Spikeslashficathon
Apr. 5th, 2004 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleThis is completely different to the plot I had in mind when I began and ended up far angstier than intended. Which means there's probably going to have to be a sequel. Dammit.
Title: Fly Like a Cannonball
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Spike/Holden (Buffy/Spike managed to creep in there)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: For the Spikeslashficathon. Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girlwithjournal who wanted shared book-nerdiness, Holden psychoanalyzing, biting, and no non-con or super-dark angst.
Note the second: This goes AU after Conversations With Dead People.
Summary: AU. Spike deals with a roommate other than Xander.
Time passed. Might have been days, maybe as much as a week. Spike lost track, fading into consciousness every now and again, each time clutched with the desperate fear that it had been a dream, or another one of Its tricks, and he was still strung up in that cave. He'd spend a few minutes watching the light from the covered, high window play across the basement ceiling, eventually let the voices upstairs and the noise from the dryer send him back under.
Every time he woke up, he hurt a little less. The scars on his chest faded and disappeared in a couple of days. A couple of times a day, Buffy gently shook him awake and helped him to sit, holding the mug to his mouth while he gulped down the blood. Mostly animal, sometimes rich and human, a few times something darker, familiar, that he was too tired to wonder about. He was careful not to touch Buffy. She'd put her arm around him, coming out of the cave, and she'd said she believed in him, and she sat beside him on the cot with every sign of trust. But he'd stepped all over the lines before, and it wasn't so very long ago that she'd flinched away from even accidentally brushing against him, so he didn't touch.
It was the day when he could stand again, walk by himself to the dryer and back without his legs giving out, that he realized what the strange-tasting blood was.
"You're up," Buffy said with surprise as she came down the stairs.
He managed a weak smile. "Yeah. Feel all right today. Tonight," he amended, since she was home from work and the window was dark. She'd left the door open. Lots of people in the kitchen, from the sounds of things. Mostly female, young. Couple of men, too - he could make out Giles's accent. He inclined his head at the staircase. "Sounds like a party."
She ran back and closed the door, turned and sat on the steps. He joined her, covering his stiffness the best he could. "My house has been taken over," she said, sighing dramatically. "Three more today. I think Dawn's going to die if she has to share the bathroom with any more girls and…" His confusion must have been plain, because she said, "and that story makes more sense if I start at the beginning."
So she brought him up to date on the houseful of girls, and what it was that had tormented and taken him. Couldn't say he'd ever heard of the First. He listened, eyes drawn to the cooling cup of blood in her hands. She seemed to have forgotten about it, and he didn't like to take it.
"Oh," she said, "this is for you, obviously." She passed it over without any brush of skin on skin. They'd elevated avoidance to an artform.
He took a sip and sniffed it, frowning. "What is this, anyway? Tastes different." And he remembered then where he'd tasted it before, the times after the chip when he'd tried drinking from other vampires, fresh from the feeding. The blood never tasted the same.
That had to be wrong, because even the vampires were fleeing Sunnydale. The only ones he'd seen around recently were those he'd made himself under the First's remember-no-evil magic. How would Buffy have one on tap to…
Oh, no.
The emergency confab was held in the kitchen out of necessity, the living room having been taken over by the teenie-Slayers Buffy had told him about. Buffy tried to insist this could wait a few days, until he was feeling stronger, but he shrugged off her help and hauled himself up the stairs. A couple of girls were seated at the table or poking at the defunct microwave, and they turned wide eyes on him when he walked (staggered, if he was honest) into the room. Buffy cleared them out, made him sit down.
When she'd called everybody down and closed the door, there were four of them around the table, all looking at Spike with varying degrees of interest and/or concern; Buffy, Rupert, Red, and -
What was he called, anyway? When Buffy had confronted him about the people he'd killed, he hadn't remembered a thing. She'd dragged him upstairs to her bathroom and he'd frozen at the door, sick to the stomach with the memory of the last time he'd been here, but she'd opened the door and looked at the relaxed young man chained to the tub. "Is this who sired you?" "Yeah, that's him. Hey, Spike." Spike had stared, appalled, and hadn't been able to speak.
Spike remembered siring him now, but he remembered it in the way that he would remember something from the night before after some serious binge drinking. It was like watching a film through fogged glass with the sound turned down. He could see himself in the Bronze with the boy - man - and he remembered taking him out the fire doors and into the alley. From that point it got even more blurred.
