Author: Gillian Silverlight
Distribution: My site : www.homestead.com/gilliansspikelair , TQ and Saber. Others please ask
Disclaimer: They belong to Joss and the WB, as well as Jim Henson. I just play with them.
Summary: Spike is drunk and a song sticks in his head.
Thanks to Patti for the laughs about this idea, and her encouragement to me.
This was fun and silly to write. I hope you enjoy it as much as I had very tongue-in-cheek fun writing it.
* There is nothing on this bloody soddin’ TV at all! Reduced to watchin’ kiddie movies, I am. Oh, bugger it! *
Spike was not a happy vampire to find that there was there was nothing on television other than a Muppet movie. He hated the Muppets!
* But the pig loves the soddin’ frog. Why can’t the Slayer love a vampire other than the poof? *
Needless to say, Spike was on his third bottle of Jack Daniels that afternoon. He’d started drinking much earlier in the day; so early it had been last night.
Then to add insult to injury, the frog started to sing!
Spike held his head in his hands at the agony of it all.
**************************************
The earlier movie had finally ended, but the blonde vampire couldn’t get the song out of his head. The words kept going round and round and round through his mind, like a carousel. Well, he’d had enough! He wanted to get off this ride!
Once the sun set, the very inebriated vampire staggered outside his crypt, tripped over absolutely nothing and fell on his back. His disjointed thoughts whirled inside his head, much like the afore mentioned carousel.
* Think I’ll lay here. Can’t fall anymore if I stay on the ground. Bloody frog, still singin’ in my ‘ead. Maybe finally going mad like Dru….
That’s it, bloody Slayer finally has driven me bloody mad, she has. Won’t talk to me, shut me out. Love the stupid chit. Can’t see that can she? Oh no, I’m not Angel… not my bloody poof of a sire, don’t have a bloody soul. *
Spike lay there, drinking occasionally from his fourth bottle of JD, which was now almost empty.
Stretched out drunk on the ground, bottle clutched in his hand, Spike started to softly sing the words that hadn’t left his head since the movie earlier that day.
‘Why are there so many songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we've been told and some choose to believe it,
Spike hadn’t seen a rainbow since the last time he’d been able to stand and look at the sun. What was it about them? Yeah, he guessed they were pretty, in a sissy kinda way. But he’d just never paid much attention to them before.
* What IS on the other side of the rainbow? Is it really a weird land with green cities and green witches? Red’s not green.. Red is.. Well, red! Rainbow couldn’t ‘ide anything anyway.. Can see right bloody through it. Wish the Slayer could see through me. I got nothing to ‘ide. Told her everything, I did. I’d give ‘er the world, stupid chit.
Not much more weird than a vampire in love with a Slayer. Me, the Big, Bad… ‘ow the mighty ‘ave fallen. *
Spike looked around him, the ground seemed awfully close..
* Oh yeah! I fell down! That’s me.. fallen.. Fallen on the ground, fallen for the Slayer..*
‘Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me
Who said that every wish would be heard and answered
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
What's so amazing, that keeps us star-gazing
And what do we think we might see’
* That’s me.. A lover, a dreamer.. Dream of the Slayer. Gets in my ‘ead, can’t get her out. Got in my ‘eart too. Never wished on the morning star.. Maybe I should, maybe it’d help.
All its done so far is make ‘er lock me out, yell at me, turn the Scoobies against me. Didn’t like them anyway.*
Spike looked up through the sparse tree branches to the blackness of the sky above him, finally noticing the pinpoints of lights, like pinholes in black velvet.
*I see the stars… kinda pretty. Don’t look at the stars. Dru always listened to them. Must ‘ave made me crazy too. *
As the drunken vampire stared, his mind always wandered back to the same place. Buffy, and in this case, her room as he’d seen it a hundred times through her window where he’d sit on the roof and just watch her as she slept. A memory stirred in the sodden reaches of his brain…
* ‘ey! Don’t the Slayer have a frog? Got a pig.. Maybe she’s got a frog too… *
Spike staggered to his feet, still clutching his bottle. He made his way very precariously down the street toward Buffy’s house.
