"Stormy Weather"
A Not-Quite-Bedtime Story by The Scary Godmother
Disclaimers and things not to flame me for:
*Dont own it, nope. I'm not that clever.
*I dont know how much this jives with the manga telling of past events, so suspend
nitpicking and enjoy a (hopefully) good story.
*The final part of the story has scenes from episode 25 in it, see above, dont own, not clever.
*I gave Spike a "christian" name because I just cant think anyone's mother would name them Spike. Also, for those curious, Elka is the name of my kitten.
~Stormy Weather
Spike stopped smoking long enough to take a sip of his scotch and soda.... Or was it gin and tonic...or was that a couple of drinks ago? Damn. In the good old days, he had at least been able to remember just how many into the hole he was.
He really made the effort to live up to this syndicate life style. He smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. He was in the bars till they closed and came home with his pockets full of phone numbers. All in all, he tried to be like James Bond.... Naw, not James Bond... Bruce Lee, yeah, a hard drinking, heavy smoking mobbed up Bruce Lee. Spending each night and every night at the fourth bar stool from the left at Sergeant Pepper's Pub, learning to be even harder drinking.
Truth be told, he was kind of new at this, only a few years in. He couldn't complain. He knew some people, he had a good man at his side, he was picking up just as many job skills as bad habits. Last night, Vicious had taught him how to blow an airlock with the butt of gun. God he hoped he got to try that out soon.
Spike was making up some nice visuals imagining this when Elka banged him with her elbow hard enough to knock his cigarette into his drink. Shit, that was the last he had money for, on both counts.
"Jesus, what was that for?!?"
"Look who's here." she said, handing over her own drink. Like he really wanted whatever the hell she was having.
Vicious was walking in. Was that all? It wasn't like he didn't see Vicious every single day and night of his life already. She had wasted a drink on that? He was just about to get kind of pissed off about this when he saw Vicious wasn't alone. Ohhhh, that made sense. He'd have tipped over his own drink to see the infamous chica Vicious never shut up about.
He was pretty sure her name was Julie...Julia, something like that. First impression, she was a little too tall, but she had that Veronica Lake hair that more than made up for it. Ok face, kind of narrow lips, nice eyes, put it all together she was pretty enough. She kind of reminded him of some kind of mountain cat in those old jungle movies. A leopard maybe. Leopard...a dangerous exotic predator, that was a weird analogy for his partner's girl. Maybe he didn't need that last drink.
"So that's Juliet?" He asked Elka.
"Julia." She corrected him, "and yeah. She makes a nice accessory, doesn't she?"
"Nice tits."
He knew Elka was rolling her eyes before she did it. "Nice tits? You sound like a 12-year-old. When are you planning on growing up Simon?"
He blanched. Simon. Shit, his mother called him Simon. He glanced left and right to make sure nobody else had heard that before answering her question.
"Maybe when I find a girl worth growing up for."
She was giving him a disdaining look.
"Hey, it could happen."
He sat alone at the bar this time, a suspicious person with two packs of cigarettes stacked next to him and a line of empty glasses Fuzzy hair in all directions, loose tie and rumple jacket, the deceiving appearance, the smooth criminal. Spike was about to take another sip of his Bourbon (or was it whiskey...or was that a couple of drinks ago?) when a small manicured hand slapped on top of the glass, blocking his entry.
"What do you think you're doing Simon?"
"Spike, call me Spike, and I'm trying to get drunk."
Elka took the seat next to him along the bar and motioned for a drink, apparently ignoring the first part of his statement. "I mean with Julia. You two were here until closing, again."
"I'm always here until closing El."
"Not with your best friend's girlfriend."
He shrugged, a real accomplishment on a barstool. "She's good company, nothing more."
Elka dropped her voice. "Bullshit."
Spike turned and tried to look offended. "Do you think if I were sleeping with Julia on the side I'd advertise it in a bar?"
It was Elka's turn to shrug. "I'm not sure you wouldn't."
"I'm not. Vicious is my partner, my friend, Jesus, I'm just watching after his girl for him."
She looked skeptical. "When did you grow a sense of responsibility?"
"Ok, I'm not blind, I'm not dead below the waist, but she belongs to Vicious and there is nothing going on between us. Nothing."
"Are you lying to me?"
"Would I do that?"
"Yes. Are you doing that?"
