Chapter 48 - Shatters

Something had been off about Spike last night, Buffy decided. She hadn’t seen him on patrol because Willow and Xander had been with her, but as he’d walked her back to the Magic Box to get her car, his mind had clearly been elsewhere, like he was waiting for something.

He’d been eerily quiet. Anxious, almost.

So not Spike.

Buffy left her house around noon, hours before she’d planned to be at the Magic Box. She didn’t even bother coming up with an excuse to herself about why she was going by Spike’s. She just was.

It turned out that she didn’t need an explanation to give Spike, either. When he opened the door (after prolonged knocking on her part), he didn’t even say anything, just leaned awkwardly against the frame. His shirt wasn’t tucked in and he was barefoot; his hair was mussed.

Buffy stared at him.

Spike blinked against the sunlit sky behind her and then reached out like he was going to touch her.

He missed.

“You’re drunk,” she realized.

“Probly,” he mumbled.

Spike turned from her and staggered back to the couch, falling on it heavily.

Buffy followed him in, shutting the door behind her. She eyed the assortment of bottles on the floor. “Did you drink all of those?”

“Well I didn’ pour ’em down the drain.” He laughed.

“Since last night?”

He picked up a bottle, a stupid grin on his face. “’Cept for this ’un, yeah.”

She glanced around again. “That’s like…alcohol poisoning quantities. You should be dead.” Buffy looked at him. “Never mind.”

He threw the bottle down and slouched back, clumsily propping one of his feet up on a box. It was heavy cardboard, the kind that—she tilted her head, noting the logo—the kind that liquor stores got shipments in.

Buffy looked back at Spike.

She hadn’t seen anyone this drunk since the welcome week parties at college, if then. Judging from the bottles, if he weren’t a vampire he’d be in the hospital or something.

Spike was watching her, smiling at her with his tongue between his teeth, his head rolled to the side and resting on his shoulder. He snickered.

Buffy straightened up. “Okay, you need to sleep it off. C’mon, get up.” She pushed his foot off the box and looped an arm around his middle, pulling him to stand and steering him into the bedroom.

She deposited Spike in the middle of the bed, bending over as she arranged him. Once she got him situated where his feet weren’t hanging off the end, she leaned on the bed with one knee and stretched to the other side for a pillow.

Suddenly he reached up, cupping her cheek with his hand. “I’d choose you,” he slurred.

Buffy froze. “What?”

She looked down at him.

“I’d hurt her. She said I wouldn’ I said I wouldn’…but I would. You or her, an’ I would.”

“Spike, what are you talking about?”

“She wouldn’ go.”

“Who?”

His hand fell from her face, and she sank down on the edge of the bed, one arm still planted on the other side of him.

“Spike?”

“I tried but she wouldn’ hear it. Anywhere I said, I’ll get you there…” Spike trailed off. Then he looked back at her. “Drusilla,” he responded, belatedly answering her question.

“You tried to get Drusilla to leave?”

“If she jus’ woulda gone she could stay, y’know?”

“Not really.”

Spike closed his eyes, rolling his head back. “I said my g’byes.”

“You and Drusilla said goodbye?”

“No.”

“Spike, you’re not making sense.”

He laughed, a half wheeze.

After a moment more, Buffy turned to move.

He jerked toward her, catching her arm. “Stay.”

“You should…I…”

Despite the haze, he was looking at her almost pleadingly.

With need.

“Okay,” she whispered. “For a little bit.”

Buffy twisted around, propping the pillow against the wall as she leaned back.

Spike curled and rolled toward her, wrapping his arms around her torso and burying his face in her middle like a child. He said something, but it was faint and muffled by the fabric of her shirt.

It sounded like ‘I’d choose you.’

She put her hand to his head. Moments later, he was unconscious.

And so went her plan of staying until he went to sleep. She couldn’t leave so immediately, after she said she’d stay.

Fifteen or twenty minutes, and then she’d go.
.
.
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Buffy must have fallen asleep herself, because when she next opened her eyes, it was much later in the day. There was only the faintest light seeping around the edges of the blanket tacked over the window.

She was also much farther down on the bed, now lying more than sitting. Spike was still wrapped around her, halfway in a fetal position.

