Crazy Madcap Redemption - 5
Dru's Grand Day Out! :)
Okay, I particularly like this chapter. It raises some... issues with Spike and Dru's relationship. That's all I'm going to say. :P
Previous Parts Here
Chapter Five: Dru's Grand Day Out
Spike was rescuing.
The very small phone he kept in his pocket exploded in a delightful electronic music, like mice had a discotheque in his jeans and it made her dance and clap.
But then he had talked very fast and angry with the bluebird girl with the boy’s name, and said he had to go, right away, and didn’t know when he would be back.
She could understand that; he was the most dashing knight in the kingdom, and so rescues had to happen. He thought she didn’t understand that, silly boy. There were damsels and tasty morsels aplenty in danger from darker things in the night than her.
Oh, but that was a delicious thought, and she couldn’t help but wrap her diaphanous cloak around her and slip out into the night.
She left her shoes at home because she was being sneaky, and her delicate toes padded kitten-quiet through the broken glass and weed-choked sidewalks.
The stars guided her, disguised, as they were wont to do, as traffic lights and turn-signals. But she knew which ones were stars, playing hooky from the sky, and which were just lights blinking at her for no reason.
At least she thought she did. They could be tricky, her stars.
But no, this time they were not false, but led her right to a bright and happy place, pulsing with a purple glow and the heat of many bodies crushed together. Supplicants wishing to worship at the temple were lined up inside a velvet rope, holding their offerings of tiny silver evening bags and cell phones.
Drusilla, of course, was a princess, not a supplicant, and so went straight to the head of the line and leaned over the muscular young man to decipher the runes on his clipboard. “Pst, pst,” she said, “The stars led me to you. Is it a party?”
“Are you high? Back of the line.” He glanced at her toes. “And proper footwear required, lady. Jeeezus.”
Drusilla pouted. “I am a princess and purple is one of my favorite colors of parties.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Queen of Sheba, if you ain’t on the list…”
So Drusilla took his mind away from him - just a little - pushed it down like a baby in the bathwater, and, giggling, stepped around him into the party.
The fairies were all there! Disguising themselves as disco lights and confetti, they danced around the periphery, singing of earthly folly and dead kings.
She started in to a country dance she had learned in her youth, though it required a partner and she had none, it was fun to set and turn about the dance floor, purple and green lights flashing up at her between her toes.
“Hey, you’re hot! Oo, scratch that, baby, you’re ice cold!” Human hands encircled her waist, radiating heat. She spun and stepped away, like a nymph leading a hero she waved her scarf at him. He followed, of course, holding his hands up at his sides and wiggling his hips as he went, as was the ritual dance of his tribe.
***
Spike was consumed with relief when his building came into view. All night and day he’d been anxious, worrying about Dru being left on her own, worrying about Angel smelling Dru, and then of course there was the actual mission-du-jour and helpless tykes to rescue. It was a wonder he’d been able to concentrate enough to put ax-end toward demon-neck. He swung his heavy ax up onto his shoulder and unlocked the street door, stepping into the dreary, but familiar halls of his apartment building, somehow sure now that the stained and banged-up green linoleum was underfoot, everything would be all right.
At the base of the stairs to the basement he saw his door was wide open. “Bugger-fucking hell,” he groaned, and ran the last few feet, though surely it wouldn’t make a difference.
The TV and Playstation were gone, a clean spot in the dust on their little table all the evidence of their existence. He dropped the ax on the couch and gripped his head. “Dru!”
She wafted in like a butterfly from the bedroom, holding a gypsy scarf stretched over her head like a veil held against rain. “Hark! My prince returns after so long a trial!”
“Drusilla. You left the door open. Someone’s stolen the mother-loving telly! I don’t have a lot of stuff to steal, pet!”
She let go of the scarf and it floated down her hair to the ground. “Well, that was while I was out, Spike. I couldn’t stay here all the night, and the lock only works from the inside.”
He rubbed between his eyes and for a while was unable to formulate a response while she watched him, hands clasped behind her back and leaning forward in eager anticipation. Oh lord, he thought, she wants me to spank her. “This being you, I am, of course, relieved and impressed you even noticed the lock. Pet, I meant for you to stay in until I got back. We discussed this. How’m I to know you’re not eating people?”
