Gunn/Spike: Boys' Club
Apr. 24th, 2004 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleThis turned out longer than expected. Spuffy ficathon must be done now since I'm away from the computer all tomorrow, eek...
Title: Boys' Club
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Gunn/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Gunn ficathon entry. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
knotted_rose. Starts right after 'Destiny'.
"Changed your mind about that drink, then?"
Gunn pulled out a chair for himself, eying the table of bottles and glasses. Looked like he was going to have to hold his beer, if the waitress ever brought it over. "Those all for you or are the Lakers coming along later?"
Spike looked so fondly at his dozens of drinks that for a second Gunn was scared he was going to try to hug the table. Now that was the happiest black-eyed guy he'd ever seen. "Bloody football teams can buy themselves drinks. These are mine."
"Yeah, and I'm sure you didn't just charge them to Angel's tab." He gratefully accepted the bottle of Miller from the waitress. Bleeding from the eyes could make a man thirsty.
"Sheila, be a love and bring me some more of these," he frowned down at the glass, swirling the liquid around, "these little blue things, yeah? And if you've got crisps or peanuts or something stashed behind the bar, toss them this way."
"Guessing the Cup of Eternal Torment was a bust," Gunn said, as Spike downed another two shots and started into a pint of something dark.
"Cup of Eternal Mountain Dew." He looked with distaste at a glass of clear, sparkly liquid and pushed it to the back of the table. "What about you? Heard it was all fun and games at the OK Corral."
Gunn grimaced, stretching his legs out beneath and table and taking a long draught of the beer. "Don't ask. Seriously." He looked around them at the big windows with their incredible views, the smooth curves of the furniture, the ambient lighting. Every inch of this place said 'company bar'. It wasn't the kind of joint he'd have pictured Spike drinking in.
"Yeah, I know," Spike said, when he pointed this out. His lip curled in disgust. "Don't even have a pool table. And they've never heard of flowering onions. But," he shrugged, "least they don't ask for folding stuff that I haven't got. Thanks, pet," he added, taking the drinks and chips from Sheila's tray.
Gunn had been in this building close to sixteen hours today, not counting the half hour to drive almost home and then change his mind about drinking with Spike versus microwave dinner and an empty apartment. He loved his job and all, but being inside the building that had nearly killed him was starting to itch.
"How quick can you finish those?"
Spike cast a speculative eye over his table. "Lesse, got about twenty drinks left, plus the snacks - ten minutes?"
**
"Now this is more like it."
Gunn grinned. This was how he imagined a Spike bar. Gritty, inelegant, with a couple of dartboards and a pool table and some big, ugly guys probably dying to jump all over somebody as skinny and small as Spike. Probably dying worse to kick the ass of the black guy in the Hugo Boss, and his brain was already going through every relevant law and case history.
Wolfram & Hart brain upgraders, represent.
"Yeah, this is a good place. Me and Wes used to come here sometimes," he said, remembering Wesley trying to teach him to play darts. Always seemed like a stupid game - yeah, as target practise he could see the point to being able to aim at something kind of head-sized, but who carried around pansy-ass little arrow things?
That got him to trying to remember when was the last time him and Wes had come here, or gone anywhere together that wasn't the hotel or a fight or the Wolfram & Hart offices. He got back as far as the time two years ago when he started dating Fred and then it was weird - like he would think about some specific thing that'd happened and his brain would just slide on over it and he'd forget what he'd even been trying to think about.
He shook his head, grinning slightly at himself. Just your average suit, these days. Couldn't leave the weirdness at the office.
Spike had already grabbed a couple of cues and was setting up the table. "So how do you play this game again?" he asked, and either Gunn was hearing things or he was doing a hell of a good Wesley impersonation. "Is it basically snooker?"
The big, ugly guys at the next table - the table that had a stack of bills on one side - were nudging each other, glancing over.
With some effort, Gunn swallowed his grin. "Come on, even you can play this game. I'll teach you."
"Oh, thanks." He blinked innocently. Gunn decided it was the scariest thing he'd seen all day.
**
They didn't stop running till they were ten blocks away. Slowing down, Charles, Gunn thought to himself, leaning against a gate, hands on his knees. Too much time driving around in his smooth company BMW.
Spike, who didn't have any breath to get back, was nearly bouncing on the spot. "That was fun."
