Loose Ends
Chapter 7 of 7
by Lynne C.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: It's all Joss' - I worship at the altar of his genius, and acknowledge that he owns all these folks and everything that they do and say.
Setting/Spoilers: AtS Season 5, generally - and, Spike's "semi-canon" past (London, mid-1970s)
Summary: An unexpected epilogue to an incident in Spike's past, inspired by a throwaway line from Buffy 7.8
Misc: You can look in my ff.net profile for my website, and check there for updates to this story, or to read this part with its proper formatting (italics and such).
Loose Ends
More than twenty years had passed since then; returning to Europe, and then back to America again -- to Sunnydale and, eventually Los Angeles, with plenty of side trips for good measure.
On occasion, Spike would hear or read about the "bad boy" rocker, and he would inevitably shake his head and call him a "right bloody wanker".
Buffy had finally asked him, at some point in her year of resurrection depression, about the obvious resemblance. He'd regaled her with the tale, glossing over the specifics of his activities in the alley that night, but emphasizing the degree of insult he felt he'd been done.
She'd pointed out to him that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, but he'd been far from mollified by that old saw. To Spike's way of thinking, the boy should have looked back on that night in abject terror, wetting himself at the memory and thanking his lucky stars to have survived it. He should not have fancied himself sufficiently equal to Spike's badness to imitate it. Buffy had dismissed this argument, and the subject entirely, with a toss of her head and the roll of her eyes and a bored "whatever!"
As a result of his experiences in recent years, and particularly since the return of soul, sanity, and finally, physical form, Spike had gained a new appreciation for irony. He seemed to be surrounded by it -- sometimes, to embody it. And he'd begun to expect it. So it came as very little surprise the evening he turned up at the rave-o-teque and discovered that the now over-the-hill performer was headlining that night.
While it was hardly the opportunity he'd looked for two decades before, it was still one not to be passed upon. Though Spike usually stuck to patrolling the outside of the building during the events he worked, this time he arranged to switch off at the final intermission with a pair of semi-professional wrestlers who were employed as general crowd control.
It had been The Animal who had suggested that he offer his services to the nightclub (Hacksaw Houlighan hadn't said much of anything beyond a grunt and a nod), after they happened upon him dusting a vampire near the loading docks. They had both been surprisingly unphased at the sight, so, by way of showing his gratitude that they would put in a good word with the management, Spike had offered them some suggestions should they encounter the undead on their own.
Now, he figured they could handle themselves and mind the back alleys for the final couple of hours until the show ended and the crowd disbursed. Spike took up post on the somewhat worn sofa in the empty dressing room and waited.
With about 15 minutes to the end of the show, two giggling young women crept through the door, stopping short when they realized the room wasn't vacant as they'd expected.
Spike raised an eyebrow at them, causing them to blurt their excuses at the same time.
"Oh, like, we just want to wait for an autograph --"
"One of the, uhhh, crew guys told us we could party with -- "
"I mean, ummm, they told us we could, you know, come here to ask for an autograph...."
Spike's dubious silence seemed to rob them of a bit of their brazenness, and the second girl was tugging her skin-tight mini skirt further down on her legs. He sighed. I hope Dawn's smarter'n these birds.... He wasn't entirely convinced that she was.
"Sorry girls, strict instructions that 'e wants 'is privacy after th' show...and," he stood up and advanced towards them a bit menacingly, "you should both be a bit careful 'bout presentin' yerselves to bad men..." he leaned in and took a loud and pointed whiff of the excessive perfume that emanated off of girl number one. "They might just get the wrong idea...," the last was offered sotto voce, his lips just inches from her ear.
They scrambled towards the door, girl number two falling off of her much-too-high heel and turning her ankle over in her hurry. The sound of their accelerated heart rates seemed to echo behind them as they exited the room, and Spike was satisfied that they'd been scared back home to their mothers, where they belonged, at least for tonight.
It was a curse, really, the way he now identified girls of a certain age with Joyce Summers' daughters. He shook his head at the follies of the young and (relatively) defenseless, as he made himself comfortable once more on the sofa, arms stretched along the back, and boots propped on the coffee table in front of him.
When the music ended, it was only a few moments before the sound of the star and his entourage approached down the corridor. Spike hadn't actually lied to the girls who'd tried to crash the dressing room -- apparently, these days, His Rebelliousness did expect a bit of solitude at the end of a show. Prob'ly has to take 'is Viagra 'fore he can let the groupies in.... So, Spike knew he'd be able to savor the moment mano-y-mano.
It was almost as good as he'd hoped.
The voices had grown louder, and the doorknob had turned, though the door did not open right away. Finally, the door opened slowly, and he entered backwards, still in the midst of an animated conversation with someone, presumably the tour manager, in the hallway.
