Shelter for the Broken Heart
This is my first time posting a story I wrote on line. I am pretty nervous about it.
Thanks to Jan for the encouragement and to my room mate and beta Cindy.
Here it is. Set after the end of Angel. Spike goes searching for Shelter, Part One.
It is Nc -17, Incase anyone wants to know
The way Spike figured it, he was good at exactly two things-fighting and fucking. And since getting his soul back, he didn’t feel as though he could fight for a living.
Damn Angel anyway. The mess Spike’s life had turned into was his fault. It was Angel’s fault for Shansuhing. Angel, or Liam Grady as he preferred to be called these days; was human now, and it was his fault for finally being happy, for finally getting Buffy, for leaving Spike behind once and for all.
So what could Spike do after the final battle? After Buffy showed up for the show down? After the victory that he had a large hand in, and after all of Angel’s dreams came true? He sure as hell couldn’t hang around and watch his heart, his Buffy, giggle and sigh over Peaches, all pink and perfect and beating heart. It hurt way too much to see them happy together, even if Spike was truly happy for them, and glad that Buffy could finally be free to love. And, he really was truly happy for them, but it all hurt too much.
Like looking in on Thanksgiving dinner when you are starving to death…that sounded too familiar. He couldn’t go with Gunn to Anne and the life of protecting and helping runaways. He couldn’t go with Illyria into what ever jungle in the Amazon she felt she needed to head to. Something about the green needed to speak with her…WTF?
So Spike hung around Angel and Buffy for a month or two. Watching them be happy, watching their love grow again. Pretending it didn’t hurt, but on the inside, Spike felt like his heart was broken into tiny pieces that he was sure he could never pick up again.
Oh sure, Spike knew he was being a whiny baby about it. He needed noise to try and push it out of his head. He decided to go away and leave the happy couple in peace. Be a man about it. It looked noble enough to them and it wasn’t like Angel-rather, Liam-could smell a lie anymore, human as he was. They didn’t need to know that Spike was jealous or envious or lonely. It was more than he could stand to see the pity in their eyes already. Definitely time to move along. Be gone, away, out of sight and out of mind. Lick his wounds in private for once.
Buffy had kissed Spike gently on the night he was to leave and told him to take care of himself, and that he was always welcome in their home. He had smiled and told her that he would and he had secretly hoped that she would beg him to stay. But, in the end, she had let him go…easily in fact. The chapter of her life that was Spike was over for her now. She stepped inside her pretty house with her Angel and closed the door. It was over. It was all over, except for the twisting weight Spike felt in his chest. Fuck that soul was a heavy bugger sometimes.
Spike ended up wandering around, aimless and alone, on the back country roads of the desert through several states. He drove at night with only the inky blanket of the star-dotted sky above to keep him company. The windows of the 1978 gas-guzzling Sedan Deville down and the wind roaring through so loud it drown out the Pink Floyd that played on the radio.
He slept in the trunk of the car parked on the side of the road during the day. Hot? Yes, but Spike hated to be cold. And it wasn’t like he could actually suffocate. Besides, he was always careful to park in the shade. He needed money to keep him full of blood and smokes and gas. How does a lone vampire with a soul make money for blood and smokes and gas? Well, again, Spike figured he could do two things very, very well-fight and fuck.
Las Vegas. Where better to sell your goods and talents…fighting and fucking. That was Spike. He was sure he could sell the fucking part anyway. It turned out that it was pretty easy for Spike to sell himself. All he had to do was walk into and escort agency, the first one in the telephone book to be exact, Avalon Premium Escorts (Preeeeemium. Huh, that’s rich) and announce to the receptionist that he was there about a job. The receptionist took one look at him and was convinced. If Spike was anything, he was convincing.
“You got a sexual preference, Toots?” she asked.
Spike took a long drag on his cigarette and blew smoke out of his nose in a lazy drift, “Human,” he drawled.
