An Intolerable Radiance 1/2
More experimenting this morning. This is a two-parter. I don't think I've done one of those before. I'm extending my wings a bit. See what you think.
An Intolerable Radiance
The knock at the door startled him.
Spike never had visitors. Truth of it was, he’d become a hermit, a recluse, one of those old bastards that frightened the children and lived in a falling-down joke of a house on the edge of town. The kind of place that had locals spinning tales about ghosts and maybe a witch or two tucked in the attic. Too bad it weren’t Red and that zoftig little bint she used to bed. Spike could have gotten off quite nicely watching the pair of them of them go at it. He sighed, full of self pity. Nothing gave him a cockstand these days.
The knock came again.
Spike huffed with annoyance, laying his book aside on the spindle-footed table, crushing the butt of his cigarette out with a twist of the wrist that had been known to decapitate demons in its day. Who the bloody hell would be knocking on his door on a late Sunday afternoon? There was a storm brewing, big, gray dollops of clouds covered the sky from end to end, hiding any trace of the sun.
“Comin’,” he hollered grumpily, limping down the hallway from sitting room to front door with an off-center, slightly painful gait. His knee was stiff and throbbing from the rainy weather brewing.
You’d think if the bloody Powers That Fucked Up were gonna give him the shanshu, the least they could have done was make him bright and shiny at the start, not shove his arse back into life just the way he ended, with all the bobs and bruises from that final fight. Got his leg broken, hadn’t he, in the last tussle. And it healed far from proper. Course it had. Him not havin’ the dosh for the surgeries needed to put things to rights.
So he made do. Made do with being a gimp, growin’ older, and no wiser, he supposed, and barely eking out a living being a bookseller of sorts in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He had a dusty little shop on the main avenue. Called it Past Lives. Spent most days there sitting on a stool behind the counter, generally being the cranky old curmudgeon everybody took him for.
A renewed drumming rattled the frosted, Tiffany swirl of glass that made up the top half of Spike’s front door.
He paused warily, eyeing the dark shape he could just make out behind the colored pane. Whoever it was, they were big enough to block out most of the rain-dimmed light. The figure swayed from side to side with the readiness of someone about to launch an attack. A surge of adrenalin like nothing Spike had felt in years flooded his veins. His heart sped up. Long gone intuition shouted a warning.
He found himself groping amid the umbrellas in the old china stand by the door for the stout oak stick he used for his morning walks. He grasped the cold doorknob and jerked it open, his arm swinging back.
They stood frozen, staring at each other over the gulf of twenty years. Spike was hyper-aware abruptly of the lines around his eyes and across his forehead, of the light frosting of gray at his temples and through the brown thicket of his bushy hair. He never colored it or gelled it any more, rarely even cut it. He knew he looked like an immense brown dandelion.
Really, there was no one to care. No one to impress. So why bother? He reckoned that was part of the reason he frightened the little ones. That and the strange way he talked: the English accent, the cursing. He must appear a half-mad, wild man to them. He was forty five years old, and in all the time he’d been aging, Angel hadn’t changed one iota.
They sat over glasses of whiskey, sipping them and sneaking peeks at each other, the familiarity of the past brewing an indigestible queasiness in Spike’s vitals. He had offered coffee, then tea, but Angel declined, wanting something stiffer to celebrate the occasion, grinning at him with unreadable eyes, an apparition throwing his life askew.
“You look good, Spike. Real good.”
Angel repeated the words, his eyes taking in the sights: all the crumbling edges of Spike’s humanity. He had no right, and Spike wanted to punch him for it, wanted to hate him, but he couldn’t. The old slide of desire still heated his blood when his gaze touched on that beautiful face and that sleek, unchanging body. He looked down, digging at a cuticle.
“Riiiight. I look bloody great. For an old fart, you mean.”
“Jesus. Don’t put words in my mouth. You’re not that old. You look almost exactly the same as you did when we fought the Senior Partners. Kept in shape, too, I see. What’s it been? A few years?”
A harsh bark of laughter met Angel’s assertion. “Make that twenty, mate, and you’d be more in the neighborhood.”
The number tasted bitter on Spike’s tongue. Saying it, he realized just how much he resented what had happened. He’d never wanted to be human, only every made noises about it to brass Angel off. Being a vampire was what he was meant to be. Bile backed up in his throat. He emptied his glass in one long gulp and smacked it back on the table.
