Warning: graphic descriptive imagery

Spike: “Slayer? Here, kitty, kitty. I find one of your friends first, I’m gonna suck ‘em dry! Use their bones to bash your head in. Are you getting a word picture here?”
            School Hard


    Buffy woke curled up on Spike’s side. She opened her eyes, and they caught at the TV. “Is that Dark Shadows?”

    Spike looked down at her. “You know it?”

    “I thought it was canceled in ‘71.”

    “It’s on reruns on channel four. You watch it as a kid?”

    “No, you’ve got it on DVD.”

    “What?”

    Buffy shook her head and sat up. “No, it’s... just here on TV,” she said. Fortunately, she knew what she’d said made no sense whatsoever in this time. “What’s Barnabas up to?”

    “Begging his dad to kill him. Wanker. All that tormented crap.” He chuckled. “Stay quiet. It’s almost over.”

    Buffy’s Spike still found Dark Shadows funny, and he himself had his tormented moments. It was definitely one of the more compelling lame TV shows Buffy had seen in her time. She hadn’t had the patience to sit through all the hundreds of hours of his DVDs of the thing, but she’d watched bits of it before, mostly half asleep. It made for good background noise. Buffy snuggled up against this Spike’s shoulder, still tired. She wondered how much blood she’d lost in the last three days, and whether – or rather, when – the signs of anemia would start to show. She certainly felt very tired. But it was nice snuggling up to Spike as he watched one of his melodramatic paranormal soap-operas. It almost felt normal.

    It stopped feeling normal quickly. Spike petted her head absently as he watched the antics of tormented vampire Barnabas Collins as he and his fictional family knocked about their cardboard set.  After a little while, Spike picked up her hand. “Ow!”

    “Shh.” He’d bitten her hand between her forefinger and thumb. He sucked on it absently, killing the pain, but not trying to zone her out. He kept on for a while, inattentively. He’d set her hand down, fondle her fingers, sip from her again. Buffy realized she’d just been turned into a bowl of popcorn. God, evil vampires were weird.

    She lay there, letting him snack on the trickle from her hand, trying very hard not to feel resentful. She’d signed up for exactly this, hoping for blood for blood, but her own future Spike paid much more attention to what he was doing when he fed. It was the sheer casualness of it that was troubling to her. As if her life didn’t even merit his full attention. It did not mesh with the Spike she knew. She wondered what had happened to him that he cherished the blood so much more in the future. She knew that on the whole it was herself – her Spike loved her, and her blood and life mattered to him. But there was more to it than that. She wondered if it was the chip that had done it. Having the prospect of living blood stolen from him might have made the whole thing more important. But she had the feeling it was even more than that.

    When the show ended, he poked Buffy with his elbow. “Turn it off,” he said.

    So she’d gone from breakfast in bed, to pet kitten, to bowl of popcorn, to remote control. Buffy sighed as she did as she was bid. That’s why he was so casual about her life. She was barely alive to him in the first place. “And what’s that look?”

    “Nothing,” Buffy said. She’d felt she was getting somewhere with him. Now she was afraid he was already getting bored with her. Except... why had he run away earlier? And if he had run away... why had he come back?

    “Come over here.”

    Buffy climbed back into the bed with him, and he took her into his arms. He held her closely, but there was no affection in it. It was as if he was experimenting with something. After a bit he pulled away and tilted her head up to look at him. His empty blue eyes searched her.

    “What?” she said after a while.

    “What did you do, earlier?”

    “I don’t know what you mean.”

    “Just tell me, I won’t be angry. I just need to know what it is.”

    “Spike, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Despite what he’d said, he did look annoyed. “Is it... the reason you ran away?”

    “I didn’t run,” he snarled.

    “Spike... all I did... I was just there. That’s all I did.”

    He looked frustrated, and let her go. A world-weary sigh breathed over her shoulder. Then he shrugged, and pulled the covers back. “You want a pizza?” he asked absently as he stood.

    Buffy was hungry, and was about to give a profound yes, when she stopped herself. The girl in the club. The child Dru killed. The delivery guy. The death was starting to pile up around her. How long could she do this, and not be tainted by it herself? No. She was done. She couldn’t stop him, but she couldn’t take this anymore, not without at least a token resistance of some kind. “I think I’d rather starve,” she said quietly.

    “What was that?”