He made a wobbly cross over his heart. "I'm not lying."
Elka gulped her vodka tonic in one drink. "God help you if you are, God help you."
James Bond/Bruce Lee/Smooth Criminal was gone. The man sitting in his place was fearing the reaper, he felt guilty. He tried desperately not to look it. Hunched over. He wasn't sure if he was imagining the whispers or not. Vicious didn't know, he didn't know a thing, he couldn't. If Vicious knew he would be dead already, and he would deserve it. His partner's girl, his partner's girl....
Elka was next to him, thank god. He couldn't sit here another night alone, waiting. Waiting for Vicious to ask the wrong question or for him to give the wrong answer, waiting for Julia to sit in that corner booth, just beyond peering eyes but where he could see...and tempt him, tempt him all damn night until he gave in. He'd give in again, and again, and again, so thank god he wasn't alone.
"You said nothing was going to happen. She doesn't belong to you. I don't understand it." Elka said flatly.
"You wouldn't."
"Stop. Give it up. Drop the habit."
"I can't." he said, another drink, another cigarette, him and habits.
"She's just a woman." She replied, with only the most minute hint that she realized how ironic that sounded, coming from a woman.
"She's not just a woman anymore Elka.... Maybe a few weeks ago she was, maybe a few days ago, but she's not now."
She sighed into her own drink. "You just want her so bad because she's the only one not throwing herself at you."
He coughed. If Elka only knew how wrong she was about that one. Truth be told, they kind of threw themselves at each other, like magnets on the opposite side of a tray. But El wouldn't understand that either. She'd never been in love, she'd never been stupid enough to fall in love, or desire, or even lust. At the moment, Spike wished he were as strong as she was.
"I want everything about her, not just the parts she can throw."
That was enough to bring both of them a small smile a one-note reprise of simpler times and lighter conversations. Then they sat in silence, neither sure how to continue. He finally picked up the thread.
"Julia's not like the rest. She wants to be with me, not just a syndicate player. She doesn't call me Simon," he said, trying to recapture the former humour, "She likes my hair, she likes my bad habits, she cooks great...You think I don't feel guilty? I do. I can't take it. I know I shouldn't, I know I cant, but then I always do. I know in my head that she's just a woman, that there are a million other women, but dammit every time I see her she's might as well be the only female from Jupiter to Mars." He paused. "Just aint no sunshine when she's gone."
She took his remarks in with dispassionate quiet. "I cant make you stop seeing her, can I?"
He shook his head. "We've been friends for a long time, I owe you a life once or twice over, but no, I'm too far-gone. No one could stop me now."
"You're wrong. Vicious could."
Spike walked into the pub, going right past his normal stool, right past the entire bar in fact, to that small booth in the back, the one Julia pretended not to be looking at him from so often. But he wasn't there for Julia today...every day from now on, but not today. He slid onto the curved leather seat and Elka was there like he'd asked, dark hair, sprinkling of freckles, a familiar sight. From the look on her face, she had already guessed what he was going to say.
"I'm getting out."
She nodded, nearly looking relieved. "I knew."
"I'm taking Julia with me."
She nodded again. "I was afraid of that."
Elka took a long long drink and Spike lit his first of several cigarettes.
"Do you love her?" She finally asked.
"I'd stop breathing if she wanted me to."
"She just might... You cant get out of this alive Simon...Spike, go, get out, take up a life more inclined to passion if that's what you want, but you aren't any good to Julia dead. She can't think this is a good idea."
"She doesn't know yet."
More long silence. Spike noticed it had begun to rain outside, a light rhythmic mist. He could hear it on the ceiling....one drop, two, three, nine, twenty, thirty-two, forty.
"I never thought I'd say goodbye to you."
He shook his head and lit up another cigarette. That was four now. "It's not goodbye. After Julia and I get settled somewhere safe, I'll find a way to let you know."
"I didn't know you cared."
"I find myself a very emotional person lately."
"I noticed."
"Do me a favour then, an emotional favour."
"What?"
"Once this is done, whether it works or not, whether you get the girl or not, if you come out alive somehow, don't look back. Not for me, Not for Julia, Not for anything. If you get out once it's like a winning ticket. If you get out twice.... People don't get out twice. Don't push your luck, ok?"
