Something Gray chapter 7/26

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Chapter 7

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The Bronze was filled with young writhing bodies pumped full of hormones as Spike surveyed the room. Once upon a time he’d be picking out his next meal, but tonight he was chafing at the memory of his erstwhile host Xander Harris and his never ending verbal jabs. The nit had become impossible to be around ever since the witch’s little spell from hell.

He’d never understood Dru’s preoccupation with eye removal before. Now he had a new appreciation.

“Bloody buggerin’ hell,” he muttered and took another long pull on the bottle of cheap bourbon. ‘Really love to make YOU “blind, too”, ya wanker,’ he thought bitterly. The whelp thought he was bleedin’ Oscar Wilde with all his attempts at humor, usually at Spike’s expense.

God, how he hated a weak moron like Xander Harris being able to get away with the swagger and slurs he constantly tossed Spike’s way. Spike used to eat idiots like the Xan-Man for breakfast, ‘after makin’ ‘em piss their pants in terror ‘o course,’ he remembered fondly.

“This cursed chip they shoved in my brain’s makin’ me as much of a ponce as William ever was,” he said. The bits of plastic and wire kept Spike from being the Master Vampire and ‘scourge of Europe’ that had set him over and above most other demons. “A bloody force to be reckoned with, I was,” he said proudly to himself.

Now he was as much a target for human bullies and blowhards like Xander as William had ever been.

“Take this hardware out of my brain and I’ll gladly make you blind. Then I’ll make you dead,” he promised.

The quirky apprentice witch’s buggering up that spell caused disaster for everyone around her. Spike had been hit harder than he would have ever imagined with the fallout on that one. Memories of that event were driving Spike mad, far more than the computer chip that prevented his feeding. As always, affairs of the heart always took the biggest toll on him.

He was filled with restless energy of the not-good kind and no way to properly work it off. ‘No one to shag and no way to kill!’ he mourned. He headed out the back door to get some fresh air and work off a bit of aggression on the piles of garbage always to be found in the alley.

A bag of empties flew down the alley with a satisfying crack and tinkle of glass. “Engaged to the Slayer, for Christ’s sake,” he shook his head as if to clear the memory. “Like a pair of soddin’ lovebirds, all cozy. Sittin’ on my lap and squirmin’ about. Gettin’ a fella all ripe and ready… bloody tease, that Slayer. Kisses, too, all hot and tasty like she had a clue about what to do to a man and all….”

He paced angrily while images of the results of the spell gone wrong danced in his mind. He was more frustrated than he had been when Dru was writhing in their bed with every demon in a ten mile radius. Felt more impotent than all that time in the wheelchair. The Slayer was the root of all his misery, he just knew it! The dark alley was now a macabre memory lane rather than the hunting grounds it should be. “Damn!” he exclaimed and threw his empty bottle against the wall of the Bronze.

“Bint probably wouldn’t have the first idea of how to please a man. Only had that one moment of ‘true love’ with Peaches and then that one-nighter with the college Casanova,” he reminded himself. “Might as well be a virgin for all the skill she’d have,” he tried to console himself.

Still, he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about what a delightful bundle she was, all cuddly soft and warm in his arms. “The kisses showed promise, gotta admit. Probably learn right quick. Seemed eager, too. Almost hungry, starved even,” he mused. “I know that feeling all too well,” he admitted sadly.

“It’s this town and this slayer causin’ all my hell,” he reaffirmed. “Before we came here, I was on top. The name William the Bloody caused even fierce demons to tremble and lesser vampires to hide in their lairs. Nothing and no one could stand up to the Big Bad and live to tell. No poncy human like the Boy with the Big Mouth would have dared be in the same room with me, let alone make jokes at my expense,” he raged. Memories of a curly haired, shy poet surrounded by jeering jackanapes flooded his mind.

It had all been simple and straightforward at first: come to the Hellmouth and cure his princess. Racking up slayer number three was only going to be the icing on his cake. It had all gone to hell rather quickly.

This little blonde bimbo with the bad puns had buggered everything. It didn’t take visions like Dru’s to see the bad omens nearly from the start.

He’d scoped out the little slayer and had his surprise attack all ready to take out his number three. First bit of bad luck was runnin’ into his bleedin’ grandsire. “Thought Peaches was still in the game, like he’d been those couple of years after havin’ the soul shoved in,” he remembered.

