jwaneeta

Gawd, how I detest chapter 7. I hated it for three weeks, rewote it from top to bottom twice, got sage advice from a friend with impeccable taste, availed myself of the sage advice ... and I still hate the cursed thing.

It's not as bad as it was, but it still sucks. *shudders* Okay, I've got to get tough. I will never finish the fic if I'm trying eternally to put lipstick on this pig. I can always go back (though it's impossible to imagine how) and fix it later. I really must... move ... on...




The Code of the Watchers, 7

Stand by your man
and tell the world you love him
keep giving all the love you can
stand by your man


~Patsy Cline


The Code of the Watchers, ch. 7
Cynthia Martin
PG-13
Spike needs a summer job and Giles needs to make amends
Thanks to the inestimable beta Diane and to the I.B., PG Wodehouse
*****


It would not be too much to say that a festival atmosphere reigned in that humble tavern by the way. It is a tribal custom among the hale farmers of America's vast heartland to break out the noisemakers and confetti after a spot of murderous weather has passed through, and the revelers around us were doing the tradition proud. I had never seen quite so many of the simple folk so frankly and drunkenly glad to be alive. I tried not to grimace too openly as I was backslapped, gladhanded, and congratulated on being a fellow survivor. Chummy lot, those honest reapers of corn.

"You a tourist?" inquired one stout fellow. "We don't get many through here."

"Not since the apparitions run dry," admitted his companion.

"Apparitions? What apparitions?"

"Hey, where you hailing from?" asked a lad with a John Deere cap. "You one of those Crocodile Dundee guys?"

"Sadly, no." I sipped at my malt. "Apparitions, you say?"

"Hank Ditweiller's wife was talking to a White Lady for a while, out on their back forty --"

"No, it was down by their sump."

" -- but that sorta petered out." John Deere shrugged apologetically.

"Ain't seen a one of her for months, Helen says," added his companion.

"How fearfully disappointing." I judged the subject exhausted and turned away to tap Spike on the shoulder. "William, about that game you owe me..."

"Huh?" Spike frowned with the brief effort of concentration, but never took his eyes off Buffy. "Oh, that. Nah, don't fancy it. Thanks, though."

It was evident that deep was calling unto deep once more, in our lowly roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. Buffy and Spike inched closer, like those iron bits that can't stop quivering and orienting themselves about the lodestone, or those witless moths irresistibly compelled to bung themselves at candles. Buffy lowered her chin and watched Spike approach from under her lashes, and a bar napkin began to darken and curl at the edges. I snatched at it, dropped it and smeared it with my shoe.

"Um. Hey," said Jeffries, and not to me.

Someone had deposited the required fee in the jukebox, and Zuptya was commencing the waltz with a burly, denim-beclad tiller of the soil. Jeffries was looking about as dangerous as a man who managed a failing magic club could look, and clearly aiming to mix in.

"Jeffries!" I snapped.

Jeffries started. "Yes, Mr. Giles?"
"Jeffries, I long for a smoke. I yearn for a cigarette in the worst way."

"You, Mr. Giles?"

"Compose yourself, Jeffries. I am but a man, and the rose -- Jeffries, just fetch me something from that machine yonder. I'll owe you."

Jeffries peeled reluctantly away.

"Harken, Spike. Attend me. Pool is of the essense. We simply must have a game of pool."

"No pool. I am not at liberty to oblige you. Oh, Buffy," said Spike.

"Spike," whispered Buffy.

"Not in public!" I interposed myself between them and gripped Spike's elbow. "Quash it, contain yourselves, the pair of you. Take stock of your surroundings -- this place is a tinderbox."

Spike craned past my shoulder, failing to give me even a modest percentage of his attention. "Run along, there's a good Watcher. Three's a crowd."

"Spike," I informed him in a low voice. "We need money."

Spike laughed. "Money! All I need is the air that I breathe, and to love her."

"Speak lower, you ass. We haven't a pin. The situation is critical."

Spike tried to duck out of my grip. Buffy slid off her stool.

"I have my treasure," Spike murmured, speaking only to her. "And she is above the price of rubies. She is a tower of ivory sheathed in gold. She is a blinding diamond in the sun. She is a sea of sapphire, and pearls wink in her secret grottos, worshipped by waving fronds and the shimmering eels who nip."

"Spike!" Buffy's eyes were huge. "Did you just make that up?"

