He blinked, forcing his eyes into focus, and realized that his body wasn't shaking on his own, but rather, someone was shaking him—the blonde girl he'd seen right before he'd passed out. What had she said her name was again? Bitsy? Bunny? Betty? And what had she said she was? Oh, right…his muse sent by the Powers That Be.
Spike sat up, clutching his head. "It's finally happened. I've lost my bleedin' mind," he muttered.
"Spike, you're awake! Oh, I was so afraid I'd broken you, and that wouldn't do at all for a muse. I'd get fired for sure then! Can I get you anything? Water? Tea? Maybe some warm milk?"
This couldn't be real… He'd had too much to drink, and now he was seeing hot little blonde numbers in his bedroom. Dressed in an outfit that looked like something from a really fancy toga party and claiming to be his muse, no less. "Bloody hell, I think I need more scotch."
"I can do that!" Buffy informed him with a cheery smile. She snapped her fingers and was suddenly holding a glass of brown liquid. "Here you go."
Spike stared at her for a moment before tentatively taking the glass from her small hands. He looked down into the drink, inspecting it, before taking a sip. It was scotch…and damn good scotch at that. His hallucinations had high-priced tastes.
"Oh, I'm not a hallucination. I'm your muse, just like I told you before you fell asleep."
Spike's brow wrinkled. Had he said that out loud? "Yeah, I heard that part, ducks, but muses like I think you're talking about don't exist."
"Oh, we exist," she replied in a tone a little too chipper for Spike in his current state. "But we only get sent to people who are in the most dire need of assistance. And my name's not Ducks. It's Buffy."
"Right, Buffy. Look, I'm sure you're very good at your, um, musing, but I'm very drunk, you're very shiny, and I think I need to sleep this off."
"Then I'll help you to your bed," Buffy told him as she pulled up by his arms. Spike's eyes bugged as the tiny woman threw him over her shoulder like he weighed next to nothing, then slung him down on the bed. He wondered for a moment both how his hallucinations managed to be so vivid and what had become of his scotch before he closed his eyes and let himself succumb to sleep.
With the morning came a hangover. Spike had long since become used to those, and all he did was groan and pull his covers up above his head. The pain would pass eventually, and as long as he didn't throw up on himself, he'd be fine.
Suddenly, foggy memories of the night before came back to him, and Spike frowned hard. Had he really been drunk enough to hallucinate some blonde woman with a goofy name like Buffy in his bedroom, claiming to be his muse?
Maybe it had all been a dream. Only he couldn't remember actually making it to his bed on his own. And his boots were gone. He couldn't remember taking those off, either.
It had to have been a dream, or a hallucination, or something of the sort. Literal "muses" were not real. Therefore, it was impossible that one had been in his flat the night before. He'd had too much to drink, and coupled with his anxiety over his book it had made him see crazy things.
Carefully, Spike brought his blanket down from his over face and peeked around his bedroom. No one. He was completely alone, no "muse" in sight. He breathed a sigh of relief, grateful he was no longer seeing things now that he was sober. Drunken hallucinations he could handle. Sober ones would make him a regular Bedlamite.
"You know, you're never going to get those poems written if you sleep the day away."
Spike screamed as he saw Buffy seated at the end of his bed. She had not been there a moment ago—where the hell had she come from?
"Zeus, there's no reason to yell," Buffy told him, rolling her eyes. "Just get up so we can get to work."
"Who…who are you?" Spike asked.
"I told you last night," Buffy replied. "My name is Buffy, and I'm your muse."
"But muses aren't real."
Buffy rolled her eyes a second time. "And again, we went over this last night. Yes, we are. And you, buddy, are in dire need of one."
"I'm in dire need of a bleedin' shrink."
"Not yet, but you will be if you just throw away all your talent like you've been doing. Now up with you. Would you like some breakfast?"
Spike's stomach rebelled at the thought of food. "God, no." He pressed the palm of his hand against his forehead in a failed attempt to stop the throbbing.
"Does your head hurt?" Buffy asked. "I can fix that." She leaned forward and pushed Spike's hand out of the way before replacing it with her own.
The place where their skin touched began to tingle, and Spike felt a pleasing warmth spread over his body. When Buffy pulled away, his pain was gone. "Is that better?" she asked.
"Yes, it really is," Spike told her with more than a little astonishment. "Thanks, pet."
Buffy beamed at him. "I'm glad I could help. Now let's get you writing."
"Yeah, we'll, um…get to that later. Right now, I've got to use the loo."
"The what?" Buffy asked with a frown.
"The…" Spike shook his head. "Never mind. You wait here, and I'll be back."
She was smiling again. "Okay."
He gave her one more glance before leaving the room.
Spike stood in the bathroom, griping the edge of the sink as he stared himself down in the mirror. "All right, mate, it's time to let sanity back in. When you go back in there, there will be no girl anywhere to be seen. Muses aren't real, she's not real, and you've got to snap out of it."
He sighed. "And I'm talking to me bleedin' self, too. Wonderful."
A deep breath, his hands run through his hair, and Spike stepped out of the bathroom and made the turn into his bedroom.
She was still there—sitting on the bed, all perky and alert and obviously waiting for him. "Why are you still here?" he blurted out.
"Because I have to inspire you. Duh. Now get you pen and your paper and start your writing. We're on a time limit here, so chop chop."
