Work Text:
Ash isn’t a slayer, but she’s killed vampires. Hell, she’s killed worse than vampires. They all have. Countless demons of all varieties, arcane curses and even the damn mayor – which is why she’s certain that the gods are laughing at her right now.
The vamp isn’t anything special. But, as always in Sunnydale, one slip can see you in the ground. She just wasn’t fast enough. The angles all wrong, her stake is knocked uselessly from her hand the minute he leaps at her.
Gasping as the fangs split her skin, the dizzying suck of blood leaving her plunges her into the odd, distant memory of the first time she saw a vampire in the flesh. The way its face had shifted, the floor falling away beneath her feet as pure fear engulfed her, for the first time confronted by something not of this world. That inhuman, instinctual terror courses through her for perhaps the second time in her life. Her mind is blank, save for panic.
She’ll never remember how she gets out. The vamp absorbs her frantic thrashing, the desperate, sharp kicks which have bought her time in the past finding no ground. His grip tightens, drawing power as quickly as she’s losing it.
She twists uselessly, until she bucks just enough to launch his head into the gravestone behind her. Emblazoned on it is a crucifix. With a roar, he pulls back, clawed hands clutching at the brand on his head.
She bolts. Or rather, crawls from him before staggering to her feet, the world dissolving immediately in front of her eyes as the altitude hits. Her impression of running consists of lurching forward and praying her feet catch her in time. Pressing a hand blindly to her burning neck, she finds it hot and wet, searing against her clammy fingers.
The footsteps are behind her quickly. How many times has she walked this cemetery, and yet – the realisation chills her – she’s in his world. Prey.
Empty and volatile as a hunted animal, she blunders on. Her hammering heart pours the blood out faster, hope shrinking, and yet she doesn’t relent.
And then Spike’s crypt is there, fizzling into static the moment she sees it, but her hand gropes frantically for the handle. She swears she feels the ghost of a cold hand brush her back as the door gives way. This time, her feet don’t make it. Her vision swims with blackness and sparks as she tumbles onto hard stone, its cold bite jolting through her bones.
One moment, Spike is enjoying a spectacularly boring evening, alone with the quiet of his crypt while throwing longing glances at a bottle of whiskey. The next, he’s on his feet, processing several things at once.
He hears the scuffle for a split-second before it bursts inside. Enough to make him perk up from where he’s sitting – and then the door explodes inwards with a wave of blood-scent that nearly barrels him over, and a flash of red hair plummeting onto his floor.
And a tall vamp, filling up his doorway in full game-face, amber eyes not leaving his catch.
Spike’s muscles connect the dots for him. In a single blink, he’s gone from idly lounging on his sofa to flinging himself into the fray, his own vamp face coming to the forefront with a snarl.
The other vampire only has time to blink at the new arrival in surprise before he’s flung backwards in a ferocious tackle, and then he’s fighting anew. Spike leaves him no opening. Punch after punch mashes him into the ground, bones crunching. Fresh blood springs from the wounds. It only serves to incense Spike more.
His opponent claws at him, but he can’t feel it. The scent of blood is thick in the air around them. Taking his chances, the other vamp rolls, and Spike lets him get his feet only to slam him against the doorframe of the crypt. They may not need air to survive, but there’s a certain sadistic glee when the vamp’s voice is strangled under the rough pressure of Spike’s forearm.
“Take what you want, man! I just got her started-”
He cuts off with a cry as Spike bares his teeth, pushing sharply against the vamp’s throat. He’s trembling with rage, sure the guy can sense it rolling off him.
“This is my fucking patch,” he growls, low through his bared teeth. It’s barely contained, but he wrestles it down, says no more. Because that way lies danger. It’s his patch. Nothing more. Nothing more the local demons need to know about, anyway. It’s a fair excuse.
“Just helping you with the hunt!” He gasps. “She tastes good too, you can try her! I didn’t kn-”
A guttural sound reverberates from within Spike’s chest. His grip tightens impossibly, other hand raising to grip the side of this vampire’s face-
He tears his head off.
Spike is still panting as the dust settles around him. His fists, still clenched, shake, his seething anger hardly abated. His nostrils flare.
Blood floods his senses. Standing there in full vamp-mode, reeling from a fight, the urge that tugs at his chest is to eat. He swallows, hard, swaying on the spot as he turns back to the doorway, the pungent bloom of blood as intoxicating as any drink.
Except it’s Ash’s.
The mist clears. His head throbs with it still, his demon writhing just below the surface, but he forces the face away with some effort.