“Look, appreciate the visit. Bygones ‘n all that shite. Rah, rah. But what are you doin’ here, old man?” The irony of Spike’s derogatory jab wasn’t lost on either of them.
Angel got that hang dog expression he always wore when he was trying to put something over on someone, namely Spike..
“Can’t I just miss you?” His grin widened at Spike’s look. “Jeez. We were friends at the end. I’d kinda come to trust you” He chewed on his lip for a moment, looking as though he were remembering, before finishing off his drink and reaching for the bottle to pour another. “I turned my head, and you were gone. What was I suppose to think? I was sure you’d dusted, and there was nothing I could do about it. Had no idea it was...,” he waved his hand in what Spike felt was a belittling gesture, “...this. Shanshu. Who would have thought it? I know I signed it away, but you getting it? That wasn’t the way it was suppose to work.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Told you I was the one, git. Always too full of yourself to listen to anybody else. Did my bit. Got my reward.”
In one sweep of his hand, Spike encompassed his human body and the house around him, the frailty and loss, the loneliness. He hadn’t meant to expose his acrimony so easily. He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Want a look around? The grand tour? S’not much, but it feels...comfy.” Spike surprised himself with that word. He arched a brow at Angel and saw the big man was equally bemused by the description.
The kitchen around them consisted of a row of battered pine cupboards, a deal table, mismatched chairs, and an ancient, stained sink. The window over the basin was cobwebbed, looking out on a weedy backyard, made more desolate by the overcast of the gloomy, sunless day.
Angel started to laugh first, joined almost at once by Spike’s reluctant chuckle.
“Is the rest this good?”
“Pillock.”
Angel threw a massive arm around Spike’s shoulders, pulling him uncomfortably close. Spike could feel the long swell of Angel’s thigh pressed against his own. Their hips made bony contact, stopping the inward glide of air to his lungs. He tipped back his head, looking into brown eyes. The unreadable expression was back.
When Spike slipped out from under the caging hold, Angel merely shrugged and nodded his head, as though confirming something he already knew. Spike swallowed and plowed forward, heading for the central staircase and the maze of rooms above. If Angel stayed the night, they could pick out a bed for him on the tour. The long lost heat of roused blood spilled into the hollow of Spike’s belly and dove south.
An Intolerable Radiance
The knock at the door startled him.
Spike never had visitors. Truth of it was, he’d become a hermit, a recluse, one of those old bastards that frightened the children and lived in a falling-down joke of a house on the edge of town. The kind of place that had locals spinning tales about ghosts and maybe a witch or two tucked in the attic. Too bad it weren’t Red and that zoftig little bint she used to bed. Spike could have gotten off quite nicely watching the pair of them of them go at it. He sighed, full of self pity. Nothing gave him a cockstand these days.
The knock came again.
Spike huffed with annoyance, laying his book aside on the spindle-footed table, crushing the butt of his cigarette out with a twist of the wrist that had been known to decapitate demons in its day. Who the bloody hell would be knocking on his door on a late Sunday afternoon? There was a storm brewing, big, gray dollops of clouds covered the sky from end to end, hiding any trace of the sun.
“Comin’,” he hollered grumpily, limping down the hallway from sitting room to front door with an off-center, slightly painful gait. His knee was stiff and throbbing from the rainy weather brewing.
You’d think if the bloody Powers That Fucked Up were gonna give him the shanshu, the least they could have done was make him bright and shiny at the start, not shove his arse back into life just the way he ended, with all the bobs and bruises from that final fight. Got his leg broken, hadn’t he, in the last tussle. And it healed far from proper. Course it had. Him not havin’ the dosh for the surgeries needed to put things to rights.
So he made do. Made do with being a gimp, growin’ older, and no wiser, he supposed, and barely eking out a living being a bookseller of sorts in a small town in the middle of nowhere. He had a dusty little shop on the main avenue. Called it Past Lives. Spent most days there sitting on a stool behind the counter, generally being the cranky old curmudgeon everybody took him for.
A renewed drumming rattled the frosted, Tiffany swirl of glass that made up the top half of Spike’s front door.
He paused warily, eyeing the dark shape he could just make out behind the colored pane. Whoever it was, they were big enough to block out most of the rain-dimmed light. The figure swayed from side to side with the readiness of someone about to launch an attack. A surge of adrenalin like nothing Spike had felt in years flooded his veins. His heart sped up. Long gone intuition shouted a warning.
