Hi! I’m caia, I’ll be your co-host here today on seasonal_spuffy, along with the talented annapurna_2.
My main offering will be the first couple chapters of a longer fic I conceived of back in the fall of 2003 based on spoilers for the AtS S5 episode “Damage”. Among the differences from canon, Spike’s hands are removed at the wrists, and he doesn’t immediately get them back. Don’t worry, though, there will be plenty of silliness and schmoop as well as angst.
Those allergic to WIPs may like to peruse my completed fiction.
Tekubi, Chapter 1
By: caia
Thanks: to rabid1st, for the spoilers, the cheerleading, and the beta.
Rating: R for now. May stray into NC-17 territory later due to subject matter, but those hoping for pr0n are likely to be disappointed.
Standard disclaimer: The characters aren’t mine, just the story.
Non-standard disclaimer: Opinions expressed by the characters or implicit in the storyline do not necessarily represent those of the author.
Distribution: Do not post elsewhere without permission. Ask, I may say yes.
Feedback: craved.
Fred was standing at her desk examining lab reports when she was startled by the mild thud that was Spike caroming off her door frame.
Her eyes widened as she took in his appearance. Since the incident with Dana, Spike had drawn in upon himself. He moved through space more tentatively now, braced and small as if he were afraid someone would hit him… or touch him. His physical presence itself seemed hesitant, almost like when he was a ghost. And it was obvious that the source of his unease was his disfigurement. When standing still, he’d been holding the plastic hands and hooks she’d made for him a bit forward, in front of his hips, like he was letting his hands drip dry after washing them.
Now, though, he was braced against her open door, right arm and plastic prosthetic hand splayed wide. With his left arm he was brandishing what looked to be a large shopping bag. The exuberant slightly wild look in his eyes reminded her of her old physics professor on an equation-solving tear.
“Spike?” she queried cautiously.
“You can do something with this, right?” Spike’s tone was urgent.
“Um… with what, exactly?”
He came forward and deposited his purchase on her desk, twisting the handle loose from his left hook impatiently as it got caught, then spilling the contents of the bag triumphantly as if they were gold bullion.
“Open the packages, would you? I’m not as dexterous as I used to be.”
“Or as sinisterous, either,” Fred quipped.
Spike looked at her oddly.
“Never mind.” She picked up a box and turned it over. “I still don’t know what you want me to do with this.”
“Make me a harness for it.”
“Oh.” Fred began to open one of the boxes. “I don’t know, Spike.” She didn’t want to douse his fervent energy, but she wasn’t sure she could do this — or should.
“Come on, it’ll be simple. You make it so it straps tight around my forearm — not like I need circulation, anyway. Put the button on the inside, so I can start and stop it with my other hand.” He seemed to remember his lack of same suddenly, and amended with an uncaring shrug, “or whathaveyou. Line it up so it goes vertically — like so.” He held his left arm adjacent to one of the items on the desk.
Enticed into the intricacies of the challenge, Fred examined the parts speculatively. “I suppose I could attach the base to a socket and strap system, like I did with the hooks. I’d have to shape the socket asymmetrically so it didn’t slide around on your wrist…”
“There’s a good science wonk. Knew you could do it.” Spike nodded in satisfaction, as if he already had what he’d asked for.
Fred shook her head. It was becoming increasingly difficult to nip this in the bud, since Spike seemed to have time-lapsed this bud to fruition already. “I was — I am — a physicist. This is prosthetic design, which is medicine, or at best mechanical engineering.”
Spike gave her a pointedly unimpressed look. “‘Dammit, Jim, I’m a physicist, not a doctor’? Bollocks. I know you can do this. You managed the curly hooks, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but… Spike, are you sure this is a good idea? This could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” He scowled at her, and she dropped her gaze. “What is this, keep little William from using the stove, now? I didn’t suddenly become incompetent when I lost my hands, you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry — ”
“Don’t need you to be sorry. Need you to be useful. You do this, you can help me be useful again, yeah?”
“Spike, you are useful,” she hurried to reassure him.
He snorted. “Right, useful with what, research? It only takes me five minutes to turn a page.” He met her eyes, and spoke softer. “I’m a fighter. It’s what I do. I’ve been moping around here the last few weeks because I haven’t been able to. This’ll be my perfect weapon. It’ll get me back in the game, and you’re the only one who can make it.”
Fred knew manipulation when she saw it. He was appealing to her sympathy, playing on her soft spot for him. And damn it, it was working. “Ok. I’ll do it. But you have to promise me you’ll be careful, ok?”
Spike’s grin could have powered the L.A. grid. “Don’t worry about me, ducks. Not like I can lose a finger.”
She couldn’t work on Spike’s new prosthetic full-time, of course. She had her own heavy Wolfram and Hart workload. And she had to make modifications to the design and order a different motor to keep it from being top heavy. But two weeks later, the weapon was ready. Fred was about to call up to the law offices to tell Spike when he practically bounded in.
“Fred, I don’t mean to rush you, but…”
“It’s done.”
His eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yep. I finished the calibrations and testing this morning. I was about to call you. The technician’s just cleaning it.” He bounced in place just a little. She smiled. “I’ll get it.”