He went a little slack. Elka was right; this was goodbye to Sgt. Pepper's, good-bye to Lin, and El, his friends, goodbye to being James Bond. But he knew it was worth it, he knew it. Even if it meant not looking back.
A couple of drinks later, he did say goodbye, for good. He'd take her advice just this once, it was the least he could do for an old friend.
Faye was running up to him. What did she want?
"I don't have any money." He repeated, powering up the Swordfish II.
But Faye stood her ground. "She said she'd be waiting there!" She yelled.
"She said you'd know what she meant."
Spike pushed it away; he pushed it all away. He might die, he might die today, he wished he could die, but he held onto the favour he promised Elka. It was all he had left in him still alive, love for Julia, promises to Elka. "Well I don't, sorry."
"Her name is Julia!" She yelled louder, and even though he knew it was coming that cut him through to hear. "Someone's trying to kill her Spike. They're after her."
He ignored it, forcing himself not to care. There wasn't enough of a man left to care not enough of Simon, or whatever you wanted to call the person he had been. He told Jet he was ready to take off and flew out into the battle zone of space. It felt like an apocalypse out there, and Spike knew it very well could be.
He had already fought Vicious again, and came out of it with nothing more than a decided dislike for stained glass. He had made it out twice; he had proven Elka wrong, right? He could do this...and Julia, they were going to hurt her, kill her...could he still care? After all the hurt and the killing she had dealt him, was it possible to go back? Could he go back and live and find the person who loved Julia again in himself?
"Spike...." Jet's voice came over the comm system, crackling with distortion. He asked if Spike could still fly, then he said not to worry about them. "Just go. Find what you lost," he told him, "and get it back. Go."
Then he was gone, but Spike had an answer. Julia was right, he would come. She knew he would come. If there was even a moment, a single second of her, an echo of her, he had to take that risk...but Elka was right too.
Comm system off, speaking to no one, he conjured up Elka's freckled face in his head and said in his mind what he needed to. 'I'm sorry,' he told her, 'But you were right all along, there was no way I was going to get out of this alive, and I cant be alive without Julia.'
He curved into the atmosphere, already feeling for his gun. He wasn't sure exactly what he was leaving behind him, but it was time to say goodbye
A Not-Quite-Bedtime Story by The Scary Godmother
Disclaimers and things not to flame me for:
*Dont own it, nope. I'm not that clever.
*I dont know how much this jives with the manga telling of past events, so suspend
nitpicking and enjoy a (hopefully) good story.
*The final part of the story has scenes from episode 25 in it, see above, dont own, not clever.
*I gave Spike a "christian" name because I just cant think anyone's mother would name them Spike. Also, for those curious, Elka is the name of my kitten.
~Stormy Weather
Spike stopped smoking long enough to take a sip of his scotch and soda.... Or was it gin and tonic...or was that a couple of drinks ago? Damn. In the good old days, he had at least been able to remember just how many into the hole he was.
He really made the effort to live up to this syndicate life style. He smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. He was in the bars till they closed and came home with his pockets full of phone numbers. All in all, he tried to be like James Bond.... Naw, not James Bond... Bruce Lee, yeah, a hard drinking, heavy smoking mobbed up Bruce Lee. Spending each night and every night at the fourth bar stool from the left at Sergeant Pepper's Pub, learning to be even harder drinking.
Truth be told, he was kind of new at this, only a few years in. He couldn't complain. He knew some people, he had a good man at his side, he was picking up just as many job skills as bad habits. Last night, Vicious had taught him how to blow an airlock with the butt of gun. God he hoped he got to try that out soon.
Spike was making up some nice visuals imagining this when Elka banged him with her elbow hard enough to knock his cigarette into his drink. Shit, that was the last he had money for, on both counts.
"Jesus, what was that for?!?"
"Look who's here." she said, handing over her own drink. Like he really wanted whatever the hell she was having.
Vicious was walking in. Was that all? It wasn't like he didn't see Vicious every single day and night of his life already. She had wasted a drink on that? He was just about to get kind of pissed off about this when he saw Vicious wasn't alone. Ohhhh, that made sense. He'd have tipped over his own drink to see the infamous chica Vicious never shut up about.