Ash is lying where she fell. The smell is all around him, steeping in the air. It’s all wrong.
He’s dropping to his knees, pulling at her desperately. Her arms aren’t warm under his touch. It’s wrong. She always hums with warmth, but the dark stain creeping along the floor is draining it from her. It stems from her neck. His eyes land on the arcs that vampire’s mouth has dug in her neck, and his demon protests more, thrashing in revulsion. The room tilts.
“Ash.” His voice is raw, pleading as he cradles her head to him, hands smearing her own blood over her cheek.
There’s a flicker – her eyes, moving listlessly, almost opening. It dies the next moment.
All air leaves him. He curses.
He can’t stop staring at her neck.
“I- Fuck, Ash, I have to- I gotta close it. Hang on, yeah?”
A shallow breath leaves her. Leaving him with no hint of whether she heard.
“I’m gonna- gonna make it better, ‘right, love? Hold still…”
But he’s talking to himself more than anything. She’s growing limp, cold in his arms, and she’s waiting for him. She needs him.
Shakily, he takes a breath, lets his eyes slip closed. Trying to scrape together enough control to do this.
Even so, he can’t help his bones shifting once more into place over his face as he leans in. The other vamp had a right go of it, struck into her artery so that heady promise of blood rushes out to meet him.
Heal. Don’t eat.
This might be easier if he had had a recent kill. If her scent didn’t do things to him, smell like all the things he’s been making himself ignore. Been keeping his distance, all good-like, even if it’s hard to stay away from a reckless girl like this one, and now he’s skipped straight to pressing his face against her bleeding neck, and it’s all he can do to keep his grip on a single shred of sanity.
He presses his tongue to the wound and his vision goes white. A shudder goes through him unbidden; his arms tighten around her. The taste unfurls, sending his head spinning, her, Ash, pure and rich on his tongue, coating his mouth.
But she lies unmoving in his grasp, cold where his arms circle her waist and support her head. Didn’t he used to like that? Told himself he did, at least. But no, not with her.
It’s wrong.
He licks again, feeling dirty, but his purpose renewed. The indents of the other vampire – he yearns to rip the bastard’s head off again for good measure – fizzles and shrinks under the balm of his saliva, a tool granted to vampires but rarely used. Blood, slick and warm, still coats her neck, his chin, far too much of it, but the source is shrinking back beneath the surface at last.
Tasting her once more, gently, to be safe, his tongue finds raw, but closed, skin.
He sags. Resting there, he presses his forehead against the side of her face, winded worse than he had been after the fight. He’s covered in her. A dream, in some ways, he nonetheless can’t stop a whining sob escaping as his demon finally backs away, leaving him himself, amber fading to blue. Why should it be that the most he ever gets of that glorious taste comes to him this way? He’s a monster for wanting it, but that scent has become entwined with the essence of Ash, forever following him the further he stumbles towards her, the more ill-advised adventures they race through, the longer she stays beside him, for some god-forsaken reason.
And he finally got it – forced on him by a passing vampire intent on ending her on his very doorstep.
Blinking, Spike pulls back. She may no longer be bleeding out, but her face remains motionless, pale under his gaze. His jaw tightens at a pang in his chest. She looks so breakable, as if he could see through her skin.
Drusilla would love her as a doll.
Suddenly sick of all things blood and darkness, Spike swipes roughly at his mouth, pawing at all remnants of Ash’s warmth which cling to his lips, his neck. He may have stopped it for now, but she’s already lost too much blood. Reckless vampire. He may not quite have been a fledge, but that demon sure didn’t know when to stop.
Throwing on his duster to hide the streaks of blood on his skin, Spike lifts Ash from the shallow pool she lies in. He can smell the direction she came from in the graveyard, must have run bleeding – to him.
Even if that was just out of convenience, he wouldn’t let her down. Much as the heavy miasma calls to him, he turns away. He’s not a fan of hospitals, but it’s her only chance.
Ash must have quite the medical record, Spike muses grimly as they approach the stark lights of Sunnydale General Hospital. Although Buffy’s would be longer, mind, if it wasn’t for the Slayer mumbo-jumbo. He supposes that’s kind of in the job description when you sign up to be a human sidekick to mankind’s last line of defence.
It’s only the quiet, but present assurance of Ash’s continued heartbeat that keeps him sane enough to hand her over to the staff and watch her wheeled away.
