Parallax (5/8)
Title: Parallax
Author: whichclothes
Chapter: 5/8
Fandom: BtVS/AtS
Characters: Spike, Angel
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I'm not Joss
Warnings: Dub-con, angst
Summary: After the battle with Wolfram & Hart, Spike and Angel return to the Hyperion. But Spike is feeling unwanted and unappreciated until he meets a new friend...and then that friendship takes an unexpected turn.
A/N: Thank you to silk_labyrinth for the excellent beta job and for suggesting such a great title. And thank you to sentine for another awesome banner! This fic is complete and I'll post 2 chapters daily.
Previous chapters here.
Five
He didn’t go back to Vesuvius. Didn’t go to The Spit either, or any other bars for that matter. He bought his bottles of Jack at a liquor store and drank them in his room, alone. One evening he caught himself sniffing the black shirt that Trevor had bought him, inhaling the man’s lingering scent, and he’d roared with rage and gathered his new clothing and run downstairs and then outside with it, stuffing it in the dustbin. An hour or so later he’d nearly cried with despair. He’d run back down again and retrieved the clothing, clutching it to his chest. Angel had watched both acts of the drama without saying anything, his eyes flat and distrustful.
Spike didn’t go out with Angel and his crew, either. He’d considered it. Certainly they seemed busy enough, and they could likely use another strong fighter. But when Spike hung about in the lounge as they plotted their strategies, nobody spoke to him, nobody even looked at him much. Angel never asked Spike to join them, and Spike couldn’t bury his pride deep enough to offer.
After nearly two weeks of this nonsense, Spike felt nearly as mad as he’d been in the basement, torn by conflicting desires he didn’t want and couldn’t fulfill. So he waited for the hotel to empty and he pulled on his boots and duster, and he went for a walk. He didn’t set out with a particular destination in mind, at least not consciously, but after a time he recognized where he was going. It was a dodgy sort of neighborhood, the sort that housed auto repair shops and check cashing businesses and derelict used car lots, and was usually fairly empty at night.
Empty of humans, in any case. Because this was the sort of area in which certain sorts of demons liked to hide out. Vampires who were saving a meal for later perhaps, or other creatures who wished to go about their business without detection or interference.
Sure enough, as he walked down the deserted, trash-strewn pavement Spike caught a whiff of Sseca demon. He hadn’t encountered the species in decades, but his past encounters had been memorable. Sseca were large and strong and vicious. Although they generally tended to keep to themselves, they went through a molting process periodically, and after they molted they needed human flesh. A Sseca located this deeply in a city was doubtless hungry.
The scent was fresh. Spike followed it across a cracked and weedy car park, down an alley next to a defunct restaurant, and over a half-crumbled wall. He found himself in front of a large metal shed. Beneath the liberally applied graffiti, the exterior of the shed had been painted over a dozen times in a wide variety of colors, all of which had faded or chipped or rusted. There were two windows-both with the glass broken out, but in one the gap was filled with cardboard. The door was closed, but the padlock had been broken.
Spike hadn’t been particularly quiet as he’d tracked the demon. Now he shouted out, “Oi! Show me your ugly mug!”
For a moment there was no response. And then the shed door was flung open and a Sseca charged out, its orange eyes glaring and its tusks glinting dully. It didn’t waste time with banter-Spike hadn’t expected it to-but headed straight at him, emitting a high-pitched screech. It moved surprisingly quickly for something that weighed nearly as much as a small car. Spike shifted his face. Just as he crouched into a fighting stance, a second demon came running out of the shed.
“Oh, bollocks,” Spike barely had time to mumble, and then they were on him.
As sharp talons gouged his flesh, Spike belatedly recalled that there was one other occasion when Sseca craved people as food-when they were breeding. Well, nothing to be done about it now, and he ignored the pain as he wheeled and kicked and hit and rolled.
Ever since the fall of Wolfram & Hart, when Spike found himself in the position of having bit off more than he could chew-an apt metaphor, he thought, spitting out a vile mouthful of Sseca-he had rung Angel on his mobile, and Angel had come to back him up. Spike had done the same for Angel, now and then. But tonight Spike hadn’t even bothered to bring his phone, and he wasn’t certain Angel would have come in any case. Even if he had, he would have made a huge point later of how he’d once again saved Spike’s useless arse, and Spike couldn’t bear to hear that any longer. He’d rather just dust.
So he fought on alone because retreat was out of the question, and the Sseca tore him to bits.
Fortunately, he returned the favor.
In the end he was still undead, which was more than could be said for the mangled heaps that had once been Sseca demons. But Spike was weakened, and he fell to his knees beside the corpses and contemplated the impossibility of getting back to the Hyperion before dawn. With few other options, he crawled into the reeking shed and pulled the door shut behind him. He lay down on the hard concrete floor and curled into a small ball around his pain.
***
It was a very long day.
Bits of light stole in through cracks in the shed walls, and Spike had to keep creeping about to avoid them. He hurt and he was hungry and he was concerned that someone would find the dead demons and then discover him. He slept fitfully, his dreams filled with horned monsters and men with shiny white teeth and people chasing him with stakes and axes.