With Spike’s permission she rolled up his duster sleeve and removed his hook. She showed him how his new weapon fit, fastened it to his left arm, then stepped back. Spike raised his arm slowly, turning and twisting to get used to the heft and shape of it. Then, carefully, he pressed the rigid fingers of his plastic right hand to the recessed start button.
The chainsaw roared to life.
Spike’s eyes flicked appraisingly over the churning metal teeth. “Groovy.”
***
Spike found Angel, Wes, and Gunn in Angel’s office where he’d left them, only now they were armed.
“Well, I’m in the mood for some mayhem,” Spike announced jovially as he strode into the room.
Angel regarded him with a mixture of pity and contempt. As if speaking to a dim-witted and ill-liked child, he said, “You can’t hold a weapon, Spike.”
Spike hated that look and that tone. He lifted his arm and pushed the button on his new toy. Over the growl of the motor, he told them smugly, “Don’t need to hold it.”
Angel looked up as if pleading to heaven for patience. Wesley gave a slight nod of approval. Gunn grinned and shook his head.
“I am a weapon.”
“Turn that off,” Angel barked over the noise.
Spike did. He took in Angel’s dour look. “C’mon, Angelus, I know you love chainsaws.”
“Not when I’m the one being tortured with them.”
“I promise not to use it on you. As long as I have other outlets for my violent impulses.”
“I think blondie’s spoiling for some ultra-violence,” Gunn observed dryly.
“So? Are we going to go kill some demons, or not?”
Much beset, Angel stalked towards the elevator. “Sure. Give the hyperactive double amputee vampire a motorized blade. ‘Cause that’s a good plan.”
Spike appeared unruffled by the slight, and the reference to his amputee status. “You’re just jealous because you don’t get to have a chainsaw hand,” he replied archly.
“Oh yeah. I wake up every day wondering why a psycho Slayer couldn’t remove some of my appendages.”
“You know mate, I’ve wondered that too, for ages.”
“Funny.”
“I thought so.”
Fred had fretted when he left her office to join the raid on the Tromilansk. She’d tried to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t take his new weapon into a melee right away — maybe he should get used to it, and test out what it could do, first. But as far as Spike was concerned, the best way to learn to use it was to take it into battle — cutting up practice dummies, or twirling it like a sparkly baton, wasn’t going to tell him how to use it against demons in the flesh.
Besides which, for entertainment value, real violence beat out pretend violence every time.
***
“Do we even need to be here?” Gunn asked.
Angel gave a small helpless shrug.
They’d stormed the abandoned gymnasium as a group, but Spike had strode to the front and taken the lead demon’s head off with a backhand slice and a vicious roar. The second demon he’d simply punched in the gut with his saw, point first, pulling it back with a flourish as the unfortunate demon gurgled to the floor. “Die, demon scum,” he’d muttered, with full irony. Then he’d charged the enraged demons lumbering towards them with his own battle cry.
Since then, Wes had de-invested some artifacts of the essence of Darshon, so they no longer pulsed ominously, and gathered them up to bring back to Wolfram & Hart so they couldn’t be used by the Tromilansk again. Angel and Gunn had taken care of any demons who attacked them instead of Spike. They’d had little to do. Spike had wheeled and struck with vicious abandon, and drawn most of the attention.
A spare Tromilansk knocked free from Spike’s berserker rampage fell stumbling to land at their feet. Angel nonchalantly skewered him with the sword he’d had over his shoulder, then wiped the blade on the demon’s tunic. “There. We’re helping.”
“Uh-huh. So, has anyone ever considered putting your boy on Ritalin? Or whatever they used to sedate people back in the day.”
“Laudanum,” Angel replied absently. “Have you ever tried to forcibly medicate a vampire?”
Gunn glanced out across the basketball court that now looked more like an abattoir. As they watched, a demon caught Spike by the throat. Spike responded by hooking his right elbow around the demon’s head and chomping on his neck like a pit bull. He flung his left arm back to ward off attack from behind. The whirring chain caught a second demon in the face, to gruesome effect.
“Ok, I can see why you might not want to try that.”
“Oh, I’ve tried it. It was just never worth the hassle. He was always twice as rowdy when he came off it.”
Spike had reached the dais where the head demon awaited him. Moments later, the demon had been relieved of all four of his hands, and Spike was jeering, “Wish you had a chainsaw hand yourself now, dontcha, pillock?”
Apparently Spike had understood some of its whistling speech, and taken offense at insults to his weaponry and anatomy.
“Spike!” Angel called.
Spike’s head whipped around.
“You want to kill him now, or are you just going to taunt him some more?”
Spike assented with a shrug, and lopped off the demon’s head, then shut the chainsaw off, leaving the room shockingly quiet. He carelessly wiped some of the demon gore clinging to the side of the saw on his own pants leg, and sauntered towards them with a spring in his step. He pulled up to a stop before them, grinning. Flecks of puce blood ringed his mouth and stood out in his hair. His black clothes and coat were spattered in a manner that suggested Jackson Pollack had substituted demon blood and a vampire for his usual media of paint and canvas.
“You are not riding back in my car,” Angel informed him.
Spike wasn’t bothered. “That’s alright. I can hoof it.”
Angel considered the trouble a chainsaw-enabled Spike could get into on L.A.’s dark streets in such a mood. “On second thought, you’re coming with us.” He eyed Spike’s gory dishevelment with a grimace. “If you’re very good, I won’t make you ride in the trunk.”
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/34383.html