He was pretty sure her name was Julie...Julia, something like that. First impression, she was a little too tall, but she had that Veronica Lake hair that more than made up for it. Ok face, kind of narrow lips, nice eyes, put it all together she was pretty enough. She kind of reminded him of some kind of mountain cat in those old jungle movies. A leopard maybe. Leopard...a dangerous exotic predator, that was a weird analogy for his partner's girl. Maybe he didn't need that last drink.
"So that's Juliet?" He asked Elka.
"Julia." She corrected him, "and yeah. She makes a nice accessory, doesn't she?"
"Nice tits."
He knew Elka was rolling her eyes before she did it. "Nice tits? You sound like a 12-year-old. When are you planning on growing up Simon?"
He blanched. Simon. Shit, his mother called him Simon. He glanced left and right to make sure nobody else had heard that before answering her question.
"Maybe when I find a girl worth growing up for."
She was giving him a disdaining look.
"Hey, it could happen."
He sat alone at the bar this time, a suspicious person with two packs of cigarettes stacked next to him and a line of empty glasses Fuzzy hair in all directions, loose tie and rumple jacket, the deceiving appearance, the smooth criminal. Spike was about to take another sip of his Bourbon (or was it whiskey...or was that a couple of drinks ago?) when a small manicured hand slapped on top of the glass, blocking his entry.
"What do you think you're doing Simon?"
"Spike, call me Spike, and I'm trying to get drunk."
Elka took the seat next to him along the bar and motioned for a drink, apparently ignoring the first part of his statement. "I mean with Julia. You two were here until closing, again."
"I'm always here until closing El."
"Not with your best friend's girlfriend."
He shrugged, a real accomplishment on a barstool. "She's good company, nothing more."
Elka dropped her voice. "Bullshit."
Spike turned and tried to look offended. "Do you think if I were sleeping with Julia on the side I'd advertise it in a bar?"
It was Elka's turn to shrug. "I'm not sure you wouldn't."
"I'm not. Vicious is my partner, my friend, Jesus, I'm just watching after his girl for him."
She looked skeptical. "When did you grow a sense of responsibility?"
"Ok, I'm not blind, I'm not dead below the waist, but she belongs to Vicious and there is nothing going on between us. Nothing."
"Are you lying to me?"
"Would I do that?"
"Yes. Are you doing that?"
He made a wobbly cross over his heart. "I'm not lying."
Elka gulped her vodka tonic in one drink. "God help you if you are, God help you."
James Bond/Bruce Lee/Smooth Criminal was gone. The man sitting in his place was fearing the reaper, he felt guilty. He tried desperately not to look it. Hunched over. He wasn't sure if he was imagining the whispers or not. Vicious didn't know, he didn't know a thing, he couldn't. If Vicious knew he would be dead already, and he would deserve it. His partner's girl, his partner's girl....
Elka was next to him, thank god. He couldn't sit here another night alone, waiting. Waiting for Vicious to ask the wrong question or for him to give the wrong answer, waiting for Julia to sit in that corner booth, just beyond peering eyes but where he could see...and tempt him, tempt him all damn night until he gave in. He'd give in again, and again, and again, so thank god he wasn't alone.
"You said nothing was going to happen. She doesn't belong to you. I don't understand it." Elka said flatly.
"You wouldn't."
"Stop. Give it up. Drop the habit."
"I can't." he said, another drink, another cigarette, him and habits.
"She's just a woman." She replied, with only the most minute hint that she realized how ironic that sounded, coming from a woman.
"She's not just a woman anymore Elka.... Maybe a few weeks ago she was, maybe a few days ago, but she's not now."
She sighed into her own drink. "You just want her so bad because she's the only one not throwing herself at you."
He coughed. If Elka only knew how wrong she was about that one. Truth be told, they kind of threw themselves at each other, like magnets on the opposite side of a tray. But El wouldn't understand that either. She'd never been in love, she'd never been stupid enough to fall in love, or desire, or even lust. At the moment, Spike wished he were as strong as she was.
"I want everything about her, not just the parts she can throw."
That was enough to bring both of them a small smile a one-note reprise of simpler times and lighter conversations. Then they sat in silence, neither sure how to continue. He finally picked up the thread.
"Julia's not like the rest. She wants to be with me, not just a syndicate player. She doesn't call me Simon," he said, trying to recapture the former humour, "She likes my hair, she likes my bad habits, she cooks great...You think I don't feel guilty? I do. I can't take it. I know I shouldn't, I know I cant, but then I always do. I know in my head that she's just a woman, that there are a million other women, but dammit every time I see her she's might as well be the only female from Jupiter to Mars." He paused. "Just aint no sunshine when she's gone."