“English boy. That’s good. With that accent, you’ll make plenty of money on the homosexual circuit. But I suspect that you’re a good enough looking guy that you will get the occasional female customer.” She looked down at her paper work. “You worked in this trade before?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Next question.” He blew out more smoke.
“How old are you?” she asked, looking up from the paper and giving him the eye.
Spike considered how funny it would be to tell her his real age. Yes, I was five years old when the Civil War broke out in 1861. But he thought better of it.
“Old enough,” Spike replied.
“Ok. What is your birth date then?” she asked him. Her eyes never left him.
Fuck, what IS my birth date? He recalled getting a sled for his birthday once. Dead of winter it was. Oh yes….
“Nine January,” he answered.
“Year?” she asked.
Here Spike stammered. “Uh…uh…nineteen…” SHIT! How old do I look? “um…1956?”
The woman frowned at him. “You are kidding me. There is no way you’re 49 years old.”
“Ok, How about 1966?” he tried again.
She kept frowning.
“Tell you what, Pet. Pick a year that puts me over 30.” He shrugged and took another lazy drag. “I don’t give a fuck what year.” He saw the woman scribble down January 9, 1970.
“Got any problem taking a drug and AIDS test? State law requires it every three months for sex workers.”
“No, not a problem. I am as clean as they get,” he said. Vampire and all, he was not worried about catching anything, no matter how nasty the trick was. He could also be assured that he couldn’t spread anything along. Not even Herpes would live on him. He’d had opportunity once upon a time to test that theory long story, lost a bet…dead skin took nothing in and gave nothing away. It was a handy dandy vampire side effect useful for a whore.
Whore. That word echoed in his head a lot lately. Spike found that it was very acceptable to the part of his soul that told him he deserved to be fucked over. His soul buzzed a lot at him, and it was not pleasant.
During the week it took to for the test results to come back, Spike used that time to find a place to stay. Any seedy dive would do, and a seedy dive is what he got. An old motel converted into fleabag apartments full of drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes-fitting. It was cheap though, so good enough for him.
As for the tests, Spike bribed the lab guy. A fifty dollar bill made the guy see it his way pretty easily. It would be hard to take a urine test for drugs when you do not urinate. He bet that Angel was going to have a strange time getting used to elimination type bodily functions again. And once he had thought that, he had thought back to Angel and Buffy and he had trouble swallowing the softball sized lump in his throat.
The AIDS test was slightly more complex since he had to have living blood for that that one. He settled for paying a demon doctor for false documents that said he was clean. He resolved to go back to that fellow when his three month checkup was due. Fuck what a nightmare. Ah, for the good old days when I could just kill a business man for his wallet and drain him dry for dinner. That thought got him a long, hard stab of guilt to the gut. Fuck that soul is a vicious bugger sometimes.
His first night ‘on call’ for Avalon Premium Escorts-that name really made him want to throw up-he was sent out to meet a man in a hotel room at the Circus Circus Hotel…more fitting irony. Standard operation procedure from what he could guess. He went to the hotel room given to him by the service. As he raised his hand to knock on the door, he realized he was shaking- hard, and his stomach was twisting. He was hungry and had not eaten in days, having used his last $150.00 paying off the lab bloke for the drug test and the demon doctor for the AIDS test.
It was not just hunger that made him shake. Self loathing crawled up his spine like a snake and latched onto his vertebrae hissing that word in his ear…whore whore whorewhorewhore. He felt like his legs wouldn’t hold him. Dammed soul made it feel awful to have to do this. He wished it would make up it’s mind. Was this a ‘what I deserve situation’ or was this a ‘you are defiling and degrading yourself’ type deal. Fucking soul.
The first time was hard. Spike knocked on the door and a burly-looking, football player-type guy flung it open. He chastised Spike for being late, and what was worse, Spike chastised himself for not being able to stop shaking like a frightened puppy. What the HELL was wrong with him? He was the fucking Big Bad! Not to mention it was not like this was the first time he had ever been buggered. Stupid soul, stupid feelings.