True, Angel had only eaten criminals and other humans thought of as so much throwaway trash. “Lost his taste for torture, but the Great Souled One still traveled with us, huntin’, killin’ and all,” he reminisced. “How was I supposed to know he was playin’ for the other team?” Spike wondered.

The real kicker to Spike’s well-laid plan that night had turned out to be the Slayer’s mother! No lone defender of the innocent or avenger of blood was this Slayer. Oh no, this one had family and friends all muckin’ about in the demon killin’ business. Like the bloody Mafia. Crazy is what it was. “Bitch should be named Corleone, not bloody Summers.

“Damn fine woman though, that Joyce Summers. Full of fire protectin’ her young. Didn’t even know the bint was more than some boy crazy teenager either. Took it a bit hard when she did find out.” He had to smile slightly in the middle of his tirade as he thought of Mrs. Summers.

“Would’ve thought that one humiliation was enough, but noooo! Never could seem to kill the bloody Slayer, even when she was laid out like a ham for carvin’ in that silly dress on Halloween. Then had to let her drop an organ on me and make me a candidate for Vamps on Wheels. Worst possible time, too, that was–not that there’s ever a good time to be stuck in a wheelchair with a snapped spine,” he corrected himself.

Spike staggered down the alley in pursuit of another bottle of comfort, haunted by his tragic history in Sunnydale.

“Then the Bubble Gum Princess with a Stake had to give ol’ Angel a happy and ruin my love life along with hers. Over a hundred years with his darlin’ only to have to sit in that damn chair and watch her fall all over her Angelus again. Hell, he’d had to put up with the two of them falling all over HIM as they rutted! If the bitch hadn’t dropped that organ on me, I’d have dragged Dru out of town and away from gel boy before she fell under his spell again,” he said with a grimace. “’Ooh, daddy, help princess put together the jigsaw demon and let’s kill all the food supply!’ Pair of idiots! Deserved each other.

“Finally got rid of the git and reclaimed my woman, only to have her turn up funny on me. ‘Soft’, she said. ‘Not a bad enough Big Bad anymore. Love struck by the Slayer’ of all things,” he spat. Dru really was daft on that last one, even more daft than the attempts to drag the world into hell for her daddy.

That was the whole reason he came back to this cursed town: to prove the silly bint wrong about it all. Come back, get all horizontal with a tasty little number–NOT the slayer–and then finish it up by puttin’ a period to ‘Buffy the Vampire Layer’ once and for all! Drag her entrails back to Brazil to drape over his dark plum; do wicked things in the Slayer’s remains.

Bitch lived under some kind of lucky star, she did! “The bloody U.S. Army helpin’ protect her without even knowin’ they were doin’ it! All I wanted was to drain her dry, instead I found myself in some Star Trek kind of holdin’ cell with soddin’ humans shovin’ hardware in my grey matter. Neutered me good and proper, they did. It’s just not right! Someone must’ve put some kind o’ charm or spell on the bint to protect her,” he decided. “Yeah, fallin’ under spells is just a part of livin’ in SunnyD,” he snarked.

Parts of this last spell disaster did bother him, however. The witch had said her flawed ‘do my will’ spell and caused him to get engaged to the Slayer. Spike was more than a little disturbed to remember how in love he had felt, how happy.

“Hell, marriages happen every day without any love or even burnin’ desire. I just don’t understand why it felt like that. Or why I still have those dreams. Or why I always get hard whenever I’m near Buffy. Or why I even think of her as Buffy instead of the Slayer,” he pondered. It just didn’t make any sense.

No matter how much fermented grain he ingested, Spike couldn’t seem to burn the memory of how her small body fit in his arms, how wonderful she had smelled, how soft and warm her skin was against his. Nothing helped, but he kept on trying.

“I need to get bat-chasin’ drunk, and fast,” he decided. “Next thing ya know, I’ll be writin’ soddin’ poems about her golden tresses, and sea green eyes that I could drown in”. He stopped in horror, realizing how very close he had come to doing just that. “God, I need a drink,” he remembered, and set off in pursuit of another bottle of forgetfulness.

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/196922.html