Spike stands underneath Buffy's window, leaning against the tree in the yard, smoking his fourth cigarette of the evening. It's late, the street is dark and the only thing illuminating his face is the bright, brief ember of the cigarette as he sucks the smoke down into his lungs...
He'd watched as Riley and Buffy swayed together to music, glowing in the light of candles downstairs. She looked peaceful. Calm, and happy. The biopsy must have gone well. God knows Riley wasn't the one making her look so soothed. He feels a soft release of tension in his shoulders as he thinks about Joyce.
Want to ask her about it. Wish it could be me in there with her, swaying her as she looks up with dreamy half closed eyes. all soft and sweet and serene.
It must've gone alright for Buffy to look so happy...
Her and Riley had stood swaying, looking into each other's eyes dreamily for what seemed like ages. He hadn't dared light a cigarette then, in case Buffy saw the glow of it from the window, but his fingers itched for it. He could feel himself becoming twitchy and irritated.
Finally they had shut off the music. Much as he was loathing watching them be so wrapped up in each other his stomach plummeted as they headed upstairs. He could just about see to the top of the stairs from the angle of the garden. As they reached the top stair Buffy stopped, let Riley kiss her, draped herself against his chest. Spike clamped his jaws, a sour bubbling jealousy burned his throat as he watched Buffy lead him round the corner into her bedroom. After a few moments the light in Buffy's bedroom window flicked on. He'd fumbled for a cigarette as she moved away, leaving the blinds open.
...Four cigarettes later and a long wait outside, and he's no closer to feeling any sort of release. He can't see them, but he can hear them. Smell them. Vampire sense of smell is such a curse sometimes.
He can smell Buffy's skin, hot and warm. Not excited though. Not wet or willing. She's about as aroused as Tara would be.
He hears him gasp... and her apologise. A soft susurration of lips on lips, possibly clothes shedding before yelp, and another apology.
Spike smirks bitterly.
Poor girl, can't help her own strength, and goes and shacks up with a weakling who has all the stamina of a fruit fly.
He hears her sigh, the note of frustration underneath ringing loud and clear like a church bell.
He pulls a fifth cigarette out of his pocket and lights it.
What good's he to you, Slayer? I bet he doesn't even wrinkle the sheets does he? Probably leaves the bed neater than he found it.
After a while, but by no means a particularly impressive feat of vigour, he hears a shallow grunt signalling the end of the nights torrid activities.
Bet that was as satisfying for her as it sounded. Girl barely made a noise, crewcut. You're never going to be able to hold on to her if you can't hold on to her. Bloody puffed up soldier, how you got her in the first place is a fucking mystery.
He chain smokes another two cigarettes, watches as the light turns off and he hears the rustle of bedsheets. He sneers, not having taken his eyes of the small square of Buffy's room he can see from the garden.
Guess the night's over. Over before it even began, eh pet? How can you stand it? Such dissatisfaction? That can't have been fulfilling. Not by a long shot.
Does he make your skin crawl, sweetheart? Heard it all. That wasn't passion, that was pity.
Spike stands in the dark for an hour more, lost in his own thoughts of Buffy, of her underneath him. God, on top of him. How beautiful she would look, all that gold hair and peach toned skin.
Bet she'd feel like a dream... all those muscles pulling and wrapping and holding you. Twisting you up until you burst.
The images in his head flow like liquid silk. The way she'd move, breath hitching, nails scratching his chest, his back. Gold hair spilling over tight breasts, neck covered in love bites and bruises from his lips. Scratches from his teeth decorating her shoulders...
He crushes his last cigarette out under his heal, is about to walk home, maybe pick up a bottle of bourbon on the way and drink until he can't feel anything anymore. Drink until the tongue in his mouth is thick and choking him. Drink until thoughts of her are all but a fuzzy blurry image instead of the sharp stinging agony they are now-
The front door of Buffy's house clicks shut and he realises he didn't hear the door even open. He freezes, thinking Buffy's about to roundhouse kick him into next week, but it's not Buffy.
Riley heads down the steps of the porch, shrugging into his coat. Spike stands a little straighter, watching as he turns down the road.
Where the hell are you going, Boy Scout? Beautiful naked girl in bed upstairs and you what? Need to take a walk around the block?