"This is so cool," the man said, grinning. "I mean, I wanted to come visit you, but Buffy said I should give you a few days. So, how're you doing?"
"Holden's been helping us a lot," Willow jumped in. "Helping in the sense that his true alliance is to evil in all its forms -" This sounded like a quotation. Holden nodded proudly. "But he's been really good about the blood and everything."
Buffy took up the story instantly, as if they were trying not to give him any chance to speak. "We remembered why you came to town in the first place. You needed Angel to help cure Drusilla, right? And we tried calling Angel but something's going on in LA and… anyway, we figured if sire's blood has all these mystical healing powers, maybe it goes both ways and Holden's might work for you."
"Well, I'm fine now," Spike said, eyes fixed on this creature he'd made. "Get rid of him. Or I'll do it. Got a stake handy?"
Holden held up his hands. "Okay. Sensing a lot of aggression here." He had a wide, infectious smile, and while Spike had always been generally in favour of vampires finding happiness in their existences, since the soul he'd been… he refused to even think the word 'brooding'. If it was one thing in that moment that he hated more than cheerful vampires, it was cheerful vampires who had been sired by him walking freely around Buffy's house.
He would have ended it right there, except what was in theory a lightning fast lunge across the table and a grip around the throat that would rip the other vampire's head clean from his shoulders became him standing up to quickly and the room becoming a merry-go-round. Just as he passed out, he realized it was Holden who had caught him before he could hit the floor. He lost consciousness too quickly to even protest.
He woke up in the basement. The indirect sunlight above him was weak, but enough to prickle across his eyelids. He could hear the occasional rustle of movement by the cot, the sound of pages being turned. No breathing or heartbeat.
"Get out," he said without opening his eyes.
"Morning. Well, afternoon, since it's just gone twelve. I'll get you some blood in a second." He sounded as casual as he had - last night, was it? Longer? "Don't try to kill me again, okay? Don't get me wrong, I respect you far too much as a sire to kick your ass, but you'll just hurt yourself." Shuffling sounds of him getting to his feet, then footsteps across the room and up the stairs.
Spike cracked open his eyes and struggled to get up. He had managed to sit up and turn around, back to the concrete wall, by the time Holden came back with two mugs. Spike took the one held out to him with some suspicion. Buffy kept bottles of holy water all over the show. Safest thing would be to forget the blood and go looking for a stake. But he really was hungry, and the first sip didn't cause hideous burning.
Holden settled himself on the floor, taking up his book again. They drank in silence.
Spike didn't like the quiet. He hadn't minded it for a while; the chattering, shifting thing beneath the school had hardly ever shut up, and it had been a relief to get away from the unending noise. But now it was making him restless and it was either say something to Holden or start chatting to himself like Dru. "See they unchained you, then."
"Yep. About twenty minutes after the first couple of Potentials arrived. Couldn't deal with having a bathroom out of commission any more." He put the book face down on the floor, open at the page he'd been looking at. Spike leaned over, idly curious. Catcher in the Rye. He'd nicked a copy of that when it was first published. Thought the narrator was a bit of a wanker, but that it was a good enough read. Not Salinger's best, but not bad.
"Favourite of your mum's?"
Holden twisted to look at him, puzzlement on his face, then he grinned. "Oh, my name? Nah, that was my dad. Big William Holden fan. I think he saw The Wild Bunch eighty-eight times."
And there was the bloody soul, slapping him with another helping of guilt. He didn't even know if the boy's parents were alive and here he was, suddenly guilty for having killed their son. What was he meant to say? Sorry I killed you, wasn't myself, no hard feelings?
Holden was soulless. He wasn't wearing a sackcloth and ashes crying woe for his death. If he was anything like Spike had been in his own early days, he was grateful for it.
It was probably some quirk of having a soul that that knowledge made it slightly worse.
The days gained a kind of routine. He would wake up to find Holden there, reading or scribbling notes on a notebook that he said he'd stolen from Dawn's bag. After a day or so Spike was strong enough to make the trip to the kitchen. They still brought the blood down to the basement, though. The girls - there were even more of them now, as if they were breeding like rabbits every time he slept - looked disgusted at them drinking upstairs.
