chicating

“I don’t know about you.” Spike said. “ But I need a drink. Back at the crypt, I have a rather disappointing O, a surprisingly piquant A pos, some whiskey…and some cherry cola for the little bit.”
“I’m in for the whiskey,” Giles decided, to nobody’s surprise, except maybe his own. “Although I must confess to a certain anthropological curiosity…”

“I could make a suicide,” Spike offered. “The O isn’t terrible when you mix it with something…or, at least it wasn’t last week. Don’t guess you have some bloody mary mix in that hobbit-hole that you call an apartment, Watcher? You could have one the way they were meant to be enjoyed.”

Giles blanched slightly. “I don’t think we have time for that..Dawn will be wondering where I am.” She wouldn’t believe me, even if she could see it, he thought but didn’t say.Even if he might not have smelled like a tobacconist. Part of the reason he laughed so hard upon hearing that Buffy, resurrected, had found such comfort in Spike, aside from the Charles Addams image of pitching woo among the cobwebs, wasn’t that it was so hard to imagine, but that it was so easy to picture getting quietly…what was that word Xander liked?...getting quietly hammered with a member of the undead. Giles bet there wasn’t a chapter in any codex about that.

Giles sent everyone on ahead of him and said he needed some air. He walked rapidly through the cemetery, trying not to think about the latest addition, the freshly-turned earth ready to receive the best part of his life’s work---god, he wished he still smoked. Suddenly, a waft of tobacco floated through the air. Giles looked left and right, uncertain whether something had heard him speak a wish out loud.

Instead, he saw Spike, smoking with one hand and holding Giles’ battered leather billfold with the other. Quicker than a flash, the blond vampire pulled two twenties out and folded them in his jeans pocket.

“Some Watcher you are. You were a million miles away when I…saw you drop this.”

“Well, I did say I found ‘too nice’ frustrating…maybe I’m due to go the other direction.” Giles replied. Part of him wanted to get upset about the dosh, but his mind was doing that cotton-wool codeine thing again, and anyway, it wasn’t like explaining this to Dawn. He couldn’t quite imagine sitting with Spike and explaining how hard he worked to make forty dollars. Maybe somebody should have, but that somebody was bones somewhere, thousands of miles away; even after all this time, an eerie thought. “Just tell me you didn’t stick your hands in my pockets."

Spike’s eyebrow went up. “Been a while, has it? Is that why you dropped the ball?”

“ I did not…drop any ball, and it hasn’t been that long, either. It’s just a matter of professional pride. Ethics, and responsibility, and…” Giles was surprised then to hear the vampire humming something that sounded like John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” and making cheeky little pelvic motions that would not be out of place on Dawn’s favourite video channel.

“Relax, Watcher. Strictly hands-free, just a simple glamour…I’m not very good at it. And,, you know, gravity. Cause you really did drop it, but I had you open your hand first. Like you were some giant schnauzer and your wallet was my shoe.Not like Dru, but then, I haven’t been round the bend quite as far, either, right? Just needed a distraction, and maybe some lolly to drown my sorrows properly. Coin of my adopted realm…”

Spike shook his bleached head as if to clear it. “Christ, Rupert, is that the bollocks that is in your brain all the time? Even when you’re not a bloody mess? It’d be a miracle if one day you don’t build a tower and end it all, too.”

Giles smiled a wintry smile, protestations of his being all right dying before they even reached his lips. “Probably. Hank Summers is back at the house on Revello. Which is why I’m not. In a rather cowardly breach of decorum. Buffy did not ‘end it all’, Spike. She committed a completely selfless act. You wouldn't understand."

“Whatever you have to tell yourself. But if she got Deadbeat Dad to resurface, she performed miracles, too. I’ll tell you, it’d be worth a bit of headache to get some revenge back for Joyce and the little bit."