It was a good thing no one was around to see him trying to climb the tree up to the roof that let him peer in through her window. Spike dangled upside down, sideways, and through it all never spilled a drop from the bottled still clutched tightly in his hand.. Making his way finally to the roof, he crawl over to the Slayer’s window.
Looking through the glass, Spike could see Buffy’s stuffed pig sitting on her bed. Letting his gaze wander, across the room on a shelf he saw the obnoxious frog that had added to the misery that was recently his un-life, all afternoon.
* Damn, that’s why ‘e’s in my ‘ead. ‘e lives in her room. Should have known it. Can’t get to ‘im to talk to him. Maybe ‘e’ll ‘ear me from out ‘ere. *
“ ‘ey you! Frog.. Wanna get this bleeding song out of me ‘ead now? Making me as crazy as Dru, crazy as the Slayer makes me.”
Spike sat there on the roof top, looking through the open window and yelling at the stuffed Kermit the Frog on the shelf inside Buffy’s room. The vampire had no idea how loud he was or that his voice carried very well indeed through the night air.
Downstairs, Buffy heard noise that sounded like it was coming from her room. She headed up the stairs carefully, trying to figure out what was causing the racket.
Instead of demons or her sister, Buffy simply found…. Spike.
The vampire was drunk, sitting outside of her window and seemed to be yelling at a stuffed toy and occasionally singing..
He hadn’t seen her standing just inside the in the doorway of her room yet. Hoping the vampire would ignore her in his current inebriated state, Buffy leaned against the doorframe and watched the show.
‘Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me
All of us under its spell
We know that it’s probably magick
Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices
I've heard them calling my name
Is this a sleep sound that calls the young sailors
The voice might be one and the same
I've heard it too many times to ignore it
“So tell me frog.. Am I under ‘er spell? She get the witch to put a spell on me so I’d love ‘er? Knew if I loved ‘er she could ‘urt me more, I guess.
D’you ‘ear voices? I do sometimes. Always sound like ‘er. Says such nice things to me. Why can’t she say nice things to my face? Why’d she ‘ave to wait until I’m dreaming about ‘er?”
Spike took another drink from the bottle, getting the last final drops of the amber liquid before he turned back to stare, obviously blurry-eyed at the small green frog still on the shelf.
“Don’t say much, do you froggie? Ya piggie’s across the room.. She not speaking to you either?”
Still getting no reply, Spike lay back on the roof, the empty bottle in his hand.
“What am I suppose to be? What does she want me to be? Can’t just grow a bloody soul. Don’t know if I want one anyway, not if I ‘ave to get all broody like that nancy-boy.”
‘Some day we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
La da da de, da da do
La da da de da da do.’
Spike picked up the chorus that continued to run through his head and sang along with the ‘la da’ part of the song. It made as much sense to him as anything else did right then.
Buffy was trying so hard not to laugh at the vampire’s antics, she almost fell. She was holding her sides, face turning red as she held the laughter in. Small snickers and gasps did manage to escape, regardless of how hard she tried and the small blonde was amazed that Spike’s normally keen vampire hearing hadn’t caught those sounds thus far.
The Slayer thought the ‘show’ so far had been just priceless! She had thought about her small camcorder and had wished vampires would show up on videotape so she could blackmail Spike with this later. She imagined the first part of the ‘show’ had been just as funny and regretted not having seen it.
Finally, taking pity on the drunken vampire, Buffy crossed the room to the window. He couldn’t stay all night on her roof; she’d never get any sleep for one thing. Then too, she’d feel guilty if she let him fall off and get hurt or lay there and fry when the sun rose.
Buffy leaned out the open window, looking for a moment at the dishevled vampire, eyes closed as he hummed. “Spike, what are you doing out there? Why were you talking to my stuffed animals?”
Beautiful blue eyes… beautiful, drunken blue eyes… opened at her words and looked up at her, as Spike grinned lop-sidedly. He raised his head slightly.
“It’s’ a Shlayer. ‘ullo Shlayer. I wanted to get the frog to tell me ‘ow to find a rainbow connection. He found one and got the pig to love him even if ‘e is a bloody frog. Thought if I could find one, you might love me even if I am a bleedin’ vampire.
