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by jackie thomas
Doyle has just died and Spike’s got an implant
Warning for sex and language
I saw Spike standing on the steps of my building as I turned the corner, his back to me, distinctive in black leather and bleached blond. I passed him and put my key in the lock.
"I'm not in the mood Spike."
"Relax Sweetie, I've got a bit of a headache myself."
I looked at him. I'd forgotten about the implant in everything that had happened, hadn't fully believed in it anyway. But then he turned toward me and I saw that thin had turned to gaunt, pronouncing the already distinct cheekbones and circling his eyes with dark rings. A cigarette, held poised at his lips, burnt out and he looked me over.
"Where’s my ring?"
"It’s destroyed."
"Perfect. I could have done with that." But even then he didn't seem really angry or even particularly interested. He turned away again and I went inside, closing the door behind me.
The office and the apartment were silent, empty. Full of Doyle.
I want him back. I want him back. Want.
I went back and opened the door and Spike followed me in. In my apartment he went straight to the fridge. Finding blood there he drained a bag and then discarding the package he crossed the floor to my bedroom shedding his clothes as he went. He slipped naked under the covers and fell asleep, as far as I could tell, within minutes.
I always thought of Spike as an alley cat, same temperament, same psychology, same basic needs. Food, shelter, territory, sex. It was what made him such an efficient hunter, such a brutal killer. Or used to. And even though he might play with his prey a little he rarely went in for the power struggles that other vampires as strong as he would engage in. As Angelus would. He might tag along for a while but he’d always be gone if it got boring, or if it looked like his own hide might be at risk or even if there was something good on TV.
And like a semi-domesticated Tom, here he was scratching at my door for a saucer of milk and a safe place to sleep
I went to the place on the couch where I spent long hours now that I hardly slept. Waiting for Cordelia and Wesley to come in, waiting for something to happen. And it was immeasurably better not to be alone, even Spike was better than the emptiness.
Want.
A few hours past and Spike slept as he always did, careless of his long limbs across the bed but unmoving, plunged into a deep darkness. Sleep was always better if you were untroubled by a soul. I slept briefly too, revisiting for the thousandth time a stinking cargo boat loaded with half-demons.
“You wouldn’t fancy a shag by any chance?”
I woke up, fogged with unsatisfactory sleep, and gazed over at Spike through the bedroom door. He winked a cold blue eye. “Handsome.” Evidently revived by food and sleep he had propped himself up on an elbow while a sheet draped itself enticingly off his thin frame. He gazed at me momentarily and then shrugged. “Nah, didn’t think so.”
He got out of bed then and pulling a sheet along with him trailed passed me like a rakish ancient Roman and went back to the fridge. He came in to the living room with a can of Cordelia’s coke and then started a shameless root around the rest of the apartment.
“Hey, did you hear? Me and the Slayer got engaged.”
I was on my feet and slamming him against the wall before I even knew what I was doing. Before I even knew that this was what I had been waiting to do.
“Oi, watchit” he said as the coke can flew out of his hand.
“What have you done to her?” I spat. Which was particularly irrational as anything he tried to do to her she could do back to him with, as Spike himself would have said, knobs on. Implant or no implant.
“Oh lay off Butch.” He said shaking me off. “It was the Witch. Accidentally cast a spell. I’ve been trying to wash Slayer off me for weeks.” He looked me over critically. “Anyway, what do you care? Rumour has it you’ve got the little Mick to keep you warm these days.” So then I hit him. Hard enough to knock him down. It made me feel quite a bit better. Curiously he made no move to retaliate.
“Tosser.” He sat up rubbing his face and complaining. “Unarmed man here.”
I got his cigarettes and lighter from his coat pocket and sat on the floor next to him. I lit one and he took it from me with bad grace.
“I heard Red telling the Watcher about the spell she did for you when you came to Sunnydale.” He took a drag of the cigarette and leaned back on an elbow. “I don’t care who you’re poking mate. I mean if you insist on playing with your food. Look…What are you gawping at?”
I hadn’t realised that I was staring at him. “Can’t you even hit me?” I asked, forgetting everything for a moment.
“Not without having my skull split in two. Why? Are you planning to stake me? Because that’s all I need.”
“Well I ought to. This is Arch-Enemy stuff.” I was half-teasing.
“Yeah, and you probably believe that too.” He lay back on the floor amongst the tangle of sheet and watched the swirls of smoke rising up from the cigarette.
Then everything had changed. “You’re really harmless?”
“Temporary, love. Once I get this thing out of my head I’m going to…Hey this isn’t funny you know. I’m sodding depressed.”
I was laughing. Really laughing. Groucho, Harpo, Chico laughing. I couldn’t remember when I last had.
“Who put it there?” I managed to say and he scowled.
