"Cocktail" A/N: Mother disclaimer: All drugs are bad. Shirley Temples and whiskey sours exist, but if you're under 21 (or whatever your country's drinking age is), wait to enjoy until you are.
KARMA: Cocktail
It's not so much a bar as an orgy with alcohol, and Faye pulls on a pair of gloves before she touches anything. The place reeks of raw liquor and raw sex, and Spike walks on nails, pricked by fundamental needs.
He orders a double whiskey sour, emphasis on the sour.
"Takin' your life in your hands," Faye sing-songs as she swishes past him. She's casing the place for Job or any of his steroid-bulked associates and she's obvious about it, craning her neck this way and that to look over the writhing bodies of revelers.
Spike grabs her upper arm. "He's in the back, and if the scene out here's too much for you, you don't want to follow him."
Faye twists her arm out of his grip, glaring at him. He opens his hand and swallows half his drink. "Have it your way, but the way you look, you just might get an education."
"One of these days I'm going to buy a habit just to shut you up."
"It'd be an improvement," he says, draining the sugar-lemon-Jack sludge left at the bottom of the glass. The ice cubes clink against each other. He taps the rim of the glass and the half-dressed bartender winks at him and takes it away to mix another.
She sits beside him, putting her chin on her fists. The plasticine covering of the barstool creaks unappetizingly as her weight settles.
"What's your pleasure?" he asks.
"You wanna buy me a drink?" Faye scowls. "Then you order me something."
Spike grins to himself. He'd bet his last woolong she doesn't know thing one about mixed drinks. Every time Faye decides to get hammered, it's straight liquor or beer, unless someone hands her a martini. "Sweet? Sour? Straight?"
"Common question round here," the bartender says, on her way to the other end of the bar to serve another customer.
Faye is suddenly delighted, her eyes brightening. She throws her head back and laughs. Spike laughs too, surprising himself. Must be feeling it already, he thinks.
The bartender brings a fresh whiskey sour, and Faye taps his hand. "Let me try that."
"You won't like it," he says, but scoots the glass towards her.
She takes a sip and screws up her face. "Eugh. It's like lemonade with no sugar."
"Oh, there's sugar in it, but not much," Spike says. "Told you you wouldn't like it." He signals the bartender. "Get her a..." What drink would annoy her the most? "A Shirley Temple."
When the pink cocktail arrives, a fishbowl bristling with cherry stems, Faye glares and growls.
Spike grins and finishes his second double whiskey sour. It goes straight to his head, and he baits her. "Can you tie the cherry stem into a knot? All the girls who drink those can tie the stems into knots."
Faye savagely plucks a long-stemmed cherry out of the drink, crushes the fruit between her fingers, and knots the stem with her hands, scowling at him the whole time.
"Not what I meant," Spike says, on the verge of laughing again. Faye sucks the pulped cherry fruit off her fingertips.
He watches her do that with some interest, but over her shoulder is Job's ugly face. The child smuggler is doing up his pants. Two goons hover just behind his shoulders like strange wings.
"Our boy," he says, nodding towards him.
"We do it here or tail him outside?"
Spike glances around. "Hell, let's do it here. That way we won't have to pay the tab."
"Good plan," Faye says. They both rise and pull their pistols.
Spike fires first, taking out the bodyguard on the left. Faye hesitates. What is she doing? As the screaming starts, she finally shoots, but so does her target. She misses. He doesn't. She gasps and slumps against the bar, holding her side.
Job's on the move, heading out the back.
"Shit!" The other bodyguard vaults the bar and reaches to pull Spike over, but he pistol-whips him and shoots him point-blank. Gray matter spatters the liquor bottles.
Faye's injured but alive, and Job is getting away, along with the seven point eight million woolong bounty on his head. Spike takes off after the mark.
"Jet, Faye's down," he shouts into his communicator as he runs. "Looks like she forgot how to aim."
"Keep your cool," Jet says. "Just take care of Job. I'll pick up Faye."
"Don't sound so eager," Spike mutters, cutting off the communication.
Job doesn't have an escape route planned. Like a lot of big wheels, he's gotten sloppy, complacent. Spike catches up to him at the end of the hall in a dead-end, but as he tackles him, he feels the sharp sting of a hypodermic needle in his thigh. Job smiles manically up at him as he presses the plunger, slamming the chemical home.
"Lame," Spike says, punching him in the gut. "That your last resort or just something of your own?" He rips the needle out of his thigh and throws it away, but the drug is already in his veins. Euphoria, golden high. Spike clenches his teeth, hating it, hating the tingling little massaging fingers under his skin. The drug does one good thing: it masks the pain in his belly, and, maddened, Spike doesn't hold back.
He drags Job to his feet, slams him against the wall. The smuggler's teeth click together. Bloody froth appears on his lips. Spike hauls him around, bends him double. He brings his knee up and his elbow down, crushing the smuggler's balls and knocking him unconscious.
Job must have called for reinforcements. They'll be busting in any second now, but Spike's deep underwater, warm water. He slumps against the wall, his arms and legs heavy, dragging. The narcotic makes him feel a little sick now, but the nausea is far away and hard to fix on. Spike fumbles for the communicator as he slides to the floor.
"Jet..." he slurs, "I'm flying, man. I'm in the back..."