He roused himself when the sun set. With considerable difficulty he struggled to his feet using the walls of the shed for support, and then staggered outside. There was nobody about and that, he expected, was at least one small mercy.
Only a few blocks on, as he stumbled and fell for the third time, he realized that there was no way he was going to make it back to the hotel. He rolled over onto his back and groaned. All right, then. This wasn’t as heroic a way to go out as last time, but it wasn’t much worse than a dirty London alley.
But just as he closed his eyes, he became aware that a dog was barking. Very close, in fact. He opened his eyes again.
He had collapsed alongside a chain-link fence, behind which was a collection of rusted and partly disassembled vehicles. The dog was behind the fence as well. It was a pitbull, white with brownish spots. Its muzzle was covered in old scars and one eye was missing. Its fur was patchy and its ribs too prominent. It snarled at him, stupidly guarding the property of an owner who didn’t even bother to care for the dog properly.
One more time, Spike hauled himself upright. He looked up at the top of the fence. Not only was it crowned with razor wire, but in his current condition it might as well have been a hundred feet high. So instead he found the gate, which was only a few yards away. It was secured by a padlocked latch, but the latch was old and slightly loose. Evidently, the owner was trusting primarily in his dog to keep thieves away. Even in his debilitated state, Spike had no problem breaking the latch.
As soon as the door squealed open, the dog attacked. It managed to get in a single, nasty bite to Spike’s chest. But he was already in such bad shape that it hardly mattered, and Spike bit back, sinking his fangs into the dog’s thick neck.
The dog struggled only for a moment and then went limp. Spike crouched beside it, swallowing rapidly, feeling his wounds begin to mend straight away. The dog’s heart slowed and faltered, it let out a single sigh that seemed almost relieved, and then it was dead. Spike drank the last of its blood and stood. Feeling rather guilty about maiming the body, but not wanting anyone to realize what had killed the beast, he found a length of metal and thrust it into the dog’s neck. He hoped that the owner would assume the deed had been done by a would-be thief.
The blood gave him enough strength to get home, but barely. Angel and Lilia came out of the lounge as Spike lurched through the lobby. “Where the hell have you been? And what the fuck happened to you?”
“Sod off,” Spike began to say. But then his knees betrayed him entirely and he fell to the hard tile floor. Angel and Lilia walked closer and loomed over him.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Angel said.
Spike was only dimly aware of being lifted in strong arms and carried up many stairs, and then of being dropped onto his bed. Someone stripped off his clothing and exclaimed over his wounds, and someone held a mug of blood to his mouth-cow, but warm-and he drank and he drank, and then he slept.
***
Spike barely got out of bed for the next two or three days. Occasionally he’d stagger over to his little fridge and grab a container of blood and chug it cold, then make his way back to the mattress and collapse. He was dimly aware that the door to his room opened a few times-someone looking in on him-but nobody entered. Mostly, Spike slept like the dead.
When he finally felt most of his strength return, he grimaced at the condition of his body and the sheets, which were liberally covered in his own dried blood and in flaking Sseca goo. He would have a nice long soak, but he was going to have to throw out the bedding. Not a problem. He could nick more from Angel.
Cleaned and dressed and feeling himself again-well, as much as he ever did lately-he made his way down the stairs. For once, the gang was gathered in the lobby instead of the lounge, Angel pacing restlessly back and forth, the others standing about or sprawled on the round seat. Angel glanced at Spike when he arrived and grunted what could have been either a greeting or an expression of mild annoyance. Spike hoisted himself up onto the old reception desk and sat there with his feet dangling. “What’s the what, then?” he asked. “Crisis du jour?”
It was Rudy who answered, either because he was leaning against the desk and therefore closest, or because he tolerated Spike the best of the lot. “Same problem as before. Lots of weird demon activity. It’s like someone’s deliberately trying to draw us out, to keep us on edge.”
“Why?”
Angel stopped pacing to glare at him. “We don’t know, moron. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. If we knew why, we could find out who.”
“Perhaps it’s just someone taken with your sparkling personality,” Spike said, which earned him a deeper frown. “You keep that up, Peaches, and your face is going to freeze like that.”
Angel balled his hand into a fist and took three steps closer, then stopped. “Forget it. I’m going to fight something worth fighting.” He turned toward the door and his entourage gathered themselves to follow.
Spike hopped off the desk and joined the crowd, but Angel halted again and put his hand out. “You’re not coming.”
“Why? Did I hurt your sensitive feelings?” Although the truth was, Spike himself was hurt by yet another rejection.
“I don’t want you fighting tonight.”
“Fuck you.”
Angel huffed out a breath of air. “You’re not all the way healed. I don’t want to have to worry about dragging your ass out of the fire if we run into something nasty tonight.”
Spike sucked in his upper lip and stuck out his chin. “Right, then,” he said, and he turned around and headed back for the stairs.
It turned out his liquor supply was completely depleted. But that didn’t worry him. He simply went to Angel’s suite; it was locked, but the lock was easily forced. The room smelled of sex. Spike stomped over to the bed and opened the bedside table and found what he’d been looking for: a nearly full bottle of Lagavulin. “Not Irish?” he mumbled to himself. He took the bottle back to his own room and drained it dry.