The Atlantic is bitter cold, the temperature low enough to kill a man if he doesn't have the good fortune to be a corpse already. It's cold enough to shiver a dead man's bones, and Spike should know.
Angelus is a swollen-headed gobshite, he thinks sullenly as he treads water, trying to figure out which way land might be. He has vague memories that suggest he should be using the stars, but even as a mortal he'd been city-bred. He's got about as much chance of figuring out the right way to go as his pillock of a sire does of ever having the gigantic stick removed from his arse.
"Bastard," Spike mutters savagely. The thought of sharks occurs to him then. He's torn between hoping he doesn't encounter any and hoping that he does, because he would quite like to fight a shark. He'd prefer to feed Angelus to one, and can't decide which would be funnier - Angelus' expression, or the shark's at getting a belly-full of vampire dust.
"I'm going to stake you out for the dawn!" he shouts, then splutters as a wave slaps him in the face. There's a reason I never take Dru to bleeding Brighton .
"I thought he'd turn you out too."
It takes Spike a second to recognize the voice - the Yank, Lawson, sounding smug as fuck-all.
"Yeah, he's a right tosser," Spike says sarcastically. "Don't suppose you'd happen to know which way land is?"
"This way," Lawson says, and starts swimming. Spike debates for a moment, then follows him on the reasoning that he's got nothing better to do. He notes with irritation that Lawson is a much better swimmer than he is.
They're not as far from the coastline as Spike was expecting, but it still takes them several hours to reach land and by the time they haul themselves soaking wet onto an apparently uninhabited beach, he's worked up one hell of a temper. There's nothing to tell them what country they're in, and though this wouldn't usually be a problem, the war that's currently raging is like nothing Spike's ever seen before. He most emphatically does not want to end up back in German hands, and the unpleasantly efficient bastards might very well have circulated his description. If he'd been smart, he'd have left for America with Dru and Darla in '38.
"Now what?" he asks Lawson impatiently. Preserving one's reputation for infallibility is all well and good, but wherever they are, it's the bleedin' countryside. Spike hates the countryside almost as much as he currently hates Angelus. It's boring. Not to mention the fact that although killing everyone in a five mile radius sounds good in theory, it loses its glamour when said radius only contains fifteen people and you have to walk a fucking mile between houses.
"Now you shut up," Lawson says, barely above a whisper. "I think we're in France," he continues, and Spike changes his mind about smacking Lawson a good one. There won't be many unguarded beaches in France tonight, and he doubts that they were lucky enough to wash up on one.
"France," he mutters under his breath. "It had to be sodding France."
The idea that occurs to him then is not only more entertaining than trying to sneak past German patrols, but deeply satisfying to contemplate. He throws Lawson a sidelong look. The younger vamp looks deadly serious, and is obviously listening intently for any sound.
It is, Spike decides, time to show him what it really is to be a vampire. So far, the poor bastard's gotten to fix a submarine and take a swim. He hasn't even gotten to eat anybody yet. Besides, Spike owes the Nazis one in the eye for the sheer humiliation of the submarine incident.
He takes a deep breath, and has just enough time to savour Lawson's outraged expression before bursting into song at top volume. The song he picks is guaranteed to bring any Germans in the area running. Or make them start shooting. Either way, something will happen.
"Hitler has only got one ball," he starts, bawling the lyrics as loudly as he can. He picked the song up from a group of Tommies in France about six months ago, and it lingered.
"Are you insane?" Lawson hisses.
"Goering has two but they're very, very small." Lawson tries to grab him. Spike evades him easily and continues.
"Himmler," he sings, "is very similar - but poor old Goebbels has no balls at all!"
"You idiot!" Lawson shouts, just as someone else shouts a command in German. Spike grins at Lawson, then turns to face the squad of infantry making its way towards them from the tree-line.
"This," he says, "is gonna be fun."
He throws himself at the Nazis with a yell of sheer joy.
Spike is licking the last of the blood off of his fingers when Lawson comes up behind him.
"I take we don't want to be out when the sun comes out?"
"Too right we don't," Spike answers. "We also don't want to be here when the whole German army comes looking for what's left of this patrol. Still, we've got about an hour to find cover. Fucking Angelus, and his sadistic little power games." He starts walking towards the woods, Lawson dogging his heels.
"He made you, too, didn't he?" the American asks.
"Hell, no! He made my sire, though," Spike admits grudgingly, "and since she's fair to cracked, he's the one taught me what it is to be a vampire."
He pushes his way into the forest, cursing his luck. The woods are not his thing. They'll most likely get lost and wander around trying to catch rabbits until they both starve.
"Who's going to teach me?"
"Most likely no one," Spike tells him, "though I'll answer any questions you can think of until we part ways. Makes you luckier than most new vamps these days. No one's really got time to babysit fledglings with this bloody war on." War or no, it's shite of Angelus to turn a fledge out without even telling him which legends are true and which aren't. Spike has no plans to mentor Lawson - Dru would like those dark good looks of his a bit too much - but the boy's family, in a way, and Spike has enough of the traditionalist left in him for that to matter.
"Do you like being a vampire?" Lawson asks.
"Do I - what sort of a question is that?" Spike asks. "Yes, I like being a vampire. I get to eat whoever I want, and nobody tells me what to do."
"Angelus does."
"Angelus is older than I am," Spike says, "and bigger. Besides, I only run into him once every forty years or so. I could set him on fire or something, but my girl would never let me hear the end of it."
"Don't tell her," Lawson suggests.
"Won't work," Spike says glumly. "She's psychic as well as insane. If she'd been around, I'd never have ended up on that bleeding U-boat in the first place. That bloody little Austrian with his stupid sodding mustache has fucked everything right up." He looks around. "I hate to admit it, but I think we're lost."
"You're not very good at this nature thing, are you?" Lawson asks dryly.
"I eat people, not fucking deer," Spike retorts, and is about to teach Lawson a few salient points of vampiric hierarchy -- namely, if whoever you're talking to can kick the shit out of you, it doesn't pay be a smartarse -- when he hears the glorious sound of a running motor.
"This way," he insists, and takes off. The vehicle turns out to be a transport truck, but given the mood that Spike's in, the odds don't actually pose much of a problem.
Author's Notes: I've only seen this episode once, so some of the canon is probably a bit off. I think the submarine was near the US, not France, so there I have taken deliberate creative license. I''m also assuming that Spike lied to Angel about what he was doing when the Nazis picked him up. It's a Spike sort of thing to do, whereas I can't help thinking he'd be bored out of his mind at a virgin-blood party.
I'm not even going to pretend that the non-description of the lack of German defences is even remotely accurate.
The song Spike sings was widely circulated amongst Allied forces, at least according to my grandfather, who knows everything.