His first customer wanted the works; suck and fuck; hold the pretty boy down and fuck his pretty asshole. If it weren’t for the $500 the guy left sitting out in plain sight on the dresser as his payment, Spike would have just twisted the burly man’s head from his shoulders and taken the lot. Stupid soul. Hope the bloody Powers That Be are happy. He was getting what he deserved. Had he been alive and human, he would have been torn up after the brutal fucking the burly man gave him. It hurt-a lot-he mused as he was face down in the pillow with that fat prick buried deep in his rectum.
His soul chattered at him the whole time. That word-whore whore whore. To Spike’s embarrassment and shame, he found it was all he could do to keep from crying at first. But, Spike had managed to shut off his feelings just about the time the guy shot his load into his asshole. Total shut down…no emotion, automatic…early one morning just as the sun was rising…shame that trigger didn’t work anymore. And that also got him another guilty stab to his gut, courtesy of his soul.
Spike took the $500 the burly man shoved at him before telling him to get his scrawny ass out of his room. He pocketed his share-$300-and stuffed the rest in the envelope he was to drop off at the escort service. Then he stumbled to the nearest bar, got hammered drunk, and passed out in an alleyway just outside his apartment building. That had nearly got him dusted when the sun came up that morning. Ooops, nothing like waking up with your arm on fire. And bugger all for that $300. Blown rent and blood money on Jack Daniels and Jim Beam.
After that first time, it wasn’t so bad. Spike quickly grew popular with men, and he was nice looking enough to get a fairly high-scale list of regulars. The regulars were nice. He got to know them and what they liked and expected, and they paid him better than your one-trick johns. Rather a nice list of fellows actually, who usually liked to take him out and show him off. One or two of them even knew Spike was a vampire. They didn’t mind and seemed to get off on it. They kept him in blood and smokes regardless, so Spike was sort of…satisfied.
The other escort blokes working for the service were a pretty nice lot as well. All 5 of them were strictly and 100% gay. They only did men so Spike was the only switch hitter. And he also got on well with the female escorts, a nice bunch of ladies in his book. Of course, Spike did always get on with the ladies. It felt good to be well liked.
Sometimes a woman would call in for a date. Those were the times Spike could really shine. None of the other men in the service would do women. Women were something Spike knew, something Spike was good at. They were usually older, lonely women who’s husbands had either died or left them for younger birds. He could take a woman to the heights of ecstasy, make her squeal with delight, make her beg him for it. And he could pour all his painful, unwanted love into it. It didn’t stop the ache in his heart…just dulled it for a while.
Soft and smooth and needy women, they tasted and smelled so sweet. It was something he was good at-fucking. And if he was lucky, and one of that night’s tricks was a woman, he would get a chance to patch the gaping hole in his heart for a little while. Give a woman who needed the attention all the love in his heart for one night. Spike knew he was a whore. But then, wasn’t that what he had always been? Get it hard, service the…. Well, whatever.
Thanks to Jan for the encouragement and to my room mate and beta Cindy.
Here it is. Set after the end of Angel. Spike goes searching for Shelter, Part One.
It is Nc -17, Incase anyone wants to know
The way Spike figured it, he was good at exactly two things-fighting and fucking. And since getting his soul back, he didn’t feel as though he could fight for a living.
Damn Angel anyway. The mess Spike’s life had turned into was his fault. It was Angel’s fault for Shansuhing. Angel, or Liam Grady as he preferred to be called these days; was human now, and it was his fault for finally being happy, for finally getting Buffy, for leaving Spike behind once and for all.
So what could Spike do after the final battle? After Buffy showed up for the show down? After the victory that he had a large hand in, and after all of Angel’s dreams came true? He sure as hell couldn’t hang around and watch his heart, his Buffy, giggle and sigh over Peaches, all pink and perfect and beating heart. It hurt way too much to see them happy together, even if Spike was truly happy for them, and glad that Buffy could finally be free to love. And, he really was truly happy for them, but it all hurt too much.
