What Happens at Drunk Brunch...

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine wakes up with the beginnings of a headache nebulously bouncing around the interior of her skull and a small, baffled frown on her face. She's in Spike's apartment - she's spent enough time here that she can figure out that much without even opening her eyes - but it takes her longer than it should to remember how she got here. Wasn't there brunch? There was brunch, right? What happened to that?

Maybe Spike could answer that question. Maybe Spike could answer a lot of questions. Except she can't decide which one to articulate first, so she settles for hiding her eyes in the crook of her elbow and letting out a groan of general confusion and complaint.

Comments

[erratic_hematic]

"I can close the curtain. I wasn't sure if your sun...thing would trump the hangover or not." After Spike had dragged Sunshine away from brunch and back to his flat, she'd passed out as soon as she hit the couch. Now, it's nearing evening, and the sun is at the right angle again to spear its way into the room.

He's already in the kitchen when she wakes, so he grabs a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water, then makes a detour over to the bathroom to grab some aspirin before coming back out to her. "Here, sit up. This'll help."

He's feeling no small amount of trepidation about whatever conversation is going to happen between them now. Eliot had known things about Spike's life that he had no intention of ever telling Sunshine, and now they've all been laid out for her. And not only her, but apparently, an entire universe where he's part of a TV show. It's a strange thought - though he can't help but feel a little disappointed that he was apparently in a show with Angel as the title character.

Who knows what Eliot can tell her once they're both sober. What he'd already told her is bad enough.

[rae_of_sun]

The events of the morning and early afternoon are just a bit (or, okay, a lot) fragmented at the moment, so it takes Sunshine a minute to remember that Spike came to brunch. Gods, why would he? Wait. Because she texted him. Wait.

Oh, gods. The thing--the Buffybot. The frigging shrine.

Okay. Okay. This is not a disaster. Baby steps. First things first. She inches herself upright, more or less - enough for the sunlight shining through the window to hit the back of her neck if she can just get her hair out of the way. She scrapes her hair out of her face, then inelegantly twists it to the side. As she does so, she begins to register that Spike is being atypically accommodating, and she eyes him with a bleary combination of uncertainty and general hungover wretchedness. Then, she eyes the pills and the glass of water. Okay. There's something she can definitely handle right now.

"Thanks," she says, downing the aspirin and a third of the water. Look at that, she made the water disappear. What a vampire thing to do. Why couldn't Eliot's horror stories have just been vampire things? She's braced for those; vampire boyfriends come prepackaged with godawful creepy histories. She wasn't braced for… weird stalker shit.

Not that Spike was braced for 'I've watched your life on television,' either. It was a hell of a revelation for both of them.

She draws her knees up and lets her head come to rest on the back of the couch, looking at him askance. "Was all that stuff true?" she asks, still clinging absently to the glass of water.

[erratic_hematic]

"Maybe you can tell me what you think and I'll tell you what's true." He sits down next to her when she sits up and pulls his phone out of his pocket. After a moment, he hands it to her displaying the series of texts she'd sent him earlier, illustrating the hilarious level of drunk she was at the time.

He raises an eyebrow, but he's clearly unsettled by the situation. He's holding himself a little too straight, being a little too forced. "I'm not sure what you think. There was a lot of shouting random words and then laughing." Two of those words had definitely been buffybot and shrine, but he'd like to avoid those topics if at all possible. He reaches over and points to a part near the bottom. "I like the part where you miss my face."

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine slowly scrolls through the texts - autocorrect had a hell of a time with 'Buffybot,' but not such a hard time that she can't figure out what she was trying to say - and she huffs out a breath that can't quite decide if it wants to be a sigh or a laugh. "I think," she starts, then realizes she has no idea where to go with it. What does she think? Her head hurts. Thoughts are hard. She hands the phone back.

"I think this sucks for you," she says first, which might not belong at the top of the list, but it is on the list. She appreciates having some amount of notoriety for her baking skills, but that is nothing compared to having someone know her entire goddamn life because in an alternate universe it's a frigging film trilogy or something. Yeesh. That is some steel-cut creepiness right there.

But it's not the only steel-cut creepiness on this mental list she's trying to compile, here. "Was there really a shrine?" she asks, with a faint, preemptive wince.

[erratic_hematic]

She's right. This does suck. It really bloody sucks. What if he loses her over this? How is he supposed to put a spin on having created a shrine? That's not easily explained even if he gives her the straight truth. He purses his lips for a moment, contemplative and more than a little worried.

