Seasonal, but not exactly festive.
Here's a short fic set around the Winter Solstice of Angel S5. Spike, definitely not broody. Honest. Rated G.
A Nocturnal
The darkest hour of the darkest night of the darkest year. Deepest midnight, and Spike was alone.
No real change there, then. Why had he ever imagined anything else was likely? He was unalive, unbreathing, corporeal again; what else could he really ask for? A vital, loving girl in his arms? Don’t be funny.
He prowled around the office. Not much he hadn’t already seen, to be honest, and not much to admire in the first place. Corporate design had never been his thing. Angel might feel it validated his sense of self, but that only served to confirm just what sort of a wanker he really was.
Almost in disbelief he picked up a strange object, a sort of frame from which hung a row of silvery balls. “I knew he didn’t have any of his own, but this is bleeding ridiculous,” he muttered. Vampires were not generally known for their fashion sense, or for moving with the times, but that Angel could be stuck in the seventies’ mindset of executive toys almost beggared belief. Next thing, he’d find a sodding Rubik’s cube.
Spike idly flicked the end ball and watched as it clicked sharply against the others, triggering a reaction at the other end. The regular clacking was soothing in its way, he supposed, if a bloke had nothing better to do. And he had a whole yawning gulf of nothing better to do.
Still, if there was bugger all to do, he might as well do it in comfort. He settled down into the chair (finest leather for executive bums, in every sense of the word) and tilted back, boots resting on the table top. No Peaches here to be annoyed by the gesture, but he’d come to terms with that loss. Other losses were harder to deal with - hazel eyes, wisps of hair, determined chin. Think too much along those lines and he’d turn into as big a brooder as other vampires he could name.
She was happy now. Had to be. No bleeding vampires to bother her and hordes of slayerettes to do the donkey work. She was swanning through some fabulous city - New York? Paris? Rome? Not London - it hurt too much to think of her in his own old home. She’d be in stylish boots, classy clothes, hair by a fashionable salon.
Or perhaps she had a little house in the country with Dawn. Just now they’d be hanging up the tinsel, setting presents beneath the tree, making that eggnog stuff Americans liked.
Yes she’d be happy. So he was happy. Right.
His life was shrunk to this. The essence of all deadness - a vampire feeling dead, his unlife like sap sunk to the very roots. He was every dead thing - but she could be a lover in her new world. And one day, one century, he’d move on. Just now, though, in Mr Broody’s brooding hole, he’d brood. Midnight of the day and the year. The longest bloody night of all.
A Nocturnal
The darkest hour of the darkest night of the darkest year. Deepest midnight, and Spike was alone.
No real change there, then. Why had he ever imagined anything else was likely? He was unalive, unbreathing, corporeal again; what else could he really ask for? A vital, loving girl in his arms? Don’t be funny.
He prowled around the office. Not much he hadn’t already seen, to be honest, and not much to admire in the first place. Corporate design had never been his thing. Angel might feel it validated his sense of self, but that only served to confirm just what sort of a wanker he really was.
Almost in disbelief he picked up a strange object, a sort of frame from which hung a row of silvery balls. “I knew he didn’t have any of his own, but this is bleeding ridiculous,” he muttered. Vampires were not generally known for their fashion sense, or for moving with the times, but that Angel could be stuck in the seventies’ mindset of executive toys almost beggared belief. Next thing, he’d find a sodding Rubik’s cube.
Spike idly flicked the end ball and watched as it clicked sharply against the others, triggering a reaction at the other end. The regular clacking was soothing in its way, he supposed, if a bloke had nothing better to do. And he had a whole yawning gulf of nothing better to do.
Still, if there was bugger all to do, he might as well do it in comfort. He settled down into the chair (finest leather for executive bums, in every sense of the word) and tilted back, boots resting on the table top. No Peaches here to be annoyed by the gesture, but he’d come to terms with that loss. Other losses were harder to deal with - hazel eyes, wisps of hair, determined chin. Think too much along those lines and he’d turn into as big a brooder as other vampires he could name.
She was happy now. Had to be. No bleeding vampires to bother her and hordes of slayerettes to do the donkey work. She was swanning through some fabulous city - New York? Paris? Rome? Not London - it hurt too much to think of her in his own old home. She’d be in stylish boots, classy clothes, hair by a fashionable salon.
Or perhaps she had a little house in the country with Dawn. Just now they’d be hanging up the tinsel, setting presents beneath the tree, making that eggnog stuff Americans liked.
Yes she’d be happy. So he was happy. Right.
His life was shrunk to this. The essence of all deadness - a vampire feeling dead, his unlife like sap sunk to the very roots. He was every dead thing - but she could be a lover in her new world. And one day, one century, he’d move on. Just now, though, in Mr Broody’s brooding hole, he’d brood. Midnight of the day and the year. The longest bloody night of all.