I can’t see rainbows, you see.. I’m a vampire and the sun will make me go POOF! Don’t wanna go POOF!” Spike’s head dropped back to the roof with a small noise, but he continued to talk. Buffy wondered if he even remembered she was there, or who she was…
“Gotta girl I love.. I need to get ‘er to love me. Pig loves the frog, girl should love the vampire. Used to love a vampire, but ‘e left ‘er. Shhh! Don’t tell anyone. Gets ‘er upset to talk about that.”
Spike had raised one finger in front of his expressive lips as he’d shushed her. He let the hand fall limply back beside his head.
“I’d never leave ‘er you know.”
Buffy heard the sorrow and pain in his words as they caught at her deep inside her chest. She leaned on the window ledge, looking further out at the vampire on her roof.
“So, Spike, why do you love this girl if she doesn’t love you?”
“Don’t know. She ‘ates me, beats me up, is always mean to me.. Love her anyway. Don’t get to pick who ya love. Just sneaks up on you and bites you in the arse Then you’re just love’s bitch again.”
He raised his head slightly, trying to focus at least one eye her direction.
“Can I come in an’ talk to tha’ froggie? I need to know ‘ow to make ‘er believe me so’s she’ll love me. It ‘urts so bad ‘cause she won’t believe me.”
Spike dropped his head once more to the shingles, red-tinged tears rolling from his eyes down toward his ears, lying there on the roof.
Buffy took a deep breath and sighed. * Why me? What did I do to deserve a drunk Spike on my roof, crying because I don’t love him? *
Shaking her head and knowing she’d regret this in some way, Buffy reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him toward the window.
“You better get in here before you fall off the roof.”
Spike was so drunk he was limp and she had to pull him through the window, but even then he fell on the floor, unable to stand up. She took the empty bottle away from him, dragged his across the floor next to the bed before lifting his ‘dead’ weight to push him onto the bed, then taking his shoes off. Spike rolled over and was quickly asleep or out cold
Buffy stood looking at the vampire curled on one side, his arm wrapped around her pig, Mr. Gordo.
* When he’s not talking, he IS very attractive. I have to admit that. He’s got a nice body. Why does he have to be a vampire? I could really go for him if he wasn’t.. But he is.. He has no soul, just that chip. He is devoted though... We saw that about him with Dru. Why does he have to be a vamp? Why can’t he have a soul if he is.. *
Buffy had no answers and wasn’t sure why she had the questions plaguing her inside her head. She focused on one of the main parts of Spike’s disjointed comments from earlier.
* What was he babbling about frogs and pigs and rainbow connections? Isn’t that a song I knew when I was a kid? *
Heading down stairs to look through all of her old childhood record albums, Buffy sat on the floor, the tattered paper covers on the old black and sometimes colored vinyl platters scattered around her on the floor. After much searching, the small blonde found a Muppet album. Turning it over to look at the song list on the back, sure enough, it had a song called ‘Rainbow Connections’. There was a very green Kermit the Frog and a fat pink, Miss Piggy on the cover. She wondered if that was the frog and pig Spike had blathered on about, so she put the old album on the stereo to listen to the song.
A slightly better version of the same lyrics and tune drifted from the speakers. Only slightly better in that, although scratchy, the voices were clear instead of slurred.
*Yep. That was it. That’s the one he was babbling about. Why was he listening to THAT!? And where? *
Buffy remembered watching the Muppets show when she was younger. She leaned back against the side of an armchair and thought about what the show had actually been about. There were a lot of characters, none of them alike or even the same color. They squabbled like all kids did, but even as different as they all were, and as much as they squabbled, even the really grouchy one, they all got along together. Miss Piggy was always chasing the much smaller Kermit all the time, yet they finally did get married in one movie, she seemed to remember dimly. And Miss Piggy used to beat Kermit up all the time…
Buffy groaned at that thought.
Does Spike see himself as Kermit and her as Miss Piggy? It wasn’t a very complementary comparison, but she supposed he was looking at it from his point of view. She DID beat him up a lot, and they WERE very different… kinda.