Like looking in on Thanksgiving dinner when you are starving to death…that sounded too familiar. He couldn’t go with Gunn to Anne and the life of protecting and helping runaways. He couldn’t go with Illyria into what ever jungle in the Amazon she felt she needed to head to. Something about the green needed to speak with her…WTF?
So Spike hung around Angel and Buffy for a month or two. Watching them be happy, watching their love grow again. Pretending it didn’t hurt, but on the inside, Spike felt like his heart was broken into tiny pieces that he was sure he could never pick up again.
Oh sure, Spike knew he was being a whiny baby about it. He needed noise to try and push it out of his head. He decided to go away and leave the happy couple in peace. Be a man about it. It looked noble enough to them and it wasn’t like Angel-rather, Liam-could smell a lie anymore, human as he was. They didn’t need to know that Spike was jealous or envious or lonely. It was more than he could stand to see the pity in their eyes already. Definitely time to move along. Be gone, away, out of sight and out of mind. Lick his wounds in private for once.
Buffy had kissed Spike gently on the night he was to leave and told him to take care of himself, and that he was always welcome in their home. He had smiled and told her that he would and he had secretly hoped that she would beg him to stay. But, in the end, she had let him go…easily in fact. The chapter of her life that was Spike was over for her now. She stepped inside her pretty house with her Angel and closed the door. It was over. It was all over, except for the twisting weight Spike felt in his chest. Fuck that soul was a heavy bugger sometimes.
Spike ended up wandering around, aimless and alone, on the back country roads of the desert through several states. He drove at night with only the inky blanket of the star-dotted sky above to keep him company. The windows of the 1978 gas-guzzling Sedan Deville down and the wind roaring through so loud it drown out the Pink Floyd that played on the radio.
He slept in the trunk of the car parked on the side of the road during the day. Hot? Yes, but Spike hated to be cold. And it wasn’t like he could actually suffocate. Besides, he was always careful to park in the shade. He needed money to keep him full of blood and smokes and gas. How does a lone vampire with a soul make money for blood and smokes and gas? Well, again, Spike figured he could do two things very, very well-fight and fuck.
Las Vegas. Where better to sell your goods and talents…fighting and fucking. That was Spike. He was sure he could sell the fucking part anyway. It turned out that it was pretty easy for Spike to sell himself. All he had to do was walk into and escort agency, the first one in the telephone book to be exact, Avalon Premium Escorts (Preeeeemium. Huh, that’s rich) and announce to the receptionist that he was there about a job. The receptionist took one look at him and was convinced. If Spike was anything, he was convincing.
“You got a sexual preference, Toots?” she asked.
Spike took a long drag on his cigarette and blew smoke out of his nose in a lazy drift, “Human,” he drawled.
“English boy. That’s good. With that accent, you’ll make plenty of money on the homosexual circuit. But I suspect that you’re a good enough looking guy that you will get the occasional female customer.” She looked down at her paper work. “You worked in this trade before?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Next question.” He blew out more smoke.
“How old are you?” she asked, looking up from the paper and giving him the eye.
Spike considered how funny it would be to tell her his real age. Yes, I was five years old when the Civil War broke out in 1861. But he thought better of it.
“Old enough,” Spike replied.
“Ok. What is your birth date then?” she asked him. Her eyes never left him.
Fuck, what IS my birth date? He recalled getting a sled for his birthday once. Dead of winter it was. Oh yes….
“Nine January,” he answered.
“Year?” she asked.
Here Spike stammered. “Uh…uh…nineteen…” SHIT! How old do I look? “um…1956?”
The woman frowned at him. “You are kidding me. There is no way you’re 49 years old.”
“Ok, How about 1966?” he tried again.
She kept frowning.
