MORTAL ALLIES SERIES
Episode 2: Spike's a Good Boi
By: Passion4Spike
Chapter 8: Strange Vampire
Chapter Summary:
Road trip entertainment.
The vampire was lurking. He was good at lurking. Better than good. A professional lurker. If Bruce Springsteen had an album called 'Born to Lurk', Spike would've been on the cover. Or, well, not 'born' exactly, but 'died' … 'Died to Lurk' … 'The Lurking Dead' … 'Dead Man Lurking'. Yeah, that was him.
Spike drew in a long hit of nicotine as he leaned against a tree in the park-like area at the back of the hotel where Buffy had walked the dog the previous morning. The sun hadn't been down long, but the reception for the wedding that had apparently been held earlier that afternoon was in full swing on the lawn. He took a swallow of whiskey from the bottle in his hand – the good stuff – which he'd nicked from the bar. The wedding guests looked like some strange mixture of the Waltons and the Manson Family. The bride had apparently found her a 'bad boy' to marry, and Spike hadn't had any trouble fitting into the crowd, even in jeans and t-shirt. It had been easy enough to grab the bottle of GlenDronach from the bar when the bartender had been distracted, and just walk away with it.
The vampire watched, unnoticed, from the dark woods around the neatly-manicured, softly-lit lawn, his predatory senses singling out targets. The bride would be delicious, all those happy-horny-hormones coursing through her would make her blood buzz like angels on bennies – but she'd be missed pretty quickly. The mother-of-the-bride was attractive, but she looked distraught, and no wonder – heaven only knew what it cost to pay for all this. Her blood would be dull and lifeless; barely worth the trouble. The mother-of-the-groom looked three sheets to the wind and could be a fun one, she was clearly a party girl. It would be easy for Spike to lure her off with a sultry look and a little sweep of tongue over his lips. The bridesmaids all seemed to be paired off with groomsmen or dates; too much work to get one of them off on their own. Then there were the children running about, playing chase in and out of the crowd and around the edges of the wood. He'd need two of them, at least, to make a good meal, but one would make a decent snack. Maybe it could hold him over and keep him from having to drink any of that rancid pig's blood.
Blonde or brunette? A ginger would be tasty, with that hot, fiery blood, but apparently there hadn't been any rust in the pipes in these families. There. Blonde. Blue eyes. Infectious giggle. Rambunctious. The flower girl? She was dressed in a frilly dress the same color as the bridesmaids. She'd do. Yes, she'd do nicely.
Spike watched, drinking his whiskey and smoking, waiting for his chance. She'd come near the woods soon, he was sure. It would only take a moment for him to grab her and steal her away into the growing darkness.
He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel before downing the rest of the whiskey and tossing the bottle down, as well. His eyes locked on his target, calculating her path and her speed, assessing the crowd, gauging the distance, deciding on his escape route, just like he'd done hundreds of times before. He took a step toward the place he estimated she'd be in another few seconds as she ran and called to her mates, getting close enough to the trees for him to nab.
He'd begun to move in earnest when he was suddenly drawn up short by a huge shadow flecked with copper moving into his path, and turning hard, accusing eyes on him.
"Bloody hell," he groaned, skidding to a stop. He'd completely forgotten that he'd brought the dog out with him while Buffy was getting dressed. "Don't look at me like that. Vampire, aren't I?" he asked his namesake in exasperation.
The dog shook his big head vigorously, rattling his tags, and looked back at the vampire, his eyes flashing momentarily sliver-blue.
"I'm not breakin' my word," Spike insisted, his lips pursed into a frown, hands going to his hips.
The dog huffed out an indignant breath.
Spike 'tsked' his tongue. "Should'a named you 'Angel', bloody self-righteous prat."
A low, dangerous growl rumbled from the dog's chest and he drew his lips back in a threatening snarl.
Spike held his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright … maybe the Angel remark was a bit beyond the pale, but still a right killjoy, you are."
"Rrrrr-Aarf!" Spike retorted in a half-growl, glaring at the white rabbit defiantly.
Spike rolled his eyes. "Fine, but see if I get you any more soddin' hamburgers," he groused, fishing in his pocket for his pack of smokes as he began trudging back toward the parking lot.