She took his remarks in with dispassionate quiet. "I cant make you stop seeing her, can I?"
He shook his head. "We've been friends for a long time, I owe you a life once or twice over, but no, I'm too far-gone. No one could stop me now."
"You're wrong. Vicious could."
Spike walked into the pub, going right past his normal stool, right past the entire bar in fact, to that small booth in the back, the one Julia pretended not to be looking at him from so often. But he wasn't there for Julia today...every day from now on, but not today. He slid onto the curved leather seat and Elka was there like he'd asked, dark hair, sprinkling of freckles, a familiar sight. From the look on her face, she had already guessed what he was going to say.
"I'm getting out."
She nodded, nearly looking relieved. "I knew."
"I'm taking Julia with me."
She nodded again. "I was afraid of that."
Elka took a long long drink and Spike lit his first of several cigarettes.
"Do you love her?" She finally asked.
"I'd stop breathing if she wanted me to."
"She just might... You cant get out of this alive Simon...Spike, go, get out, take up a life more inclined to passion if that's what you want, but you aren't any good to Julia dead. She can't think this is a good idea."
"She doesn't know yet."
More long silence. Spike noticed it had begun to rain outside, a light rhythmic mist. He could hear it on the ceiling....one drop, two, three, nine, twenty, thirty-two, forty.
"I never thought I'd say goodbye to you."
He shook his head and lit up another cigarette. That was four now. "It's not goodbye. After Julia and I get settled somewhere safe, I'll find a way to let you know."
"I didn't know you cared."
"I find myself a very emotional person lately."
"I noticed."
"Do me a favour then, an emotional favour."
"What?"
"Once this is done, whether it works or not, whether you get the girl or not, if you come out alive somehow, don't look back. Not for me, Not for Julia, Not for anything. If you get out once it's like a winning ticket. If you get out twice.... People don't get out twice. Don't push your luck, ok?"
He went a little slack. Elka was right; this was goodbye to Sgt. Pepper's, good-bye to Lin, and El, his friends, goodbye to being James Bond. But he knew it was worth it, he knew it. Even if it meant not looking back.
A couple of drinks later, he did say goodbye, for good. He'd take her advice just this once, it was the least he could do for an old friend.
Faye was running up to him. What did she want?
"I don't have any money." He repeated, powering up the Swordfish II.
But Faye stood her ground. "She said she'd be waiting there!" She yelled.
"She said you'd know what she meant."
Spike pushed it away; he pushed it all away. He might die, he might die today, he wished he could die, but he held onto the favour he promised Elka. It was all he had left in him still alive, love for Julia, promises to Elka. "Well I don't, sorry."
"Her name is Julia!" She yelled louder, and even though he knew it was coming that cut him through to hear. "Someone's trying to kill her Spike. They're after her."
He ignored it, forcing himself not to care. There wasn't enough of a man left to care not enough of Simon, or whatever you wanted to call the person he had been. He told Jet he was ready to take off and flew out into the battle zone of space. It felt like an apocalypse out there, and Spike knew it very well could be.
He had already fought Vicious again, and came out of it with nothing more than a decided dislike for stained glass. He had made it out twice; he had proven Elka wrong, right? He could do this...and Julia, they were going to hurt her, kill her...could he still care? After all the hurt and the killing she had dealt him, was it possible to go back? Could he go back and live and find the person who loved Julia again in himself?
"Spike...." Jet's voice came over the comm system, crackling with distortion. He asked if Spike could still fly, then he said not to worry about them. "Just go. Find what you lost," he told him, "and get it back. Go."
Then he was gone, but Spike had an answer. Julia was right, he would come. She knew he would come. If there was even a moment, a single second of her, an echo of her, he had to take that risk...but Elka was right too.
Comm system off, speaking to no one, he conjured up Elka's freckled face in his head and said in his mind what he needed to. 'I'm sorry,' he told her, 'But you were right all along, there was no way I was going to get out of this alive, and I cant be alive without Julia.'
He curved into the atmosphere, already feeling for his gun. He wasn't sure exactly what he was leaving behind him, but it was time to say goodbye