Hello fellow Buffy enthusiasts! This is a little side story I've been working on in my free time to balance the work to play ratio. Full disclaimer, I love Buffy and Spike together, but it's been done so many times I doubt I'd come up with anything terribly new. My goal is to keep this story as fresh as possible, so besides the characters themselves (Oh, Joss Whedon, how I love thee so) and their histories, I'm not going to be borrowing much in the way of plot or line-for-line dialogue from the episodes. Comments make my day and I'm happy to communicate via PM. Thanks for reading!
And now, off to Sunnydale!
William the Bloody was having a bloody awful night. He needed a drink, a shag, and a cigarette, preferably in that order, but all three simultaneously would be more than acceptable too. It had all started when his plans for robbing a very large Frophla Demon had gone horribly awry. Two showers and a change of clothing later, he could still feel it's slime burning his skin. And he didn't even have a charmed Necklace of Thilodian to show for it. Not that he needed it exactly, but the higher his bar tab at Willy's Place climbed, the faster Willy's patience ran out.
"Could have made enough quid off it to buy Willy's sodding bar," he muttered as he roughly shouldered his way past a group of drunk college students. One of them shrieked as the jolt forced him to crash sideways into his friend, and both boys toppled to the sidewalk. Watching anything fall over was a visual Spike always found entertaining, but tonight he couldn't have cared less.
Harmony was the second item on his ever-growing mental shitlist. Stupid bint had a bad habit of showing up at the worst possible moments, couldn't keep her mouth shut for more than two minutes unless she was unconscious, and even then he didn't trust her to stay quiet. She'd also used up half his nancy-boy hair gel and an entire bottle of his black nail polish painting little black hearts all over his sarcophagus. Safe to say, she was out of his crypt before she had time to blink.
And then, the marshmallows on his proverbial hot chocolate, he was getting succinctly nowhere with Buffy. Every pass he made, every effort he put forth to show her that he could be better was met with suspicion and the promise of a good staking. It wasn't completely her fault, he had been trying to kill her for years, but it was getting preposterously old.
He stalked his way towards Willy's, the one establishment besides his own living quarters that he was moderately welcome, on the hopes that he could threaten Willy enough to let his bar tab ride just a little higher. At least then he could drown his miserable existence in Jack Daniels and hatch up some scheme more exciting than spending the night slumped in his chair watching Dawson's Creek reruns.
And so it was, that after having such a wretchedly awful night, he was delighted to find that once he'd thrown the door to Willy's open and shoved some vamp newbie out of his favorite seat at the bar, that Willy wasn't even around. Some pretty little brunette flitted around behind the counter, taking orders and delivering drinks with a speed that put the owner of the bar to shame. Maybe he could even start a running tab under a fake name. Or someone else's name, he thought with a calculating smile. Rupert Giles had a nice ring to it. Willy wouldn't even know until it was too late to do anything about it.
Spike leaned back on his stool as he waited for the new bartender to take his order. She looked wholesome, innocent, as though she belonged in a Gap catalogue, not a seedy dive bar. Couldn't have been more than twenty-five. Not his type. That was Angelus's thing, the sweet ones. He liked his women with a bit of after-burn.
As she breezed past him to get change for a bill, he could hear her heart beating through the din of conversations and clinking of glasses, thrumming as quickly as a bird's wings, adrenaline and a perhaps a touch of fear coursing through her veins. She seemed human. Normal heart rate for a one in a demon-infested hole in the wall, anyway. But it was her scent that gave him pause; the faintest whisper of campfire ashes and forest dust, and something he couldn't quite place, but it was intoxicating and unnerving and he wasn't sure why.
He really needed a drink.
"Hey barkeep, what's a bloke gotta do to get a drink around here?" he interrupted as the girl was handing a demon back his change.
She turned around and gave him a saccharine smile. "He needs to not be an impatient asshat and wait until it's his turn to order." She walked away and began taking a drink order at the other side of the bar.
Spike's lips pursed into a unexpected smirk. So the cute little kitten had a mouth on her. If he could turn on the charm enough, perhaps a quick rough and tumble in a back alley somewhere wasn't out of the question.
"Tasty little morsel, aren't you?" he murmured, mostly to himself but loudly enough that the reptilian demon who was sitting next to him overheard.
"Don't even think about it, vamp, unless you never want to step foot in here again," the demon snorted mirthfully.