The dog trotted momentarily to catch up, then bumped into the side of Spike's thigh with a heavy shoulder, sending the vampire stumbling off to the side and nearly dropping his lighter. "Said I was goin', didn't I? Drink the nasty shite," he muttered, lighting up another smoke and stuffing the lighter back into his pocket.
"Whoof!" Spike encouraged, nuzzling the vampire's now-free hand.
"Think ya deserve a petting for that, do ya?" Spike continued to grouse. "Not bloody likely," he grumbled even as he began to scratch the dog's floppy ears. "Pain in my arse, you are."
Who's a good boi? Spike's a good boi.
** X-X-X-X-X **
Buffy was just bringing her bag of snacks out of the room when the two Spike's returned. She leaned against the trunk, waiting for them to get across the parking lot.
"You guys have a good time?" she wondered as the dog came up and pressed against her, bumming more petting, which he got.
"Brilliant," Spike grumbled. "Do ya know how to heat up that blood, then?" he asked, tilting his head toward the cooler already in the back floorboard.
"Yeah," Buffy said, standing up from where she was leaning against the trunk with difficulty, since Spike was pinning her to the car. "C'mon, I'll show you. If you don't do it right, you get cooked blood on the outside of the mug and cold on the inside."
"Don't think I need t' muddle my brain with the details," Spike insisted, reaching through the back window and retrieving one of the containers from the cooler. "Reckon I won't ever need that useless info after we part ways," he insisted, handing her the container. "Be sticking with the 'on tap' brands after this."
Buffy rolled her eyes but took the container from him. "Have you been drinking?" she asked, catching a whiff of alcohol on his breath.
"What's it to ya? Is killing barley against the bloody rules now, too?" he snarked.
"No … I was just curious if I was going to be riding in a car driven by a drunken vampire, is all."
"Pfft," Spike snorted. "Take more than a bottle o' Scotch t' get me drunk – unfortunately."
"A bottle? Like … one of those cute little baby bottles?" she wondered, holding up her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate a small, single-serving size bottle.
Spike barked out a laugh. "Yeah, pet, one o' those bitty ones. Must'a fallen off an airplane, I reckon," he asserted, looking up in the starlit sky for said plane.
With his gaze still skyward, Buffy swung her fist at his chin with a haymaker punch. Spike jerked away, leaning backwards almost Matrix-style, to avoid it.
"What the bloody fuck, Slayer?" he demanded, curling his hands into fists as he straightened back up, centering his weight, his demon rising, ready to fight.
"Just doing a field sobriety test," she said with a shrug. "You passed." She turned then and headed back into the room to heat up the blood.
"Bloody bint," he muttered, glowering after her. Standing there waiting, it occurred to him that he should've saved some whiskey to wash the taste of rancid blood out of his mouth with. He looked back at the wedding party and then at the door to the room. Did he have time to nick another bottle before she came back?
"Rrrraarrrf," Spike warned in a low rumble.
"Sod off," the vampire growled back. "Was just gonna nick some scotch, for fuck's sake. Don't be such a ponce."
Buffy returned then with two mugs, which she set down on the trunk. "Blood and cocoa," she said, shrugging. "Mom said you needed the cocoa to get the taste of pig's blood out of your mouth."
The vampire's brows couldn't decide whether to rise or draw together, so they made an odd confused motion. "How the bloody hell…"
Buffy snorted at the strange face he had manifested. "She's a mom. She can tell when her cooking is just being forced down, like when I had to eat broccoli or liver," Buffy informed him, as he picked up the mug of blood and sniffed it.
His nose wrinkled up, but he swallowed it down in a few long gulps, like taking medicine. "Bloody awful," he complained, his face contorting like he'd just swallowed a combination of orange juice and toothpaste.
"I think it's an acquired taste," Buffy told him as he picked up the cocoa and took a sip, swirling it around in his mouth to try and get all the blood rinsed away before swallowing.
"Who would want t' acquire a taste for that shite?" he wondered, before taking another drink of the cocoa, cleansing his palate.
"Vampires who don't want to get staked?" Buffy guessed with a saccharine smile as she waited for him to finish the cocoa.
