Chapter 2: Comfort

Buffy stepped out onto the back porch and breathed a sigh of relief. She basked in the stillness and the silence, gazing up at the stars as a breeze made her hair dance on her shoulders.

The snap of a twig and the rustle of leaves startled her out of her reverie. She appreciated the warning, since he usually just snuck up on her with his vampire stealth. “Quite the merrymaking going on in there,” Spike’s voice came from the shadows.

Buffy watched him as he crossed the lawn and joined her on the porch. His pale skin and hair took on an ethereal glow in the moonlight. “It’s a welcome home party.”

“For you or the Watcher?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Then shouldn’t you be in there?” When Buffy didn’t respond, he answered for her. “Too much noise. Too many people expecting you to be happy.” She nodded, and he remembered the last time he’d seen her. “This is getting to be a habit with you, innit? Running out in the middle of a lovefest.”

“It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, right?”

“There is that. You want me to take ’em out?” He threw a mock punch. “Give me a hell of a headache, but I could probably thin the herd a little.” His teasing managed to elicit a small smile from Buffy, and his eyes brightened at the sight. “Knew I could get a grin.”

The smile faded almost as quickly as it had appeared as Buffy sank down on the porch steps. “Everyone wants me to be okay.”

Spike took a seat next to her. “Well, sure, that’s what friends do.”

“But I’m not!” He could hear the pain in her voice. “And they – they’re so disappointed if I – I have to keep pretending for them. I’m so tired, I just… it takes so much. The big bowl of happy is so not me right now, and they expect me to –”

She stopped abruptly. Spike looked over at her, but she was staring at her hands in her lap. “Buffy, if you need to… talk about it, or… I mean, if there’s anything I –” She shook her head, still not meeting his eyes.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, Buffy sighed. “I should go back in.” She didn’t seem too keen on the idea.

“Screw them,” said Spike. Her head jerked up at his tone, and when he continued, his voice was softer, gentler. “What do you want, pet?”

“I want… I don’t know what I want. I just don’t want to pretend.”

“Don’t have to pretend with me.”

“I want… the pain to go away. Everything hurts, Spike, everything. And there’s so much pain, and fear, and – and loss. Like I’ve lost something huge, even worse than when my mom… it’s a part of me, that’s just… gone. And I’m angry at them, but I can’t even hate them because it makes me too tired.”

He clenched his jaw and blinked back tears – for her, of course, because it killed him to see her like this, but also out of rage at them, that they could do this to her without considering the consequences.

“I don’t – I don’t know what to say, pet. I wish I did, but… not much good with the comfort, I guess.”

“No, you’ve been… this has helped.”

He looked up hopefully. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She hesitated, uncertain, then said, “Spike? What was it like, for you?” When he gave her a puzzled look, she added, “Dying.”

He drew in a deep breath, letting it out in a slow, thoughtful exhale. “Well, it hurt, for one. You been bitten before, know what that’s like. There’s pain, yeah, but… something else, something…”

“Passionate.”

He glanced over and found her expression unyielding, concealing any emotions, but her eyes radiated understanding.

“Yeah.” He coughed nervously. “Anyway, after a bit, everything started to go dark and, well, then there was nothing, really. Just woke up again, seemed like only moments, but must have been a day at least.”

“Did you think about anything, when it happened? Your family? Your… life?”

He began fiddling with his Zippo, flicking it open and closed, running his finger through the flame. “Thought about a girl,” he told her with a sheepish half-smile. “Cecily.”

“Your girlfriend?”

The last time she’d asked for his life story, he’d woven it with lies and embellishments, spinning a fantastic tale of an Artful Dodger youth followed by years of reprobate law-breaking and troublemaking, and carefully omitting the part where he’d been a ponce and a lousy poet obsessed with a woman who wouldn’t give him the time of day.

He shook his head. “Hardly.” He snapped the lighter closed one final time and dropped it in his pocket. When he withdrew his hand again, it contained a flask. He tilted his head back and let the bourbon smooth away the rough edges of painful memories.

“You wanna talk about… what it felt like for you?” he asked her.

She whipped her head back and forth violently. “No. I want to forget it, all of it. If I can’t remember, it won’t hurt, right?” Her eyes pleaded with him, and then shifted away from his face. He followed her gaze to the flask in his hand and studied it for a moment before handing to her.

She snatched it out of his hand, took a swig, and promptly coughed and gagged as the liquor burned her throat. “Blechhh,” she said, making a face. “What is that?”

“Bourbon, love.”

“I don’t think I like bourbon.”

“It’s not a forgetting spell, but it does the trick. For a little while, at least.”

She looked at him again, all the pleading and the pain welling up in her eyes. “Okay.”

He cocked his head to one side, judging whether she was serious. This was probably a terrible idea, but when had that ever stopped him before? He’d let a hellgod rearrange his insides to spare her from pain. This was nothing in comparison. He pocketed the flask again and stood, tugging her up with him.

“Come on.” He intertwined his fingers with hers and leaned back, countering her resistance as he tried to pull her off the porch. “We’ll go someplace with variety.”

She gave in and allowed herself to be drawn toward him, until they were standing inches apart. Spike felt a sudden warmth at her nearness and suppressed a shudder. “Right, then,” he stammered, momentarily thrown by her wide eyes and soft lips so close to his, and he had to fight the urge not to take her in his arms right there and try to kiss away her pain. He backed away and headed for the bushes.

Buffy followed him out of her yard and down the street. She expected him to take her back to his crypt and was surprised to find that they were heading toward the center of town.

“Where are we going?”

Spike turned to her, puzzled. “A bar.” She wanted to drink – he thought it was obvious. He certainly wasn’t going to take her back to his crypt – where there was alcohol, yes, but also a bed and pillows and candles and handcuffs, with plenty of potential for drunken fumblings and imminent stakings. Definitely a bad idea. So he was headed to Willy’s. “Where they have alcohol,” he explained.

Buffy frowned. “First of all, I’m not old enough –”

“You don’t get carded in demon bars.”

“And besides, I don’t really want to be around noise and people, remember?”

Spike relented. “My place, then? Dark, quiet, and all the blood and bourbon you can drink.” He’d just have to keep on his guard, then. If she was gonna get hammered, he’d be staying sober tonight.

Buffy made the same face she had when she’d swallowed the bourbon. “Anything else?”

“I’ll see what I can scrounge up.”

It turned out he didn’t need to do much scrounging. By the time they got back to his crypt, she was drinking out of his flask again and had managed to swallow without gagging, though she continued to make a face with each swig, and occasionally he heard an unhappy gurgling noise. Spike pulled out all the liquor bottles he had and set them up on the big flat-topped sarcophagus. He sat down next to the bottles and gestured for Buffy to join him. He grabbed a bottle and two chipped glass tumblers he’d stolen from the Summers basement the previous year, but before he could pour, Buffy shook her head and took the bottle away from him. He watched, amused, as she proceeded to drink his whiskey directly from the bottle.

She stuck her tongue out and shook her head. “Blehhhhhh.” Spike moved to take the bottle back, but she held it out of reach.

His lips curled up as he moved the glasses aside. “Won’t be needing these then, I guess.”