Work Text:
There’s this guy at school. Martin Brooker. He’s on the football team, so she never thought he’d look twice at her, but one day, in Geography, he does.
It turns out he’s not one of those guys who’s insufferable about the sport. He actually talks about other stuff, actually listens. He passes notes to her, making jokes about their old teacher, and she starts to hope.
They finally get to a date. Spike won’t stop taking the piss out of her for grinning like a lovesick idiot when she goes to hang out with him in the cemetery afterwards (not that she tells him the reason). Then there’s another date. Martin buys her lunch at school. It’s going well.
Not everything is going well, though. It’s a rough patch at home right now. Why else would she be hanging with Spike instead of at home waiting by the phone after that first date?
They get to another. Three whole dates. It’s at his place, he’s having a bbq with some mates. She sticks around after they leave, helping clean up, and, well, one thing leads to another.
Caught up, she half forgets everything else until Martin squeezes an unfortunate spot and she hardly saves herself from wincing, holds back a whimper of pain. Thanks to the trouble at home, she still has some very big, very obvious bruises on her midriff. They have to stay hidden.
So, yeah. Shit.
He notices her pulling back and presses her harder into the wall, searching for her lips again, hands still roaming. She twists her head away.
“Can we do this later?” she pants.
“What’s wrong with now?”
“Nothing, I-I want to… I wish I could-”
“Then let’s.”
She wants to. She does, she tells herself. But having your parents on your mind hardly helps getting in the mood, and the moment’s broken. Shame is already curling hot in her gut.
“Just not- not tonight, okay?”
But it doesn’t seem to be okay with him.
By this time he’s grabbing at her chest, and when she manages to wriggle free, he leaves scratches. He didn’t mean to do it, she knows. She just moved a bit too roughly trying to get the message across. She wonders again if it would be less hassle to just do it. But now she kind of doesn’t want to. And she feels disgusting. He can’t see the state of her under these clothes.
He’s cold and grumpy and she’s clearly not able to apologise enough because he doesn’t say goodnight when he closes the door.
She cries on the way home, for once glad she doesn’t run across Spike.
Why do her parents have to ruin everything? At home is bad enough, but they’re following her when she leaves, too. She wants him, and she clearly hasn’t done a good job of making him feel like that tonight.
But it’s ok. She’ll make it up to him. More than make it up to him.
The next day, she puts foundation over the bruises, the angle twisting them painfully but she does it. Puts on a more revealing top. That’ll show him she means it. Add in the jeans that make her legs look the best.
Looking in the mirror, she realises the one flaw. Those scratches are deeper than she realised. Or just look worse than they are. So she grabs a blouse, chucks it over the top and arranges it to hide the red lines Martin left. Perfect.
Except, when she turns up at school ready to win him back after this temporary setback, nothing goes as planned.
They’re talking about her. Staring.
She tries to go up to Martin when his friends crowd in to block her path. How could you, they ask her. How dare you?
“I’m sorry?”
“So you think coming clean makes it better? Think you’re a good person just because you decided to tell him you’re sleeping with half the team before doing it to him to?”
She gapes. Jostles enough to meet Martin’s eyes. His eyes are cold as he frowns at her from behind the wall of friends.
“I heard we’re having an affair,” says Ryan Johnson from behind her in French.
Mortified, she stammers and tries for an apology.
“It’s creepy,” he tells her, “knock it off. Spreading rumours isn’t exactly going to win a guy over.”
She stares at him as he leaves, feeling the sting of tears with a sick feeling in her stomach.
She gets the message by lunchtime, having heard nothing but her name on people’s lips, everyone she passes turning to stare at her in gleeful disdain. She clutches her bag in front of her, wishing she wasn’t wearing anything this revealing. Her tight jeans leave her feeling exposed, when this morning she had enjoyed them.
Slowly, she approaches the dining hall. A group of girls emerge from the doors, practically recoiling when they see her, before marching away, giggling behind their hands. Pretending not to see the looks they throw back at her, she turns back to the canteen, blinking furiously.
Staring through that window from the outside, the hall seems like another world. If she crosses into it, they’ll all be laughing at her. Judging her. There’s Martin in a back corner, ranting to the group of boys surrounding him, the ones who had been at the barbecue last night. They had been nice to her.
Didn’t he know she never meant it? She bites down on her lip as it wobbles. There are tears threatening in her eyes, making the packed hall look blurry.
Breathing in thinly through her nose, she turns and rushes away, ignoring her growling stomach. She shuts herself in a toilet cubicle, but still doesn’t cry. If anyone comes in, they’ll hear and if they know it’s her then she’ll only be laughed at again.
Pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes, she curls into herself and waits an agonising half hour for the bell to ring.
The day, in short, is a day from hell. The guy she likes hates her, the whole school thinks she’s a massive slut, and it’s all because of those damn bruises!
She doesn’t even bother going home. Doesn’t want to set foot in that place. They did it to her, it’s their fault, and her stupid fault too, much as she hates to admit it. The whole thing is eating at her, making her feel silly and small and dirty and this whole mess of ‘if only’s isn’t helping at all.
She’s still carrying that teary feeling too and she hates feeling so fucking fragile, and she’s angry too which only makes it worse because if she thinks about it too hard it makes her want to cry even more. Her composure is about as solid as a tissue on the surface of water.
And where the hell is Spike? She doesn’t know how long it’s been since dark fell over the cemetery, but she’s given up kidding herself that she’s not here hoping to bump into him. What she’ll do then, she has no idea, but for some reason, him not showing when she expected him to is bugging her. The night always ends up going somewhere interesting at least, when he’s around. And right now it’s only going in circles.
She paces some more. Spins the same scenes from the night before through her mind until she feels sick. Gives up and marches to Spike’s crypt. Knocks roughly. Pushes the door open when there’s nothing, pokes her head through.
Sure enough, he’s not here. She could wait for him? No. She may have managed to admit that she hopes to run into the vampire, but waiting for him in his own crypt is a step too far.
She scopes the place out quickly, just in case he’s hiding for some reason, but no. Folding her arms, she paces the maze between his piles of clutter and bottles, ready to head out for some more self-loathing in the graveyard…
Her eyes slide to a bottle sitting at the base of his sarcophagus. It’s mostly full, some dark amber liquid inside which she’s seen him slug back on occasion.
She grabs it and storms out.
That’s how he finds her later on, as he wanders back to his crypt. He spies someone slumped by a tomb and slows, lazy grin spreading over his face. He smells booze. It’s only when he steps closer that he smells her, too, sees her silhouette, the arm clutching the bottle slung over one knee and her head bent forwards, face hiding among her hair.
“My, my,” he chuckles, “didn’t bank on a drunken scooby. Not so pure and proper now, eh-?”
Then he suddenly halts. He lifts a hand to point at her accusingly, expression growing indignant.
“Oi! Is that mine?”
Ash turns to him, head lolling a little as she flips her hair back over the other shoulder. The bottle sloshes in her hand. It’s much emptier than he remembers.
“Hey, that’s good stuff!” he rants, storming forwards.
She dodges as he swipes for the bottle – just. He could wrest it off her easily enough if he really wanted, but he stops short to stare at her half in shock, half downright unimpressed as her attempt at standing ends in her stumbling into the tomb.
“Blimey. You really are bollocksed.”
“Piss off, Spike,” she spits.
He had thought his eyebrows couldn’t rise any higher.
It seems she really means it, too, because she scowls and turns her back on him, taking another swig from the bottle and flinching at the taste. He feels a begrudging admiration for how much she’s managed to get down if she doesn’t even like it.
“You know, you’re damn lucky it’s me and not any other vamp. Even a fledge could take you right now.”
“They wouldn’t like the taste.”
“Just because you don’t,” he grumbles, “and why drink it if you don’t like it? That stuff’s expensive too! ‘S a bloody waste, I tell you!”
“Don’t care. Leave me alone, Spike.”
“Oh, yeah, and wind up with a Slayer knockin’ on my door for lettin’ you get snacked on on my watch? Not bloody likely.”
“What do you care what Buffy thinks?” she argues as he grabs her wrist, tugging her with him.
When she kicks at him and yanks her hand back, he actually lets her. Might be something to do with the fact she stumbles into the light and her face is puffy and streaked with tears, eyes glassy. She’s been crying her bloody eyes out, over a bottle of his booze? This has got to be good.
“Alright,” he’s tucking his thumbs into his belt and giving her a look, chin tilting down. “Out with it.”
“Wha-”
“Oh, don’t give me that! You’re a bloody mess!”
She huffs, teetering slightly on her feet. Her fingers tighten on the bottle’s neck.
“Who says it’s anything? And-and why do you care?”
“Already been over that,” he rolls his eyes, but it’s a front, “and as for the denial… I’d say you crossed that bridge about half a bottle ago, luv. So, let’s see. You’re drinkin’ your sorrows away in the middle of the night, on a Hellmouth…”
Her breathing shudders and she blinks furiously, looking down.
