(no subject)
So in the Buffy comics Giles died, and got resurrected as a twelve year old, which is boring because Giles was clearly a lot more fun as a teenager. Also Spike and Buffy are a sweet couple, which has killed all the chemistry in their relationship, so that was a poor choice too.
And Buzzfeed is full of Buffy stuff, so I'm craving a little something.
Xander isn't meant to be an arsehole, he just hates Spike and is worried about Giles.
Rupert is a lanky teenager, a little taller than Spike with at least two more inches to grow before he reaches his proper Giles height, but not if he keeps bumming Spike's cigarettes.
He found Rupert in Manchester. He wasn't looking for him, and wasn't even sure it was him at first. He was just another skinny teenager in too much eye make up, except then they made eye contact and the kid bolted. That was enough to kick in Spike's predator instincts, and he didn't realise who he was following until the kid reached up to push a pair of glasses he wasn't wearing up his nose an the gesture was suddenly, painfully familiar.
"Giles? Bloody hell."
So now they're sharing a squat in Salford. It's a basement flat in an old terrace where all the windows are boarded up, which suits Spike. The ground floor is occupied by six hardcore ravers of various ages locked in a permanent party none of them know how to leave, while the top has some middle class kids who think squatting makes them part of a movement. All three floors pointedly ignore each other.
Spike has the bedroom and Rupert has the sofabed, because for Rupert it's a novelty to be able to sleep on one again without putting his back out. His life is a mess of rediscovery, like the realisation that a seventeen year old can't hold his booze like a forty year old, but also doesn't suffer hangovers like one either. They drink a lot, between them, and smoke a lot, and there's always some tar black coffee and a lukewarm teapot somewhere in the apartment. Rupert has some money, but has been cut off from most of his old accounts on account of being dead and a teenager simultaneously. Spike does alright, but then, he doesn't spend much. Most nights they go to a pub and find someone to invite them to a house party.
They've brought a couple of party guests home with them. Barbara and Edith. They bonded with Rupert over having a name you just can't make cool, and with Spike over his willingness to share his fags with them. They spend the tram ride trying to come up with nicknames for themselves as cool as 'Ripper', which they hadn't thought cool at all earlier in the evening, but that's what a few jaegerbombs will do for you. Both women are in their mid twenties. Rupert actively avoids girls his own age, and Spike sympathises.
Spike swipes a bottle of milk from someone's doorstep - a reminder that the sun would be up by now if they didn't live in monsoon Manchester - and they drink it with vodka until the vodka runs out and Rupert pointedly pulls out the sofa bed. Spike and Barb retire to the bedroom. Rupert takes Edith on the couch.
Rupert has the experience of an adult man, but not the staying power. Edith is polite enough to wait until he falls asleep, then joins Spike and Barbara in the bedroom.
The next morning Rupert is pissed.
"You could have joined us too," Spike says.
"I hate this body. It's... it's not mine." Rupert is wearing a wooly jumper and tweed trousers, but he looks more like the hipsters upstairs than the man he used to be. He reaches for the glasses he doesn't wear any more and narrowly avoids poking himself in the eye. "It's bad enough being a teenager once. I can't believe it was like this, though. Feeling this much. Everything happening so fast. There's no time to even think."
"Old you wouldn't even have been able to get it up," Spike points out. "So, there's that."
Rupert glares at him. There's still a little kohl smeared around his eye sockets, though most of it's rubbed off on the pillows now. "What do you mean, I could have joined you?"
"It's a big bed." Spike shrugs. There's something about nerdy-cool old-young Giles that calls to the William-Spike in him. He's not sure what he wants to do about it, but there's no harm in throwing some ideas out there. "Bigger than some of the ones four of us used to share back in the day."
Rupert plucks up a pair of sunglasses from between piles of foil take away trays just to have something to clean.
"So that, ah, that was you, ah."
Spike laughs. "The soulless don't have a lot of hangups," he says.
"Did you ever tell Buffy?" Rupert asks. He doesn't meet Spike's eyes.
"Tell her what? Hey, pet, you know what else we've got in common? We both know the taste of your ex-boyfriend's cock?"
Rupert polishes the sunglasses so hard one of the cheap plastic lenses pops out. He puts them down with a frustrated sigh.
"Sorry," Spike says, lying.