"Easy to say for the guy who didn't… oh, wait. You did get punched." There was a purplish bruise beginning to show on his cheekbone, the same side as the scar on his eyebrow. Gunn wondered if there was some kind of martial arts feng shui there or if Spike just turned his head that way a lot in fights.
"And I got…" He pulled a wad of crumpled bills from the pocket of the duster. "Forty-five dollars. I call that a successful night." His words were just the slightest bit slurred. Not a huge surprise. All the drinks back at the office, plus the ten or twelve he'd managed to put away before the brawl had broken out, it was incredible he was still walking and talking. "I'm hungry."
"Don't look at me, I ain't tapping a vein."
"Not hungry hungry. Food hungry. Where are we? Must be somewhere does burgers, maybe a kebab…"
Time was Gunn knew these streets like he knew his truck or the comic collection that he dragged from one tenement squat to the next. His Johnny Mnemonic obviously hadn't included a street map, because it was a couple of minutes before he could say, "No food places for a couples of streets over. This is houses, coupla businesses, the kids' playground. We can head back to the car, find someplace to eat."
But Spike was looking at the playground gates with a gleam in his eyes that Gunn hadn't seen since - well, since his sister was alive. Any time she was about to do something that was going to get herself, and probably him, into a whole heap of trouble.
"Spike?"
"I wanna play on the swings," he announced, already swinging himself up and over the fence, coat streaming behind him like a cape.
At least he knew some good lawyers, Gunn thought, as he followed.
**
He'd always hated vamps more than demons. Yeah, he had plenty of hate for demons too - sorry, Lorne, he mentally added - but there was something else about vampires. Even before Alonna. Demons, most of them, couldn't hide how they looked. Big and scary and not people. Vampires could trick you. Tuck away the fangs and they'd pass for pale, scary-smiling average joes and joannes.
Spike being a vampire hadn't really been a big thing, because he'd been a ghost. Wasn't like he was out draining pedestrians, or even drinking pigs' blood like Angel. He was just - there. Noisy, one-Y-chromosome-away-from-bitch-on-wheels English guy who liked to piss Angel off and saved Gunn's life that time.
He'd liked him.
Now he was corporeal. And still a vampire, only a for real vampire now. Those morons at the bar'd nearly pissed themselves when he flashed his fangs.
Gunn sat on one of the swings, rocking himself back and forth a little as he wondered whether Spike would tire himself out before the sun came up. He wondered more if he was going to get to bed at all that night and if Lorne's sleep idea could be reworked into a deal that didn't mean going Bruce Banner.
Spike had abandoned the adventure slide and was sitting on the merry go round, gently rotating. Gunn took pity on him. Those things were no fun by yourself. He got up from his swing and picked his way across the dark ground, avoiding the McDonalds and Doublemeat Palace wrappers. "I didn't even know these things were still around," he said. "Most of them were removed after that case in 1991 where…" He trailed off, shaking his head.
"Really can't switch that off, can you?"
"Never know when you might need to know every document filed in Bergstein versus the Hargaloth Clan. Or all the words to I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General."
"With aspirations sinister, evil and vampirical," Spike said. "Bet you're a hit at parties."
"You want me to spin you or not?"
God, Spike was not pouting at him. He was not doing some thing with his lip and his eyes that made him look like the most sarcastic five-year-old on Earth.
But whatever he wasn't doing, he was good at it. Gunn lasted four seconds before he gripped one of the metal rails and gave the merry go round an almighty spin, running alongside it before jumping on at the last second.
He hadn't done this since he was nine, ten. After that he'd let Alonna play, but he always checked the edges of the slide for needles and razorblades, always watched out for vampires while she rode the merry go round.
No need to do that tonight. Only vampire in the vicinity was the one sitting behind him, who got hungry for people food and liked bar fights and imported beer.
The ride eventually slowed down. Neither of them got off to push. Spike was lying back, now, torso flat on the top circle, legs hanging over the side. Gunn's height made it awkward, but he managed to mirror the position. From above they must look like stoners, he thought.
"Dru always liked playgrounds," Spike said. "Never really saw the appeal."
"For somebody who doesn't like playgrounds, you sure seemed to be having fun. Gotta see Angel about putting you on the company health plan, by the way. Ritalin don't come cheap."
Beside him, he felt Spike give a wriggling stretch of his arms. "First time in months I've had a body to have fun in, Charlie-boy."