But his words trail off, something dawning on him which he doesn’t like. Scoffing, he throws a hand out.
“Is this about a sodding boy?!”
Her eyes blink up at him balefully. They’re thick with tears, and so sad, and she’s the picture of a hot mess with that pout. And she says nothing.
“Oh, bloody hell.”
Spike’s whole body shrugs, turning away from her and towards the abyss, or somewhere equally cosy.
Ash’s jaw clenches. She knows the words aren’t true even as she feels them slipping from her mouth. Knows it’s petty, and cruel, and a lie. But everything outside of her bleeding heart is blurred, and isn’t alcohol supposed to do the opposite and make you forget?
So she curses her tongue and spits the words anyway.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Spike whirls back to her in an instant, his eyes blazing. He scoffs darkly.
“I wouldn’t understand? I wouldn’t understand?! I’ve been through more than any of your bloody lot ever care to remember! Whoever you’ve been shagging doesn’t hold a candle to Drusilla!”
“See?” Ash hisses with real venom, “You don’t care. Well, you don’t have to be here. Leave me alone!”
And she flounces past him.
Exhaling roughly, he swallows back the bait he shouldn’t have taken. The words of a bleeding drunk teenage girl are enough to make him forget all reason? He’s almost embarrassed.
Instead, he spins to face her retreating back, splaying his hands in apology, and starts his last-ditch effort.
“Oi! Not so quick! Listen, pet,” he sighs, “I get it, alright? You got your heart broken. You’re drunk” – she stops, body slowing without her meaning to, and turns just enough to glance at him – “now, the natural next thing to do is to blabber all your worries to someone who’s willing to listen. Usually the dodgy sort, but you’re too drunk to care. That’s how these things are meant to go. And I’ve decided to step up to the plate.”
He puffs his chest out, a sarcastically gracious smile stretching his lips.
Shifting, she stares at the rippling amber liquid, hands fidgeting around the bottle, before her shoulders drop.
“Fine.”
“Then give me some o’ that.”
Striding forward, Spike plucks the bottle from her hands (with no intention of giving it back to her) and plonks himself on a sarcophagus to listen.
She’s thoroughly miserable, that much is clear, so after a generous swig, he turns his full attention and his most sympathetic eyes to her.
“He... he doesn’t see,” she hiccoughs, “… see how much I want to be with him. I meant it, and I do want to… If only I could just show him, for real… I tried, but I-I couldn’t when it counted… oh god, he hates me!”
She paces a couple of steps each way as she speaks, ending with her face falling into her hands. Spike tries to piece together the snippets. In fairness, if she’s drunk enough to spill this easily, he shouldn’t have expected it to be comprehensible.
Still, what he hears, he isn’t sure he likes. It’s entertaining, the way she dances around saying sex out loud, but it’s not getting them anywhere.
“So, because you haven’t done the deed yet, he’s lost interest?” Spike ventures.
Ash sighs, long and hard.
“I-I- We nearly did, and I, oh god, I want to! But I just- I can’t and it’s stupid and now he hates me. And so does everyone else. He made up all these disgusting stories…” A sob breaks her off. “Why couldn’t I just do it! I was so stupid!”
She throws her hands out, looking, exasperated at the sky, tears flying from her eyes.
But Spike’s focus is robbed from the words.
Her blouse moves as she rants, and she’s only wearing a tiny thing underneath – and there are scratches. Stark, red lines that descend down past the hem. That’s no demon – it’s not deep enough, not burned or carved with weapons. That’s plain, old, human violence. Spike’s eyes darken.
“So he did that?”
She frowns, taking too long to realise what he means. Then, her eyes go wide, caught, and a hand flies up to tug her blouse across her chest again. It stays there, hiding them.
“No, that’s not…”
Spike shuts her up with a hard look. Her lip trembles and she looks at the floor.
“It’s not what you think.”
“I think,” Spike says, hopping down from his seat, “that he tried it on with you, ‘n didn’t like it too much when you said no.”
“Didn’ say no…” she mumbles, “I said ‘not now.’”
“Same bloody thing, pet! The lady protests, an’ he ploughs on anyway, until she has to push ‘im off, hm?”
“But he wasn’t- he’s not like that!” She whines.
“Doesn’t look like it from here, pet. Blimey, he’s done a bang-up job of it if you’re still singing his praises. Let me guess, it’s just your fault for not going with it? He says it’s not that big of a deal, but clearly it’s big enough for him to hurt a lady-”
“He didn’t hurt me!”