So much for keeping it clean. "A word outside, Spike, and right now. Buffy, drink your beer."

A great deal can hang on the personal history of the Watcher and the Watched. The relationship between an S. and her W. is at best a tenuous and fraught thing. After all that had fallen out between us I scarcely dared hope, as I gave Buffy the eye to stand down, that she would actually do it. But she did, bless her.

"You guys talk," she said, hoisting her mug. "I'm good here."

My hero, my brave loyal girl. When shall come another? Not soon, I hope. I pushed Spike out the door into the parking lot.

****

"Hell, no," snarled Spike. "If you think I'm going to endanger my immortal soul by hustling pool, you're mental, Watcher. I worked hard for this thing and it's only started to pay out. Not a chance."

"You're not going to lose your soul over a game of pool, you twit."

"How do you know? Mine comes with a boatload of restrictions, I can tell you. Haven't even begun to sort them out. Better safe than sorry, I'm thinking."

"Don't be absurd."

"You're on a slippery slope, Rupert," Spike informed me primly. "I've been meaning to tell you that for some time. Just between us, you're on the road to perdition. Saw it back in Sunnydale and you haven't improved a lot since. Anyway, not gonna let you drag me into your gray moral twilight -- gotta line to walk, even if you don't."

The hausers of my fabled patience parted their moorings at last. "This is absolutely," I exploded, "the reason I cannot abide religiosity in any shape or form -- it's pure selfishness, that's all. William the Bloody is stepping high, wide and handsome down the path of virtue but the rest of us can hang, is that it? Listen to me, you stubborn wretch. We cannot use credit cards, because such transactions can be traced -- cash is what we need. Chance has put us in a bar with a pool table, the place is groaning with celebrants in the last stages of easily-bilked inebriation and you are a shark at the game. Think of it as Divine Providence, if you must. And bear in mind," I added nastily, "that we are all in peril because of you."

"Get thee behind me, Watcher."

"Think of Buffy."

"Stop."

"Poor girl. Poor child. Hunted like a hare, after all she's done and suffered. And the man who purports to love her will not raise a cue in her defense."

"Damn you. Stop."

A shaft of light fell between us as the door opened and Buffy appeared. I could not help but notice she was failing to walk a perfectly straight line: almost beam-to, alas, on one beer.

"Hi there!" she said brightly. "I got lonely for my best guys. Everybody's looking awfully serious -- whatcha doing out here?"

Spike crammed his hands into his pockets and hung his head. "Oh, this and that, pet. A disagreement, maybe. I said a bad thing to your Watcher just now."
"Then you'd better take it back, Spike," replied Buffy, with an indulgent smile.

"Look at her, Spike,” I urged. “Cast your selfish eyes on our precious girl, who always thinks of others first. What ails you, man? You'd do it if you had an ounce of true devotion. You'd do it if you loved her at all. Buffy," I said. "It is time to hustle a few of the locals. Tell Spike to join me at the pool table."
Buffy blinked as the situation took rough shape in her beer-gentled brain. Her eyes, previously the size of dinner plates, expanded to roughly the circumference of hubcaps.

"Buffy," quavered Spike.

Buffy silently took his hand.

Spike trembled visibly. Then he took a deep breath and stood a bit taller, donning a sere expression of calm, selfless resolve. I recognized it from those last ugly days on the Hellmouth, though I had failed to grasp what it actually meant, at the time. I had since learned: it was Spike's personal brand of pure, uncut Renunciation, concentrated and distilled to lethal levels. I felt my chest clench. He was going to give her up, the simpleton, and accept her rejection, and send all my hard work slap down the drain.

Under the bar's neon glare Spike began to glow like a martyr in a stained glass window. I felt an almost uncontrollable desire to sink a fist into his midsection before he ruined everything.

"I'm sorry, Buffy... " Spike faltered, going pale, and then rallied. "But no. I can't do it. Because it would be wrong. Don't do wrong things anymore. That's over. So I can't. I could not love thee so, my dear," added Spike with misery, conviction, and absolute finality, "loved I not honor more."

They stared at one another. Then Buffy stepped in and drew Spike's face down to meet hers in a long, grave kiss.

"I love you, Spike," she whispered, when she finally came up for air. "I love you because you're so good."
"Oh my God!" exclaimed Spike faintly.

They were starting to smoulder again, the rebellious, infuriating, Watcher-defying mutineers. I left them to it. Ripper was not dead, nor did he sleep – and he was perfectly capable of scraping up some action on his own.