Spike snorted and rolled his eyes. "Starting to think staking would be preferable."
"Don't be a baby," she groaned.
"I'll stop bein' a baby when you stop being a bitch," he sniffed as he handed the empty cocoa mug back to her.
Buffy laughed. "Well, I guess neither of those things is gonna happen, then."
"Not bloody likely," he agreed as she turned to go back in the room to rinse the mugs out.
** X-X-X-X-X **
"How much further?" Buffy wondered as the night rolled by outside her window, dark and boring, just like most of the previous night.
Spike arched a brow at her. "What are you, five?"
She rolled her eyes. "I was just wondering. Are we gonna get there tonight?"
"Barring too many bathroom breaks, yeah," Spike said.
"As if you don't want those breaks just as much as we do. You're jonesing for a cigarette right now."
"Bollocks," he disagreed. "Could go days without a fag. Reckon I could go longer without a fag than you could without chocolate, Slayer."
"As if!" Buffy disagreed. "Anyway, chocolate doesn't stink up the car."
"Says you," Spike retorted, wrinkling his nose. "Smell like Willy Wonka, you do."
Buffy tsked her tongue and rolled her eyes. "Better than smelling like a burned-out gymnasium," she contended, looking in her snack bag for more of the offending chocolatey sustenance. "And I should know!
"Oh, look. Mom put some Trivial Pursuit cards in here," Buffy said, pulling out a handful of cards in a rubber band. "Do you wanna play?"
Spike's brows furrowed. "How do ya play?"
"Well, usually there's a board, but in the car we usually just ask the questions and see who knows the answers," Buffy explained, grabbing her small flashlight to use to read by.
"What are the stakes?" Spike asked.
Buffy frowned. "There are no stakes, it's just for fun."
"That's bollocks. Gotta have stakes."
"Well, I'm not even sure how to keep score this way," she pointed out.
"Afraid, are ya?"
"Not afraid! Ummmm … okay, I'll ask the questions and if we disagree on the answer, then whoever is right gets a point. We'll take turns answering first. I'll have to ask all the questions on the card and then look at the answers on the back, otherwise, I'd be able to see the rest of the answers."
"You're a bloody idiot," he informed her.
A low, warning growl came from the backseat, making Spike roll his eyes.
"What? Why?" Buffy demanded.
"Ya shouldn't've told me all the answers were on the back. Could've gone through a few cards 'fore I noticed."
Buffy clicked her tongue. "I'm not a cheater," she declared.
"No, yer a bloody idiot," Spike agreed.
The growl raised in volume and a snarl was added in for good measure. "Well, the Slayer's not as smart as you, I'd wager," Spike shot back over the seat.
The dog let out a huff of breath and a sigh. The growl stopped.
"HEY!" Buffy objected, her face caught between a pout and a scowl. "You're supposed to be on my side," she chastised, looking back over the seat at the big furball.
The Guardian sighed again, more heavily, and flopped back flat on the seat, removing himself from this no-win situation. Buffy rolled her eyes.
Spike choked out a muffled laugh. "So, stakes?" he asked again.
"At this rate, the only stakes are wooden and pointy!" she threatened. "Do you want to play or not?"
"Go on then…"
"Right, okay, first question: 'What Russian city saw the collapse of the German eastern front?'" she asked, reading from the card.
"Stalingrad," Spike supplied immediately.
Buffy frowned. "Uh, yeah, of course," she said confidently, shrugging a shoulder. "'What color is the towel in Edgar Degas' 1898 pastel 'After the Bath, Woman Wiping Her Neck'?'"
Spike glanced over at her as she studied the card, thinking. He smirked as he turned back to watch the road, waiting. "Think we need a time limit. Tick-tock, Slayer, not getting any younger here."
"Shut up, I'm thinking," she complained.
"Shall I hum the 'Final Jeopardy!' music?" he wondered.
She scowled at him. "Pink," she answered.
"White," Spike disagreed.
She scowled harder. "Next question: 'What color is a Remy Martin bottle?'"
"Green," Spike replied immediately.
"Yeah, you get the easy ones…" she complained, moving on to another question.