"I hate being all hormones," Rupert says. "It's not like I never had a threesome myself, back in the day, but now I'm jealous that you've had a foursome." When Spike doesn't react to the teenager's shocking revelation, he goes on to say, "I'm going to research aging spells," in a voice that manages to sound both resigned and aggrieved.
He moves like he's going to throw himself onto the sofabed, stops, and sits down like an adult. There's a cumstain on the cushion by his leg, that Spike chooses not to point out.
"Shall I put a brew on?" Spike asks.
#
Rupert likes to dress up. It feels like he's in fancy dress all of the time, so why not play with that? He finds costume parties to drag Spike too.
Sooner or later Spike is going to get bored of hanging around with a kid like him, he knows. Or an old man like him. It's hard to tell. He bores himself sometimes. He's bored of his anger, his lust, his greed. He's bored of his patience and restraint and experience. He's so fucking bored of being bored.
There's a showing of the Rocky Horror Show at the Opera House, and they're going. He saw the play at the Royal Court in London in its first ever run. He goes as Frank. Spike doesn't take a lot of persuading to get into the gold trunks of Rocky.
Every hen night they pass, which seems like every hen night in the Greater Manchester area, rips open Spike's duster to coo at his costume. They're late to the play, which makes it harder to sneak in. They get in during the interval and find a couple of seats vacated by a couple who apparently missed the last fifty years and didn't know they were seeing some pervert play. They make friends with the people in the seats around them, who respectfully wait for Spike to take off his duster of his own accord before wolfwhistling loud enough to stop the play.
Rupert is getting a little bored of house parties. Someone has filled two crates with alcohol. One is red wine, tequila, red bull and jaegermeister. The other... Rupert doesn't know, but there's a haze over it that suggests the red box of death is preferable. He might have the young, fresh liver of a seventeen year old, but he'll be damned before he subjects it to that.
"Oh my god, it was so transgressive, you know? Richard O'Brien is gender queer, you know? Like, I think he was so ahead of his time. We're finally coming to understand gender fluidity, you know?"
No, Rupert thinks, I don't know. I knew, back in the seventies. I knew when I watched David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and I knew watching The Slits and The Clash. I shopped at Sex. I wore women's tops and doc martens. There is nothing. fucking. new. Only new to you.
He needs to find Spike. Spike gets it. Spike smirks when he complains, and talks about the trial of Oscar Wilde.
"Are you on facebook?" the girl he's talking to asks. She's wearing sequinned hot pants and a corset and bare feet, and Rupert thinks she said earlier she's a chartered accountant or something.
"No," he answers shortly, trying to plot and escape route. If he could make it out of Sunnydale's catacombs between nests of vampires, he can make it from the kitchen to the entrance hall, where he can hear Spike.
"Oh my god, that's so authentic of you. I would leave facebook too, but everyone from work is on there, and my mum's only just got her head around it, you know? It's not the real me on there, of course. If work knew the real me they'd probably fire me. Are you on tumblr?"
He can hear... American accents?
Oh god. No. Bloody hell.
"Excuse me," Rupert says.
It takes him five minutes to walk three metres, squeezing past half naked party goers. He desperately wants to be wrong and just go home. He and Spike can commiserate over being the oldest people there, they can swing by the chippie for comfort food, get some beers in, and just hang on the couch.
Not hang. God, he's even thinking like a teenager now.
He sidles past Spike's broad back, putting a hand on his shoulder so he knows who it is - it's a casual gesture that he hopes Spike will simply recognise, but even if he doesn't Rupert knows how good Spike's sense of smell is - and looks at the three people in front of him.
"Fuck."
"Giles!" Willow's eyes go wide with delight, then wider with shock.
"And Giles's nipples," Xander says.
"Hey, Gee," says Faith. "Nice tat. Real?"
He's so fucking glad it's Faith rather than Buffy. It is the slimmest of silver linings imaginable, but it is one.
"Hi," he says.
Spike hands out plastic cups of red death. He downs it in one. God knows he doesn't want to risk tasting it. Willow clearly made that mistake, and has the face of someone who isn't sure which deity she offended.
He wants them to leave. He can't deal with this right now. With being Giles in thigh high boots and a badly fitting corset. The scoobies clear can't either. The only moment in his life that has previously come remotely close to being this awkward was when Buffy found out he'd fucked her mother on a car bonnet.
That isn't a helpful thought.
"Maybe we should reconvene in the morning," Spike says. Rupert wants to kiss him.