She skipped up to him. “I drank,” she said, coyly, and danced away. “Champaign!”
“Oh, Dru.” He sank onto the sofa next to the ax. “Look at your feet!” They were filthy, black on the bottoms, scratched, and marked with dried blood from tiny cuts.
She skipped around the room, presumably acting out her dance of the previous evening. “But it wasn’t like the Champaign we had in Paris, Spike. Not at all. That was starlight and jewels made into bubbles. This was more like something made from grapes. Oh, but it still tickled my nose and made the dear boy taste sweet!”
He jumped up, the ax bouncing on the cushion from his motion and falling with a clunk to the floor. “A boy. You tasted a boy?” He grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “Drusilla, did you eat someone?”
“Only tasted,” she pouted. “And he fell asleep in the bathtub,” she pointed at the bathroom door with a sulky frown.
“Oh god.” Spike ran his sweating palms through his hair again. “Fell asleep could mean anything with you.” He threw open the bathroom door and was greeted with the sight of a great lunk of a frat-boy slouched against the back wall of the shower stall. He was easily identified as a frat boy, or else he’d stolen the beer- and vomit-stained Zeta Beta Tau t-shirt. His wide, dark jeans were pulled down to expose paisley boxers and his limp dick, and he was snoring fit to shake the fixtures loose.
“Alive,” Spike sighed, catching himself against the door-frame in relief. He inhaled again. “And drunk, and… Drusilla!”
“Hm?” She looked up from examining the ax on the floor.
Spike’s face felt numb with rage. “You fucked this… this git?”
She raised herself onto tiptoe, her hands clasped under her chin. “Oh.” She pursed her lips. “Only a little.”
“I - can… can I not expect you to understand that when I have sex with you, I rather hope you aren’t having sex with other men?”
“I didn’t eat him!” She pouted. “I wanted to. His blood is so loud; it was practically begging to jump out of him as he danced.” She stomped one delicate, dirt-stained foot. “If I can’t eat the pretty boys, I must have some pleasure from them!”
Spike held his head as though afraid it was going to crack open. “So you’re telling me I can have you faithful, or good, but not at the same time?” He leaned his back against the doorjamb. “I’m the bleedin’ knight in the Wife of Bath’s tale.”
“You were always my knight,” Drusilla smiled like a teacher seeing her student has finally solved a difficult problem. She kissed him on the nose.
Spike sighed and turned to face the bathroom. “Oi!” He slammed the bathroom door hard into the wall. “Arse-wipe! Get up! Man of the flat wants a bleedin’ shower!” When that didn’t work he stepped forward and kicked his foot. “UP!”
The frat boy snorted and flailed to waking, blinking blearily at Spike. “Wha? Huh?”
“I said get your arse up, or I’m turning the shower on anyway, and the water comes out brown at first which would stain your pathetic clothes and serve you bleedin’ right you Neanderthal ass-picking pillock!”
The frat boy grabbed on to the towel-rail over his head and stared at Spike with some concern now. “Oh god, somebody’s yellin’ at me in British.”
“It’s ENGLISH, you moron. And in case you hadn’t figured it out, I’m the boyfriend of the trollop you shagged last night.”
“Oh. Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.” Spike nodded exaggeratedly, looming menacingly over the prone college student. “The realization dawns. Now get your pants up, Doogie. I can’t bear looking at your pathetic todger.”
Dru poked her head over Spike’s shoulder. “Are you not going to kill him? Not even a tiny bit?”
Spike turned and placed his hand on Drusilla’s sternum. He backed her into the living area. “Drusilla, pet, you did not orchestrate this whole thing in the hopes that it would drive me to kill a man, did you?”
She bit her forefinger and giggled.
“Don’t be laughing about this, now. I want the truth.” His voice cracked a little. “Because you can’t do this, Dru. You can’t be testing me or trying to pull me to the dark side. This whole arrangement, me and you, it’s about bringing you into the light. That’s the only way this works.”
“You’re all rules with a soul,” she said, twisting and pouting prettily. “Rules are no fun unless you’re breaking them.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone, so get it out of your silly head right now,” Spike said, pointing firmly at the ground.
Behind him, a man coughed. “Uh, look, uh, she didn’t tell me she was with anybody, okay?”
Spike faced him only long enough to say, “Out, you daft nit,” and marched over to sit on his couch and face his not-a-telly.
