Midnight Descends
Sprusilla one-shot set during Not Fade Away
I don't realize how much I've missed her until I sense her closing in. My princess―coming on slow like death and slithering up my spine. I've always loved that feeling. Before the soul, before Buffy, before Sunnyhell, when Ripe Wicked was all I thought I'd ever need, we'd separate to make independent mischief, but I'd know the exact moment she demanded my return. Oh, black beauty, she'd come creeping through my veins, a favored drug.
Even with all that has passed between us, I immediately recognize her call.
I look up from the stage―finishing the ode to me mum―and catch a glimpse of blood red fabric sliding through the crowd, coupled with the scent of daisies I suddenly find overwhelming. Both serve to assure me the sensation was no phantom memory unearthed by the poem I'd recited when first I drank myself into performing.
No, she is surrounding me, and not because I conjured her with lyrical nostalgia. Just desiring this girl could never have brought her to me. I've tried that tack before, failed too many times not to have learned. If she is here, it is only because she wants to be.
Even still, she is keeping her distance: luring me with flashes of color and snatches of smell. All I have for certain is the customary fire igniting within me, but that's more than enough. She's teasing, enjoying her created game. She slips between bodies, pushing her way to the edge of the room, and then her giggle pulses in my ears.
She knows I'll give chase, knows I enjoy playing as well.
Standing, I ignore the applause that once again erupts from the bar's clientele. Their praise doesn't much matter anymore; this is no longer how I wish to spend my final hours.
I duck into the throng of creatures cold and hot, demon and human alike. It only takes a moment to hone my instincts to her; I could move blindfolded now. She is silent, as she should be with no need to breathe and no beating heart. But she cannot disappear; each of her movements echo in me.
On some basic level, the blood we shared when she offered me eternity still lives beneath my flesh, blood that will find her forever, whenever she's in reach.
I track her out of the club, sticking to the long shadows cast by buildings beneath a sun sitting high in its midday position. She's not alone. Indistinguishable before, surrounded by many of his kind, the human is now unmistakable. Whatever her purpose for him, his death will be at the end of it. Maybe I should play the champion, save the git, but I'm curious to know where she's headed while baiting me. I stay quiet and tag along.
She has to feel me, but she's not letting on. She moves steadily; I quicken my pace to get her in my sight. Several back alleys later and I've caught up with her. She's mere feet in front of me, holding a black umbrella and the arm of a young bloke: some late-twenties boring berk, enamored with her as anyone would be. He keeps trying to kiss her and she keeps evading him in that coy way I'd seen arouse and enrage many in my years as her predatory partner. This is a dance we perfected long ago, and she's running through the practiced steps I recall well.
I take a risk, give a growl, and watch her stop short. She certainly notices me now, and I can't help but smile because a part of me will always want her attention.
Big blue eyes glint amber as her comely face shifts to ridges and fangs. A moment later and you'd never know she let her demon loose; she turns back to her companion and goes forward, tugging me on an invisible leash behind her.
They pause at some hotel's side entrance and he pulls her through, still attempting to have his hands everywhere they shouldn't be. I wait a tick before I follow.
Her scent lingers in the lobby and the elevator, but the trail goes cold each time the doors open. Then abruptly she's back again, invading me on the third floor. Stalking down the hallway, I feel her behind a door. Room 17, and no, the irony isn't lost on me. I could kick it in, but instead I knock.
And I'm not ready for it. Not like I always thought I'd be, in the time since our last meeting. Sprawled next to Buffy, after one love-hate fuck or another, occasionally my mind would wander back to my sire and our days bathed in blood. I would imagine that if she'd only beckon me, I'd finally leave it behind―the solitude Summers was dragging me into. But the call never came, I never went, and now she's peering at me from behind the door she's opened a crack.
"Hello, Dru."
"My Spike," she murmurs, and I want to rage at the miserable unending truth of that statement. Fucking hell, she owns me still.
I know I should walk away, run if I have to, whatever it takes to stop her words suckering me just as they did one hundred and twenty-four years ago. I don't. And I won't. Her gaze snags mine and I'm as helpless to ignore her as ever I was.
"Let me in?" I ask, fingering the flimsy gold chain that prevents the door's opening any farther. I could break it effortlessly, and I don't need an invite into a public establishment. But I'm asking anyway.
She smiles then, and I view the claret staining pearl-white teeth and seeping from the corners of her mouth.
"Of course."
I'm over the threshold a split second after she allows it and closer to her than I have been in too long. So much for resistance. I don't reach for her, though. I can't, not yet.
"What took you?" she asks, her grin turning impish.
"Lost you on the lift."
"Never lost," she says.
I think, just misplaced, before I shake it off and raise a thumb to the blood on her face, smearing it along her bottom lip.
"Where is the wanker?"
She glances toward the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. I can partially see him, gangly collection of limbs crumpled on the tile floor. "Cold, now."
"None for me, then?" I should be glad she's finished him off already, saves me the trouble of feeling obligated to stop her. But it's an old reflex, wanting to share in the kill.
Bringing her hand between us, she says, "Ah-ah," index finger ticking like a metronome, "I can see you."
She's phrased it the same as Anyanka had, all that time ago that in this moment feels further away than it should. Shame pulls at me like a needy toddler on its mother's skirt. Under the influence of Buffy's opinion, I sought the soul, and under the influence of Dru's presence I want to apologize for it. Love, fucking love. 'S not only funny, it's right fickle.
