[fic] btvs/ats, "served cold"
Feb. 12th, 2008 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damalurbackupTITLE: Served Cold
CHARACTERS: Spike/Buffy
NOTES: Angst angst angst angst angst. Also AU.
SUMMARY: She catches up to him in London. Ashes to ashes, he thinks, and turns to face her.
SERVED COLD
Two years with the chip in his head, and they treat him like a puppy. Like their own watch dog, fangless and neutered, can’t fight or fuck properly. They forget. When they’re angry they take it out on him and when they’re lost they come to him for answers and when they’re weak they buy his strength with cash or cigarettes.
He doesn’t tell them that he could buy the whole tobacco industry with his family’s investments. They call him stupid vamp, no patience, and he doesn’t tell them about his Oxford education. They call him soulless and he doesn’t tell them how he loves; they call him harmless and he doesn’t tell them that he could still burn them or poison them or command some lesser demon to eviscerate them.
He doesn’t because of her.
And then one morning he wakes up. It’s not actually morning, it’s twilight, which isn’t precisely morning even to him. Close enough. He wakes up, remembers the scorn in his dark lady’s eyes and how the Slayer’s face mirrored the same disgust. He’d offered to stake Drusilla for her –
Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain –
- and she’d laughed at him.
So he wakes up one morning and thinks, well, fuck it. The next time he wakes up he’s stretched out on an operating table with nine stitches up the back up his skull. He stands up and stretches with a lion’s lazy grace; his mind is his own again. He dons his leather and reminds himself that his heart is unbeating and eats the doctor with relish, no fava beans necessary.
Although he thinks of Wheatabix with a mild pang not entirely unlike regret.
There’s a Scooby meeting at the Magic Box, and his presence is expected but not requested. Even though the Slayer shudders with fearlustrevulsion when he touches her, he’s still the only one who can actually back her up and she knows it.
So he goes to the Magic Box; the Slayer isn’t there yet, but the rest are. Not three minutes pass and the whelp’s at his throat. He gives Harris a thousand yard stare and smiles a predator’s smile, all teeth and no tongue. Xander has the gall to laugh, but Spike pulls out a cigarette and lights it and blows smoke in the whelp’s face with casual disregard for their closeness.
“I’d let up,” he advises.
Harris laughs again but backs up all the same. “Like you could do anything,” he scoffs.
Spike flicks his cigarette and starts to prowl, long lean paces around Xander. The whelp eyes him.
“I’m the youngest vampire to ever be acknowledged as a master,” Spike says. He could have been discussing football stats or soap operas; there was no threat in his voice but a world of it in his stance. “Last master of the Aurelian line, that’s me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harris says. The others look up, books discarded in favor of the show.
“Please allow me to introduce myself,” Spike drawls. The cigarette falls from his fingers, and he crushes it beneath his heel with one swift twist like snapping a neck. “I’m a man of wealth and taste,” he finishes. The feral grin is back and he lunges before the human can blink. One quick twist and the head lolls to the side. No blood from this one; there’s tastier treats to be had. The demon goes down with a curse on her lips, the witch clutches a spell, the watcher rips Spike apart with his eyes. Evil Undead looses himself in the blood and slaughter; when he comes back to himself the Slayer is standing in the doorway, her eyes numb.
He opens his mouth, to taunt, to lord, to savor –
“I could have loved you,” she whispers.
He flees.
Once he’s out of Sunnydale he remembers that he doesn’t need to breathe. Then he cranks up the radio and glories in his freedom. A century and a half and he’s never really been without shackles. He works his way down the Americas and up through Africa, loops idly around southern Asia before cutting a bloody swath across Europe.
She tracks him, of course, but he dodges her for a full twenty years. And what glorious years! In a mere two decades he relegates the Master to a mere footnote, makes Angelus’ centuries of torture look tame, shoves Dracula into the role of comic legend.
She catches up to him in London. Ashes to ashes, he thinks, and turns to face her. She wears the years well and her grief better, and they dance until the dark before dawn. He finally takes her with a quick brutal jab to the belly; she feints in the wrong direction, he twists her around, presses fangs to her throat, but doesn’t break skin.
He thinks of what to say:
- I don’t fuck my food
- My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
- I’m sorry
But in the end he owes her the truth.
“Love you, Buffy,” and then he slides his fangs into her neck and drinks her dry. He thinks that one of them comes while she dies; he’s not sure which. Afterward he lays his coat out on the cobblestones and curls her gently on top and stretches out beside her.