Holden had apparently been a nomad around the house, sleeping for a few hours here and there wherever there was space. With the increasing crowds, he found himself an inflatable mattress from somewhere and claimed a corner of the basement. "You don't mind, do you?" Buffy asked, as if it wasn't her own house, as if he wasn't here on a sufferance as much as Holden. He said that no, he didn't mind, and didn't add that it let him keep an eye on him just in case the magic keeping him in check went wrong.
Like an anti-protection spell, Willow had said when he'd got her alone long enough to ask her. If Holden tried to leave the house he'd run into the invisible barrier that usually kept vampires out. "It's water-tight, Spike, really. He can't even go fangy while the spell's in place. Giles tested him with crosses and holy water and everything." She went off on a tangent about how she could expand the spell if she had more power (a shadow had crossed her face at that) and that it'd be an alternative to staking vampires. Spike had just nodded and thought to himself these are vampires, love. Stop them from vamping out? Fine. Won't stop them from having some fun with a box of matches and a can of petrol, and even if it does, it's not like your spells have ever gone wrong before.
Holden didn't sleep a lot, said he'd spent most of his time at college substituting coffee for sleep and dying hadn't gotten him out of the habit yet. That triggered an odd flash of memory in Spike - that night in the Bronze, Holden had been drinking black coffee, hands cupped around the mug as if he was trying to leech the heat from it. In the alley, the taste of it had still been on his mouth. Spike had crushed him against the bricks, desperately reaching for that warmth.
Then Buffy had been there, and she'd started singing.
Holden liked to talk about himself. He liked to listen to people, too, but when Spike wasn't forthcoming with conversation he would break into some story about his family or his girlfriend or the vast connection he claimed to feel with the evil of the world. Spike thought that he sounded like one of the bubble-brained nits who came over all new age and declared themselves High Priestess of some goddess or other. Not that he'd say so around Willow.
Willow, now - there was someone with a real connection to evil.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Holden asked. "It's like the air around her crackles. You should've seen her in high school. She was so fuzzy. I'd say it's always the quiet ones, but actually most studies say it's the other way around."
He had seen her in high school, anxious little thing in fuzzy pink sweaters.
"She killed someone," he said. "Skinned him alive."
Holden's eyes lit up. "Really? Awesome! And, I mean, skinning, that's heavy stuff, psychologically speaking. I'd love to talk to her about it."
He snorted. "Yeah, you do that. Maybe once she turns you into a toad you can live in the kitchen sink, give me some peace."
During the day, they could hear the girls training in the garden. Spike sometimes missed the darkness and the quiet of the crypt.
He was fine, now, aside from the odd twinge in his ribs. Looked like they'd been right about the blood speeding the healing along. If Angelus had been Holden's sire he would have waxed poetic about the connections of family, more than likely spent the days trapped in the basement fucking him senseless on top of the dryer. Angelus wouldn't have let himself be trapped. Chip, magic handcuffs, he'd find some way to slaughter the household and have a good time while doing in.
Holden seemed interested in the good time part of it, and he made no claims to be seeking redemption. "It's not like I have anything personal against Buffy," he said, one of those endless, dull mornings in the basement. Spike rolled over to look at him. He was irritating and he rarely shut up, but he was a distraction. Holden was a few feet away, stretched out on his mattress, hands clasped behind his head and staring up at the ceiling.
"Don't you miss it?" Holden asked. "Hunting, fresh, blood, the whole evil shebang?"
He'd switched to the analyst voice, the one that encouraged people to pour their hearts out to him. Just the other day Spike had found him sitting on the stairs with one of the nameless little girls, chatting quietly and nodding in the right places while she sobbed and spilled some story about missing her mum. And all the while, he'd been openly eying her neck.
"Trying to sleep," he said.
"You know, you should open up a little more. You're as bad as Buffy."
Spike gritted his teeth and said nothing.
"What the hell are you…"
"Come on, they're all outside. Nobody's gonna hear us."
Spike struggled to brace himself on his palms, back rising off the bed. He couldn't sit all the way up; when he was fully recovered Holden would be nowhere near his strength, but he wasn't there yet, and the other vampire was bigger than he was. Harris's size, just thinner.
Holden kissed him again, pressing his tongue past his lips this time. He was warm. Tasted of microwaved blood and the coffee that he drank scalding hot.
Spike pushed him back again, trying to remember what he'd done when this had been Anya and his body hadn't been quite so interested. "Thought you said you had a girlfriend?"