Because of course I still love her. That emotion is a weakness I can't rid myself of. I don't get over it, it gets over on me. I can cover it with another, and that time and place and girl will mean as much…but old flames burn steady until it's time again for them to flare up and incinerate me anew.
Here she stands, seeing my soul, waiting for me to deny it. I wish I could, because it's not what she'd want for me. But there's no point in hiding from the vampiress with the second sight. I say nothing, and she says,
"You shimmer. You shine. Like him."
I bristle. There's something I can deny, and I'll be damned if I don't. "No. Not like him."
She considers this; her smile falters, then brightens once more, "No, not like him. The soul shoved Angelus all away…but you've left space for Spike, haven't you?" She places her palm―warm from the recent feed―on my chest, presses hard, pushing her words into me with those long fingers, painted nails that have drawn my blood more times than I can count. "There he is, pet, all swagger and sneer. My bad dog. Thank you for keeping him, even if he is on a chain. Our pack has gone to dust or decency, but I can still recognize you, beneath your white hat. Glad for it. To lose my Spike completely would be..."
She lets the sentence hang. The implication makes me uncomfortable. I'd never concerned myself with what our abandonment―mine―had done to her. I was too wrapped up in being a saint for my Slayer to wonder how Dru was getting on. Should have realized it would damage her. She's strong, stronger than some give her credit for, but she needs to be seen to, she needs to be attached. 'S why twenty years into vampirism she sought me out. She wanted something…someone…all for herself.
I am a rotten bastard. I was the one supposed to love her best.
I say, "Never lost."
She's close to crying. I can smell the salt of her tears preparing to fall. "I've been lonely, William."
"I'm sorry, princess," I say. And I am. So goddamn sorry. "That why you've come to find me?"
She nods slowly. "Wouldn't dare miss my chance."
Might have guessed. She brought me into this world, such as I am. Sweet of her to see me out.
"You know what's comin'?"
"I saw black thorns and beasties. City of Angels dragged straight to hell," she says. "Don't fret, though, you'll save the baby."
My fingertips brush her cheek, touch the dark locks framing her angular face. She wears her hair simply now, hanging loose around the shoulders. I wonder if those elaborate styles she once preferred were abandoned because she had no one to help her. All that pinning and curling was difficult to do alone without a reflection. I assisted whenever she asked. I'd have done anything she asked.
And I still may. God help me if she asks me to stay.
"Funny, you never cared for children," she continues. "Except to eat. Remember the orphanage?"
"Dru, don't let's reminisce."
It's not that the memory pricks my conscience; it's just a bitter reminder of how everything has gotten irrevocably fucked.
Enjoying the feel of superiority over Angel, I've been playing as though getting my soul was some noble search 'n rescue mission. As if I were driven by righteousness. Sounds great, even believable, given all that followed. Except the old man was right, wasn't he? I did do it for Buffy, even if it was to gain access to her heart and not what's between her thighs.
When I walked into that cave and made my bargain with Lloyd (the fuck kind of poncy demon name is Lloyd, anyway?), I wasn't thinking about redemption, and I certainly wasn't aiming to save the bleeding world. I was thinking of her. Of being hers, because it was the only way I could be. Buffy would never let herself love a monster. What else was there but to try and be a man? Don't know that she loved me even then, whatever she said while our hands were on fire.
Drusilla loved me. Her affection came with conditions of its own, but far fewer than the Slayer's had. I refuse to detract from its worth now we're on opposite ends of the good/evil spectrum.
All this change, every single way I've buggered myself that there's no coming back from. For what, really? Buffy's cozied up to The Immortal, I've signed on to Captain Forehead's fucking suicide mission, and this will be my last day on earth. Again.
Death, glory, sod all else. Been there. Done that. Doubt it'll be as satisfying the second time around.
"Poor boy. You're lonesome, too."
"Didn't say that, ducks."
"No, but I heard you all the same." She leans in to press her forehead against mine, a gesture so familiar it aches.
"Always did, didn't you?" I say. "Probably the only one ever has."
When I tell her to get her kit off, she does.
Standing in the center of the crimson ring her dress has made on the floor, she watches me circle her.
I drink her in, the vision. At times it's still fascinating, the inalterable nature of our kind. That same flawless luminescent skin, just as I remember it, soft alabaster roped with delicate blue veins branching outward from a still, black heart.
She steps over her discarded frock and into my arms, puts her pretty mouth to my ear. "If you're leaving me for good an' all, I want a proper farewell."
I get the sense she's not talking about the impending battle. Even if I survive, we both know she's gone where I can no longer follow.
"An' you'll have it," I say. "More'n once, I'd wager."
Perhaps my own heart—a few shades lighter since the soul—should rebel against this, being moments away from screwing my sire while a corpse lies in the other room. But I want her, and it's already too late for the little blighter, and Ididn't kill him. It only looks like old times if you squint.
She melts into me, and I am unsurprised to find my lips haven't forgotten how to kiss her, my hands how to touch her. It's as natural as not-breathing. I am immediately drunk on the taste of her, the feel. I'm hard as a bloody rock, my fangs itching to descend. I let them; I'm free to be a monster here.
When the time comes—too soon—I will leave this room, don my white hat and go be a hero. I'll risk my neck, and quite possibly lose it. But I have her now, and I will savor it, this one last good day.