She’d never seen him so—well, obviously she’d never seen him so drunk—but she’d never seen him so…vulnerable.

Something horrible must have happened with Drusilla.

It sounded like he had tried to get her to leave.

Buffy wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She couldn’t just go around offering every vampire that she ran across a chance to skip town. On the other hand, she herself hadn’t. And while Buffy couldn’t let Drusilla stay in Sunnydale to spare Spike, she supposed that if Dru had mysteriously disappeared, it wasn’t like she was going to go hunt her down.

Buffy wasn’t sure she could understand Spike’s relationship with Drusilla. He had been in love with her and now he wasn’t, that much she got. But she didn’t have any concept of what it would be like to have been with someone for that long. And she wasn’t touching the whole sire thing.

She was aware that Spike was in an uncomfortable situation. He’d said that he wouldn’t be a direct part of killing Drusilla. And she couldn’t ask him to be; honestly, she’d not expected him to react to the news about ‘the Aurelians’ as well as he had.

Of course, maybe all of that was out the window now. Spike’s words, albeit drunken ones, echoed in her head. I’d choose you…I’d hurt her…

Buffy moved her arm slightly, which must have alerted Spike that she was awake, because she felt him stir and grasp at her.

“I have to patrol soon,” she whispered.

“Later.” His voice was heavy.

“Almost.” She paused. “What happened?”

A silence. “Doesn’ matter.”

After another moment of silence, he sighed against her. “She wouldn’ go, I said my g’byes,” he repeated. Probably he didn’t remember saying it in the first place.

By now, Buffy could hazard a guess at what had happened.

Spike had offered Dru an out—most likely pleaded with her to take it, to take herself out of Sunnydale and away from what would end up happening. For whatever reason, she had refused.

And then Buffy knew.

This was Spike making his peace with what was going to happen. Drinking himself stupid, yes, but severing whatever lingering ties he still had to Drusilla.

“I would,” he said.

Buffy didn’t point out that she hadn’t said anything. “I’ve never seen you this drunk.”

“Can only get tha’ drunk over a woman.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’m glad you never got that drunk over me.”

He laughed. “Drunker, worse like.”

“What? When?”

“When you got all chosen.”

She said nothing, and after a moment he continued.

“It shouldn’t ’ve been you. Least tha’s what I thought. I liked you, an’ then you went an’ turned into the Slayer.”

Buffy suddenly wondered what Spike had thought, back then. A vampire who liked a human girl against his nature, who struggled with the idea of even having a relationship with her, only to have her become his natural enemy after he had done so. She’d been so wrapped up in the fact that she was having a weird time (hello, vampire?) that she had never considered that he might’ve been having one as well, for whatever reasons.

“Why was it worse?”

“I heard ’em, y’know, sayin’ Slayer…but it wasn’ you, it couldn’ be you… An’ then it was,” he rambled. “Wanted to hate you, but I couldn’.”

“Why was it worse?” she asked again.

He tightened his grip on her. “Cause you weren’ there.”

“I…I’m here now.”

“All mine,” he said. “’S Saturday,” he suddenly mumbled.

Spike started to inch up her body.

“Whoa,” Buffy said, stiffening. While she trusted him, she wasn’t sure a drunk Spike near her neck was entirely a good idea.

“Jus’ a little, ’ll clear me right up.”

He was already at her throat, halfway on top of her.

Buffy brought her hands up in alarm, started to push him off. “Spike, stop.”

And he did. Just like that.

They lay frozen for a moment, her hands pressed against his shoulders, before Spike let his head fall on her chest. A second more and he rolled off her.

Buffy propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at him. “Later, okay?”

“Yeah.” He nodded.

She scooted to the edge of the bed and sat up. “I really do have to patrol.”

“Right.” Spike started to move.

Buffy pushed him back down with one hand. “Nuh-uh. The last thing I need is a wasted vampire following me around. I’ll be fine for one patrol. I’ll make sure Giles comes with me.”

Spike stared at her for a moment, but seemed to accept it. He fell back on the bed. “You comin’ back after?”

She paused. “Yeah. Sure.”