knightsoflegend | CLOSED ♔ I'M ONE STEP AWAY

WHO || Buffy Summers & Spike
WHAT || Buffy and Spike clear up some issues.
WHERE || out front of the hotel, Chicago
WHEN || Two days after the Chicago mission's conclusion, while Gar's off calling Des.
HOW || Prose.

Back to slumming around the hotel. Not that Buffy was exactly eager to get shot again (although, all things considered, between Myri's heal-job and her own apparent propensity towards quick recovery, not too bad on that front), but sitting around a hotel for days on end once again wasn't high on her list of things that ranked as lovin', either.

Particularly because it involved stiffly sitting in a corner with a book, one of the hotel's courtesy notepads slapped down on the pages as she doodled instead of read. Mostly meaningless patterns of lines, but eventually the scratch of the hotel pen would get more aggressive and other things would come out. Only in the most professional of manners, of course. The whole deal with this Nightscape-y place is that nobody really remembered the dream they had there. Better she get it down before her fun experience conveniently slipped her mind, too, even if she somehow felt like that face and the feeling of the bullet tearing through her gut were things she'd never forget.

She waited until Spike slipped downstairs for a smoke break to corner him. Snapping her book shut on the notepad, she dropped it into her chair and casually headed after him once he'd gotten a minute or so's head start. She pulled her jacket around her as she stepped outside the front of the hotel just as he was lighting up, coming to a stop with her hands tucked into her jacket pockets and a narrow, accusatory expression on her face.

"Do you get it, yet?"

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He clenched his fist, eager to slam it in her face and show her just how bloody impotent he was, but he resisted. Mostly because... she was right. He couldn't hit anything, not without hurting himself, and he hated it. Sure, he'd managed to be useful even so. He'd fought where he could anyway, through the pain, and he'd used his enhanced senses and... he really wished he could fight for real, without the headaches.

There were non-fighting jobs he could do, it was true, but he didn't want those jobs. He was rot at research. He didn't have the first clue how to heal someone, and clearly his attempts would fail hard since he was so unholy. The only thing he could really do was withstand getting hit a lot, and Buffy was clearly doing her best to try the limits of that ability.

"One that's a hell of a lot less dangerous than a girl with no control over her superstrength." He smirks at her bitterly. "Bet they fire you first for being off your rocker."

Buffy was undeterred. She just kept going like he hadn't said anything at all, acquiring a look of smug superiority along the way, eyebrows arching in the "so there" kind of way.

"Or maybe they'll take a leaf out of the Hellsing book. Keep you as a pet. Lock you up in the basement under some freaky mind control until they need to let you out to eat something. Ooh! Maybe, while we're here, we could co-opt one of those cages from Nightscape. That's where animals belong, isn't it?"

That did it. She could taunt him for being harmless all she wanted, but that was his freedom she was talking about. Spike didn't know much about himself, all things considered, but he knew he'd never be well-behaved enough to be anyone's pet. Chip or no chip.

He didn't really think about it. His hand shot out, hard and fast, slamming into her face (attack 27) with all the force (damage 12) of his vampire strength. He wasn't worried about killing her. He'd seen her shrug off a bullet to the stomach. All he wanted to do was hurt her.

The second his fist connected, though, his head burst into pain, (damage 7) sending him back, clutching his head. He tried hard not to make any noise, not to give her the satisfaction of screaming or anything, but try as he might, he couldn't hold back a quiet whimper. It hurt. A lot.

Her head whipped to the side from the strength of the blow, but with a balance check of 16 she keeps her stagger to one step, knocking her into the wall which she braces herself on. She keeps her face turned away for a moment, stunned and offended that he would ever hit her!!11 even though she hit him first. It was fucking rude okay you don't hit a lady.

She reached up, touching her hand to her lip, which was split from the punch, and looks at the blood on her fingers, then up at him. The hand clenched into a fist and she reaches wide and punches him back, knocking him in the eye (atk 28) with all of her frightening strength (dmg 14). Why? Because fuck you, that's why.

