Once More, with Feeling

WHOOOOOOOOOP!

First. "I know it's not real, but I just want to feel" is not of the bad, I'm almost certain. Speaking as a fan of the MGM musicals...

Okay.

We see Spike's crypt, angle on the entry to the sublevel, and Spike comes up the ladder at the same time Buffy comes in the door. When he sees her, he gives a sort of humorless laugh. "The sun sets and she appears," he says. "Come to serenade me?"

"So," she says, not really surprised, "You know what's been going on?"

"Well, I've seen some damned funny things the last couple of days," he says, a little amused at it all. "Six hundred pound Shirago demon making like Yma Sumac, that one'll stick with you." He gives her a small smile. "I remain immune, happy to say." He holds up a huge bottle of whiskey. "Drink?"

Buffy, remembering the last time she took a drink from Spike, says, "A -world- of no." He lowers the bottle, not surprised, as though he'd expected something of the sort. And not in a good way.

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"So," Buffy goes on, as though she asks this every day, "any idea what's causing this?"

There's a flicker of hurt in Spike's face. "Oh, so that's all..." he begins, and breaks off. "You've just come to pump me for information." (I suspect that he's not quite entirely sober, here, but that's just my gut feeling and I have no evidence. Except for the bottle...) He is clearly not happy about this.

Buffy doesn't appear to notice that this bothers him. "What else would I want to pump you for?" she asks, and then looks a little appalled. "I really just said that, didn't I?"

Spike gives a disgusted sigh. Not sure if he's disgusted with himself for expecting anything else, or her for not noticing his feelings. He starts moving toward the door. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't want to bore you with small talk," he says, and jerks the door open. "Don't know a thing."

Buffy looks a little puzzled. "What's up?" she asks. "You're all bad-mood-y." Clearly this isn't the kind of reception she's gotten used to.

Spike pulls the door wider. " 'S nothing," he says. "Glad you could stop by." He motions for her to leave. Buffy just looks at him. " 'S-nothing-," he says, his voice thickening. This hurts, and and the stupid bint can't see it. Or =won't=.

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"What?" she says, and he starts to sing. He gets a couple notes out, realizes what he's doing, gets an OHSHIT look, but keps singing. Buffy rolls her eyes, as though she's thinking, oh, great, more he-loves-me stuff...

After a few bars, Spike throws up his hands and just goes with the song, with the hurt and anger.

Buffy is uncomfortable, in that pissed-off kind of way that means he's hitting nerves. When he tells her that whispering in a dead man's ear doesn't make it real (implying that if she were to tell the Scoobies, it would make it more real), she looks away. "Great," he sings, disgusted, and goes to lie on the sarcophagus as he starts to sing the chorus. But he's up again almost immediately, driven by the hurt, and when he throws the bottle against the wall, she goes on alert. Not high alert, but definitely dealing with something dangerous, here. On her toes, wary. Spike advances on her like a big cat. This is the Big, Very Dangerous, VERY Sexy Bad, and she knows it. "I lay my body down," he sings as he backs her across the room, "but I can't find my sweet release... " He throws up his hands again, and turns away from her for the last line, "Let me rest in peace."

She turns to go, but he stops her at the door. He sings, "You know you've got a willing slave," and sinks to his knees before her. Her eyes widen; the notion definitely appeals, but she's trying not to show it.

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Spike sings, "And you just love to play the thought that you might misbehave," giving her one of a smoldering look as he pulls his gaze from her face downward. He's nailed it; she glances away, very uncomfortable, and then looks back at him, setting her jaw, determined not to let him get to her. But when he tells her, "But till you do, I'm telling you, stop visiting my grave," she looks a little hurt.

He opens the door again. "And let me rest in peace," he sings.

Cut to the cemetery. They're walking through the gravestones, and he's singing about being possessed and how much his love for her is hurting him. She looks very uncomfortable, and maybe a little guilty. He tells her again, "So leave me be," and jumps on the coffin for the final chorus. At "take my love and bury it," he vamps out, starts flinging chairs about, and grabs the priest. The priest just stares back at him. Buffy grabs him, he tries to get away, and they tumble into the open grave. He finishes the song lying there, with her on top of him, and for the last couple of lines he lets his head fall back and his eyes close. He's tired of not getting anything back from her.

When he finishes singing, he looks up at her. She's hurt and angry that he's made her see all this, and she jumps out of the grave and runs off. Spike gets up and watches her go. "So," he says, "you're not staying, then?"