“Then what do you call that?”
“An accident!”
“You don’t put a scratch on the lady you love,” he tells her, before grinning evilly. “Not unless she asks you to.”
She shudders.
“Ewww, Spike! And we’re not like that! I swear he didn’t mean to!”
Both her hands are clutching her shirt now, as if she can cover herself up completely and hide forever.
“Bloody hell, maybe there’s no helping you, pet. You need to get some damn self-respect, and take that from the guy who doesn’t have enough himself.”
Jabbing a finger at her, he slumps back down carelessly and takes a rough swig from the bottle. Ash is silent, and when he gives her a sideways look, he finds her eyes shimmering with tears, but none of them fall. She swallows and sends a yearning look at the bottle.
“No more for you,” he mutters, setting it behind him.
This is a right mess. The first time he had run into her out here, he had grumbled and they had traded jabs and he had been surprised to find she wasn’t too bad to chat with, even if she ran with the prissy scooby gang. Too many nights’ worth of conversations have seen him having a decent laugh and also questioning what the hell was wrong with him for humouring her. He wonders if she feels the same. Wonders why on earth she would choose to stop by the cemetery rather than be literally anywhere else, but he had never asked. They never did, not about anything that meant anything.
But apparently they’ve got a bit too comfortable along the way. Because this has never happened before.
He’s never been face-to-face with a teary, emotional Ash, and he isn’t quite prepared for it. But she’s a sodding teenager in love and scorned by it – that he can relate to at least.
“Listen, luv, I know how it is. You love someone, you chase ‘em, you’re blind to their faults and they can’t put a foot wrong. You lose yourself. Case in point.”
He nods her way and she hugs herself, but she’s listening.
“But you gotta both be on the same page. Gotta listen to each other, not go around making the other one put their body on the line, or do something they don’t want to just to please them. You shouldn’t have anything to prove.”
“Were you and Drusilla like that?”
“’Course we weren’t, pet. And do you see her next to me right now?”
She blinks.
“No… but a hundred years has to count for something.”
“Bloody right it does! How long have I been waiting for someone to say it out loud-?!”
He stops himself, realising his message is getting a bit lost here.
“But listen, pet, you can chase and chase, but if you stop for one moment you might realise something…”
“Realise what?”
He sighs and looks her straight in the eyes. Hers are big and naïve, almost nervous to hear what he has to say.
“That he’s a right wanker, luv.”
She sort of deflates, but at least she’s not fighting back.
“You don’t want ‘im to be, I know, but you gotta face it. Sex isn’t something you should have to use to prove anything.” He’s just thankful she’s too drunk to notice the haunted note in his eyes as he speaks too close to experience. “You shouldn’t have to do anything like that.”
She blinks. The tears are still there, the anger too, but it’s definitely shifting. She… hadn’t thought about that.
“All those things he said about me… But I- I must have done something wrong…”
“Yeah, you chose the wrong guy,” Spike scoffs. Then sighs. “I dunno what tossers are walking around these days passing for men but… Listen, I can’t believe I’m about to give you advice, but you’re better off without him, pet. He doesn’t see anything more than your body. Why else would he throw a bleedin’ tantrum the moment he couldn’t have it, hm?”
“He- He didn’t even give me the chance to explain!” She huffs, turning to pace between the graves.
Much as Spike enjoys hearing the anger rise in her voice at last, the anger this kid deserves more than her tears, she’s not really in a fit state for the walking-in-a-straight-line just yet. He raises a brow as she trips on a headstone.
“I was going to make it up to him…” she moans, dragging herself back to the sarcophagus Spike occupies and plopping down next to him.
“God, please spare me the details,” he begs, sorely tempted to grab the liquor again. But he doesn’t want to remind her of its existence, and figures having one of the two of them operational would be for the best.
“What happened to Mr Confidant?”
“Left the building… or, left the graveyard,” Spike tells. “He was only using you for the gossip anyway.”
“Well, I would never’ve thought, but maybe he was kind of right,” she admits, staring at the grass like it’s some kind of puzzle. “Martin could have listened to me this morning. And not lied about those rumours.”
“More importantly, could also do without the guilting you into sex part. A ladies’ body is her own to do with as she pleases.”
Unable to deny he’s being way too soft, Spike gives in to another sip. Ash stares, but this time at him and not the bottle.
“Now, does this Martin have a last name? An address?” Spike changes tack. Ash narrows her eyes. “…Any arteries conveniently near the surface?”
“Spike!”
She whacks him sharply with the back of her hand, to which he just grins.