"No," Willow says, eyes still wider than can be helpful. "I mean, we've come a long way."
They're scared he'll disappear again, Rupert realises. Faith must have told them. He'd run the moment she and Angel had turned their backs.
"How did you find us?" Rupert asks. After all, even he's not clear on where they are. Somewhere in Trafford. Probably.
"Location spell," Willow says. "Actually, it didn't pick you up, which I haven't figured out yet, but we did find Spike with it, so we thought we'd ask him for help."
"Because that's what Spike's known for," Xander says dryly. "His helpful nature."
"What did you use to cast for me?" Giles asks.
"One of your books."
"They're not my books any more," Giles says. "I left them to you."
Willow considers this. "We didn't have anything else. Anything more recent. I mean, you're still you, so-"
"Come on, Red," Faith interrupts. "He's still a high school librarian?"
"Those books belonged to Ripper too," Willow says.
"Ripper?" the woman from the kitchen as joined them. "Oh my god, that's an awesome nickname."
"I think that's our cue to leave," Rupert says.
#
Spike gives Rupert his coat on the way home. He's okay with being almost naked in front of the slayerettes, and the rest of Manchester, but Rupert was clearing struggling. It's raining, of course, which at least allows them both to pretend it's because Rupert's cold. His hair is flat, his make up is running, and one of his heels has broken. He's the very picture of teenaged misery.
The night doesn't get any better when they get home. The plywood has been ripped from their window (there's only one in the whole flat, thanks to being a basement, which is why Spike chose the place) and is lying in several damp pieces in the middle of the road. The window is broken, the glass scattered in and around the sink, and the rain is spotting Rupert's books.
The laptop they watch Passions on (well, Spike watches Passions on, and Rupert puts up with) has been stolen, but that's about it. It's not like they have a lot of property.
Rupert is worryingly quiet until he gets to the bedroom, at which point he lets loose with the most Giles sigh Spike has heard from him.
"That bloody cat," he says slowly, "has given birth. On the bed."
Spike knows. The smell of cat placenta is almost overpowering with his senses.
"Leave it," Spike calls from the main room. "We don't want it to eat its kittens on anything."
"That's rabbits," Giles calls back, but Spike knows he's not going to risk it.
Xander is peering at the broken window. "The frame is basically rotten. Why was it boarded up if it wasn't broken?" he asks.
"So it didn't get broken," Spike says. "Come on, there's a skip out back. We can probably get a new bit."
"Sure you don't want to watch the sunrise tomorrow?" Xander asks, but he seems happy for an excuse to get out of there.
The skip is actually a couple of streets away. Spike leaves Xander to root through it - "Don't want to accidentally stake myself, mate," - while he has a smoke.
"How is Giles?" Xander asks. "I mean, when you're not, uh, at costume parties."
"Alright," Spike says. When he doesn't elaborate Xander glares at him. Spike takes a long drag on his cigarette.
Eventually Xander is forced to elaborate. "Is it like this Buffy?" he asks. "Was he in heaven?"
"No," Spike says. "I haven't pried, obviously. But no, I don't think he was. He's done the kind of shit that takes more than a world-saving sacrifice to pay penance for."
"He doesn't seem happy."
"He's getting happier. Or he was, at any rate." Spike drops his cigarette and grinds it under his boot. "Nothing wrong with a bit of sex, drugs and rock and roll when you're feeling out of sorts." He leers at Xander.
"Oh god, you haven't."
"Haven't what?"
"If you've touched Giles, in any way-" Xander is angry enough to shove Spike back against the skip, narrowly missing a broken fence pane, but Spike gets over his surprise pretty damn quick and shoves him back.
"Why?" he asks. "Why shouldn't I? He's legal. He's more than legal, he's almost fucking sixty!" Spike shakes himself. He doesn't want to leave Rupert alone with the girls for as long as this fight could be. "I haven't," he says shortly.
"Why is he here?" Xander asks, and Spike wonders what it says about Xander that the only reason he can conceive of anyone hanging around with him is sex. He's still wearing nothing by boots and gold pants. Xander's scorn is heavy as he goes on, "Why does he want to be with you rather than us?"
That's the million dollar question, Spike thinks. Why has he stayed?
"Because he's seventeen and sixty, and I'm twenty two and a hundred and forty? Because we both died and didn't go to heaven? Mutual appreciation of The Jam?"
Because I'm in no position to judge, Spike thinks. We're both too busy judging ourselves.