He shrugged. "Had in the past tense. Being, y'know, dead, and her not being a necro, as far as I'm aware. Anyway, all vampires are inherently bisexual."
"Bollocks."
"Really?" He grinned. "Maybe it's just me." He tilted his head, mouth positioned over Spike's neck. "Who made you?"
Fuck of a time to be interested in the family tree. "What?"
"Was it a guy or a girl?"
"Girl," he said. "Drusilla." He closed his eyes as he spoke her name. The thing in the cave hadn't been Dru. Not crazy enough, like he'd said. Beautiful enough, though. He'd changed and fallen in love with Buffy, but he'd never forgotten that.
"Huh. I'd have guessed guy. Left or right?"
Spike clamped his fingers onto his arm, strong enough to break it, if Holden had been human.
"Left or right?" he persisted. "Where'd she bite you?" He brushed his thumb against Spike's eyebrow. "How come you scarred there but not on your neck?"
Spike pulled him down, hard, catching him by the back of the neck. "She bit me on the left. Now stop. Asking. Bloody. Questions."
Holden bit him on the left side. Human teeth, blunt, not enough force to draw blood.
Spike flipped them over, pressed him down onto the cot, showed him how it was meant to be done.
He hadn't had a cigarette since before the soul. Couple of times a day his hand went to where his pocket would be if he was still wearing his coat, before he remembered he'd left the duster - somewhere? Buffy had brought it to him in the school, he thought, but not much about that time was clear.
No chance of a smoke, then, but he went out on to the porch anyway, paced it restlessly till Buffy got back from patrol. She'd been taking a couple of the little chits with her these past few nights. Tonight she came back with Kennedy and Rona and the one whose accent made him wince and swear never to return to London.
"How are you doing?" she asked him, when she'd sent the others inside.
"Can't complain. You?"
"My Slayer-lessons could use some work. If you're up to it, maybe you could come out with us tomorrow night, give them some real vamp experience."
He nodded slightly. Something to do, thank Christ. He'd been feeling the restlessness that he had when Finn's soldier-boys first stuck the chip in his head, that need to get up and move. He'd been stuck inside four walls too long.
"So what did you do today?"
Fucked another bloke in your house with your kid sister upstairs. Stopped him from screaming, aren't you proud of me?
"This and that."
Buffy was glancing back at the house, and there was something else, he saw. Something she didn't want to say. His first thought was that they'd worked out why he'd been killing, or that there were victims he didn't know about. Then he realized: "It's the boy, isn't it? You're going to kill him."
She stepped further back into the garden, dropping her voice as she said, "Spike, I like Holden. I really do. He's funny and a good listener and he helps my little sister with her English homework." Her shoulders slumped. "Willow thinks the spell's starting to break down. And he doesn't even have a chip, let alone a soul. In this case, gonna have to vote for good old technology over magic."
"Right," Spike said. This was what he'd wanted, right? No more infuriating, affable vampire sharing his living space, asking endless questions about vampires in general and their bloodline in particular, drawing him into debates over souls and free will.
Buffy reached out, hand stopping just an inch or so above his arm. Close enough that he could feel the heat of her body. "Spike, I'm sorry. But we only kept him around so he could help you. If you're okay, then I have to kill him."
What did she think she was apologizing for, he wondered? He hadn't chosen to make Holden, hadn't been the one to drag him back to the house or decide to keep him alive. He wouldn't be sobbing bitter tears over his dust.
He looked down at his hands. They'd somehow clenched themselves into fists.
"I'll do it," he said. "Should be me who finishes it."
"Are you sure?"
He was.
She did touch him, then, squeezed his hand quickly and let it drop. "Take your time."
He watched her go back into the house, gazing after her with sadness, with love. He waited for the First to leap in with one of its parlour games, and when that didn't happen he just waited. For something. Anything.
He stayed in the cool night air for a long time, and then he went to find a stake.
Title: Fly Like a Cannonball
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Spike/Holden (Buffy/Spike managed to creep in there)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: For the Spikeslashficathon. Written for
girlwithjournal who wanted shared book-nerdiness, Holden psychoanalyzing, biting, and no non-con or super-dark angst.Note the second: This goes AU after Conversations With Dead People.
Summary: AU. Spike deals with a roommate other than Xander.