****

The mug shattered on the wall by my left ear. A stool followed it on roughly the same trajectory.
"Can't we discuss this like reasonable --"
A fist stopped my inquiry. Another pair of arms grabbed me from behind. Double teamed, and at my age. I supposed it was a compliment.

"Hang on, Mr. Giles!" shouted Jeffries, from under a pile of attackers. "I'll be right there!"

"Jeffy!" cried Zuptya from her perch atop the bar. She bounced an ashtray off a combatant but didn't slow the proceedings any that I could see. My vison was considerably impaired by the loss of my glasses, and it's hard to say, isn't it, when the action becomes as general as all that. Buffy and Spike were long overdue, to my way of thinking.

Then I heard sirens. Sirens, blast it, howling over the din of breaking glass and splintering stools.

My fellow revelers, clearly feeling the shank of the evening had passed, betook themselves out back doors, windows and transoms. I saw the wisdom in this and hauled Jeffries -- who had lost himself in contemplation of the sawdust, from chin level -- up by his belt and set him on his feet.

"Zuppy," he groaned.

"She is right by the door, Jeffries, impersonating a waste can. Come along, Zuptya, it is time to be --"

The door crashed aside and the bar was flooded with officers bearing nightsticks. Troopers, I gathered, by the earthen hue of their habiliaments and the brisk efficiency with which they brought us down. I was cuffed -- not for the first time in my storied life, but the shame never quite eases, especially if one has the misfortune to be sober when it happens -- and hustled out into the parking lot. Radios squawked. Flashing lights painted the scene with a certain infernal liveliness. I caught sight of Jeffires resisting attempts to insert him into the rear seat of a state car.

I was slammed face down onto a hood and advised, in no very congenial tones, not to move. I twisted a bit anyway. "Don't fight them, Jeffries," I shouted. "We'll soon have this squared away. Patience!"

"Move again and I'll shoot you," said a voice in my ear. I was pulled up, spun about, and found myself facing Ethan Rayne, dressed absolutely from stem to stern as a badge-wielding defender of the peace. He unholstered his revolver and placed the barrel gently between my eyes.

"Or maybe I'll do it anyway," he smirked.

****

The backroads had never looked darker or quite so dashed lonely. It gave me a pronounced sensation of hollowness in the mid-gustatory regions. The cruiser whispered over the graveled lanes solo, for Rayne had fallen back from the others and struck out on his own some time before.

"What do you think, Rip?" Rayne tapped an ash out the window, which promptly blew back in and caught me in the eye. "This look secluded and hopeless enough for you?"

"You swine," I rasped. "Do your worst."

"Tut. I didn't say you were dead yet. If you cooperate we can all get home in time for breakfast and consider this an evening well-spent."

"Spike is long gone. I sent him off straight away. How stupid do you think I am?"

"Hm. That's very convincing, but I think I will err on the side of caution, if you don't mind." Rayne turned off the road, stopped the crusier, and grinned back at me through the bars. "At this point, Ripper, it would probably be considerate to give you some notion of what I'm up to. It's damned juicy. But you wouldn't appreciate the finer points and you're a miserable sodding bastard after all, so let's skip to the pistol-whipping, shall we?"

And skip we did. Rayne got out and opened my door, and our conversation continued amid the freshly ploughed loam of the field. After a memorably uncomfortable interval, at which point I was quite the worse for wear, Rayne paused to catch his breath.

"You're going to tell me where he is eventually," he sighed. "Why make me work so hard?"

I spat. "He's dead."

"Oh, come on."

"All right, then: he's on a plane to Nicaragua."

"You're determined to try me, aren't you?"

I struggled to sit up. "If you knew even the smallest thing about a Watcher and his code you would spare yourself all this undignified effort, Ethan. But you are a troglodyte and ever were, so I suppose we must do this by the numbers."

Rayne snickered. "Well, that's fine by me. My friends will be joining us soon. You don't want to be evasive with them, Rip, I assure you."

The wind began to pick up. A distant thunder rolled. An unmistakably Wagnerian atmosphere, complete with the promise of knockout effects, began a unencumbered descent.

"Ah." Rayne made a show of checking his watch. "Late, as usual. But better late than never, eh?"

I could not find it within myself, as the sky began to lower and crackle like a sheet of packing bubbles, to even remotely agree.


TBC