He found himself groping amid the umbrellas in the old china stand by the door for the stout oak stick he used for his morning walks. He grasped the cold doorknob and jerked it open, his arm swinging back.
They stood frozen, staring at each other over the gulf of twenty years. Spike was hyper-aware abruptly of the lines around his eyes and across his forehead, of the light frosting of gray at his temples and through the brown thicket of his bushy hair. He never colored it or gelled it any more, rarely even cut it. He knew he looked like an immense brown dandelion.
Really, there was no one to care. No one to impress. So why bother? He reckoned that was part of the reason he frightened the little ones. That and the strange way he talked: the English accent, the cursing. He must appear a half-mad, wild man to them. He was forty five years old, and in all the time he’d been aging, Angel hadn’t changed one iota.
They sat over glasses of whiskey, sipping them and sneaking peeks at each other, the familiarity of the past brewing an indigestible queasiness in Spike’s vitals. He had offered coffee, then tea, but Angel declined, wanting something stiffer to celebrate the occasion, grinning at him with unreadable eyes, an apparition throwing his life askew.
“You look good, Spike. Real good.”
Angel repeated the words, his eyes taking in the sights: all the crumbling edges of Spike’s humanity. He had no right, and Spike wanted to punch him for it, wanted to hate him, but he couldn’t. The old slide of desire still heated his blood when his gaze touched on that beautiful face and that sleek, unchanging body. He looked down, digging at a cuticle.
“Riiiight. I look bloody great. For an old fart, you mean.”
“Jesus. Don’t put words in my mouth. You’re not that old. You look almost exactly the same as you did when we fought the Senior Partners. Kept in shape, too, I see. What’s it been? A few years?”
A harsh bark of laughter met Angel’s assertion. “Make that twenty, mate, and you’d be more in the neighborhood.”
The number tasted bitter on Spike’s tongue. Saying it, he realized just how much he resented what had happened. He’d never wanted to be human, only every made noises about it to brass Angel off. Being a vampire was what he was meant to be. Bile backed up in his throat. He emptied his glass in one long gulp and smacked it back on the table.
“Look, appreciate the visit. Bygones ‘n all that shite. Rah, rah. But what are you doin’ here, old man?” The irony of Spike’s derogatory jab wasn’t lost on either of them.
Angel got that hang dog expression he always wore when he was trying to put something over on someone, namely Spike..
“Can’t I just miss you?” His grin widened at Spike’s look. “Jeez. We were friends at the end. I’d kinda come to trust you” He chewed on his lip for a moment, looking as though he were remembering, before finishing off his drink and reaching for the bottle to pour another. “I turned my head, and you were gone. What was I suppose to think? I was sure you’d dusted, and there was nothing I could do about it. Had no idea it was...,” he waved his hand in what Spike felt was a belittling gesture, “...this. Shanshu. Who would have thought it? I know I signed it away, but you getting it? That wasn’t the way it was suppose to work.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Told you I was the one, git. Always too full of yourself to listen to anybody else. Did my bit. Got my reward.”
In one sweep of his hand, Spike encompassed his human body and the house around him, the frailty and loss, the loneliness. He hadn’t meant to expose his acrimony so easily. He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Want a look around? The grand tour? S’not much, but it feels...comfy.” Spike surprised himself with that word. He arched a brow at Angel and saw the big man was equally bemused by the description.
The kitchen around them consisted of a row of battered pine cupboards, a deal table, mismatched chairs, and an ancient, stained sink. The window over the basin was cobwebbed, looking out on a weedy backyard, made more desolate by the overcast of the gloomy, sunless day.
Angel started to laugh first, joined almost at once by Spike’s reluctant chuckle.
“Is the rest this good?”
“Pillock.”
Angel threw a massive arm around Spike’s shoulders, pulling him uncomfortably close. Spike could feel the long swell of Angel’s thigh pressed against his own. Their hips made bony contact, stopping the inward glide of air to his lungs. He tipped back his head, looking into brown eyes. The unreadable expression was back.
When Spike slipped out from under the caging hold, Angel merely shrugged and nodded his head, as though confirming something he already knew. Spike swallowed and plowed forward, heading for the central staircase and the maze of rooms above. If Angel stayed the night, they could pick out a bed for him on the tour. The long lost heat of roused blood spilled into the hollow of Spike’s belly and dove south.