Time passed. Might have been days, maybe as much as a week. Spike lost track, fading into consciousness every now and again, each time clutched with the desperate fear that it had been a dream, or another one of Its tricks, and he was still strung up in that cave. He'd spend a few minutes watching the light from the covered, high window play across the basement ceiling, eventually let the voices upstairs and the noise from the dryer send him back under.
Every time he woke up, he hurt a little less. The scars on his chest faded and disappeared in a couple of days. A couple of times a day, Buffy gently shook him awake and helped him to sit, holding the mug to his mouth while he gulped down the blood. Mostly animal, sometimes rich and human, a few times something darker, familiar, that he was too tired to wonder about. He was careful not to touch Buffy. She'd put her arm around him, coming out of the cave, and she'd said she believed in him, and she sat beside him on the cot with every sign of trust. But he'd stepped all over the lines before, and it wasn't so very long ago that she'd flinched away from even accidentally brushing against him, so he didn't touch.
It was the day when he could stand again, walk by himself to the dryer and back without his legs giving out, that he realized what the strange-tasting blood was.
"You're up," Buffy said with surprise as she came down the stairs.
He managed a weak smile. "Yeah. Feel all right today. Tonight," he amended, since she was home from work and the window was dark. She'd left the door open. Lots of people in the kitchen, from the sounds of things. Mostly female, young. Couple of men, too - he could make out Giles's accent. He inclined his head at the staircase. "Sounds like a party."
She ran back and closed the door, turned and sat on the steps. He joined her, covering his stiffness the best he could. "My house has been taken over," she said, sighing dramatically. "Three more today. I think Dawn's going to die if she has to share the bathroom with any more girls and…" His confusion must have been plain, because she said, "and that story makes more sense if I start at the beginning."
So she brought him up to date on the houseful of girls, and what it was that had tormented and taken him. Couldn't say he'd ever heard of the First. He listened, eyes drawn to the cooling cup of blood in her hands. She seemed to have forgotten about it, and he didn't like to take it.
"Oh," she said, "this is for you, obviously." She passed it over without any brush of skin on skin. They'd elevated avoidance to an artform.
He took a sip and sniffed it, frowning. "What is this, anyway? Tastes different." And he remembered then where he'd tasted it before, the times after the chip when he'd tried drinking from other vampires, fresh from the feeding. The blood never tasted the same.
That had to be wrong, because even the vampires were fleeing Sunnydale. The only ones he'd seen around recently were those he'd made himself under the First's remember-no-evil magic. How would Buffy have one on tap to…
Oh, no.
The emergency confab was held in the kitchen out of necessity, the living room having been taken over by the teenie-Slayers Buffy had told him about. Buffy tried to insist this could wait a few days, until he was feeling stronger, but he shrugged off her help and hauled himself up the stairs. A couple of girls were seated at the table or poking at the defunct microwave, and they turned wide eyes on him when he walked (staggered, if he was honest) into the room. Buffy cleared them out, made him sit down.
When she'd called everybody down and closed the door, there were four of them around the table, all looking at Spike with varying degrees of interest and/or concern; Buffy, Rupert, Red, and -
What was he called, anyway? When Buffy had confronted him about the people he'd killed, he hadn't remembered a thing. She'd dragged him upstairs to her bathroom and he'd frozen at the door, sick to the stomach with the memory of the last time he'd been here, but she'd opened the door and looked at the relaxed young man chained to the tub. "Is this who sired you?" "Yeah, that's him. Hey, Spike." Spike had stared, appalled, and hadn't been able to speak.
Spike remembered siring him now, but he remembered it in the way that he would remember something from the night before after some serious binge drinking. It was like watching a film through fogged glass with the sound turned down. He could see himself in the Bronze with the boy - man - and he remembered taking him out the fire doors and into the alley. From that point it got even more blurred.
"This is so cool," the man said, grinning. "I mean, I wanted to come visit you, but Buffy said I should give you a few days. So, how're you doing?"
"Holden's been helping us a lot," Willow jumped in. "Helping in the sense that his true alliance is to evil in all its forms -" This sounded like a quotation. Holden nodded proudly. "But he's been really good about the blood and everything."
Buffy took up the story instantly, as if they were trying not to give him any chance to speak. "We remembered why you came to town in the first place. You needed Angel to help cure Drusilla, right? And we tried calling Angel but something's going on in LA and… anyway, we figured if sire's blood has all these mystical healing powers, maybe it goes both ways and Holden's might work for you."