“Oh bloody Captain Boring,” his eyes narrowed. “The Slayer’s new shag. Yeah, thought that would wipe the smile off your face.”
I got up and went back to the couch. He followed me with his eyes but otherwise lay unmoving.
“For Christ’s sake,” he said eventually. “You’re really dragging a great steaming pile of soul with you today. What the fuck’s your problem? And in what possible way could it be worse than mine?”
Alley cats don’t have souls but that doesn’t mean they won’t come and curl up in your lap now and then to exchange a bit of comfort.
“Doyle’s dead.” I got to say out loud two of the words that had been screaming incessantly in my head.
He regarded me through a smoky haze.
“Fucking humans,” he murmured. “One gust of wind knocks em down and they don’t get up again.” Reaching out he flicked ash into the upturned coke can. “How?” he demanded, though he couldn’t possibly care. The only time Doyle and Spike had met Spike had offered to snap his spine in two. But he listened without a word to the whole story.
He got to his feet when I finished speaking. “Have you got any booze?” He asked. He resumed his search through my cupboards until he found a bottle of Jack Daniels and took a long swig. Then he came back to me, kneeling on the floor in front of me. He pushed the bottle into my hands and pushed it to my lips until I drank too, washing away the unshed tears that telling the story had set off behind my eyes.
Then he kissed me. A hard, wet kiss laced with smoke, alcohol and blood. We hadn’t kissed in a hundred years, give or take, but I remembered his taste. Reckless, impatient, darkly tender. He stayed close to me when the kiss finished, his mouth an inch away from mine. It was a challenge, just as everything of Spike was a challenge.
Some time ago he had splashed on some aftershave and the scent on him was more intoxicating than the whisky.
A moment’s hesitation on my part and he had tired of the closeness and was gone, sitting back on his heels to finish the cigarette.
“You fall too fucking easily,” he said unpleasantly.
I want.
“It should have been mine. My death.” I whispered.
“And you can’t even be grateful. I thought I was supposed to be the bastard here.”
“What do you want Spike?”
“To piss you off obviously.” He crushed the stub out on the top of the can and flicked it away. There was something about the gesture, something elegant and unspecifically disreputable that sent every preoccupation fleeing from my mind.
I slipped off the couch and pushed him down on to the floor my mouth on his, I think taking him by surprise as he hastily put aside the whisky bottle and grabbed me tight with both hands through my hair.
Not so long ago I had kissed Doyle and it had hurt. It had been a kiss so loaded with longing and hopelessness and finality that it had physically hurt. This one didn’t, this one was a bolt of lightening through every nerve ending in my undead body and it didn’t hurt a bit.
He pulled at my shirt, unbuttoning, ripping and it was gone and without moving too far away from him I lost the rest of my clothes. He smiled then, a rare smile as I looked down at him. I pulled the sheet away, unwrapping him like a gift until he was as naked as I and I caressed the white pale skin until he hardened under my touch.
“Sweet William.”
I kissed him and pressed against him, feeling the unnatural strength of his body as he pushed against me, his back arching, his tongue pushing its way into my mouth. There was no humanity here, nothing to torment me with pulsating life, nothing to falsely promise any manner of happiness, nothing but cool skin against cool skin, cock against cock and sudden memories of iron beds in Victorian basements and old powers. Nothing but a sheltering darkness and trails of salt kisses.
Afterwards I lay on my back, reaching to caress his wiry hair and without even thinking I offered him my neck. He lazily revealed his demon and fell on me. I held him, his skin silky against mine waiting to feel pinprick punctures. But instead I felt his forehead pressing against my shoulder.
“Ow. Fuck.”
“Spike?”
“Implant.” Our forgetting had worked too well.
“Hush then,” I whispered, folding my arms around him as I would to still a distressed child. As I had held Doyle a lifetime ago. Doyle. He shifted in my arms, my alley cat getting comfortable, but then he began to plant soft kisses on my face just as if he had sensed my thoughts wondering back to a grimmer place. I would never have believed he could have such a tender touch.
My weeks of unrest beginning to catch up with me I felt I could sleep now if only Spike stayed here in my arms. He didn’t need to know that, all he had to do was stay.
“Spike, don’t go yet.”
“Can’t mate, its dawn and you knackered my ring,” but his tone was quiet, even soothing. Sex always put him in a good mood. “Anyway lets go to bed, your floor’s like concrete or something.” He pulled me to my feet and led me by the hand to the bedroom. “Or is it part of your atonement thing? Do you want me to get you some nails to sleep on? Or hot coals?”
“Can you shut up for five minutes?”
“Not really.”
We quickly rearranged the tangle of sheets and soon he was back in my arms his head where my silent heart was. “You may have a soul in there,” he said as I drifted off to sleep. “But there’s no god out there looking after it.”
End
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