"There was a...collection." He cringes. That doesn't sound any better. "It was a shrine. I loved the bird, really loved her. I didn't understand-" He looks down at her hands instead of her face. He didn't understand then that searching out ways to make Buffy see him differently, and then searching out increasingly desperate ways to either stop the hurt of what he was feeling or to feel it more fully - all of that only gave her more reasons not to love him. Dru and Harmony hadn't exactly prepared him for how a healthy relationship is supposed to go. He was selfish and very naive. "I didn't understand a lot of things."

He shrugs his shoulders, then looks over at her again. "Would it help to know I didn't have a soul at the time?"

[rae_of_sun]

She grimaces at 'collection,' because no, that does not sound any better. It lends a 'creepy museum curator' flair to the whole thing, but given the option, she's slightly less skeeved by the 'lovesick idiot with a tragically loose grasp on reality' vibe that 'shrine' offers. Maybe she shouldn't be. Lovesick idiots can be as dangerous as vampires, and she at least knows how to handle vampires. Obsessive boyfriends are something she's been more successful at avoiding.

But Spike… she frowns, focusing on his shadows for a moment, even though she barely needs the outside confirmation that he's being honest. The openness is a little surprising. Even though the cat is out of the proverbial bag and she feels she's well within her rights to ask about this, it's still - obviously - not something he ever wanted her to know about, and she expected him to be more defensive. When he looks back up at her and puts his question, she blinks.

"Um." Sunshine raises her eyebrows, considering. "Yes." She takes a bracing sip of water, trying to get her thoughts into some kind of order. Or some kind of coherency, at least. "I mean. You're a vampire." She waves her glass at him in an all-encompassing 'duh' sort of gesture. "You've done plenty of things I don't want to know about, or, or think about." Blech. She wrinkles her nose - so much for not thinking about it - then narrows her eyes at him. "All of it pre-soul, I presume." Because getting his soul returned is when he cleaned up his act, right? Isn't that how it worked? Gods, that better be how it worked.

[erratic_hematic]

"I'd stopped with humans before I got it back. At first it was forced and then...it wasn't." He shrugs again. He doesn't really want to get into it. If he can avoid telling her anything about the chip that was in his brain to prevent him from hurting people he's definitely going to avoid it. Buffy had been an enormous reason for him to seek out his soul, but it been more than that. He'd gotten tired of not being able to feel as deeply as he'd wanted to feel. He'd gotten tired of not understanding the moral implications of his actions.

"Angel-" He smiles, smug in a contrived way. "His soul was a curse. I fought to get mine back."

[rae_of_sun]

She peers at him, a little wary of any smugness following so closely on the heels of his previous mood (probably best described as 'oh shit' on a never-ending loop). But he's not lying. He did stop drinking human blood on purpose, and he did fight to get his soul back.

So. She could rank Eliot's drunken recollections of a televised version of Spike's life as more important than what she already knows, and what Spike's telling her now, and decide that a few episodes' worth of weirdness is a deal breaker. But considering what she's already implicitly forgiven (or at least elected to deliberately overlook), that seems… dumb. And not particularly fair (on top of all the other ridiculously unfair aspects of this situation).

More to the point, she just doesn't want to break up with him. Maybe that's just her own inertia talking. At the moment, she doesn't want to do much of anything besides go back to sleep. But she's not so far gone that she can't appreciate how upfront he's been, and she figures he's earned himself more trust than Eliot's revelation can dismantle. (How accurate were those shows, anyway? They could have been waaaay off base. Yeah. That's what she's gonna tell herself.)

"Okay." She leans over, a little precariously, and sets the water on the coffee table. Then she lets herself topple gently forward, her forehead coming to rest on his shoulder. "I believe you. And," she pauses to smother a yawn, then gives his arm a pat, "I trust you. It's okay." There's a beat during which she wriggles a little to get more comfortable. Then she adds, "… But seriously, don't steal my clothes." She is still rebuilding her wardrobe, here, and she can't afford for perfectly wearable things to go missing.

[erratic_hematic]

When she leans into him, Spike takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Nothing ended. She trusts him. How did that happen? As his panic about Eliot and his information melts away, it's replaced by no small amount of wonder that Sunshine can just settle up against him and get comfortable after all of that.

Her amendment dampens his enthusiasm a little, but his smile isn't contrived anymore when he answers back. "I haven't. I won't. I've got you." Well. There is the matter of that shirt of his she wore that he hasn't bothered to wash yet. But that's a completely different thing, right?

[rae_of_sun]

To be fair, in her current state she could probably settle comfortably against a brick wall (though she'd regret it when she woke up). But Spike is definitely several steps up from there, comfort-wise, even with all the weird (and potentially untrue, let's not forget that) crap that Eliot brought up. Well, okay, the shrine thing was true, but Spike owned up to it like an adult, and it was pre-soul, and she's tired, and her head hurts, so screw it. She doesn't want to deal with this anymore. Not right now.

