Old Tricks -- Spike/Xander 12/?
I've no words about my life right now -- let's pretend I've not been away and just slog on with this story, yeah?
Title: Old Tricks 12/?
Rating: Adult
Summary: Buffy sends Spike to bring Xander home. Things don’t go quite as plan (and do they ever?).
Last time, on Old Tricks:
“I paid you to take me to the shore,” he says through his teeth. Captain Arab pulls a gun from his trousers.
“I take you already,” he says with a smirk. Gun trumps axe (now, though it never used to, just another perk of being one of the soft pink fleshy things).
Spike gives him the blackest look he’d ever given and wants very, very much to bite something.
Part 12
Spike has sea salt up his nose, sand down his trousers, and a very large axe digging into his palms. The first wave of Skitters are demon sushi before they can so much as mewl. He can see the shapes of people down the beach, plodging through the mass and using a flamethrower to great effect. They’re far away. This could be an issue.
His boot is sucked off his foot in the second wave and his heel squelches onto teeth hungry for the warmth blood provides. It hurts, but he swings and hacks and feels his face grow numb as the muscles are tensed around a snarl. Third wave are trickier little bastards, they come up from behind. Another Skitter, a spineless sack of teeth and red that fucking oozes, manages to pull itself up his calf and more teeth sink into his thigh. Two more squelch up his back and he can’t hack at them without slicing his own head off.
“Bugger,” he says as he goes down. It’s like drowning in sacks of water wrapped in thorns.
*
He doesn’t realize Xander is above him until he sees the shorts. Lurid green in a wash of jelly red. God they’re awful. The indignity of being pulled to his feet by a man dressed like a traffic light is searing, but he doesn’t have time to think about it because Harris has scorched the Skitters off his body and he’s already moving away. It takes Spike a moment to realize he’s now holding a lump of wood, fire eating at its tip. It doesn’t take him any longer than that to start using it.
Skitters aren’t generally formidable creatures - never more than six hundred of them nesting, so they’re easy to handle. But this. This is different. There are thousands of them and they want to feed. Spike only just manages to yank Delia to safety from under a wave of them pushing her to a palm tree, her mouth screaming silently into fleshy bags. She’s crying and studded with snapped fangs when he gets to her, and he nearly rips his arm open doing it. Spike lets her shiver behind him as he sweeps the ground with the petrol Harris chucked him when they crossed paths again at the jetty.
It’s an age later that they stand on a beach left twitching, and the stench of crisped demon skin turns his stomach.
Christ. Skitters.
*
Harris’ boat is up the beach - the girls are ushered below deck, where there are bandages and blankets and a mountain of chocolate. It stopped raining at some point, though Spike hadn’t noticed at the time. Harris is scraping the last of the fried Skitters off the engine, and Spike stands starboard, trying to puke. He wants a cigarette but the petrol on his hands makes him think twice about fishing out his lighter. He’s not keen on the idea of losing his hands again.
“Apocalypse, huh?” Xander says, leaning on the rail beside him.
“So they tell me,” Spike says, watching the water. He can see a hardened oil slick beneath them - oil washed ashore from Kuwait during the Gulf War, probably.
“So we’re going to be buried in jello with teeth?” Bearing his teeth in something like a smile, his eyes are tired and there are lines on his forehead. Growing up, this boy.
“Lot worse than that, I imagine. This place is going to hell,” Spike says, tearing his gaze towards the sunset. The sky is streaked with pink.
“Uber-Hell. Sounds like I’m going to have a busy calendar this year. You’re sticking around, right?”
Spike snorts. Lifts his heavy head and rests it on Xander’s shoulder.
“If you’re lucky.”
tbc
Title: Old Tricks 12/?
Rating: Adult
Summary: Buffy sends Spike to bring Xander home. Things don’t go quite as plan (and do they ever?).
Last time, on Old Tricks:
“I paid you to take me to the shore,” he says through his teeth. Captain Arab pulls a gun from his trousers.
“I take you already,” he says with a smirk. Gun trumps axe (now, though it never used to, just another perk of being one of the soft pink fleshy things).
Spike gives him the blackest look he’d ever given and wants very, very much to bite something.
Part 12
Spike has sea salt up his nose, sand down his trousers, and a very large axe digging into his palms. The first wave of Skitters are demon sushi before they can so much as mewl. He can see the shapes of people down the beach, plodging through the mass and using a flamethrower to great effect. They’re far away. This could be an issue.
His boot is sucked off his foot in the second wave and his heel squelches onto teeth hungry for the warmth blood provides. It hurts, but he swings and hacks and feels his face grow numb as the muscles are tensed around a snarl. Third wave are trickier little bastards, they come up from behind. Another Skitter, a spineless sack of teeth and red that fucking oozes, manages to pull itself up his calf and more teeth sink into his thigh. Two more squelch up his back and he can’t hack at them without slicing his own head off.
“Bugger,” he says as he goes down. It’s like drowning in sacks of water wrapped in thorns.
*
He doesn’t realize Xander is above him until he sees the shorts. Lurid green in a wash of jelly red. God they’re awful. The indignity of being pulled to his feet by a man dressed like a traffic light is searing, but he doesn’t have time to think about it because Harris has scorched the Skitters off his body and he’s already moving away. It takes Spike a moment to realize he’s now holding a lump of wood, fire eating at its tip. It doesn’t take him any longer than that to start using it.
Skitters aren’t generally formidable creatures - never more than six hundred of them nesting, so they’re easy to handle. But this. This is different. There are thousands of them and they want to feed. Spike only just manages to yank Delia to safety from under a wave of them pushing her to a palm tree, her mouth screaming silently into fleshy bags. She’s crying and studded with snapped fangs when he gets to her, and he nearly rips his arm open doing it. Spike lets her shiver behind him as he sweeps the ground with the petrol Harris chucked him when they crossed paths again at the jetty.
It’s an age later that they stand on a beach left twitching, and the stench of crisped demon skin turns his stomach.
Christ. Skitters.
*
Harris’ boat is up the beach - the girls are ushered below deck, where there are bandages and blankets and a mountain of chocolate. It stopped raining at some point, though Spike hadn’t noticed at the time. Harris is scraping the last of the fried Skitters off the engine, and Spike stands starboard, trying to puke. He wants a cigarette but the petrol on his hands makes him think twice about fishing out his lighter. He’s not keen on the idea of losing his hands again.
“Apocalypse, huh?” Xander says, leaning on the rail beside him.
“So they tell me,” Spike says, watching the water. He can see a hardened oil slick beneath them - oil washed ashore from Kuwait during the Gulf War, probably.
“So we’re going to be buried in jello with teeth?” Bearing his teeth in something like a smile, his eyes are tired and there are lines on his forehead. Growing up, this boy.
“Lot worse than that, I imagine. This place is going to hell,” Spike says, tearing his gaze towards the sunset. The sky is streaked with pink.
“Uber-Hell. Sounds like I’m going to have a busy calendar this year. You’re sticking around, right?”
Spike snorts. Lifts his heavy head and rests it on Xander’s shoulder.
“If you’re lucky.”
tbc