That explained all the different kinds of drinks. If he'd been ghostly for months he'd want to try a little of everything too. "What, did you have a list? Get made solid, have to drink, eat, get into a fight -"
"A fight with humans. Haven't had a chance at a decent brawl since the chip came out, 'cept for Wood."
"- fight with humans." Play with the kids' outdoor toys didn't sound like it fitted on that list, but Spike didn't seem the type to plan ahead, anyway. "Guess the night's still young. Anything you still want to do?"
He decided, later, that it was a culture thing. Maybe to British people, or vampires, or British vampires, what he'd said sounded like "please turn around and pounce on me."
"O…kay?" he said, because Spike seemed to be straddling him. Scratch that, Spike was straddling him, looking drunk and devious and like he was going to do something stupid.
"Actually," Spike said, "now that you mention it, there was something." And he leaned down and kissed him.
Gunn would have liked to claim he was too surprised to push him off. That was the safe explanation, the one that made it not his fault. Better than the truth, which was that he'd never kissed a vampire and really never kissed a guy, vampire or not, and he was distracted with thinking that Spike wasn't as cold as he would have thought, and that it wasn't so different from how Gwen kissed. She'd never been able to touch anyone that way, not ever, and when she'd kissed him, once she stopped being scared that LISA was going to cut out and fry him, she'd been all hunger and pressure, like she'd been starved her whole life.
Months as a ghost didn't count for the same as a lifetime as Rogue, but he guessed it kind of amounted to the same thing.
Spike caught his lower lip between his teeth, sucking it. Gunn had never thought about what making out with a vampire'd be like, but he would have guessed they'd taste sharp and coppery, like the inside of his mouth the times he'd busted his lip on patrol or gotten hit by one of Momma's 'male friends'. He slid his tongue cautiously against Spike's and there was nothing there but the faint aftertaste of beer and Jack Daniels and all the weird drinks he'd tried.
Finally, when he was wondering if Spike had forgotten about living, breathing humans needing to do the second if they wanted to keep with the first, the vampire pulled back.
Gunn flashed back to the evening. Drinks. Pool. Fighting. Running. "Hey," he said, shocked, "is this a date?"
"Yeah, course it is," Spike said absently, occupied with undoing his tie. "Tell you what, I'll take you to the prom. Draw little love hearts in your yearbook."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, you're the one trying to take my clothes off, blondie bear."
"Don't seem to be getting much of an objection," he pointed out. "Sort of your job, innit? 'Objection, Your Honour, vampire is badgering the… defence or prosecution or what have you.'" His fingers had been working while he rambled and he finally pulled the tie free, brandishing it in triumph before he tossed it aside and went to work on the shirt buttons.
The shift in his weight must have set the merry go round slowly turning, and Gunn remembered where they were. He caught Spike's hand. "Hey. Objection." He meant to go on, say that they were in public and that Angel might have the collective balls of the LAPD in his desk drawer - God, he hoped that wasn't literal - but that it still wasn't smart to be getting down and dirty in the middle of a park, even if Spike's coat did cover them both. His old crew patrolled these streets, they could think Spike was attacking him and put a stake in his back. Or they could work out what was going on and still cause them a big pile of trouble.
He would have explained all of that, but the second he objected Spike froze, smirk wiped off his face. "Right," he said quietly, sounding very un-Spikelike. "Supposed to ask first. Forgot that. Didn't mean - sorry."
"It's okay, it's fine," Gunn said, but Spike had already hauled himself off him and was hurrying away, nearly out of sight.
**
"Anybody seen Spike?" he asked in the middle of Wednesday's meeting, the question casual as he could make it.
Angel didn't look up from the papers he was signing. "Harmony?"
"He hasn't been around for a couple of days, boss."
"I knew there was a reason I was in a good mood."
"I'm worried about him," Fred said. "He doesn't even have anywhere to live."
"Oh, wait! He said something about going to Europe to find Buffy," Harmony said. "Geez," she muttered, when Angel and Gunn fixed her with identical glares, "it wasn't like I made him go."
**
It was close to ten at night. Way past the end of working hours for those no longer keeping vampire times. Gunn checked over all his paperwork for the next week's cases. Sure, he'd checked it once already, but there was no such thing as too prepared. Then he moved his desk a half foot to the left. When that was done, he spent a couple of minutes rearranging his toy robots on the shelves.
Still only ten forty. Damn.
On his way home, he dropped into the bar where they'd played pool, just in case. The owner looked at him suspiciously and mentioned something about a bar fight the previous week, and unpaid breakages. He left fast.