"That's right," she mumbles emphatically into his shoulder, as if she's just made a really good point and he's backed her up on it. She... might not have entirely slept off her buzz. Whoops. She should rectify that. "I'm gonna fall asleep on your couch again," she announces, though she doesn't make any attempt to resettle herself in a more sensible, prone position, electing to remain awkwardly slumped against him. Spike, Spike's couch, what's the difference, really?

[erratic_hematic]

"Okay." He's not sure what else to say. He's immensely relieved, and Sunshine is being amazing about all of this.

"Just one question." He dips his head so that he can nuzzle into her hair. He loves her hair. He loves...well. It's much too early to start thinking that he loves her. So he wont do that.

"Do you really think I'm..." He smirks, trying to remember her exact wording. "like a frigging Greek sculpture, but better endowed?" He chuckles, low and fond. He's tired himself, but if he can, he's going to wait till she falls asleep. Maybe then he can get them both into bed and into a much more comfortable position.

[rae_of_sun]

She hums when he nuzzles her hair, both to indicate that she's still at least semi-conscious and in general encouragement. Spike's cuddlier tendencies are ceasing to surprise her, incongruous as they'd seemed at the outset. Maybe the irony is part of what makes snuggling with him so appealing, despite her generally ambivalent attitude towards snuggling in general. The whole lukewarm body temperature thing helps, too, because it means not feeling uncomfortably overheated on days like today (might lose its charm in winter, but they can cross that bridge when they come to it).

His question succeeds in dragging her into a slightly more alert and considerably more mortified state. "… I said that?" Oh, gods. She must have. That sounded like a pretty direct quote. "Um." Wow, Sunshine. That's… well, it's pretty apt, actually. And she must have intended it as a compliment, right? He doesn't sound mad. Still, she turns her face into his shoulder, thoroughly embarrassed, before venturing, "It's… not inaccurate…"

[erratic_hematic]

He smiles, and chuckles again. It's actually quite flattering, even though she'd been totally plastered when she'd said it. It'll definitely be something he can bring up later if she ever criticizes his appearance. "I'll just get a plinth, shall I? I can stand up on it and you can admire from all angles."

[rae_of_sun]

"Shuddup," she mutters, smiling in spite of herself. A plinth, gods. It wouldn't even fit; he'd hit his head on the ceiling. She considers pointing that out, but what she ends up saying is, "Don't need a plinth for that, anyway."

Well. What should have been a serious discussion about the metaphorical skeletons in his closet (because the real ones are definitely not anything she wants to talk about) has morphed into a discussion about his perfectly sculpted abs. The embarrassment has come full circle.

She slings an arm over said abs and admits, "I think I'm still buzzed," on the off chance he hasn't worked that out for himself. "And I should sleep." Before she says anything else ridiculous.

[erratic_hematic]

"Okay," he says, "You can admire me from all angles later. Sleep is a good plan." Though it might be best to just get her to the bed now instead of waiting for her to fall asleep before moving her. If she stays in this position she's going to have a sore neck in the morning.

"Come on." Spike leans forward enough to get his other arm under her legs, then stands and hefts her up, her head still resting on his shoulder. It doesn't take long to shoulder his way past the bedroom door. The sheets on the bed are already pushed back from when he left to pick her up from Eliot's earlier. He sets her down and bends to take of her shoes, then settles in next to her and pulls the cover up over them both.

[rae_of_sun]

Oh, hey, relocation. Probably a good idea. No arguments here. It occurs to her, distantly, that she might be pushing it just a little on the whole 'trusting' front given recent events - like, is this really the time to let him haul her off to bed? - but she said she trusts him, and she's pretty sure she meant it. Besides, she can't honestly say she objects to being taken to a bed when she's on the verge of dozing off. That's a bed's primary function.

She is a little surprised when Spike settles in beside her, because this highly atypical bedtime is a result of overindulgence on her part, and what's his excuse? But she's too groggy to question it - so the vampire lite keeps weird hours, whatever - and it's kind of nice to have the company. Right?

Yes. She's glad he's here. Sunshine snuggles up to him, tucking her head beneath his chin and letting her hand settle above his heart. That faint little ping of awareness has a comforting familiarity to it, now. It's almost like the acknowledgment she'd get from her home wards in her own universe: you're home, you're safe. If she was lucid, that might be a revelation. But she's not, so she just sighs contentedly, mumbles something that sounds like, "good boyfriend," and promptly falls asleep.