But he doesn't have the air of a man stepping out for fresh air. Riley's shoulders are hunched, furtive.
On the move to somewhere he shouldn't be. Somewhere the Mrs doesn't know about...
Spike shrugs his coat up around his shoulders as he pushes off from the tree, casting a last glance up to Buffy's window.
Think I'll take a little walk myself.
Spike stalks Riley down into the lower depths Sunnydale, where the factories are all empty shells, and the shop windows are all boarded up.
It's late at night but there's still enough foot traffic of drunks and drug addicts passing by on the road for Spike's footsteps to blend in underneath. Eventually Riley turns a corner into an abandoned factory parking lot. Spike hangs back in the shadows and watches as Riley disappears into the mouth of the rotten factory.
It stinks down this end of town. Like piss and drugs and-
and blood.
There's blood in that factory. Lots of it to be able to smell it from here. To be able to smell it underneath all this muck.
The demon in his mind pricks up its nose, baring fangs and Spike can hear the growl of it reverberate all the way down his spine, straight down into his boots. That smell sets his teeth on edge and he fights to keep his human features from slipping underneath the fangs and furrowed brow of the vampire rising up.
Wild as the animal in him is he's always managed to keep a leash on it. Sometimes clawing it back by his fingernails but it still listens to him. It never had him fully. Not like others. Other vampires would feed and rip and tear to pieces anything in their path to feed their hunger. Couldn't keep it sated. Couldn't hold on to it, the blood lust was always too much. Too powerful a tide not to be swept by it. Too taken by it to think even a single focussed thought, becoming mindless snarling monsters, prowling like rabid dogs.
As the smell of blood settles down around him Spike pulls the control back by inches until he can see straight, lets the demon gnash and bite inside but doesn't let it out.
Heard of these places. Never wanted to be caught dead in one. Well... deader in one. Full of sad lonely humans, men mostly, paying vampires to suck them off. Getting off on the rush of it. He could smell the arousal underneath the stench, stale and disgusting like dried semen and blood stains.
Sure there were plenty of his fellow kind in places like these. More since the Initiative shut down, flooding the streets with vampires that couldn't feed themselves. That couldn't bite anymore, and refused to get by on animal blood. That's a little loophole her army brat's playgroup didn't see coming. Human desire drowns out the pain of the bite, letting the chip remain dormant.
All these new and disgusting suck houses popping up all over the place now. Spreading out into any unused and abandoned places they can find.
Even in his most desperate moments, starving to death after his escape from the Initiative, feeling his demon starting to pace and shred himself from the inside out, the thought of using one of these places turned his stomach. It was beyond distasteful. It was revolting. Humans or not, willing or not, you don't unleash an addiction like that on someone. On yourself sure, but not on others. Not on weak minded feeble idiots scrabbling to find something to make them feel alive, whether they asked for it or not.
You have to be a real parasite to do something like that.
Besides, I might not be perfect, not by a long fucking way, but I'm no whore. Start down that road, where does it end?
And here we have the Slayer's boyfriend, Initiative soldier, Captain Dependable, waltzing right into the middle of the fray.
Probably out for a quick punch up on blood-drunk vamps. Easy targets for someone looking to work off a little aggrevation and dissatisfaction. For someone looking to feel less expendable for once.
Spike smirks, heading for the doorway of the factory.
It would be too much to hope... but God how satisfying it would be if he-
Inside the entrance he freezes, pulls back into the shadows. Riley is standing amongst moulding furniture dragged in and scattered haphazardly through the warehouse, humans and vampires draped across them in varying states of undress and recline. The smell of blood is searing now and it takes all of Spike's attention to focus on Riley. Riley talking to a skinny, anaemic looking girl-vamp. Dishevelled and hungry looking. Riley fishing in his pocket, pulling out a wad of notes and handing it to her.
Riley being taken by the hand. Riley being led upstairs as he lifts the sleeve of his shirt up, peeling away a bandage covering twin holes just underneath the crook of his elbow.
Spike bites his lip, grinning like a maniac, eyes gleaming in the gloom of the shadowy factory as he retreats unnoticed.
What dyu know, there is a God after all. And for some reason, he's shining his light on me.