Then, she drew her fist back and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth to rub away the blood.

"Screw you." She wasn't sticking around for a fistfight with a vampire. She just backed off a couple steps, shaking her head, and then turned to head inside. If he knew what was good for him, he'd give it up. If she didn't knock him out, his migraine would.

Spike? Knowing what's good for him? What crazy alternate universe are you from? He was smart enough to realise he can't beat her in a straight-out fist fight. The whole headache thing. It put a damper on things. But that didn't mean he was ready to just give up. He stumbled back with the punch, but didn't fall (balance check 16). He put a hand against the wall for a moment to steady himself, then used a burst of vampire speed to catch up to her, appearing in front of her as she turned around.

"I'm no one's pet," he said, spitting the words out. "I don't know who your Hellsing friends are, but I'd rather die than be..." he scrunched his face up in disgust. "Tamed." He'd fight until the headaches killed him if he had to. "You'd best remember it."

She didn't bother to correct him that … she'd pretty much told him half of what she even knew about Hellsing with that barb. They weren't her friends. She barely knew shit about them. They weren't even the Knighthood's friends. And she even managed to hide the surprise and gut reaction of fear when he appeared in front of her out of nowhere, simply jerking to a halt.

"What part of "out of my face" were you not clear on?" She was trying hard not to engage. Emphasis on hard, as in it was really difficult not to engage when he just opened door after door. His inner conflict was quickly becoming outer and it was too easy to wedge a knife in his sore spots. Flopping back and forth between 'I don't want to be like other vampires, I'm good' and 'I'd rather die than be tamed.' Was there even another word for a good vampire?

Yes, Buffy, there were lots of other words. "Hero." "Champion." "Good." He didn't have to be tame, he could just only beat on the bad guys. He'd never follow orders or roll over for a treat, though. He was above that.

"The part where I don't give a damn what you say." It wasn't true. He wanted it to be true, but he couldn't stop caring. Couldn't stop wishing things were otherwise. But he wasn't tame, and if she told him to get out of her face, he'd just get even more in it. He leaned forward, baring human teeth. "You know, I'm starting to think your whole soul story was just something you spun to justify hating me." She'd seemed so sympathetic for a moment, though, like she truly didn't want to give him the news... he pushed the thought away. "Starting to think you don't know a bloody thing about vampires. Or me."

It'd be nice. If she really didn't know a thing about vampires. If she didn't know what they looked like, if she didn't know what it felt like when they bit you and you wanted to scream but couldn't, if she didn't know how strong they were, how fast, how terrifying? It'd be nice if she didn't dream of killing them, or getting killed by them. It'd be nice if her teammate wasn't one of them.

But, she did. And he was.

Her expression is tired rather than antagonizing and she just shakes her head at him. There was no point in baiting him or fighting him. It didn't get either of them anywhere, and the point was … she didn't want to be right.

"I wish I didn't," she expressed plainly. Her voice grew to be more raw as she continued on. "If you honestly think that I want to be right about this, then you don't know me at all." She stepped around him and walked through the sliding doors back into the lobby. She wanted him to be right. She wanted him to not be a monster.

But, she was right, and he was a monster. And it hurt to know that. To know that she was wrong to fight against her gut instinct when it gave her icky vibes off of him. As nice as denial would be, moments like this one just drove home the point: she was wrong to ever be his friend. To ever feel bad for him when she broke him the news. To ever feel for him at all.

She'd gone to Kat in hopes that there could be some kind of exception. A nice, unbiased opinion from someone who didn't dream so frequently about having their throat ripped open. And the verdict was in.

Spike let her go. That had been... something of a disaster. Like all his conversations with Buffy tended to be. "But I don't want to be a monster..." he said it at her back, and he wasn't even sure if she'd heard it. He wasn't sure he wanted her too. It wouldn't make a difference to how she felt about him. That much was clear.

He stared after her for a moment, then turned away angrily, stalking off into the night. He needed a drink. Again.

CLOSED ♔ I'M ONE STEP AWAY

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