At close to midnight he was flipping through a hundred and eight cable channels on his new plasma screen TV when the intercom buzzed.
"Gunn," he said.
"Yeah, s'me."
"Oh," he said. "Hey. You want to, uh -" He pressed the button that opened the door downstairs.
When he opened his apartment door Spike was already standing there, one hand raised to knock, the other clutching a six-pack.
"Hi."
"'lo." He thrust the beers awkwardly at Gunn.
"Thanks."
He shrugged. "Thought I should stop round. Say sorry for last week. Getting so pissed. First night of freedom, all that."
"Yeah, I figured." He spoke carefully. "Guess if I'd been stuck being Casper I'd go kind of crazy, too. Get drunk, get into fights, grab the first warm -" he remembered the nooner with Harmony - "the second warm… no, wait, first warm body."
"Well," Spike said. "Glad you understand." He fidgeted on the spot, glancing left and right down the hallway. "I'll be off, then."
"To Europe?"
Maybe that sounded bitter, because Spike's eyebrows went up. "Maybe."
"Because I was thinking," he forged ahead, "you've got it pretty good here. Friends, a chance to do some good, grandpa with a ton of disposable income and eleven cars you haven't even tried to steal yet…"
Spike had been looking serious, but the last made him grin. "I have had my eye on the little Lamborghini."
"Plus," he added, wondering whether he'd actually gone insane, "I had fun last week. Wouldn't mind doing it again some time."
He thought he was getting better at reading Spike, the way the surprise and happiness and cautious hope went by faster than Tyler Durden's porn spliced into Cinderella; flickers that he wasn't sure he'd seen at all, because a second later they were replaced with that cocky indifference.
"Not gonna drink all those yourself, are you?" Spike said, nodding at the beers.
Gunn smiled, and stepped back, and invited him in.
END
Title: Boys' Club
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Gunn/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Gunn ficathon entry. For
knotted_rose. Starts right after 'Destiny'."Changed your mind about that drink, then?"
Gunn pulled out a chair for himself, eying the table of bottles and glasses. Looked like he was going to have to hold his beer, if the waitress ever brought it over. "Those all for you or are the Lakers coming along later?"
Spike looked so fondly at his dozens of drinks that for a second Gunn was scared he was going to try to hug the table. Now that was the happiest black-eyed guy he'd ever seen. "Bloody football teams can buy themselves drinks. These are mine."
"Yeah, and I'm sure you didn't just charge them to Angel's tab." He gratefully accepted the bottle of Miller from the waitress. Bleeding from the eyes could make a man thirsty.
"Sheila, be a love and bring me some more of these," he frowned down at the glass, swirling the liquid around, "these little blue things, yeah? And if you've got crisps or peanuts or something stashed behind the bar, toss them this way."
"Guessing the Cup of Eternal Torment was a bust," Gunn said, as Spike downed another two shots and started into a pint of something dark.
"Cup of Eternal Mountain Dew." He looked with distaste at a glass of clear, sparkly liquid and pushed it to the back of the table. "What about you? Heard it was all fun and games at the OK Corral."
Gunn grimaced, stretching his legs out beneath and table and taking a long draught of the beer. "Don't ask. Seriously." He looked around them at the big windows with their incredible views, the smooth curves of the furniture, the ambient lighting. Every inch of this place said 'company bar'. It wasn't the kind of joint he'd have pictured Spike drinking in.
"Yeah, I know," Spike said, when he pointed this out. His lip curled in disgust. "Don't even have a pool table. And they've never heard of flowering onions. But," he shrugged, "least they don't ask for folding stuff that I haven't got. Thanks, pet," he added, taking the drinks and chips from Sheila's tray.
Gunn had been in this building close to sixteen hours today, not counting the half hour to drive almost home and then change his mind about drinking with Spike versus microwave dinner and an empty apartment. He loved his job and all, but being inside the building that had nearly killed him was starting to itch.
"How quick can you finish those?"
Spike cast a speculative eye over his table. "Lesse, got about twenty drinks left, plus the snacks - ten minutes?"
**
"Now this is more like it."
Gunn grinned. This was how he imagined a Spike bar. Gritty, inelegant, with a couple of dartboards and a pool table and some big, ugly guys probably dying to jump all over somebody as skinny and small as Spike. Probably dying worse to kick the ass of the black guy in the Hugo Boss, and his brain was already going through every relevant law and case history.