“Call me when you’ve come to your senses, and I can get a guilt-free meal,” Spike tells her matter-of-factly. “Prick has it coming to him.”
Ash is still bladdered, and he doesn’t know where her sodding house is, so when he sees her head drooping, he props her up and directs them both into the crypt.
“Look at you, you’re a right state,” he tells her as he has to catch her from walking into a tree. His voice comes out all too amused, almost fond.
He’s refrained from more booze, after all, and happily turns on the telly, depositing Ash on the sofa while he takes the armchair.
They chat about the crap on the box, and some more about the bellend from school. The sniffles return when she finally tells him some of the rumours the kid’s been spreading.
“I just don’t know how to go back there and see him,” she sniffles.
Spike decides against turning the guy into a vampire, deciding he’ll be too bloody good at it. All he deserves is a shallow grave.
Ash drops off to sleep somewhere in the wee small hours. It’s night, so it should be prime hours for Spike to be out and about lurking and prowling and other such things. But he turns the tv down, throws his least ratty blanket over her and drinks his own way through the night.
When she wakes up, it takes her several long moments to take in her surroundings. And one very short one to bolt upright, eyes wide and panicked.
Her first ever hangover hits with the altitude, and she groans, lifting a hand to her crown. Spike gazes over blearily from his spot reclining on the sarcophagus.
“What time is it?” she asks.
He shrugs, squinting over at the light which squeezes around the edge of the thick crypt door.
“Probably ‘bout ten, I’d wager.”
Her eyes grow rounder, hand dropping from her head, the new shock clearly much worse than the hangover.
“Ten!? You think so?”
Fighting her way out of the covers, she staggers to her feet, cursing under her breath. Spike just watches in amusement.
“Didn’ think you’d be so eager to go to school, all considered.”
She’s frozen, staring down at the blanket in bewilderment. She wasn’t at home this morning, which is bad, but all the hurrying in the world won’t change that. And Spike’s words wake her up the rest of the way, bringing back all the reasons she had run from the world the night before.
She sends him a look full of confusion, desperate and torn. And curious. She’s sober now, and likely having the same realisation Spike had last night. They’ve hung out for lack of anything better to do, verbally sparring and just passing the time. They’ve never cried at each other, or got drunk on the other’s liquor, or spent the night in the crypt.
“I… I have to,” she says in a small voice.
Spike studies her. Then turns away, going back to resting.
“Give ‘im hell.”
She swallows, eyes lingering on that platinum blond head. It takes her too long to cajole her feet into facing their fear and heading outside. The door falls shut heavily behind her.
She doesn’t show up the next evening. Or the next. Spike’s completely got through the bottle she started by the time he finds her again, kicking her feet on a headstone and staring into the trees at the back of the cemetery.
Rounding the graves, he notices a mass of dark, bruised blotches at her temple.
She doesn’t seem surprised to see him. Leaning against an adjoining stone, he cocks his head and appraises her.
“Three day long hangover, eh? That’s one way to learn your lesson.”
“I was busy, Spike,” she sighs, but it just sounds tired. “Sometimes I do have enough of a life not to hang out here.”
“And yet, you return,” he observes.
“Go figure.” He’s glad to get a chuckle out of her. “My life only lasts as long as the latest demon stomps around, causes trouble, and ends when it gets beaten up by Buffy.”
“And you stand in the way of its fists?”
She gives him a sidelong glance.
“It was actually a very strategic move,” she quips.
“Mind you–” Spike shifts on his perch, eyes flicking down and back up to her injury “–I only heard talk of a Boretz demon causing a stink. Doesn’t look much like the claws they love to wave about. ‘N you don’t seem to be poisoned.”
She firmly averts her eyes.
“This one was a Kovitch demon.”
“Ah.” He nods, though he hadn’t been aware of any in town. “Not the most impressive beasts.”
“Thanks,” she huffs sarcastically, “need I remind you? Puny human over here!”
“Reckon you’re the one who needs reminding, love. Puny humans are also not built for half a bottle of whiskey in one sitting.”
She rolls her eyes, but looks at him with a faint smile.
“Thanks, Spike. And you know what, Buffy wasn’t too busy with the Boretz guy to go intimidate Martin the other day…”
Spike’s bloody glad to hear it, and listens to the story with satisfaction (only a little bitter it wasn’t him serving up karma). The night is normal again, like before. As normal as a vampire hanging out with a human can be, anyway, even if they both pretend not to care. But neither of them can take back the way Spike was there for her the night she fell apart for the first time.