"He's coming home with us," Xander says.
Rupert has changed when they get back. It's the fraying jumper that Spike finds inexplicably hot. He's cleaned his face and is wearing the plastic sunglasses, minus both lenses now. Spikes supposes he should probably get dressed himself, but he really doesn't want to bother the nursing cat.
Willow has been catching Rupert up on everything the stateside gang has been up to since he died. Rupert's doing his best to be Giles for her, but every now and then his eyes flick to her tits and back up to her eyes, giving him away.
"How about you lot go back to whatever hotel you're in, and we do this in the morning?" Spike says pointedly.
"When you're asleep and can't annoy us?" Xander asks. "Good idea!"
"Why don't you come with us?" Willow asks Rupert.
Rupert's going to say yes just to make them shut up, Spike can tell. Luckily, Faith butts in with, "And who's going to share a bed with jailbait gee?"
He's not jailbait, but Spike isn't going to point that out.
"I'm fine here," Rupert says. "I need to stay and make sure my books aren't rain damaged."
"So we'll help," Faith says. "See, this one here is slightly damp. This copy of, uh."
"Eveline," Spike supplies. "It's porn." He doesn't know why Rupert's blushing; it's one of Spike's books.
"I can tell from the cover," Faith says.
"You know where we live," Spike says. "And it's too close to morning to do a runner."
It takes a bit more persuading, but the three of them are still a little freaked out by an eyeliner-wearing and stockings-clad father figure and are willing to go as long as Rupert implies a good night's sleep will turn him back into the Giles they know.
It's nearly dawn and Spike doesn't entirely trust Xander not to have nailed the chipboard to the window in a such a way it'll fall off as soon as sunlight hits it. It seems sturdy enough though. When he stops rattling it he hears another sound, though. Choked sobs.
Giles is stood in the tiny bathroom. Well, in the shower, since there isn't enough space between the sink and the toilet to stand there. You have to shimmy to get into the shower. He's staring into the mirror. Spike assumes his entrance has gone unnoticed, but even if he isn't visible the opening and closing of the bathroom door was.
"This has been the worst night ever," Rupert says.
It hasn't, Spike is pretty certain, but reminding Rupert of Jenny isn't going to help right now.
"Everything has been shit." He sounds more defeated than anything else. "We spent an hour and a half watching a play we've both seen before, and better. Then an hour being talked at by people who think they're they first person to ever discover Freddie Mercury. All I wanted... All I... I just wanted to come home with you."
Rupert's voice catches in his throat and his shoulders start to shake. Spike wraps an arm around him and pulls him back against his chest. He's aware he's still mostly naked, and Rupert was obviously undressing for a shower when the night caught up with him. The ratty jumper is on top of the toilet, and Spike has a strong urge to smell it. Instead he buries his nose in Rupert's hair. He smells of kohl and sweat and cheap booze and wool and leather and books and death.
"Do you want to go with them?" Spike asks.
"I don't know."
Spikes considers. "If you go, I'm coming with you," he says.
"I can't be younger than them," Rupert says. "I can't be younger than Dawn."
"You can't want to fuck them," Spike says.
"I was trying not to say that," Rupert says.
"Why not?" Spike holds him tighter. Rupert is hot and warm and soft in his arms. Rupert sighs and lets his head drop back against Spike's shoulder. His stubble rasps against Spike's cheek.
"Fine," Rupert says. "I want to fuck you, too."
"Good."
They stumble towards the bedroom, then remember, and go for the couch instead. Rupert kisses Spike hungrily, and when they lose contact Rupert bites a messy trail along Spike's jawline instead.
"We should pull out the sofabed," Rupert says.
"Can you be arsed?" Spike asks. If that's what Rupert really wants...
"No."
The gold shorts are almost impossible to remove with an erection, even with both of them trying. Rupert's stockings are much easier to unroll, though the fishnets snag on Spike's teeth.
Now he knows what Rupert's cock tastes like. The pulse of blood so close to his teeth pulls his vamp side out.
"Don't even think about it," Rupert says, but with the lazy satisfaction on someone on the receiving end of a good blow job. Spike swallows as Rupert comes, and risks a nip at his femoral artery. Rupert moans and let him.
Rupert sleeps on top of him. It shouldn't be comfortable for either of them, but it is.