    “If it means another slaughtered delivery guy,” she said, and forced herself to meet his eyes. “I’d rather starve.”

    Spike regarded her for a moment, and then shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Starve.”

    Buffy’s head sank. This whole debacle was going to be harder than she’d thought. She’d thought last night – or this morning, really – that she’d been getting to him. Now he seemed more distant than ever. He pulled on his jeans. “Get up, put the bed away.”

    Buffy held out her hand first. “Ahm... could you?” The handcuff was still locked onto it.

    Spike’s face clouded. “Stop giving me orders!” Buffy was taken aback. It was a complete one-eighty from the casual dismissiveness of second ago. “I’m the one in charge here. Just shut the hell up!”

    Buffy didn’t even have time to apologize before Spike dragged her off the bed. He picked her up and dropped her roughly in her closet. He grabbed the handcuff and locked it to the doorknob, then shoved the door closed on her.

    Buffy couldn’t reach the light cord. She sat there on the floor, in the dark, naked and bewildered. What had she done? It didn’t make any sense. One second, snuggling and chatting about daytime television and pizza, and the next....

    Evil bastard.

    Her confusion and annoyance only had time to simmer before the door opened again, and Spike unlocked her wrist. She couldn’t have been there more than ten minutes. “Spike.”

    “Shut up.” It was a murmur this time. He scooped her up like a new bride and carried her to the couch. He’d closed it up, and he sat her down gently. He reached down and slid her shirt – his shirt – over her head. Spike’s shirt was so big on Sarah’s body that it reached to mid-thigh, and she didn’t feel anywhere near so vulnerable. He touched her face and caressed her lips with his thumb. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. It was very inhuman. Whatever it was, he hadn’t just unchained her because of guilt. It was something else entirely.

    His touch was tender. He fondled her hair, ran his fingers over her ear, down her bitten throat, and slowly he shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said to himself.

    She didn’t dare say anything after earlier.

    A moment later he sat back. “Go. Use the bathroom. Take a shower.”

    Buffy swallowed and nodded. She cleaned up, then took a long, long drink from the bathroom tap, just in case his unpredictable mood continued. When she came out, Drusilla had her arms around Spike, and was rocking back and forth to unheard music. “East side, I think,” Spike was saying. Dru’s eyes caught on Buffy, and Buffy took a step back.

    “Your puppy looks whipped,” Drusilla said.

    “Not yet,” Spike said.

    “Can I help?”

    Buffy cringed.

    “You’ve your own toys to play with,” Spike said, more teasing than anything else.

    “It’s more fun to play dollies together,” Drusilla said. “Can we, later?”

    “Of course, my sweet,” he said, and he kissed her. He stood back from her, still holding her hands. “Just as soon as me and the boys get back.”

    “Do you think you’ll get her tonight?”

    Spike shrugged. “She’s a tricky one,” he said with a grin. “But I’m all healed up, and aching for a good kill.”

    Drusilla laughed. “You’ll kill her for me?”

    “Of course, my dark goddess,” Spike said. “And she owes me a blooding, now.”

    Buffy knew they were talking about Nikki. She wondered how many conversations of this type the two had shared over her, the first year she’d met Spike.

    “And when she’s dead?”

    “Finest knight in the land, baby,” Spike said, and he spun her joyfully in the middle of the room, then pulled her back into an embrace. “I’ll lay her skin at your feet.”

    Buffy felt ill.

    “Just let me put the pet away, sweet,” Spike said, and he kissed Dru’s fingers. Buffy went to her closet without being told. Spike set her down and locked the collar on her.

    “I’d just stay here,” Buffy said.

    “And go staking more minions,” he said fondly.

    “They attacked me,” Buffy pointed out.

    Spike kissed her forehead with an amused smirk. He seemed in a much better mood now that Dru was treating him nicely. “I’ll lock up the lair,” he said, like he was promising a child to check for monsters under the bed. Then he walked away, retreating into Dru’s room.

    “I’m thinking of taking my dolly out in his pram,” Drusilla said.

    Spike came out of her room a moment later with something denim in his hand. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But he doesn’t look up to going anywhere. And you might want to put a cloth on his leg, love. Or kill him quick. He’s staining your pretty lace.”

    Buffy didn’t want to know what Dru had done to the guy. She’d never wanted to feel sorry for a sadistic pedophile before.

    “All right,” Dru said, looking disappointed.