The frat boy exhibited uncharacteristic (thus far) wisdom and simply slipped out the door, holding up his over-large pants to speed his escape.
After a suitable silence had passed and Drusilla had stopped grumbling, Spike set his chin on his hand and sighed. “From the top: don’t leave the door unlocked, we live in a shit-hole and people will walk in and steal things. Got it?”
Petulantly, she nodded.
“Secondly.” He sighed. “Please don’t fuck random men. Or any men who aren’t me. And don’t eat anyone.” She began to look about to cry. He ducked his head. “You - you’re doing real great, pet, other than that. Haven’t killed anyone, that’s good. I am glad you knew there was a lock, petal. And I believe you; that you just wanted to have good, non-eating fun. But wear shoes when you go outside. You need a bath worse than I do, and I have demon blood under my nails.”
He felt like the grumpy, uptight father of a spoilt teen as she danced over and kissed his forehead.
“I thought it was demons you didn’t like me sleeping with,” she said, with a thoughtful frown.
“No, it’s men. Any men.”
“Or else it was just horns. You went on and on about Jared’s antlers.”
Spike blinked. “That thing was named ‘Jared’? No, never mind. ‘Course he was. Probably a public aid worker with a condo in Poughkeepsie. Men, kitten. I want to be the only one.”
She sank onto the couch beside him, an arm trailing over his shoulders. “No men at all, then?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, yeah, no men at all.”
“What about women?”
He laughed, covering his eyes. “Yeah, all right. You can sleep with women. See, I’m not so square, am I?”
Drusilla hummed happily and Spike relaxed back on the sofa, closing his eyes. He was exhausted, all the fight and the tension coming back to him now the immediate threat and fight was past. He fell asleep right there.
Drusilla tucked her scarf around her sleeping prince and gave him a kiss on his dear forehead, which was much prettier when it didn’t have those frowny wrinkles on it. Then she went to the door and shut it, fastening the lock for the night. She picked up another scarf that had somehow fallen onto the floor and noticed that her feet were all dirty.
Treacherous pixies! They must have gotten to her toes while she was sitting down. She waved a finger to scold them and tripped merrily into the shower to clean herself.
Continued -->
Okay, I particularly like this chapter. It raises some... issues with Spike and Dru's relationship. That's all I'm going to say. :P
Previous Parts Here
Chapter Five: Dru's Grand Day Out
Spike was rescuing.
The very small phone he kept in his pocket exploded in a delightful electronic music, like mice had a discotheque in his jeans and it made her dance and clap.
But then he had talked very fast and angry with the bluebird girl with the boy’s name, and said he had to go, right away, and didn’t know when he would be back.
She could understand that; he was the most dashing knight in the kingdom, and so rescues had to happen. He thought she didn’t understand that, silly boy. There were damsels and tasty morsels aplenty in danger from darker things in the night than her.
Oh, but that was a delicious thought, and she couldn’t help but wrap her diaphanous cloak around her and slip out into the night.
She left her shoes at home because she was being sneaky, and her delicate toes padded kitten-quiet through the broken glass and weed-choked sidewalks.
The stars guided her, disguised, as they were wont to do, as traffic lights and turn-signals. But she knew which ones were stars, playing hooky from the sky, and which were just lights blinking at her for no reason.
At least she thought she did. They could be tricky, her stars.
But no, this time they were not false, but led her right to a bright and happy place, pulsing with a purple glow and the heat of many bodies crushed together. Supplicants wishing to worship at the temple were lined up inside a velvet rope, holding their offerings of tiny silver evening bags and cell phones.
Drusilla, of course, was a princess, not a supplicant, and so went straight to the head of the line and leaned over the muscular young man to decipher the runes on his clipboard. “Pst, pst,” she said, “The stars led me to you. Is it a party?”
“Are you high? Back of the line.” He glanced at her toes. “And proper footwear required, lady. Jeeezus.”
Drusilla pouted. “I am a princess and purple is one of my favorite colors of parties.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Queen of Sheba, if you ain’t on the list…”
So Drusilla took his mind away from him - just a little - pushed it down like a baby in the bathwater, and, giggling, stepped around him into the party.
The fairies were all there! Disguising themselves as disco lights and confetti, they danced around the periphery, singing of earthly folly and dead kings.