For the first time since he died, he watches the sun rise.
CHARACTERS: Spike/Buffy
NOTES: Angst angst angst angst angst. Also AU.
SUMMARY: She catches up to him in London. Ashes to ashes, he thinks, and turns to face her.
SERVED COLD
Two years with the chip in his head, and they treat him like a puppy. Like their own watch dog, fangless and neutered, can’t fight or fuck properly. They forget. When they’re angry they take it out on him and when they’re lost they come to him for answers and when they’re weak they buy his strength with cash or cigarettes.
He doesn’t tell them that he could buy the whole tobacco industry with his family’s investments. They call him stupid vamp, no patience, and he doesn’t tell them about his Oxford education. They call him soulless and he doesn’t tell them how he loves; they call him harmless and he doesn’t tell them that he could still burn them or poison them or command some lesser demon to eviscerate them.
He doesn’t because of her.
And then one morning he wakes up. It’s not actually morning, it’s twilight, which isn’t precisely morning even to him. Close enough. He wakes up, remembers the scorn in his dark lady’s eyes and how the Slayer’s face mirrored the same disgust. He’d offered to stake Drusilla for her –
Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain –
- and she’d laughed at him.
So he wakes up one morning and thinks, well, fuck it. The next time he wakes up he’s stretched out on an operating table with nine stitches up the back up his skull. He stands up and stretches with a lion’s lazy grace; his mind is his own again. He dons his leather and reminds himself that his heart is unbeating and eats the doctor with relish, no fava beans necessary.
Although he thinks of Wheatabix with a mild pang not entirely unlike regret.
There’s a Scooby meeting at the Magic Box, and his presence is expected but not requested. Even though the Slayer shudders with fearlustrevulsion when he touches her, he’s still the only one who can actually back her up and she knows it.
So he goes to the Magic Box; the Slayer isn’t there yet, but the rest are. Not three minutes pass and the whelp’s at his throat. He gives Harris a thousand yard stare and smiles a predator’s smile, all teeth and no tongue. Xander has the gall to laugh, but Spike pulls out a cigarette and lights it and blows smoke in the whelp’s face with casual disregard for their closeness.
“I’d let up,” he advises.
Harris laughs again but backs up all the same. “Like you could do anything,” he scoffs.
Spike flicks his cigarette and starts to prowl, long lean paces around Xander. The whelp eyes him.
“I’m the youngest vampire to ever be acknowledged as a master,” Spike says. He could have been discussing football stats or soap operas; there was no threat in his voice but a world of it in his stance. “Last master of the Aurelian line, that’s me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Harris says. The others look up, books discarded in favor of the show.
“Please allow me to introduce myself,” Spike drawls. The cigarette falls from his fingers, and he crushes it beneath his heel with one swift twist like snapping a neck. “I’m a man of wealth and taste,” he finishes. The feral grin is back and he lunges before the human can blink. One quick twist and the head lolls to the side. No blood from this one; there’s tastier treats to be had. The demon goes down with a curse on her lips, the witch clutches a spell, the watcher rips Spike apart with his eyes. Evil Undead looses himself in the blood and slaughter; when he comes back to himself the Slayer is standing in the doorway, her eyes numb.
He opens his mouth, to taunt, to lord, to savor –
“I could have loved you,” she whispers.
He flees.
Once he’s out of Sunnydale he remembers that he doesn’t need to breathe. Then he cranks up the radio and glories in his freedom. A century and a half and he’s never really been without shackles. He works his way down the Americas and up through Africa, loops idly around southern Asia before cutting a bloody swath across Europe.
She tracks him, of course, but he dodges her for a full twenty years. And what glorious years! In a mere two decades he relegates the Master to a mere footnote, makes Angelus’ centuries of torture look tame, shoves Dracula into the role of comic legend.
She catches up to him in London. Ashes to ashes, he thinks, and turns to face her. She wears the years well and her grief better, and they dance until the dark before dawn. He finally takes her with a quick brutal jab to the belly; she feints in the wrong direction, he twists her around, presses fangs to her throat, but doesn’t break skin.
He thinks of what to say:
- I don’t fuck my food
- My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
- I’m sorry
But in the end he owes her the truth.
“Love you, Buffy,” and then he slides his fangs into her neck and drinks her dry. He thinks that one of them comes while she dies; he’s not sure which. Afterward he lays his coat out on the cobblestones and curls her gently on top and stretches out beside her.
For the first time since he died, he watches the sun rise.