She used to believe that differences didn’t matter. That was when she was a child, when things were innocent and the world was a happy loving place to a small child. That was before being Chosen. It was before Angel and Angelus.
* Spike keeps saying he isn’t Angel. I’ve been very aware that he’s not Angel, but maybe I’ve only seen that from a very narrow point of view. They are two different vampires. They were two very different men before they were Turned. Angelus went after my family and friends before me. Spike had chocolate with my mom and all he did was cry on her shoulder about Dru being unfaithful and dumping him. He never harmed her and Mom trusted him. She never trusted Angel….*
Buffy frowned hard, not liking the way her thoughts were running, yet she had to admit the truth of them.
* And these last months, Spike… well, he has been different. More different than usual for a vampire, or than was normal for him. Maybe kids are right. Maybe some differences between people don’t matter that much. Maybe it’s just the difference in how we act toward others and treat others. *
She ran both hands through her hair in frustration. “Oh, hell… Maybe…. If he can see something in a child’s song, maybe there is something good in there in that weird vampire. “
She pulled herself up from the floor, heading back up the stairs to check on said ‘different vampire’.
* Yeah and maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt too. *
Spike was still sleeping or out cold, as Buffy sat carefully on the edge of the bed to look at him, really LOOK at him for once. She tried to see who the man was that he had been before… She remembered something Willow had said long ago about her vampire self from that other dimension and how she, Buffy, had blightly assured Willow that the vampire was nothing like the person they used to be. She remembered Angel’s haistily bitten off comment. It seemed that Angel might have been right and she might have been wrong on assuming the vampire was not the person. Ok, the person without any inhibitions or morals or the slightest bit of conciousness.. but still the person they had been. Buffy thought about the things Spike had told her about his past, the little signs she’d come to know meant he was lying to her and thought about WHERE she thought he’d lied. More and more a better picture started to emerge in her minds eye.
She was so deep in thought that she didn’t see Spike open his eyes. He reached out with that lightening speed and put both arms around her, rolling her under him. Before she could get a word out, he’d leaned down and kissed her.
Buffy had both hands flat against his very muscular chest. It felt nice under her hands and fingertips. She kissed him back before she realized what she was doing.
It had been quite a while since she’d been with anyone. Not since Riley, and Spike was no slouch at kissing. Buffy guessed that 100 years of practice certainly had it’s advantages in some areas. She wrapped one arm around his neck, pulling him closer.
He finally broke the kiss so she could catch her breath. “That was wonderful, luv. Did’ch’a talk to the frog and pig? “
Buffy almost laughed at the seriousness in his face. “Spike, you’re still drunk.”
“Yeah, that I am. But drunk or sober, I love you, Buffy. It never stops, never goes away. Not since I finally realized it, not since it happened. Even your recent ex saw it and had a few choice things to say on the subject.”
Spike kept his hands where they were, enjoying the feel of touching Buffy and not wanting to rub the place where the ‘G.I.’ had staked him with a plastic stake. The vampire knew doing so would only produce more questions from Buffy than he’d have now.
“Riley? He thought you were in love with me?”
“Yeah. Warned me away from you. But I can’t help how I feel, Buffy.”
He moved slightly, preparing to stand up. His drunken outburst had spoiled the mood that had only just begun between them.
“I’d better go now.”
He turned her loose and stood up, still staggering a bit.
Buffy slid off the bed, standing right behind him and put a hand on his arm.
“Since you’re already inside, and drunk.. Let me make you some chocolate to help sober you up a bit.”
He looked at her, wondering what the catch was.. Seeing nothing lurking in her eyes, he agreed and followed her down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Know how Mom did this? She always did it before. I’m probably not as good at making hot chocolate.”
“Yeah, I watched her when she did. Let me help you, luv.”
Buffy looked up at him and saw affection, longing, and unless she was mistaken, grief for her mother’s loss in his face. “Yeah, Spike. That would be nice.”
They made hot chocolate together.
Gillian Silverlight 3/15/01 (Slight revision 9/10/02)