When they'd finished all the questions on that card, Spike had one point – the towel was white in the painting. She slid that card over to his side of the seat and began the next set of questions.
"'Who was the lead guitarist for 'The Band''?"
"Robbie Robertson," Spike supplied.
Buffy snorted. "Well, everyone knows that," she groused. Never heard of them or him. "'What did the Greek orator Demosthenes put in his mouth to improve his speech?'" She frowned again. "What kind of stupid question is that?"
Spike smirked. "Don't they have a 'Trivial Pursuit for Slayers' with questions like, 'What color is the sky'?"
"Shut up, I'm thinking here," she complained. "Braces," she answered after a few moments, making Spike bark out a laugh loud enough to wake up the dog.
"What's so funny?" she grumbled.
"Don't reckon they had braces in the three-hundreds BC, pet," he explained. "'Pebbles' is the answer."
"Like, Fruity Pebbles?! The cereal? How…"
"Not the bloody cereal! Pebbles, stones," Spike repeated.
"As in rocks?" Buffy questioned, turning the card over to look. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"
Spike laughed harder.
"Shut up," she grumbled, searching through the cards for some questions she had a chance at. Where were the ones about Wile E. Coyote and The Backstreet Boys and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers her mom used to ask her? Clearly, her mother hadn't sent those cards! Buffy started firing off questions to Spike as she sifted through them, all of which he answered correctly.
"What kind of craft was the mast atop the Empire State Building intended to moor?"
"Blimps."
"Wrong! 'Dirigibles'," Buffy informed him haughtily when he finally missed one.
Spike snorted. "Blimps are dirigibles," he asserted.
"Pfft, says you," she complained. "'What's one-third of one-third?'"
"One-ninth."
"'Which of The Beatles does Sinclair Lewis' Babbit share his first name with?'"
"George Harrison."
"'What's the road to hell paved with?'"
"Slayers," Spike replied, grinning at her.
Buffy rolled her eyes. "What did you do, pay attention in school or something?" she asked, looking through the cards to try and find something he wouldn't know.
Spike shrugged. "Been around a while. Picked stuff up watchin' 'Jeopardy!' the last hundred years, didn't I?"
"Alex Trebek isn't that old," she contended.
"Heard he's actually a robot … one o' those android things, looks human," Spike replied.
"'Which way does Pac-Man face as the game begins?'" she tried, sure she had him now!
"Left."
"You've played Pac-Man? Are you kidding me?" Buffy demanded, gathering the cards up and putting the rubber-band back around them.
Spike snorted. "Whaddya reckon, I just spend all night terrorizing villagers and all day shaggin' and sleepin' it off? Fun as it is, even that gets old after a few decades."
Buffy pulled out a Snickers bar as she tossed the cards back into the bag. "Angel wouldn't know Pac-Man from a … a dirigible," she contended grumpily.
"Not sure when yer gonna figure out: I'm not the incredible git," Spike sniffed.
That point had not gone unnoticed, especially last night with his hair tousled and curling around his face, water dripping down his body, and nothing but a threadbare, hotel towel between her and the bits of him that filled out his jeans so nicely. Or when he let Spike in to comfort her – Angel would've never have thought of that. For that matter, she wondered if Angel would've even noticed that she was upset. She was not going there, however. Subject, it's time for a change. "You went to school, didn't you? I mean like … college or whatever. Did they have college back then?"
"How bloody old d' ya reckon I am, luv?" he wondered, arching a brow at her. "Not as old as Alex Trebek, I can tell ya."
Buffy laughed, shaking her head and eating her candy bar. "You're a strange vampire."
Spike shot her another wicked smile. "I'm takin' that as a compliment, ya know?"
Buffy shrugged, not disagreeing, taking another bite of her chocolate as the night air whistled past outside her window.
*END NOTES**
All the questions Buffy asked were from the original Trivial Pursuit game.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you're enjoying the story! Please stop in and let me know, I'd seriously love to hear from you!
Thanks to my wonderful friends, PaganBaby and Holli117, for sharing their talents with me by betaing this story. Any mistakes here are mine because I just can't stop fiddling!
New banner by Holli117! Isn't it cool!? And thanks to Paganbaby for the first amazing banner!
More to come soon!