Were hallucinations supposed to last this long—or be this bossy? Maybe he should just check himself into the mental hospital. Would that be a valid excuse for falling behind on his deadline?
"You're not crazy, Spike. I'm as real as you are. So stop thinking I'm going to disappear, 'cause I'm not. Not until you write what you need to write anyway."
Spike blinked. "Can you read my mind?"
"Well, I have to have some connection to your thoughts if I'm going to inspire them, don't I?" Buffy asked. She closed her mouth, yet Spike still heard her voice clearly. "We can communicate like this all the time if it's easier for you."
Spike held up his hand. "No. No. The last thing I need on top of all of this to be hearing bleedin' voices. And while you're at it, just stop reading my thoughts. It's disturbing to say the least."
Buffy shrugged, but when she spoke again, it was aloud. "Suit yourself. I'm here to serve you after all. So, where do you want to write today? You've got that little balcony, that could be nice. You've written some simply beautiful poems outside."
Spike's eyebrow arched. "How do you know about that?"
"I know everything about you, Spike," Buffy informed him. "Well, everything that pertains to your artistic life. It's all in your file."
"File? Muses keep files?"
"Of course we do. How else would we know who to help and how to do it? As a matter of fact, I've worked in the file room for over a century now." An almost imperceptible shudder traveled through Buffy's body. She had to help this guy write his book of poetry in time and prove herself as a muse, because she was not going back to that horrid place.
"Right then. And what exactly did my file say?"
"Well, it said you were a very successful and prolific poet until your girlfriend up and left you and now you've got a case of writer's block that's going to be detrimental to your career unless you get some help. That about sum it up?"
Spike frowned. "Yeah, it does."
"Good. Now we've got all that settled." Buffy clapped her hands together. "Let's get you writing."
Spike was still far from convinced that he wasn't hallucinating, but he decided to go with it. It didn't seem like this so-called muse was going to fade away anytime soon anyway…
"How about we stay inside? I'll just sit up in the bed, yeah?"
"Sounds good to me," Buffy said as she got to her feet. She went over to Spike, took him by the arm, and dragged him over to the edge of the bed. There, she sat him down before fluffing his pillows and pushing him back on them with a hard shove. "Comfy?"
Spike rubbed his chest where she'd pushed him. "Yeah, I'm good."
"Great! Now your writing supplies…" Buffy turned and began digging around his room until she popped back over to him with paper, pens, and the small board he used to press down on. "There you go. Now write."
Spike stared down at the paper, trying to bring a stanza, line, word, anything into his mind. If he had a muse now, shouldn't the poems just be flowing? Well, they weren't, and the muse in question was reclining at the edge of his bed, watching him very intently. Frankly, it disturbed him.
After several minutes had passed, Spike looked up at her and asked, "What are you doing?"
"I'm inspiring you," Buffy replied.
"Uh, I hate to break it to you, pet, but at the moment—not so much."
Buffy frowned. "Oh. Nothing at all?"
Spike shook his head. "Nope. Sorry."
"Should I take my clothes off? Some of the poets I've helped in the past have told me they were much more inspired when I was naked."
Spike held up his hand. "No! Keep your little…girly toga thing on." Granted, she probably had a nice body under that thing, but it was disturbing enough having her stare at him clothed, and somehow, he didn't think it would get any better if she was nude. That would just be…very distracting.
"Then what should I do?" Buffy asked. "I could give you a neck rub. Or sing you a song while I play my lyre."
"Uh, that's okay. I've never been a huge fan of lyre music."
"I read in your file that you enjoy…punk rock." Buffy's mouth seem to struggle with the last two words, and if they were something very foreign to her.
"Yeah, I do," Spike replied. "Have you ever heard any?"
Buffy shook her head. "No, I haven't. I haven't been back down to Earth in quite some time, I'm afraid. Not since…" She paused, clearing her throat. "It's been a while."
"Here, I'll play some. Listening to music helps me write sometimes."
"All right then. Play this punk rock, and I will listen."
Spike laid his paper down on the bed and got up. His record player was set up in the corner, and he pulled out his well-worn copy of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. He knew it was probably time for him to accept that technology had moved on and purchase a CD player, but he just couldn't get used to the idea of listening to this music on anything but vinyl.
However, no more than a few bars of "Holidays in the Sun" had sounded out in the small flat before Buffy had clamped her hands over her ears. "Ah! This is horrible! No wonder you can't write anything if you listen to this noise!" She waved her hand, and suddenly his record player began to fill the room with the soft sounds of a light, classical piece.
"Oi now!" Spike yelled. "What did you bleedin' do?"
"I'm helping you," Buffy insisted. "You can't possibly experience a true rush of creative energy while listening to that."
Spike had had enough. He was clearly insane, and now his cheery blonde hallucination was buggering up his records. He grabbed his boots from where they were neatly placed at the foot of the bed and began putting them on.
"Where are you going?" Buffy asked.
"The pub."
"You can't go there! You'll become very inebriated if you do!"
"And that would be the idea," Spike replied. He laced up his second boot then left the flat, ignoring Buffy as she called after him.
I was very happy to see the enthusiastic response to the first chapter of this story. Personally, I've been having a lot of fun writing this one, and I hope all of my readers will enjoy it as much as I have!
Please take a moment to review.