"Well, I'm fine now," Spike said, eyes fixed on this creature he'd made. "Get rid of him. Or I'll do it. Got a stake handy?"
Holden held up his hands. "Okay. Sensing a lot of aggression here." He had a wide, infectious smile, and while Spike had always been generally in favour of vampires finding happiness in their existences, since the soul he'd been… he refused to even think the word 'brooding'. If it was one thing in that moment that he hated more than cheerful vampires, it was cheerful vampires who had been sired by him walking freely around Buffy's house.
He would have ended it right there, except what was in theory a lightning fast lunge across the table and a grip around the throat that would rip the other vampire's head clean from his shoulders became him standing up to quickly and the room becoming a merry-go-round. Just as he passed out, he realized it was Holden who had caught him before he could hit the floor. He lost consciousness too quickly to even protest.
He woke up in the basement. The indirect sunlight above him was weak, but enough to prickle across his eyelids. He could hear the occasional rustle of movement by the cot, the sound of pages being turned. No breathing or heartbeat.
"Get out," he said without opening his eyes.
"Morning. Well, afternoon, since it's just gone twelve. I'll get you some blood in a second." He sounded as casual as he had - last night, was it? Longer? "Don't try to kill me again, okay? Don't get me wrong, I respect you far too much as a sire to kick your ass, but you'll just hurt yourself." Shuffling sounds of him getting to his feet, then footsteps across the room and up the stairs.
Spike cracked open his eyes and struggled to get up. He had managed to sit up and turn around, back to the concrete wall, by the time Holden came back with two mugs. Spike took the one held out to him with some suspicion. Buffy kept bottles of holy water all over the show. Safest thing would be to forget the blood and go looking for a stake. But he really was hungry, and the first sip didn't cause hideous burning.
Holden settled himself on the floor, taking up his book again. They drank in silence.
Spike didn't like the quiet. He hadn't minded it for a while; the chattering, shifting thing beneath the school had hardly ever shut up, and it had been a relief to get away from the unending noise. But now it was making him restless and it was either say something to Holden or start chatting to himself like Dru. "See they unchained you, then."
"Yep. About twenty minutes after the first couple of Potentials arrived. Couldn't deal with having a bathroom out of commission any more." He put the book face down on the floor, open at the page he'd been looking at. Spike leaned over, idly curious. Catcher in the Rye. He'd nicked a copy of that when it was first published. Thought the narrator was a bit of a wanker, but that it was a good enough read. Not Salinger's best, but not bad.
"Favourite of your mum's?"
Holden twisted to look at him, puzzlement on his face, then he grinned. "Oh, my name? Nah, that was my dad. Big William Holden fan. I think he saw The Wild Bunch eighty-eight times."
And there was the bloody soul, slapping him with another helping of guilt. He didn't even know if the boy's parents were alive and here he was, suddenly guilty for having killed their son. What was he meant to say? Sorry I killed you, wasn't myself, no hard feelings?
Holden was soulless. He wasn't wearing a sackcloth and ashes crying woe for his death. If he was anything like Spike had been in his own early days, he was grateful for it.
It was probably some quirk of having a soul that that knowledge made it slightly worse.
The days gained a kind of routine. He would wake up to find Holden there, reading or scribbling notes on a notebook that he said he'd stolen from Dawn's bag. After a day or so Spike was strong enough to make the trip to the kitchen. They still brought the blood down to the basement, though. The girls - there were even more of them now, as if they were breeding like rabbits every time he slept - looked disgusted at them drinking upstairs.
Holden had apparently been a nomad around the house, sleeping for a few hours here and there wherever there was space. With the increasing crowds, he found himself an inflatable mattress from somewhere and claimed a corner of the basement. "You don't mind, do you?" Buffy asked, as if it wasn't her own house, as if he wasn't here on a sufferance as much as Holden. He said that no, he didn't mind, and didn't add that it let him keep an eye on him just in case the magic keeping him in check went wrong.
Like an anti-protection spell, Willow had said when he'd got her alone long enough to ask her. If Holden tried to leave the house he'd run into the invisible barrier that usually kept vampires out. "It's water-tight, Spike, really. He can't even go fangy while the spell's in place. Giles tested him with crosses and holy water and everything." She went off on a tangent about how she could expand the spell if she had more power (a shadow had crossed her face at that) and that it'd be an alternative to staking vampires. Spike had just nodded and thought to himself these are vampires, love. Stop them from vamping out? Fine. Won't stop them from having some fun with a box of matches and a can of petrol, and even if it does, it's not like your spells have ever gone wrong before.