Spike shot an irritated glance at him. "What's it to you, Killer Croc? You Willy's new muscle or somethin'?"
"No, I just happen to know that three other customers this week got shown the door after trying to bribe Willy into getting a drink from the new girl," he frowned. "Not paying Willy to order a drink from her, like paying to actually drink from her."
"Pfft. Willy'd sell his own mum for the change under your chair cushion. You must've heard it wrong mate."
"Yeah, well Gartin and Meorge used to be here every night and I haven't seen them for days, so think what you want," the demon said with a yawn, dropping a few dollar bills next to his empty glass and sauntering off. Spike discreetly pocketed the tip while the bartender still had her back turned.
After a few more minutes she finally stopped in front of him, bestowing him with a speedy once-over that annoyed him with its casualness. "And now it's your turn. What can I get you?" she asked, speaking to him like a teacher in a nursery school clas. The underlying current of sarcasm wasn't lost on Spike.
He took an appraising look at her. Long mahogany hair tied up in a sloppy ponytail, pale skin with a smattering of freckles. Swan-like neck. Carelessly pretty. And that attitude that seemed so jarring coming from her soft, pink mouth. Oh, the possibilities. His eyes lingered on her lips. "Depends. What are you offerin', pet?"
The girl barely contained rolling her eyes at him. "Beer, hard alcohol. Otter blood. Whatever the blue stuff that smells like rotting eggs is."
"Mattagar brain fluid."
The girl scrunched up her nose. "Really didn't want to know that."
Spike grinned seductively. "Just helpin' you out, luv. Been around a while. Know my way around a demon bar, could teach you all sorts of things."
"Sorry, I'm really not in the mood to have some Billy Idol wannabe show me how to mix a blood cocktail while he's feeling me up in the stockroom."
"Oi! I'll have you know, Billy Idol stole his look from-"
"Yeah, yeah, save it. That's what Elvis the Pelvis over there said too," she said, with a jerk of her head towards the corner of the bar.
Spike whipped his head in the direction that the bartender had indicated. A scrawny dark haired vampire wearing a bedazzled white jumpsuit and a broken pair of aviators gave him an unenthusiastic wave.
"Oh that's rich. Fine. Double otter blood. Make it the fresh stuff too, not that nasty rot that's been sittin' out for a week. Don't need that swill in my mouth after the kind of night I've had."
"Excellent choice. One otter blood, coming right up," the brunette said with another feigned customer-service smile. She retrieved an empty glass from the upper bar shelves.
"Elvis the bloody Pelvis," he growled to himself as he watched her bend over to get a pitcher of blood out of the mini fridge. "Bet he wasn't even livin' when-"
Spike stopped short as the collar of the bartender's shirt dipped downward, exposing a whole lot of cleavage and a delicate lacy bra. With a lascivious glimmer in his eye, he shifted forward to get a better look. No, not just cleavage and a bra, but a whole lot of tattoos, pale blue runes that patterned her chest and seemed to spread all the way down her torso. Curious.
She straightened abruptly, as though she could feel herself being watched, deftly tugging her shirt back into place. She decanted the blood straight to the top of the glass, and with a practiced hand, slid it over the polished wood bar top to Spike.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"Yeah. What's your name, pet? Not too many humans come into this joint, 'specially girls who aren't the fang-groupie sort. Willy's your uncle or somethin'?"
"Uncle? No, gross. Willy's family and mine go way back, I needed a job and this happened to be convenient so he let me have it. And you can call me Allie. Any other drink I can get you?" She eyed him suspiciously. "That's not from a bite wound?"
"Let you know."
"I don't doubt it," she snorted. "You paying for this now?"
"Start me a tab."
She pulled out a ledger book and a pen. "Name?"
"Giles. Rupert Giles," he stated with an air of self-importance. That was how the old bag would say it, right?
She stared at him for a moment. Shit. She knew.
"Your name's Rupert Giles?" she asked slowly.
Alright, maybe she didn't. "Yeah. That's me. I know you?"
She blinked, then scribbled something down in the ledger and flipped it shut. "Ah, no. No, you don't. Look, I'm sorry, it's been kind of a long night, I didn't mean to snap at you."
"No harm done," he said, lewdly running his tongue across his incisors, "but perhaps you and I could have a chat of the private sort later, and you can make it up to me."
She opened her mouth to respond, but a man in an expensive looking suit sat down at the bar, and she pressed her lips together and turned to go take his order.