    Spike tossed the denim to Buffy and then caught Dru up, lifting her as if they were in a ballroom. “I’ll be back soon, my lovely.”

    “Please,” Drusilla said. “My wonderful warrior.” She bent her head to kiss him, her feet still dangling. It was heated, passionate, unbridled. Buffy felt as if they were about to find a nice wall. She looked down. Spike was playing the gallant romantic for his beloved, dancing and kissing and offering her his kill. And he had given his pet Buffy a pair of his jeans, so she wouldn’t have to spend all night half naked. The tiny gesture made her want to break his sternum. If he was going to have sparks of random humanity, why were they so pitifully small? They didn’t make her feel grateful. She hated them.

    The two vampires finished kissing, finally, and Spike left. Buffy could reach the door to the closet. She wondered if she dared close it. Whether the movement would draw Drusilla’s attention, or if seeing her would be worse.

    Drusilla went to the kitchenette and pulled the last of the leftover Chinese food out of the fridge. She dumped it all anyhow into her dog dish, and then Buffy heard a clink as she picked up the plate of eggrolls. Buffy expected her to go into her bedroom – she intended to close the closet door as soon as the vampiress’s back was turned. But Drusilla stopped at her closet. “Time to feed the children,” she said quietly.

    Buffy cursed Sarah’s cowardly form again as her body shivered instinctually. Drusilla wasn’t just a vampire. Buffy knew simple vampires. Drusilla was transcendental. She was strange and almost miraculous, and her eyes saw through everything. She stood before her and stared right through Buffy. The very air seemed broken around Drusilla. She wondered what Tara would have said about her aura. Dropped before her in a mere human body, Buffy thought she finally understood exactly what it was about her that had seduced Spike into becoming a vampire, and seduced Angel into making her into one. The pure face with the rough cockney accent was a contrast like light in darkness, perfect in itself. She was long and graceful and elegant in a way that seemed sharp, like a needle. She was unearthly, dark and seductive as a creature of evil. As a pure and chaste human being, she must have been just as alluring.

    Now, of course, Buffy knew Dru might kill her with a flick of a single finger, and might not even notice if she’d done it.

    “Poor Spike,” Drusilla said, kneeling down to stare at – stare through – Buffy. “He doesn’t see how twisted up he’s getting. Past and future and present, all presented. Pretty present, your presence.” Buffy wondered how much she knew in her madness. She petted Buffy’s head. Her cool fingers raised goose bumps, and Buffy’s breath shook in her throat. “Good puppy,” Drusilla said. “I had a puppy once,” her eyes distant. “He was a birthday present, too. We called him Biscuits. I found him nailed to my front door.” Her eyes were at least two worlds away by now, and Buffy was afraid she was falling with her. “My baby niece had been in his little stomach. Three months old. He’d opened it up, and I got to see the bits. Little hands. Little fingers. Pretty little thumbnails in the viscera.” She laughed and hummed, as if someone had just offered her a treat. “Good, good puppy.”

    Buffy felt sick, a cold lump in her chest. God, she wished she’d been left in ignorance of the details of what Angel had done. Buffy was glad she’d only had her mother and her vampire-savvy friends to worry about when Angel had chosen to torture her. Drusilla was evil, but... good god, to have that in your head! And the memory of that horror being that of a human being, an innocent girl who had loved that creature, that infant; that moment must have been....

    Buffy could all but hear the screaming.

    Dru left her then, leaving the plate of eggrolls behind for her. Buffy stared at them in a kind of horror. There was no way she was eating after that. Shame, because she’d been hungry a minute ago. She retched, but there was nothing in her stomach. She pushed the plate to the furthest corner of the closet, and tried to think about anything other than the image Dru had just painted in her head.  

    Buffy slid on the ripped jeans. They were far too large, but she rolled up the cuffs. Her own leather skirt was still lying on the floor near the sofa, but she couldn’t reach it, and she felt safer in the jeans, anyway.

    She was left there for hours. Some part of her wondered if Spike was killing Nikki even then. After a while the horror of Dru’s terrible story faded, and Buffy made herself eat the stale eggrolls. She wasn’t sure when Spike would bother feeding her again.    

 

Chapter End Notes:

130 episodes of Dark Shadows were released for syndication in 1975 by a spin-off of ABC Films. I do not know if it was playing in New York at the time, or at what time or station if it was, but I didn’t feel any deep need to be more accurate than that.