, Riley ended up being a conniving bastard, and why was he the only one who seemed to remember that Spike was a fucking vampire who wanted them dead. Or at least had wanted them dead not that long ago. But no, Buffy wanted to take a walk on the wild side, and they were supposed to just look the other way. And why the hell was Tara so quick to defend this abomination of a relationship that Buffy had gotten herself into? Hello? Our friend is sleeping with a serial killer and you’re ok with this? The fuck is wrong with these people?
 
He got up and searched his kitchen, but there was no more alcohol of any kind to be had. I should probably lay off the booze for the night anyhow, he thought grudgingly. Kicking dejectedly at an empty beer can, he slouched off to the bedroom, stripped down to his boxers, and threw himself in bed.
 
TBC
 
<<     >>