As Spike sipped at his blood, he watched Allie make drinks for various customers and tried to puzzle her out. There was seemingly nothing out of ordinary about her, besides the fact that she had a pulse and was working at a demon bar. And those tattoos on her torso… those were definitely on the occulty side of things. No girl walked into a tattoo shop and demanded an entire dictionary of symbols be tattooed on her body, no matter how sloshed she'd gotten at a frat party; those kind of outings always resulted in flowers and unicorns on some ridiculous body part. He should know. Harmony had several.
Were there more? She was wearing a pair of jeans and a long sleeved floral thermal, so it wasn't like he could see if she did. Spike inspected the rest of the bar's patrons. Temperature hardly made a difference to him, but the few humans and climate sensitive demons of the clothes-wearing variety all had on t-shirts and shorts.
She was sweating. Not a lot, but just enough that Spike could see a slight glistening on her forehead. The girl was definitely uncomfortable, but she wasn't even rolling up her sleeves. He leaned his elbows on the bar top. Young girl, completely covered in tattoos and working in a demon bar. Added up to downright suspicious if it somehow involved the watcher.
"Spike! Didn't I make it clear that I'd seriously consider killing you if I ever saw you in here again?" a loud raspy voice rumbled from behind him.
Spike knew who it was without even looking. "Piss off, Bartrax. Be a good boy and go find yourself a nice ol' dog to eat. Somewhere else."
If Spike hadn't been paying rapt attention to the bartender, he might not have noticed the subtle shift in her demeanor when the angry demon behind him mentioned his actual name; the slight tensing of her shoulders, the tightening of her fingers around the nozzle of the beer dispenser she was using. Well, the tabby was out of the bag now. Spike was no Rupert Giles.
The enormous demon leaned close enough that Spike could smell the festering scent of rotted flesh on his breath. "Really shouldn't be eating dogs, Spike. You'll go running to tell the Slayer and her friends that I'm a puppy murderer and then she'll come and try to kill me. Isn't that what you do? Rat out your own kind because you're one of hers now?"
"Not gonna stop you if you want the All-You-Can-Eat at Pets R' Us, but just between us, think you should lay off the poodles. Not doin' your breath any favors, mate."
All the attention Spike had been placing on the bartender was swiftly refocused to that of violence when he felt himself get lifted up by the back of his coat collar and thrown halfway across the room. He landed headfirst on top of a booth table being shared by some very cranky looking vampires. All five of them stood up at once and towered over him, and the bar grew eerily quiet.
Spike laughed maniacally. "Did you see that? Bartrax here fancies himself the demon overlord of Sunnydale, tellin' vamps where and what they can do. Time to show this poncy bugger what's what, yeah?"
A few of the vampires shrugged noncommittally, and one left to get a drink refill.
Well, fuck.
Bartrax roared and everyone moved out of the way to let him pick Spike up and heave him towards the exit. Spike managed to get a few solid kicks in before Bartrax's well-placed punch to the face pushed him out the front door, and he landed on his back, groaning as he hit his elbows on the pavement.
"Next time, vampire, it won't be your ass falling out the door, it'll be your dust," Bartrax yelled out from inside.
Spike flipped him the bird when the door shut.
He'd made it a few streets before he reached for his pack of smokes and realized they were gone. Must've fallen out somewhere between his seat at the bar and being airborne. It was his last pack, too. He cursed aloud and kicked a lampost with all his might, cursing even louder at his numb foot, then began trudging back to the bar.
He waited until the bar was empty, which didn't take long. Willy's usual closing time was 4 am, and most of the clientele had worse places to be and more evil things to be doing. When the front was shut and locked by 4:01, he eased himself in through the back door, moving stealthily from years of practice. The pack of cigarettes was lying right underneath his stool. Easy. He snatched them off the floor and began to head back out when he heard a peculiar tune being whistled from stockroom.
Stepping lightly towards the sound, he leaned his head in so he could hear it better. It was the bartender, of course, pulling down bottles to be restocked in the bar. And she was singing the tune now. Her voice wasn't beautiful, but there was something in the low pitch of the sound that he found enthralling, and though he didn't understand the words she was singing, he knew instinctively that they were very old.
It was the second time that night that an odd sense of dread overcame him while being in the girl's presence, and he knew it was time to go warn the Slayer that something dark had come to Sunnydale.