Wolfram & Hart brain upgraders, represent.
"Yeah, this is a good place. Me and Wes used to come here sometimes," he said, remembering Wesley trying to teach him to play darts. Always seemed like a stupid game - yeah, as target practise he could see the point to being able to aim at something kind of head-sized, but who carried around pansy-ass little arrow things?
That got him to trying to remember when was the last time him and Wes had come here, or gone anywhere together that wasn't the hotel or a fight or the Wolfram & Hart offices. He got back as far as the time two years ago when he started dating Fred and then it was weird - like he would think about some specific thing that'd happened and his brain would just slide on over it and he'd forget what he'd even been trying to think about.
He shook his head, grinning slightly at himself. Just your average suit, these days. Couldn't leave the weirdness at the office.
Spike had already grabbed a couple of cues and was setting up the table. "So how do you play this game again?" he asked, and either Gunn was hearing things or he was doing a hell of a good Wesley impersonation. "Is it basically snooker?"
The big, ugly guys at the next table - the table that had a stack of bills on one side - were nudging each other, glancing over.
With some effort, Gunn swallowed his grin. "Come on, even you can play this game. I'll teach you."
"Oh, thanks." He blinked innocently. Gunn decided it was the scariest thing he'd seen all day.
**
They didn't stop running till they were ten blocks away. Slowing down, Charles, Gunn thought to himself, leaning against a gate, hands on his knees. Too much time driving around in his smooth company BMW.
Spike, who didn't have any breath to get back, was nearly bouncing on the spot. "That was fun."
"Easy to say for the guy who didn't… oh, wait. You did get punched." There was a purplish bruise beginning to show on his cheekbone, the same side as the scar on his eyebrow. Gunn wondered if there was some kind of martial arts feng shui there or if Spike just turned his head that way a lot in fights.
"And I got…" He pulled a wad of crumpled bills from the pocket of the duster. "Forty-five dollars. I call that a successful night." His words were just the slightest bit slurred. Not a huge surprise. All the drinks back at the office, plus the ten or twelve he'd managed to put away before the brawl had broken out, it was incredible he was still walking and talking. "I'm hungry."
"Don't look at me, I ain't tapping a vein."
"Not hungry hungry. Food hungry. Where are we? Must be somewhere does burgers, maybe a kebab…"
Time was Gunn knew these streets like he knew his truck or the comic collection that he dragged from one tenement squat to the next. His Johnny Mnemonic obviously hadn't included a street map, because it was a couple of minutes before he could say, "No food places for a couples of streets over. This is houses, coupla businesses, the kids' playground. We can head back to the car, find someplace to eat."
But Spike was looking at the playground gates with a gleam in his eyes that Gunn hadn't seen since - well, since his sister was alive. Any time she was about to do something that was going to get herself, and probably him, into a whole heap of trouble.
"Spike?"
"I wanna play on the swings," he announced, already swinging himself up and over the fence, coat streaming behind him like a cape.
At least he knew some good lawyers, Gunn thought, as he followed.
**
He'd always hated vamps more than demons. Yeah, he had plenty of hate for demons too - sorry, Lorne, he mentally added - but there was something else about vampires. Even before Alonna. Demons, most of them, couldn't hide how they looked. Big and scary and not people. Vampires could trick you. Tuck away the fangs and they'd pass for pale, scary-smiling average joes and joannes.
Spike being a vampire hadn't really been a big thing, because he'd been a ghost. Wasn't like he was out draining pedestrians, or even drinking pigs' blood like Angel. He was just - there. Noisy, one-Y-chromosome-away-from-bitch-on-wheels English guy who liked to piss Angel off and saved Gunn's life that time.
He'd liked him.
Now he was corporeal. And still a vampire, only a for real vampire now. Those morons at the bar'd nearly pissed themselves when he flashed his fangs.
Gunn sat on one of the swings, rocking himself back and forth a little as he wondered whether Spike would tire himself out before the sun came up. He wondered more if he was going to get to bed at all that night and if Lorne's sleep idea could be reworked into a deal that didn't mean going Bruce Banner.
Spike had abandoned the adventure slide and was sitting on the merry go round, gently rotating. Gunn took pity on him. Those things were no fun by yourself. He got up from his swing and picked his way across the dark ground, avoiding the McDonalds and Doublemeat Palace wrappers. "I didn't even know these things were still around," he said. "Most of them were removed after that case in 1991 where…" He trailed off, shaking his head.