"We can't leave," Spike mumbles in Rupert's ear. "Kittens." It seems as good a reason to stay in Salford as any. There's also Man United, and beer, the good stuff you can't buy in America, and dog racing. It's been forever since he's gone to the dogs.
And Buzzfeed is full of Buffy stuff, so I'm craving a little something.
Xander isn't meant to be an arsehole, he just hates Spike and is worried about Giles.
Rupert is a lanky teenager, a little taller than Spike with at least two more inches to grow before he reaches his proper Giles height, but not if he keeps bumming Spike's cigarettes.
He found Rupert in Manchester. He wasn't looking for him, and wasn't even sure it was him at first. He was just another skinny teenager in too much eye make up, except then they made eye contact and the kid bolted. That was enough to kick in Spike's predator instincts, and he didn't realise who he was following until the kid reached up to push a pair of glasses he wasn't wearing up his nose an the gesture was suddenly, painfully familiar.
"Giles? Bloody hell."
So now they're sharing a squat in Salford. It's a basement flat in an old terrace where all the windows are boarded up, which suits Spike. The ground floor is occupied by six hardcore ravers of various ages locked in a permanent party none of them know how to leave, while the top has some middle class kids who think squatting makes them part of a movement. All three floors pointedly ignore each other.
Spike has the bedroom and Rupert has the sofabed, because for Rupert it's a novelty to be able to sleep on one again without putting his back out. His life is a mess of rediscovery, like the realisation that a seventeen year old can't hold his booze like a forty year old, but also doesn't suffer hangovers like one either. They drink a lot, between them, and smoke a lot, and there's always some tar black coffee and a lukewarm teapot somewhere in the apartment. Rupert has some money, but has been cut off from most of his old accounts on account of being dead and a teenager simultaneously. Spike does alright, but then, he doesn't spend much. Most nights they go to a pub and find someone to invite them to a house party.
They've brought a couple of party guests home with them. Barbara and Edith. They bonded with Rupert over having a name you just can't make cool, and with Spike over his willingness to share his fags with them. They spend the tram ride trying to come up with nicknames for themselves as cool as 'Ripper', which they hadn't thought cool at all earlier in the evening, but that's what a few jaegerbombs will do for you. Both women are in their mid twenties. Rupert actively avoids girls his own age, and Spike sympathises.
Spike swipes a bottle of milk from someone's doorstep - a reminder that the sun would be up by now if they didn't live in monsoon Manchester - and they drink it with vodka until the vodka runs out and Rupert pointedly pulls out the sofa bed. Spike and Barb retire to the bedroom. Rupert takes Edith on the couch.
Rupert has the experience of an adult man, but not the staying power. Edith is polite enough to wait until he falls asleep, then joins Spike and Barbara in the bedroom.
The next morning Rupert is pissed.
"You could have joined us too," Spike says.
"I hate this body. It's... it's not mine." Rupert is wearing a wooly jumper and tweed trousers, but he looks more like the hipsters upstairs than the man he used to be. He reaches for the glasses he doesn't wear any more and narrowly avoids poking himself in the eye. "It's bad enough being a teenager once. I can't believe it was like this, though. Feeling this much. Everything happening so fast. There's no time to even think."
"Old you wouldn't even have been able to get it up," Spike points out. "So, there's that."
Rupert glares at him. There's still a little kohl smeared around his eye sockets, though most of it's rubbed off on the pillows now. "What do you mean, I could have joined you?"
"It's a big bed." Spike shrugs. There's something about nerdy-cool old-young Giles that calls to the William-Spike in him. He's not sure what he wants to do about it, but there's no harm in throwing some ideas out there. "Bigger than some of the ones four of us used to share back in the day."
Rupert plucks up a pair of sunglasses from between piles of foil take away trays just to have something to clean.
"So that, ah, that was you, ah."
Spike laughs. "The soulless don't have a lot of hangups," he says.
"Did you ever tell Buffy?" Rupert asks. He doesn't meet Spike's eyes.
"Tell her what? Hey, pet, you know what else we've got in common? We both know the taste of your ex-boyfriend's cock?"
Rupert polishes the sunglasses so hard one of the cheap plastic lenses pops out. He puts them down with a frustrated sigh.
"Sorry," Spike says, lying.
"I hate being all hormones," Rupert says. "It's not like I never had a threesome myself, back in the day, but now I'm jealous that you've had a foursome." When Spike doesn't react to the teenager's shocking revelation, he goes on to say, "I'm going to research aging spells," in a voice that manages to sound both resigned and aggrieved.