She started in to a country dance she had learned in her youth, though it required a partner and she had none, it was fun to set and turn about the dance floor, purple and green lights flashing up at her between her toes.
“Hey, you’re hot! Oo, scratch that, baby, you’re ice cold!” Human hands encircled her waist, radiating heat. She spun and stepped away, like a nymph leading a hero she waved her scarf at him. He followed, of course, holding his hands up at his sides and wiggling his hips as he went, as was the ritual dance of his tribe.
***
Spike was consumed with relief when his building came into view. All night and day he’d been anxious, worrying about Dru being left on her own, worrying about Angel smelling Dru, and then of course there was the actual mission-du-jour and helpless tykes to rescue. It was a wonder he’d been able to concentrate enough to put ax-end toward demon-neck. He swung his heavy ax up onto his shoulder and unlocked the street door, stepping into the dreary, but familiar halls of his apartment building, somehow sure now that the stained and banged-up green linoleum was underfoot, everything would be all right.
At the base of the stairs to the basement he saw his door was wide open. “Bugger-fucking hell,” he groaned, and ran the last few feet, though surely it wouldn’t make a difference.
The TV and Playstation were gone, a clean spot in the dust on their little table all the evidence of their existence. He dropped the ax on the couch and gripped his head. “Dru!”
She wafted in like a butterfly from the bedroom, holding a gypsy scarf stretched over her head like a veil held against rain. “Hark! My prince returns after so long a trial!”
“Drusilla. You left the door open. Someone’s stolen the mother-loving telly! I don’t have a lot of stuff to steal, pet!”
She let go of the scarf and it floated down her hair to the ground. “Well, that was while I was out, Spike. I couldn’t stay here all the night, and the lock only works from the inside.”
He rubbed between his eyes and for a while was unable to formulate a response while she watched him, hands clasped behind her back and leaning forward in eager anticipation. Oh lord, he thought, she wants me to spank her. “This being you, I am, of course, relieved and impressed you even noticed the lock. Pet, I meant for you to stay in until I got back. We discussed this. How’m I to know you’re not eating people?”
She skipped up to him. “I drank,” she said, coyly, and danced away. “Champaign!”
“Oh, Dru.” He sank onto the sofa next to the ax. “Look at your feet!” They were filthy, black on the bottoms, scratched, and marked with dried blood from tiny cuts.
She skipped around the room, presumably acting out her dance of the previous evening. “But it wasn’t like the Champaign we had in Paris, Spike. Not at all. That was starlight and jewels made into bubbles. This was more like something made from grapes. Oh, but it still tickled my nose and made the dear boy taste sweet!”
He jumped up, the ax bouncing on the cushion from his motion and falling with a clunk to the floor. “A boy. You tasted a boy?” He grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “Drusilla, did you eat someone?”
“Only tasted,” she pouted. “And he fell asleep in the bathtub,” she pointed at the bathroom door with a sulky frown.
“Oh god.” Spike ran his sweating palms through his hair again. “Fell asleep could mean anything with you.” He threw open the bathroom door and was greeted with the sight of a great lunk of a frat-boy slouched against the back wall of the shower stall. He was easily identified as a frat boy, or else he’d stolen the beer- and vomit-stained Zeta Beta Tau t-shirt. His wide, dark jeans were pulled down to expose paisley boxers and his limp dick, and he was snoring fit to shake the fixtures loose.
“Alive,” Spike sighed, catching himself against the door-frame in relief. He inhaled again. “And drunk, and… Drusilla!”
“Hm?” She looked up from examining the ax on the floor.
Spike’s face felt numb with rage. “You fucked this… this git?”
She raised herself onto tiptoe, her hands clasped under her chin. “Oh.” She pursed her lips. “Only a little.”
“I - can… can I not expect you to understand that when I have sex with you, I rather hope you aren’t having sex with other men?”
“I didn’t eat him!” She pouted. “I wanted to. His blood is so loud; it was practically begging to jump out of him as he danced.” She stomped one delicate, dirt-stained foot. “If I can’t eat the pretty boys, I must have some pleasure from them!”
Spike held his head as though afraid it was going to crack open. “So you’re telling me I can have you faithful, or good, but not at the same time?” He leaned his back against the doorjamb. “I’m the bleedin’ knight in the Wife of Bath’s tale.”