"Really can't switch that off, can you?"
"Never know when you might need to know every document filed in Bergstein versus the Hargaloth Clan. Or all the words to I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General."
"With aspirations sinister, evil and vampirical," Spike said. "Bet you're a hit at parties."
"You want me to spin you or not?"
God, Spike was not pouting at him. He was not doing some thing with his lip and his eyes that made him look like the most sarcastic five-year-old on Earth.
But whatever he wasn't doing, he was good at it. Gunn lasted four seconds before he gripped one of the metal rails and gave the merry go round an almighty spin, running alongside it before jumping on at the last second.
He hadn't done this since he was nine, ten. After that he'd let Alonna play, but he always checked the edges of the slide for needles and razorblades, always watched out for vampires while she rode the merry go round.
No need to do that tonight. Only vampire in the vicinity was the one sitting behind him, who got hungry for people food and liked bar fights and imported beer.
The ride eventually slowed down. Neither of them got off to push. Spike was lying back, now, torso flat on the top circle, legs hanging over the side. Gunn's height made it awkward, but he managed to mirror the position. From above they must look like stoners, he thought.
"Dru always liked playgrounds," Spike said. "Never really saw the appeal."
"For somebody who doesn't like playgrounds, you sure seemed to be having fun. Gotta see Angel about putting you on the company health plan, by the way. Ritalin don't come cheap."
Beside him, he felt Spike give a wriggling stretch of his arms. "First time in months I've had a body to have fun in, Charlie-boy."
That explained all the different kinds of drinks. If he'd been ghostly for months he'd want to try a little of everything too. "What, did you have a list? Get made solid, have to drink, eat, get into a fight -"
"A fight with humans. Haven't had a chance at a decent brawl since the chip came out, 'cept for Wood."
"- fight with humans." Play with the kids' outdoor toys didn't sound like it fitted on that list, but Spike didn't seem the type to plan ahead, anyway. "Guess the night's still young. Anything you still want to do?"
He decided, later, that it was a culture thing. Maybe to British people, or vampires, or British vampires, what he'd said sounded like "please turn around and pounce on me."
"O…kay?" he said, because Spike seemed to be straddling him. Scratch that, Spike was straddling him, looking drunk and devious and like he was going to do something stupid.
"Actually," Spike said, "now that you mention it, there was something." And he leaned down and kissed him.
Gunn would have liked to claim he was too surprised to push him off. That was the safe explanation, the one that made it not his fault. Better than the truth, which was that he'd never kissed a vampire and really never kissed a guy, vampire or not, and he was distracted with thinking that Spike wasn't as cold as he would have thought, and that it wasn't so different from how Gwen kissed. She'd never been able to touch anyone that way, not ever, and when she'd kissed him, once she stopped being scared that LISA was going to cut out and fry him, she'd been all hunger and pressure, like she'd been starved her whole life.
Months as a ghost didn't count for the same as a lifetime as Rogue, but he guessed it kind of amounted to the same thing.
Spike caught his lower lip between his teeth, sucking it. Gunn had never thought about what making out with a vampire'd be like, but he would have guessed they'd taste sharp and coppery, like the inside of his mouth the times he'd busted his lip on patrol or gotten hit by one of Momma's 'male friends'. He slid his tongue cautiously against Spike's and there was nothing there but the faint aftertaste of beer and Jack Daniels and all the weird drinks he'd tried.
Finally, when he was wondering if Spike had forgotten about living, breathing humans needing to do the second if they wanted to keep with the first, the vampire pulled back.
Gunn flashed back to the evening. Drinks. Pool. Fighting. Running. "Hey," he said, shocked, "is this a date?"
"Yeah, course it is," Spike said absently, occupied with undoing his tie. "Tell you what, I'll take you to the prom. Draw little love hearts in your yearbook."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, you're the one trying to take my clothes off, blondie bear."
"Don't seem to be getting much of an objection," he pointed out. "Sort of your job, innit? 'Objection, Your Honour, vampire is badgering the… defence or prosecution or what have you.'" His fingers had been working while he rambled and he finally pulled the tie free, brandishing it in triumph before he tossed it aside and went to work on the shirt buttons.