" -- you maybe book a venue that's not such a shitehole? Fuckin' Christ!"
He shut the door and leaned his forehead to it, before turning around.
He froze when he realized that someone was waiting for him, and when he realized who was waiting for him, the distinction between the skin of his face where it met the peroxide work atop his head faxed to nothing as the blood drained away.
Spike grinned up at him from his reclined pose on the sofa, and chuckled low when he began to reach behind him to find the doorknob again.
"Relax, Rocker-Boy. If I'd been 'ere to kill you, you'd be dead a'ready."
Garnering no response from the still-stunned celebrity, Spike took the opportunity to examine him closely for the first time. "Phht...1981 called, mate, wantin' their leather trews back!"
"You 'ere just to mock me, then?"
"Wot, it speaks? Not a statuary after all...no, not just to mock you. Wanted a look at the wee baby punker all gowed up, I s'ppose."
"Never thought to see you 'gain...." The voice was modulated, but very tense, and he was easing himself sideways, clearly attempting to work himself into a position to bolt.
"Yeh, likewise. 'Course, I've been seein' you all over for years, remindin' me I let one get away...." With that, Spike rose, and sauntered in the direction of the mini refrigerator that lived in the corner of the dressing room. "Yer standin' there all twitchy; sit down and we'll have us a chat." He perused the contents of the refrigerator, a bit taken aback by the tameness of the contents. Reality not keeping up with the legend, here.... Finally, he extracted two Red Bulls and turned to see his "host" unmoved from his spot near the door.
He popped the tab on his can and took a healthy swig before casually closing the distance between them. He shoved the second can into the agitated man's hands, took him by a shoulder and propelled him towards and into the chair opposite the sofa. Spike then resumed his previous sprawl on the couch.
He waited for the questions that didn't come, and studied the man opposite him, who was alternating between an affectation of cool indifference, taking large swallows of his Red Bull and staring at Spike with surprising boldness, and moments of palpable panic, when his breath would grow short and his eyes would shift rapidly about the room. Those waves of terror lapping at his senses were something Spike used to crave almost as much as he craved the blood that sped through the veins of the terrified. Like an alcoholic, he sometimes still missed it -- or maybe he missed reveling in it. Now it made him uncomfortable. He'd begun this thing, intending to get a kick out of giving the guy a harmless scare, but as his demon began to lift its salivating head, he realized it might just be backfiring on him a bit.
'At's it, Spike, jus' doin' wi'out thinkin' things through....now best defuse this bomb you've set....
He mentally gave the demon a kick in the chops, took a breath, and made an attempt at reassurance. "I said, relax, I'm not goin' t' hurt you...there was a time, but...I'm just indulgin' a curiosity. I'll bet you'd convinced yerself it was all a hallucination, eh?
"Well, I wasn't much pissed, but I'd had a bit o'grass, so fig'r'd 't was possible...so, why the fuck are you here?" Even as he was still trying to process what was happening, his fear appeared to be giving way to anger. He got to his feet then, crossing to stand over Spike, punctuating his words with broad gestures of his Red Bull-holding hand. "Since when d'you not 'not hurt' people, eh? 'At's not your way -- I may've been a wild man by times, but you're a fuckin' monster. So, either bite me, or get the fuck out!" At the last he deliberately exposed his neck in Spike's direction, a movement that was accompanied by his trademark curl of the lip, sending Spike into a fit of derisive laughter.
"Oh, quit posturin'! It's not goin' to work on me; I bloody invented it! Now, sit down and tell me where you come off goin' about lookin' like me!"
" 'S 'at what this is about?" This time, his emphasis was such that some of the drink splashed out of the can onto the leg of Spike's jeans. He paid no apparent mind, however, to the raised eyebrow that served as Spike's response, but continued his diatribe, still flailing to make his points. "Yer in a snit 'cause I learned to live wi'the most fuckin' horrifyin' thing that's ever fuckin' happened to me, and that includes my drug O.D.s and bein' the father o' two teenagers, by usin' the image t'get ahead? 'S not like you'd patented it!"
"Gotta hand it t'ya, mate, knowin' that the boogie man's real, an' that 'e's right 'ere with you, you seem pretty sure I was tellin' the truth 'bout not bein' here to kill you."
"I guess you don't seem so scary as I remembered. Maybe you weren't so bad after all! Maybe I didn't see what I thought I saw and you're jus' here lookin' for somethin' to steal that you can sell on the Internet!" He finally sat back down, the charges that he didn't really believe still serving to take the edge off of his apprehension.
