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Making Music by Sigyn
 
Making Music
 
 
 



    “Well, well,” Spike said as Buffy closed the door of his crypt behind her. He was sitting on one of his chairs, scribbling on a pad of paper. “Back again?”

    “Shut up,” Buffy said.

    The longing and self-loathing were back in her voice, and he knew what she’d come for. A bolt of desire tickled him, but he kept cool. He knew she preferred it that way. “If you’re after a bit of cold comfort, love, you should be a little bit more polite.”

    “Like you care,” Buffy said. She pushed the pad of paper off his lap and took its place, straddling him. She started gnawing at his throat, the seductive scent of vampire and the pungent musk of cigarettes firing her as it always did.

    Spike’s hands went up around her torso as he groaned with the perfect mixture of pleasure and pain. Then she bit just a little too hard, and he actually grunted. “Ow! You’re going to have to be punished for that, you vixen.” He flipped her with one hand and held her head down over the arm of the chair. “What do you think you are?” he asked slyly. “A vampire or something?” He rubbed at her ass, and gently down between her legs before he spanked her. Once, twice, three times before she struggled away, but he held her down. “No, I’m not through with you yet,” he said through a snarl.

    Buffy felt hot with shame and arousal, and her eye caught on the pad Spike had been writing on. She grabbed it and used it to wack him in the side of the head before she rolled off onto the floor.

    He almost followed her, grinning, until he saw what she’d picked up. He made a grab for it. “Give me that.”

    “Why?” Buffy asked, looking down at it properly for the first time.

    “Just give me that, it’s mine.”

    “What is it?”

    “It’s nothing.”

    Buffy jumped up out of his reach and glanced over the paper. The first thing that struck her was the elegance of his Victorian handwriting, which was far more elaborate than the simple cursive she’d been taught in elementary school. The second was that she recognized the words almost immediately. “I died so many years ago, you can make me feel like it isn’t so....” She looked down at him. “This is that song you sang at me.”

    “Give it back!” he snapped, angry now.

    “No, it’s cute!” She danced to the other side of his sarcophagus. “Come on. It’s not like I haven’t already heard it.”

    “Yeah, but it’s mine. Give it back.”

    “What? You want me to leave?” Buffy teased. “That is what you were singing, after all.”

    “I was trying to get you out quickly before I sang at you at all,” Spike said. “Just give me the paper.”

    Buffy handed the pad to him, and he ripped the top sheet off and folded it, as if he meant to hide it. “I knew how you felt, Spike,” Buffy said. “It wasn’t as if you’d been keeping it a secret.”

    “Yeah, but I wasn’t crooning it to the moon, either,” he muttered.

    “Hey, it was a weird few days. I said a few things I hadn’t really meant to, myself.”

    “Suppose I don’t mind, really,” Spike said. He slid up to her and took hold of her hair. At her grunt of arousal he came in close enough to kiss her. “Do I make you feel?” he whispered into her mouth.

    She leaned forward for his kiss, only to be disappointed as he pulled away, a sly mischief on his face. It made her angry, and she snatched the paper back out of his hand. “Maybe I should show it to the Scoobies,” she said. “Everyone loves a good laugh.”

    “You do, and I’ll snap your ribs one by one, and make you eat them,” Spike growled. Buffy wasn’t sure exactly what level of kidding he was at. She’d seen him look this embarrassed before, but only over his sex robot. “I didn’t write it down to be made a laughingstock.”

    “Why did you, anyway?”

    Spike leaned against the wall and refused to look at her. “Please,” he said quietly.

    It was a real plea. Buffy held the paper out, and he took it back.

    “Tell me,” Buffy said.

    He shrugged, looking down at the now crinkled sheet. “Best poem I ever wrote,” he said, sounding, if anything, shy. “I mean, I know it was a demon spell. But the feelings were mine, that means the words were mine, yeah? I know all about bad poetry, and this isn’t. I mean, it’s no Keats, but it’s got the Sex Pistols floored.”

    Buffy stared at him, struck by a sudden revelation. “My god.”

    “What?”

    She couldn’t believe it. “You were really a poet, you weren’t just making that up.”

    “You thought I’d make that up?”

    “I thought you were teasing me. That was kind of a weird night when you told me.”

    “What, you mean our first date?”

    “Shut up, it was not a date.”

    “Sure felt like it to me. The Bronze, billiards, a brief battle out back. It was great date until the end.”

    “I knew you were trying to kiss me,” Buffy said, annoyed.

    “Hey, pet, you gotta admit it was hot,” Spike said. “You were all flushed and sort of scared. It was great. I couldn’t help but want to touch you.”

    “I know,” Buffy said. “That’s why it was creepy.”

    Spike came up to her and slid his hand down her hip, around the top of her thigh. Her breath caught. “Am I still creepy?”

    “More than ever!” Buffy said, and she pushed him away.

    He didn’t let her, and she didn’t really protest. He grabbed her ass with both hands and started rubbing it, kneading it like dough, pulling her against him until she could feel him hard against her abdomen.

    She moaned, but she wasn’t letting him off that easy. “I can’t believe you were a poet.”

    “I didn’t make money at it or anything,” Spike said. “I only told you at all to prove to you how different it is, being made a vampire. I was weak and human and pathetic,” he said with disgust. He nibbled at her neck, and her breath caught. “I’m a totally different creature now.”

    Buffy looked up at him. “So why keep the poem?”

    Spike blinked, and let her go.

    “If all you love now is blood and violence,” Buffy said, “then why write it down at all?”

    He turned away, but she caught the edge of confusion that she often saw on his face. It was a look she’d never seen before this last year. Spike was usually so decisive, but lately certain things seemed to have thrown him for a loop. It had been a long time since he’d drunk human blood. And Buffy wondered often what his grief for her had been like for him – he’d seemed deeper when she came back. “Spike?”

    “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t written any since Drusilla... since I died,” he said. He looked down at the neat, Victorian script. “I didn’t want to forget it.”

    “Have you tried?” Buffy asked.

    “To what? Write?”

    “Yeah.”

    “What does anyone need the poems of a vampire for?” Spike asked, dismissive. “Besides. There’s plenty of great poets out there. Have you heard this one: There once was a girl from Nantucket–”

    “You say one more line of that, and I’ll hit you.”

    “Promises, promises.”

    “I’m serious,” Buffy said. “Have you ever tried?”

    “Vampires don’t write poems,” Spike said. “They don’t write symphonies unless you count the screams of their victims. They don’t paint pictures, they don’t sculpt masterpieces. Why do you think Angel made Drusilla? She was his art, and victims like her. Battle was mine. There are some things that don’t carry over when you die.”

    “Like art? That can’t be right. I mean, Angel used to sketch.”

    “Only to torture you,” Spike said.

    Buffy didn’t understand. “Why? The mind is the same, mostly, yeah? That’s what makes art.”

    “It’s not the only thing,” Spike said quietly.

    “I don’t understand.”

    “What don’t I have, pet? You go on about it all the bloody time.”

    A soul, Buffy realized. He’d lost his poetry when he’d lost his soul.  Something twisted in her, and she felt almost sick for him. “I’m sorry,” Buffy said.

    Spike grinned then. “Don’t be. I’m not. I still have an art.”

    “Oh? Battling demons?”

    “Yeah, that,” Spike said, coming up to her. “I also make music. Some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.”

    Buffy would have responded, but his hand was down the front of her pants, and she was too busy gasping and gulping for air. “You see?” he said, his voice sultry, as he twisted his fingers, making her moan. “What other art would I need?”

    It still seemed a shame, but Buffy was a little too distracted to answer.