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Later...

Spike comes into the Magic Box, shoving one of the Marionette Minions in front of him. He tells the minion to sing, but it just says, very briefly, that the demon has Dawn at the Bronze and that he wants Buffy. Spike is unhappy with this tiny bit of information, and tries to strong-arm more out of the minion, but he knocks Spike aside and flees.

"Strong," Spike says, looking after the minion. Then, very scornfully, "One day he'll be a -real- boy."

"So, Dawn is in trouble?" Buffy says. "It must be Tuesday."

There's discussion about what to do. Giles says Buffy must go alone.

"Don't be a stupid git!" Spike says, getting between Buffy and Giles. "There'll..."

"When I want your opinion, Spike," Giles says coldly, and breaks off. Thinks about that for a second. "I'll never want your opinion."

Willow suggests a spell, Tara wigs, but nobody moves to go with her.

Spike turns to Buffy, disgusted with the others. "Forget them, Slayer," he says, I've got your back."

Buffy just looks at him. She's hurt that he told her to leave him alone, and pissed that he was right. "I thought you wanted me to stay away from you," she says. "Isn't that what you sang?"

Xander is amused. "Spike sang a wittle song?" he says. Spike ignores him.

"Fine," Spike says through his teeth. Obviously she doesn't want his help. "I hope you dance til you burn. You and the Little Bit." He storms out.

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Buffy heads for the Bronze, singing. "I touch the fire, it freezes me," she sings--she's tired of this frozen place inside her, she wants to be alive again--"I want the fire back."

In an alley, Spike crouches on a box, smoking. "This torch I bear is scorching me," he sings, "Buffy's laughing, I've no doubt. I hope she fries. I'm free if that bitch dies." He flings away the cigarette, angry. But of course he doesn't really want her dead. "I'd better help her out." He gets up and heads to the Bronze.

Giles wonders if he's wrong, if he's put Dawn in danger, if his Slayer is too far gone to care. The Scoobies all leave for the Bronze, too.

Buffy bursts in, threatens the demon, makes a deal that if she can't kill him, she goes with him to Hellsville instead of Dawn. Scoobies arrive. Buffy confesses that she was in heaven. Willow is devastated. Buffy, just wanting the pain to be over, starts to dance, maybe of her own will, maybe pushed into it by the demon. She starts to whirl, and smoke, but suddenly Spike is there. He stops her.

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"Life is not a song," he sings, "Life isn't bliss. Life is just this--it's living." He strokes her hair gently. "You'll get along. The pain that you feel you only can heal by -living-." He looks at her, his love plain. "You have to go on living so one of us is living." She doesn't know how to respond to this.

Dawn says, " 'The hardest thing about being in this world is living in it.' "

The demon congratulates them, telling them they've won. He plans to take Dawn, but she swears she didn't summon him. They figure out it's Xander. The demon vanishes, saying, "I'll see you in hell!"

They're all standing around, stunned. Dawn begins to sing. "Where do we go from here?" The others join in, and Buffy and Spike glance at each other--where =do= they go from here?--but they can't hold each others' eyes. The song continues, through the hand clasping and breaking away from it, and suddenly Spike shakes his head. The spell has worn off him. "Bugger this!" he says, and stalks out.

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The gang keep singing, and we hear them as Spike stalks down the alley. Buffy comes out of the Bronze.

"Hey," she says, hesitantly.

Spike turns back to her. "You should go back inside," he says softly, his voice humming with pain. "Finish the big group sing, get your Kumbayayas out."

"I don't want to," Buffy says.

He tries to smile. "The day you suss out what you do want, there'll [robably be a parade. Seventy-six bloody trombones..." This is what's killing him, that it's right there in front of her and she can't see it...

"Spike...," she begins, but he cuts her off.

"You don't have to say anything..."

And she cuts him off, singing a reprise of the song she sang on the way to the Bronze. "I touch the fire and it freezes me..."

Spike comes in, reprising his song from the crypt, "I died so many years ago..."

They sing together:

Buffy: I know it's not real, but I just want to feel...

Spike: But you make me feel...

And they kiss.

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"There have been five great kisses since Saul and Delila Korn invented kissing.

"Well, this one leaves them all behind."

Okay, now, why I don't think "I know it's not real" is a problem:

They're each reprising, here. They're saying that they couldn't feel, that they were dead inside, -until they found each other-.

Somebody who's a musical fan, help me out, here. I know what I -mean-...

--

Dori

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