Holden didn't sleep a lot, said he'd spent most of his time at college substituting coffee for sleep and dying hadn't gotten him out of the habit yet. That triggered an odd flash of memory in Spike - that night in the Bronze, Holden had been drinking black coffee, hands cupped around the mug as if he was trying to leech the heat from it. In the alley, the taste of it had still been on his mouth. Spike had crushed him against the bricks, desperately reaching for that warmth.
Then Buffy had been there, and she'd started singing.
Holden liked to talk about himself. He liked to listen to people, too, but when Spike wasn't forthcoming with conversation he would break into some story about his family or his girlfriend or the vast connection he claimed to feel with the evil of the world. Spike thought that he sounded like one of the bubble-brained nits who came over all new age and declared themselves High Priestess of some goddess or other. Not that he'd say so around Willow.
Willow, now - there was someone with a real connection to evil.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Holden asked. "It's like the air around her crackles. You should've seen her in high school. She was so fuzzy. I'd say it's always the quiet ones, but actually most studies say it's the other way around."
He had seen her in high school, anxious little thing in fuzzy pink sweaters.
"She killed someone," he said. "Skinned him alive."
Holden's eyes lit up. "Really? Awesome! And, I mean, skinning, that's heavy stuff, psychologically speaking. I'd love to talk to her about it."
He snorted. "Yeah, you do that. Maybe once she turns you into a toad you can live in the kitchen sink, give me some peace."
During the day, they could hear the girls training in the garden. Spike sometimes missed the darkness and the quiet of the crypt.
He was fine, now, aside from the odd twinge in his ribs. Looked like they'd been right about the blood speeding the healing along. If Angelus had been Holden's sire he would have waxed poetic about the connections of family, more than likely spent the days trapped in the basement fucking him senseless on top of the dryer. Angelus wouldn't have let himself be trapped. Chip, magic handcuffs, he'd find some way to slaughter the household and have a good time while doing in.
Holden seemed interested in the good time part of it, and he made no claims to be seeking redemption. "It's not like I have anything personal against Buffy," he said, one of those endless, dull mornings in the basement. Spike rolled over to look at him. He was irritating and he rarely shut up, but he was a distraction. Holden was a few feet away, stretched out on his mattress, hands clasped behind his head and staring up at the ceiling.
"Don't you miss it?" Holden asked. "Hunting, fresh, blood, the whole evil shebang?"
He'd switched to the analyst voice, the one that encouraged people to pour their hearts out to him. Just the other day Spike had found him sitting on the stairs with one of the nameless little girls, chatting quietly and nodding in the right places while she sobbed and spilled some story about missing her mum. And all the while, he'd been openly eying her neck.
"Trying to sleep," he said.
"You know, you should open up a little more. You're as bad as Buffy."
Spike gritted his teeth and said nothing.
"What the hell are you…"
"Come on, they're all outside. Nobody's gonna hear us."
Spike struggled to brace himself on his palms, back rising off the bed. He couldn't sit all the way up; when he was fully recovered Holden would be nowhere near his strength, but he wasn't there yet, and the other vampire was bigger than he was. Harris's size, just thinner.
Holden kissed him again, pressing his tongue past his lips this time. He was warm. Tasted of microwaved blood and the coffee that he drank scalding hot.
Spike pushed him back again, trying to remember what he'd done when this had been Anya and his body hadn't been quite so interested. "Thought you said you had a girlfriend?"
He shrugged. "Had in the past tense. Being, y'know, dead, and her not being a necro, as far as I'm aware. Anyway, all vampires are inherently bisexual."
"Bollocks."
"Really?" He grinned. "Maybe it's just me." He tilted his head, mouth positioned over Spike's neck. "Who made you?"
Fuck of a time to be interested in the family tree. "What?"
"Was it a guy or a girl?"
"Girl," he said. "Drusilla." He closed his eyes as he spoke her name. The thing in the cave hadn't been Dru. Not crazy enough, like he'd said. Beautiful enough, though. He'd changed and fallen in love with Buffy, but he'd never forgotten that.
"Huh. I'd have guessed guy. Left or right?"
Spike clamped his fingers onto his arm, strong enough to break it, if Holden had been human.