“You were always my knight,” Drusilla smiled like a teacher seeing her student has finally solved a difficult problem. She kissed him on the nose.
Spike sighed and turned to face the bathroom. “Oi!” He slammed the bathroom door hard into the wall. “Arse-wipe! Get up! Man of the flat wants a bleedin’ shower!” When that didn’t work he stepped forward and kicked his foot. “UP!”
The frat boy snorted and flailed to waking, blinking blearily at Spike. “Wha? Huh?”
“I said get your arse up, or I’m turning the shower on anyway, and the water comes out brown at first which would stain your pathetic clothes and serve you bleedin’ right you Neanderthal ass-picking pillock!”
The frat boy grabbed on to the towel-rail over his head and stared at Spike with some concern now. “Oh god, somebody’s yellin’ at me in British.”
“It’s ENGLISH, you moron. And in case you hadn’t figured it out, I’m the boyfriend of the trollop you shagged last night.”
“Oh. Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.” Spike nodded exaggeratedly, looming menacingly over the prone college student. “The realization dawns. Now get your pants up, Doogie. I can’t bear looking at your pathetic todger.”
Dru poked her head over Spike’s shoulder. “Are you not going to kill him? Not even a tiny bit?”
Spike turned and placed his hand on Drusilla’s sternum. He backed her into the living area. “Drusilla, pet, you did not orchestrate this whole thing in the hopes that it would drive me to kill a man, did you?”
She bit her forefinger and giggled.
“Don’t be laughing about this, now. I want the truth.” His voice cracked a little. “Because you can’t do this, Dru. You can’t be testing me or trying to pull me to the dark side. This whole arrangement, me and you, it’s about bringing you into the light. That’s the only way this works.”
“You’re all rules with a soul,” she said, twisting and pouting prettily. “Rules are no fun unless you’re breaking them.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone, so get it out of your silly head right now,” Spike said, pointing firmly at the ground.
Behind him, a man coughed. “Uh, look, uh, she didn’t tell me she was with anybody, okay?”
Spike faced him only long enough to say, “Out, you daft nit,” and marched over to sit on his couch and face his not-a-telly.
The frat boy exhibited uncharacteristic (thus far) wisdom and simply slipped out the door, holding up his over-large pants to speed his escape.
After a suitable silence had passed and Drusilla had stopped grumbling, Spike set his chin on his hand and sighed. “From the top: don’t leave the door unlocked, we live in a shit-hole and people will walk in and steal things. Got it?”
Petulantly, she nodded.
“Secondly.” He sighed. “Please don’t fuck random men. Or any men who aren’t me. And don’t eat anyone.” She began to look about to cry. He ducked his head. “You - you’re doing real great, pet, other than that. Haven’t killed anyone, that’s good. I am glad you knew there was a lock, petal. And I believe you; that you just wanted to have good, non-eating fun. But wear shoes when you go outside. You need a bath worse than I do, and I have demon blood under my nails.”
He felt like the grumpy, uptight father of a spoilt teen as she danced over and kissed his forehead.
“I thought it was demons you didn’t like me sleeping with,” she said, with a thoughtful frown.
“No, it’s men. Any men.”
“Or else it was just horns. You went on and on about Jared’s antlers.”
Spike blinked. “That thing was named ‘Jared’? No, never mind. ‘Course he was. Probably a public aid worker with a condo in Poughkeepsie. Men, kitten. I want to be the only one.”
She sank onto the couch beside him, an arm trailing over his shoulders. “No men at all, then?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, yeah, no men at all.”
“What about women?”
He laughed, covering his eyes. “Yeah, all right. You can sleep with women. See, I’m not so square, am I?”
Drusilla hummed happily and Spike relaxed back on the sofa, closing his eyes. He was exhausted, all the fight and the tension coming back to him now the immediate threat and fight was past. He fell asleep right there.
Drusilla tucked her scarf around her sleeping prince and gave him a kiss on his dear forehead, which was much prettier when it didn’t have those frowny wrinkles on it. Then she went to the door and shut it, fastening the lock for the night. She picked up another scarf that had somehow fallen onto the floor and noticed that her feet were all dirty.
Treacherous pixies! They must have gotten to her toes while she was sitting down. She waved a finger to scold them and tripped merrily into the shower to clean herself.
Continued -->