He moves like he's going to throw himself onto the sofabed, stops, and sits down like an adult. There's a cumstain on the cushion by his leg, that Spike chooses not to point out.
"Shall I put a brew on?" Spike asks.
#
Rupert likes to dress up. It feels like he's in fancy dress all of the time, so why not play with that? He finds costume parties to drag Spike too.
Sooner or later Spike is going to get bored of hanging around with a kid like him, he knows. Or an old man like him. It's hard to tell. He bores himself sometimes. He's bored of his anger, his lust, his greed. He's bored of his patience and restraint and experience. He's so fucking bored of being bored.
There's a showing of the Rocky Horror Show at the Opera House, and they're going. He saw the play at the Royal Court in London in its first ever run. He goes as Frank. Spike doesn't take a lot of persuading to get into the gold trunks of Rocky.
Every hen night they pass, which seems like every hen night in the Greater Manchester area, rips open Spike's duster to coo at his costume. They're late to the play, which makes it harder to sneak in. They get in during the interval and find a couple of seats vacated by a couple who apparently missed the last fifty years and didn't know they were seeing some pervert play. They make friends with the people in the seats around them, who respectfully wait for Spike to take off his duster of his own accord before wolfwhistling loud enough to stop the play.
Rupert is getting a little bored of house parties. Someone has filled two crates with alcohol. One is red wine, tequila, red bull and jaegermeister. The other... Rupert doesn't know, but there's a haze over it that suggests the red box of death is preferable. He might have the young, fresh liver of a seventeen year old, but he'll be damned before he subjects it to that.
"Oh my god, it was so transgressive, you know? Richard O'Brien is gender queer, you know? Like, I think he was so ahead of his time. We're finally coming to understand gender fluidity, you know?"
No, Rupert thinks, I don't know. I knew, back in the seventies. I knew when I watched David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and I knew watching The Slits and The Clash. I shopped at Sex. I wore women's tops and doc martens. There is nothing. fucking. new. Only new to you.
He needs to find Spike. Spike gets it. Spike smirks when he complains, and talks about the trial of Oscar Wilde.
"Are you on facebook?" the girl he's talking to asks. She's wearing sequinned hot pants and a corset and bare feet, and Rupert thinks she said earlier she's a chartered accountant or something.
"No," he answers shortly, trying to plot and escape route. If he could make it out of Sunnydale's catacombs between nests of vampires, he can make it from the kitchen to the entrance hall, where he can hear Spike.
"Oh my god, that's so authentic of you. I would leave facebook too, but everyone from work is on there, and my mum's only just got her head around it, you know? It's not the real me on there, of course. If work knew the real me they'd probably fire me. Are you on tumblr?"
He can hear... American accents?
Oh god. No. Bloody hell.
"Excuse me," Rupert says.
It takes him five minutes to walk three metres, squeezing past half naked party goers. He desperately wants to be wrong and just go home. He and Spike can commiserate over being the oldest people there, they can swing by the chippie for comfort food, get some beers in, and just hang on the couch.
Not hang. God, he's even thinking like a teenager now.
He sidles past Spike's broad back, putting a hand on his shoulder so he knows who it is - it's a casual gesture that he hopes Spike will simply recognise, but even if he doesn't Rupert knows how good Spike's sense of smell is - and looks at the three people in front of him.
"Fuck."
"Giles!" Willow's eyes go wide with delight, then wider with shock.
"And Giles's nipples," Xander says.
"Hey, Gee," says Faith. "Nice tat. Real?"
He's so fucking glad it's Faith rather than Buffy. It is the slimmest of silver linings imaginable, but it is one.
"Hi," he says.
Spike hands out plastic cups of red death. He downs it in one. God knows he doesn't want to risk tasting it. Willow clearly made that mistake, and has the face of someone who isn't sure which deity she offended.
He wants them to leave. He can't deal with this right now. With being Giles in thigh high boots and a badly fitting corset. The scoobies clear can't either. The only moment in his life that has previously come remotely close to being this awkward was when Buffy found out he'd fucked her mother on a car bonnet.
That isn't a helpful thought.
"Maybe we should reconvene in the morning," Spike says. Rupert wants to kiss him.
"No," Willow says, eyes still wider than can be helpful. "I mean, we've come a long way."
They're scared he'll disappear again, Rupert realises. Faith must have told them. He'd run the moment she and Angel had turned their backs.