He must be shaken, because he doesn’t even try to return the eyelash-fluttering look the nurse gives him when she shows him to the phone. He just morosely dials Buffy’s place, and leans heavily against the wall waiting for her to pick up.
“Hello?”
“Buffy.”
“Ugh, Spike. This can’t be good. Out with it.”
He wants to be offended, but she is right, so he just sighs and obeys.
“’M with Ash. Just took her to the hospital.”
“Is she-?”
“She’ll live, they reckon.”
Buffy gives a sigh of her own.
“…Okay. Be there soon.”
Giving a grunt of acknowledgement, he lets her hang up first before taking to pacing a strip up and down the waiting room. A maddening twenty minutes later, his hairs prick up, announcing the Slayer’s arrival even before the doors slide open and a frustrated-looking scooby gang come marching towards him.
Oh, great. He plays the hero, and now he’s on the chopping block?
Buffy stops in front of him with her arms folded and fixes him with an expectant look. He opens his mouth, but she stalls him by giving the same pointed look to the linoleum floor.
Glancing down, he finds several partial boot-prints outlined in red from his pacing.
“So there was blood involved,” Buffy surmises.
“Bravo,” he drawls. “Flowers for the detective.”
Before he can elaborate, that same nurse from earlier comes hurrying towards him, calling out “Spike!” as if she knows him. He rolls his eyes and turns, ready to endure her overtures, but happily she skips to the chase this time.
“You can see the patient now.”
She gives a quizzical glance at the newly assembled arrivals, but Spike is already brushing past her.
“Called some friends. Which room?”
“Nineteen…” she tells him, and he’s left her behind.
It’s not hard to spot what happened. A wadge of bandages is wound around Ash’s neck, and there’s a blood bag emptying into her through a drip in her arm.
Willow and Xander give Spike wary glances, but move past to sit at Ash’s bedside. She stirs a little at their arrival. Willow flattens her hair, sending her a pitying look.
Buffy, however, turns on her heel and raises a brow at Spike.
He merely rolls his eyes.
“What?”
“You have blood on your mouth,” she says, venom leaking into her words.
Freezing, he raises a hand, probing for anywhere he missed. There’s a sticky smudge right in the corner of his lips. He rubs at it determinedly, feeling the weight of Buffy’s glare, which promises that he won’t be leaving this hospital if he doesn’t start explaining himself pronto. He feels the weight himself, sullied with her blood.
“Don’t bloody well look at me like that,” he grumbles, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staunchly ignoring the blood matted under his nails. “Wasn’ me. She’s the one who came barging in on me, already bitten, with some vamp on her tail. I had to…” His voice grows quieter, gruff. “Had to close up the wound, or she would‘a bled out there and then.”
“…Close the wound?”
“Yeah-” he clears his throat. “Vamp saliva works a charm. We don’ have to kill someone to drink from them, y’know?”
“I… didn’t, actually.”
“Well.” He shrugs.
“That’s not exactly an image I love,” chimes Xander from across the bed. He levels a challenging look at Spike. “Sure you didn’t get a sip in while you could?”
“Xander!” Willow scolds, but he only shrugs, keeping his eyes on Spike.
“Course I bloody didn’t! I’ve kept my fangs off all you lot since I got here, ‘m hardly about to start now, am I?”
“And this vamp?” Buffy asks, her toe tapping.
“Dusted him, didn’ I?”
“There was only one? Did you spot any others? Was he a fledge, grown…?”
“Keep your knickers on, Slayer. Just the one. Few months old, I’d wager.”
Buffy frowns into the space ahead of her.
“Must have been a random attack.”
“You don’t think this has some kind of connection?” Willow questions. “I mean, people – or, or vamps – might know she’s your friend.”
“There’s always someone new in town,” Buffy sighs. “Always demons I miss. At least she’s okay.” She lifts her eyes from Ash’s sleeping face, resting on each of them – Spike last of all. “But let’s all keep an eye out. Willow’s right, and we can never be too sure.”
“Right you are, Slayer,” Spike tips his head.
He doesn’t really want to leave, but with the three of them around her bed, he finds himself backing for the door.
“I’ll, uh… see what the doctors have to say. Be back.”
Except, when the door shuts behind him, he goes no further. Just slumps back against the wall. Lets his head fall back, and just focuses on the murmurs of heartbeats in the room beyond.
Four heartbeats.
He’s not going to sleep today. Doesn’t fancy seeing Ash painted in blood and grey as death in his dreams, thank you very much. Better to make sure no vamps come near his patch ever again.