"Piffle! You should talk...I get 'ere, 'xpectin' all kinds o' booze, drugs and wild sex to go wi' the rock 'n' roll, but instead, I find roughage in the refrigerator an' nary a broken bit of' furniture to be found. Not even properly upholdin' the image yer cribbin'! Bloody poof! I bet most of those stories about your hell-raisin' days aren't even true!"
"You take that back!"
"Don't get your knickers in a twist. 'S not like I'm evil anymore...course, still a vampire, so could give you a good thrashin' wi'out much effort. But, got my soul back..." here, his voice dropped, " 'cause of a girl, no less...." He paused a bit wistfully for a second, before continuing at a more normal volume, " 'n' now, I'm bein' all Boy Scout and savin' the world from destruction. Repeatedly. Go figure...So, what's your excuse?"
"Finally outgrew my protracted adolescence, guess you'd say. I got kids who don't want a baddass rockstar, just want a dad." He gave Spike a wry smile then.
"What?"
"Jus' realized I 'ave you beat."
" 'Ow's that?"
"I was only 'bout 25 years late in approximatin' a responsible adult, 't least in my real life. How long'd it take you?"
"Bit over a hundred," was the grudging reply. They were quiet for a bit, while they both digested the foregoing ten minutes. The erstwhile doppelganger finally relaxed enough to put his feet up on the coffee table, mirroring Spike's laid-back attitude. The previously charged air became almost companionable. Spike, at length, continued as if there'd been no pause, "but at least I 'aven't lost my looks!"
"Bugger off!"
The remainder of the night was a bit surreal. They conversed like old acquaintances, but of a sideways variety.
When Spike remarked on the star's crucifix jewelry phase, he learned that he'd viewed that as an element of self-defense. He explained how, after that night in North London, he'd gotten paralytically drunk every evening for many months, in the hope of sleeping without the nightmare image of what he'd seen re-surfacing.
Spike, asserted that, if one thought about it, he was now much tougher than when he was soul-less, since, back then, he generally just preyed on a weaker species (he declined to go into the convoluted details of his history with slayers). Now, on the other hand, he was whaling on other non-human types, often older, bigger and/or stronger than he was. He was told to "stuff yer braggin', I'm not some piece o' arse to be impressed at the pub."
They swapped life, and un-life, and near-death, and back-from-death stories into the small hours.
As Spike finally departed the club, not long ahead of the sunrise, he thought ruefully of the chuckle he and Buffy might have shared over this improbable encounter. And he discovered that, although he wanted to share it with her, with each new experience that he could call his own, it hurt just a little bit less that he couldn't. It was a strange sort of comfort. But then, he was a strange sort of vampire.
The End
No kidding, every time I'd sit down to work on this, a Billy Idol song would begin playing on the radio. That's just a weird sensation. I'm sure I've just grown more aware of them as I've been writing -- though that's not quite true either. Ever since Sleeper (BtVS 7.8), I've been aware of the connection, and the idea, and would be reminded of it every time Mr. Broad's "more, more, more" shouted through my speakers! It's like I have to write the story if I'm going to exorcise the idea. We'll see if it works!
Of course, in the story, I've never actually called "His Rebelliousness" by his actual name. It just seemed not quite right, to drop that wall of separation between the real person out there in the world (despite the fact that he's never going to read this), and the fiction I chose to write. I hope my gyrations to avoid a name, and still keep clear who "he" was at any given time, didn't detract too much from the narrative.
Interestingly, I noticed, once I started doing some research in order to try and get the chronology and details right, and looking at old photos (aside, anyone want to buy a packet of old Generation X and solo-Idol press clippings?) that...I think Idol really does look more like the derivative entity. He really didn't adopt the "look" that we associate with him until well after the true, semi-underground punk movement had passed it's heyday in the late '70s like he invented the pop version of punk...which, of course, is exactly what those who considered themselves "true" punk accused him of. Either way, putting 1982-83 Billy Idol next to 1977 NYC Spike, the latter strikes me as more the "real" thing. Go figure!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little stroll through a version of Spike's past, at least alluded to within the "canon."
For those who are interested:
Bibliography: My online sources in researching for this story
http:idolise.rocks.it
http:www.rollingstone.com/artists/bio.asp?oid=179&cf=179
http:idollinks.bravepages.com
http:www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/oct2001/bertiemarshall/bertiemarshall.html
http:www.punk77.co.uk/groups/bromley.htm
http:www.thefilthandthefury.co.uk/pistols/bio/spbio1.htm
http:www.vogue.co.uk/whoswho/VivienneWestwood/default.html
http:www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1231viviennewestwood/biography1.html
http:encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sex%20Pistols
http:encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Bromley%20Contingent
http:encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Billy%20Idol