"How did you find us?" Rupert asks. After all, even he's not clear on where they are. Somewhere in Trafford. Probably.
"Location spell," Willow says. "Actually, it didn't pick you up, which I haven't figured out yet, but we did find Spike with it, so we thought we'd ask him for help."
"Because that's what Spike's known for," Xander says dryly. "His helpful nature."
"What did you use to cast for me?" Giles asks.
"One of your books."
"They're not my books any more," Giles says. "I left them to you."
Willow considers this. "We didn't have anything else. Anything more recent. I mean, you're still you, so-"
"Come on, Red," Faith interrupts. "He's still a high school librarian?"
"Those books belonged to Ripper too," Willow says.
"Ripper?" the woman from the kitchen as joined them. "Oh my god, that's an awesome nickname."
"I think that's our cue to leave," Rupert says.
#
Spike gives Rupert his coat on the way home. He's okay with being almost naked in front of the slayerettes, and the rest of Manchester, but Rupert was clearing struggling. It's raining, of course, which at least allows them both to pretend it's because Rupert's cold. His hair is flat, his make up is running, and one of his heels has broken. He's the very picture of teenaged misery.
The night doesn't get any better when they get home. The plywood has been ripped from their window (there's only one in the whole flat, thanks to being a basement, which is why Spike chose the place) and is lying in several damp pieces in the middle of the road. The window is broken, the glass scattered in and around the sink, and the rain is spotting Rupert's books.
The laptop they watch Passions on (well, Spike watches Passions on, and Rupert puts up with) has been stolen, but that's about it. It's not like they have a lot of property.
Rupert is worryingly quiet until he gets to the bedroom, at which point he lets loose with the most Giles sigh Spike has heard from him.
"That bloody cat," he says slowly, "has given birth. On the bed."
Spike knows. The smell of cat placenta is almost overpowering with his senses.
"Leave it," Spike calls from the main room. "We don't want it to eat its kittens on anything."
"That's rabbits," Giles calls back, but Spike knows he's not going to risk it.
Xander is peering at the broken window. "The frame is basically rotten. Why was it boarded up if it wasn't broken?" he asks.
"So it didn't get broken," Spike says. "Come on, there's a skip out back. We can probably get a new bit."
"Sure you don't want to watch the sunrise tomorrow?" Xander asks, but he seems happy for an excuse to get out of there.
The skip is actually a couple of streets away. Spike leaves Xander to root through it - "Don't want to accidentally stake myself, mate," - while he has a smoke.
"How is Giles?" Xander asks. "I mean, when you're not, uh, at costume parties."
"Alright," Spike says. When he doesn't elaborate Xander glares at him. Spike takes a long drag on his cigarette.
Eventually Xander is forced to elaborate. "Is it like this Buffy?" he asks. "Was he in heaven?"
"No," Spike says. "I haven't pried, obviously. But no, I don't think he was. He's done the kind of shit that takes more than a world-saving sacrifice to pay penance for."
"He doesn't seem happy."
"He's getting happier. Or he was, at any rate." Spike drops his cigarette and grinds it under his boot. "Nothing wrong with a bit of sex, drugs and rock and roll when you're feeling out of sorts." He leers at Xander.
"Oh god, you haven't."
"Haven't what?"
"If you've touched Giles, in any way-" Xander is angry enough to shove Spike back against the skip, narrowly missing a broken fence pane, but Spike gets over his surprise pretty damn quick and shoves him back.
"Why?" he asks. "Why shouldn't I? He's legal. He's more than legal, he's almost fucking sixty!" Spike shakes himself. He doesn't want to leave Rupert alone with the girls for as long as this fight could be. "I haven't," he says shortly.
"Why is he here?" Xander asks, and Spike wonders what it says about Xander that the only reason he can conceive of anyone hanging around with him is sex. He's still wearing nothing by boots and gold pants. Xander's scorn is heavy as he goes on, "Why does he want to be with you rather than us?"
That's the million dollar question, Spike thinks. Why has he stayed?
"Because he's seventeen and sixty, and I'm twenty two and a hundred and forty? Because we both died and didn't go to heaven? Mutual appreciation of The Jam?"
Because I'm in no position to judge, Spike thinks. We're both too busy judging ourselves.
"He's coming home with us," Xander says.