The shift in his weight must have set the merry go round slowly turning, and Gunn remembered where they were. He caught Spike's hand. "Hey. Objection." He meant to go on, say that they were in public and that Angel might have the collective balls of the LAPD in his desk drawer - God, he hoped that wasn't literal - but that it still wasn't smart to be getting down and dirty in the middle of a park, even if Spike's coat did cover them both. His old crew patrolled these streets, they could think Spike was attacking him and put a stake in his back. Or they could work out what was going on and still cause them a big pile of trouble.
He would have explained all of that, but the second he objected Spike froze, smirk wiped off his face. "Right," he said quietly, sounding very un-Spikelike. "Supposed to ask first. Forgot that. Didn't mean - sorry."
"It's okay, it's fine," Gunn said, but Spike had already hauled himself off him and was hurrying away, nearly out of sight.
**
"Anybody seen Spike?" he asked in the middle of Wednesday's meeting, the question casual as he could make it.
Angel didn't look up from the papers he was signing. "Harmony?"
"He hasn't been around for a couple of days, boss."
"I knew there was a reason I was in a good mood."
"I'm worried about him," Fred said. "He doesn't even have anywhere to live."
"Oh, wait! He said something about going to Europe to find Buffy," Harmony said. "Geez," she muttered, when Angel and Gunn fixed her with identical glares, "it wasn't like I made him go."
**
It was close to ten at night. Way past the end of working hours for those no longer keeping vampire times. Gunn checked over all his paperwork for the next week's cases. Sure, he'd checked it once already, but there was no such thing as too prepared. Then he moved his desk a half foot to the left. When that was done, he spent a couple of minutes rearranging his toy robots on the shelves.
Still only ten forty. Damn.
On his way home, he dropped into the bar where they'd played pool, just in case. The owner looked at him suspiciously and mentioned something about a bar fight the previous week, and unpaid breakages. He left fast.
At close to midnight he was flipping through a hundred and eight cable channels on his new plasma screen TV when the intercom buzzed.
"Gunn," he said.
"Yeah, s'me."
"Oh," he said. "Hey. You want to, uh -" He pressed the button that opened the door downstairs.
When he opened his apartment door Spike was already standing there, one hand raised to knock, the other clutching a six-pack.
"Hi."
"'lo." He thrust the beers awkwardly at Gunn.
"Thanks."
He shrugged. "Thought I should stop round. Say sorry for last week. Getting so pissed. First night of freedom, all that."
"Yeah, I figured." He spoke carefully. "Guess if I'd been stuck being Casper I'd go kind of crazy, too. Get drunk, get into fights, grab the first warm -" he remembered the nooner with Harmony - "the second warm… no, wait, first warm body."
"Well," Spike said. "Glad you understand." He fidgeted on the spot, glancing left and right down the hallway. "I'll be off, then."
"To Europe?"
Maybe that sounded bitter, because Spike's eyebrows went up. "Maybe."
"Because I was thinking," he forged ahead, "you've got it pretty good here. Friends, a chance to do some good, grandpa with a ton of disposable income and eleven cars you haven't even tried to steal yet…"
Spike had been looking serious, but the last made him grin. "I have had my eye on the little Lamborghini."
"Plus," he added, wondering whether he'd actually gone insane, "I had fun last week. Wouldn't mind doing it again some time."
He thought he was getting better at reading Spike, the way the surprise and happiness and cautious hope went by faster than Tyler Durden's porn spliced into Cinderella; flickers that he wasn't sure he'd seen at all, because a second later they were replaced with that cocky indifference.
"Not gonna drink all those yourself, are you?" Spike said, nodding at the beers.
Gunn smiled, and stepped back, and invited him in.
END
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no subject
on 2004-04-24 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 10:10 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 10:51 am (UTC)Thanks. Chris.
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on 2004-04-24 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 11:36 am (UTC)Great job with the characterization and dialogue. Totally seems like exactly what Spike would want to do after getting his body back.
Thanks for sharing.
no subject
on 2004-04-24 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 12:07 pm (UTC)Thank you again!
::big smooches::
no subject
on 2004-04-24 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-24 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-26 11:58 am (UTC)I especially liked these bits:
Gunn wondered if there was some kind of martial arts feng shui there or if Spike just turned his head that way a lot in fights.
After that he'd let Alonna play, but he always checked the edges of the slide for needles and razorblades
Dru always liked playgrounds [nice throwback to BtVS and our first glimpse of Dru]
And of course:
"Right," he said quietly, sounding very un-Spikelike. "Supposed to ask first. Forgot that. Didn't mean - sorry."
no subject
on 2004-08-16 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-01-23 06:22 pm (UTC)