"Left or right?" he persisted. "Where'd she bite you?" He brushed his thumb against Spike's eyebrow. "How come you scarred there but not on your neck?"
Spike pulled him down, hard, catching him by the back of the neck. "She bit me on the left. Now stop. Asking. Bloody. Questions."
Holden bit him on the left side. Human teeth, blunt, not enough force to draw blood.
Spike flipped them over, pressed him down onto the cot, showed him how it was meant to be done.
He hadn't had a cigarette since before the soul. Couple of times a day his hand went to where his pocket would be if he was still wearing his coat, before he remembered he'd left the duster - somewhere? Buffy had brought it to him in the school, he thought, but not much about that time was clear.
No chance of a smoke, then, but he went out on to the porch anyway, paced it restlessly till Buffy got back from patrol. She'd been taking a couple of the little chits with her these past few nights. Tonight she came back with Kennedy and Rona and the one whose accent made him wince and swear never to return to London.
"How are you doing?" she asked him, when she'd sent the others inside.
"Can't complain. You?"
"My Slayer-lessons could use some work. If you're up to it, maybe you could come out with us tomorrow night, give them some real vamp experience."
He nodded slightly. Something to do, thank Christ. He'd been feeling the restlessness that he had when Finn's soldier-boys first stuck the chip in his head, that need to get up and move. He'd been stuck inside four walls too long.
"So what did you do today?"
Fucked another bloke in your house with your kid sister upstairs. Stopped him from screaming, aren't you proud of me?
"This and that."
Buffy was glancing back at the house, and there was something else, he saw. Something she didn't want to say. His first thought was that they'd worked out why he'd been killing, or that there were victims he didn't know about. Then he realized: "It's the boy, isn't it? You're going to kill him."
She stepped further back into the garden, dropping her voice as she said, "Spike, I like Holden. I really do. He's funny and a good listener and he helps my little sister with her English homework." Her shoulders slumped. "Willow thinks the spell's starting to break down. And he doesn't even have a chip, let alone a soul. In this case, gonna have to vote for good old technology over magic."
"Right," Spike said. This was what he'd wanted, right? No more infuriating, affable vampire sharing his living space, asking endless questions about vampires in general and their bloodline in particular, drawing him into debates over souls and free will.
Buffy reached out, hand stopping just an inch or so above his arm. Close enough that he could feel the heat of her body. "Spike, I'm sorry. But we only kept him around so he could help you. If you're okay, then I have to kill him."
What did she think she was apologizing for, he wondered? He hadn't chosen to make Holden, hadn't been the one to drag him back to the house or decide to keep him alive. He wouldn't be sobbing bitter tears over his dust.
He looked down at his hands. They'd somehow clenched themselves into fists.
"I'll do it," he said. "Should be me who finishes it."
"Are you sure?"
He was.
She did touch him, then, squeezed his hand quickly and let it drop. "Take your time."
He watched her go back into the house, gazing after her with sadness, with love. He waited for the First to leap in with one of its parlour games, and when that didn't happen he just waited. For something. Anything.
He stayed in the cool night air for a long time, and then he went to find a stake.
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on 2004-04-05 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-05 03:44 pm (UTC)That was sweet, enjoyed it muchly. Thank you.
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on 2004-04-05 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-05 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-07 09:55 am (UTC)And the Holden voice is wonderful. I wish more people wrote Holden. Or, really, that you wrote more Holden :)
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on 2004-04-07 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-07 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-05-29 05:17 pm (UTC)I love the things you make Holden say and do. Willow's "Helping in the sense that his true alliance is to evil in all its forms -" and Holden's approving nod were great. Also, Holden's questioning of Spike on issues like whether his sire was a guy or a girl, and whether they bit him on the right or the left—it makes so much sense that he would wonder about those things, and try to make sense of it all in an academic kind of way that never occurred to any of our other vampires. (Also reminded me of Harmony's thing about being a right biter or a left biter.)
I enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing! :)
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on 2006-03-26 02:13 am (UTC)It would have been excellent for events to have transpired along these lines, because really, Holden was a cool vamp. I know it's been a while since you wrote this...but I'm just now finding it....but I hope you really do make a sequel...I'd LOVE to read it. :)
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on 2006-03-26 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-03-26 07:39 pm (UTC)I have a "search" community(
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on 2006-03-26 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-03-27 12:33 am (UTC)