Rupert has changed when they get back. It's the fraying jumper that Spike finds inexplicably hot. He's cleaned his face and is wearing the plastic sunglasses, minus both lenses now. Spikes supposes he should probably get dressed himself, but he really doesn't want to bother the nursing cat.
Willow has been catching Rupert up on everything the stateside gang has been up to since he died. Rupert's doing his best to be Giles for her, but every now and then his eyes flick to her tits and back up to her eyes, giving him away.
"How about you lot go back to whatever hotel you're in, and we do this in the morning?" Spike says pointedly.
"When you're asleep and can't annoy us?" Xander asks. "Good idea!"
"Why don't you come with us?" Willow asks Rupert.
Rupert's going to say yes just to make them shut up, Spike can tell. Luckily, Faith butts in with, "And who's going to share a bed with jailbait gee?"
He's not jailbait, but Spike isn't going to point that out.
"I'm fine here," Rupert says. "I need to stay and make sure my books aren't rain damaged."
"So we'll help," Faith says. "See, this one here is slightly damp. This copy of, uh."
"Eveline," Spike supplies. "It's porn." He doesn't know why Rupert's blushing; it's one of Spike's books.
"I can tell from the cover," Faith says.
"You know where we live," Spike says. "And it's too close to morning to do a runner."
It takes a bit more persuading, but the three of them are still a little freaked out by an eyeliner-wearing and stockings-clad father figure and are willing to go as long as Rupert implies a good night's sleep will turn him back into the Giles they know.
It's nearly dawn and Spike doesn't entirely trust Xander not to have nailed the chipboard to the window in a such a way it'll fall off as soon as sunlight hits it. It seems sturdy enough though. When he stops rattling it he hears another sound, though. Choked sobs.
Giles is stood in the tiny bathroom. Well, in the shower, since there isn't enough space between the sink and the toilet to stand there. You have to shimmy to get into the shower. He's staring into the mirror. Spike assumes his entrance has gone unnoticed, but even if he isn't visible the opening and closing of the bathroom door was.
"This has been the worst night ever," Rupert says.
It hasn't, Spike is pretty certain, but reminding Rupert of Jenny isn't going to help right now.
"Everything has been shit." He sounds more defeated than anything else. "We spent an hour and a half watching a play we've both seen before, and better. Then an hour being talked at by people who think they're they first person to ever discover Freddie Mercury. All I wanted... All I... I just wanted to come home with you."
Rupert's voice catches in his throat and his shoulders start to shake. Spike wraps an arm around him and pulls him back against his chest. He's aware he's still mostly naked, and Rupert was obviously undressing for a shower when the night caught up with him. The ratty jumper is on top of the toilet, and Spike has a strong urge to smell it. Instead he buries his nose in Rupert's hair. He smells of kohl and sweat and cheap booze and wool and leather and books and death.
"Do you want to go with them?" Spike asks.
"I don't know."
Spikes considers. "If you go, I'm coming with you," he says.
"I can't be younger than them," Rupert says. "I can't be younger than Dawn."
"You can't want to fuck them," Spike says.
"I was trying not to say that," Rupert says.
"Why not?" Spike holds him tighter. Rupert is hot and warm and soft in his arms. Rupert sighs and lets his head drop back against Spike's shoulder. His stubble rasps against Spike's cheek.
"Fine," Rupert says. "I want to fuck you, too."
"Good."
They stumble towards the bedroom, then remember, and go for the couch instead. Rupert kisses Spike hungrily, and when they lose contact Rupert bites a messy trail along Spike's jawline instead.
"We should pull out the sofabed," Rupert says.
"Can you be arsed?" Spike asks. If that's what Rupert really wants...
"No."
The gold shorts are almost impossible to remove with an erection, even with both of them trying. Rupert's stockings are much easier to unroll, though the fishnets snag on Spike's teeth.
Now he knows what Rupert's cock tastes like. The pulse of blood so close to his teeth pulls his vamp side out.
"Don't even think about it," Rupert says, but with the lazy satisfaction on someone on the receiving end of a good blow job. Spike swallows as Rupert comes, and risks a nip at his femoral artery. Rupert moans and let him.
Rupert sleeps on top of him. It shouldn't be comfortable for either of them, but it is.
"We can't leave," Spike mumbles in Rupert's ear. "Kittens." It seems as good a reason to stay in Salford as any. There's also Man United, and beer, the good stuff you can't buy in America, and dog racing. It's been forever since he's gone to the dogs.