“Tell you what, Pet. Pick a year that puts me over 30.” He shrugged and took another lazy drag. “I don’t give a fuck what year.” He saw the woman scribble down January 9, 1970.
“Got any problem taking a drug and AIDS test? State law requires it every three months for sex workers.”
“No, not a problem. I am as clean as they get,” he said. Vampire and all, he was not worried about catching anything, no matter how nasty the trick was. He could also be assured that he couldn’t spread anything along. Not even Herpes would live on him. He’d had opportunity once upon a time to test that theory long story, lost a bet…dead skin took nothing in and gave nothing away. It was a handy dandy vampire side effect useful for a whore.
Whore. That word echoed in his head a lot lately. Spike found that it was very acceptable to the part of his soul that told him he deserved to be fucked over. His soul buzzed a lot at him, and it was not pleasant.
During the week it took to for the test results to come back, Spike used that time to find a place to stay. Any seedy dive would do, and a seedy dive is what he got. An old motel converted into fleabag apartments full of drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes-fitting. It was cheap though, so good enough for him.
As for the tests, Spike bribed the lab guy. A fifty dollar bill made the guy see it his way pretty easily. It would be hard to take a urine test for drugs when you do not urinate. He bet that Angel was going to have a strange time getting used to elimination type bodily functions again. And once he had thought that, he had thought back to Angel and Buffy and he had trouble swallowing the softball sized lump in his throat.
The AIDS test was slightly more complex since he had to have living blood for that that one. He settled for paying a demon doctor for false documents that said he was clean. He resolved to go back to that fellow when his three month checkup was due. Fuck what a nightmare. Ah, for the good old days when I could just kill a business man for his wallet and drain him dry for dinner. That thought got him a long, hard stab of guilt to the gut. Fuck that soul is a vicious bugger sometimes.
His first night ‘on call’ for Avalon Premium Escorts-that name really made him want to throw up-he was sent out to meet a man in a hotel room at the Circus Circus Hotel…more fitting irony. Standard operation procedure from what he could guess. He went to the hotel room given to him by the service. As he raised his hand to knock on the door, he realized he was shaking- hard, and his stomach was twisting. He was hungry and had not eaten in days, having used his last $150.00 paying off the lab bloke for the drug test and the demon doctor for the AIDS test.
It was not just hunger that made him shake. Self loathing crawled up his spine like a snake and latched onto his vertebrae hissing that word in his ear…whore whore whorewhorewhore. He felt like his legs wouldn’t hold him. Dammed soul made it feel awful to have to do this. He wished it would make up it’s mind. Was this a ‘what I deserve situation’ or was this a ‘you are defiling and degrading yourself’ type deal. Fucking soul.
The first time was hard. Spike knocked on the door and a burly-looking, football player-type guy flung it open. He chastised Spike for being late, and what was worse, Spike chastised himself for not being able to stop shaking like a frightened puppy. What the HELL was wrong with him? He was the fucking Big Bad! Not to mention it was not like this was the first time he had ever been buggered. Stupid soul, stupid feelings.
His first customer wanted the works; suck and fuck; hold the pretty boy down and fuck his pretty asshole. If it weren’t for the $500 the guy left sitting out in plain sight on the dresser as his payment, Spike would have just twisted the burly man’s head from his shoulders and taken the lot. Stupid soul. Hope the bloody Powers That Be are happy. He was getting what he deserved. Had he been alive and human, he would have been torn up after the brutal fucking the burly man gave him. It hurt-a lot-he mused as he was face down in the pillow with that fat prick buried deep in his rectum.
His soul chattered at him the whole time. That word-whore whore whore. To Spike’s embarrassment and shame, he found it was all he could do to keep from crying at first. But, Spike had managed to shut off his feelings just about the time the guy shot his load into his asshole. Total shut down…no emotion, automatic…early one morning just as the sun was rising…shame that trigger didn’t work anymore. And that also got him another guilty stab to his gut, courtesy of his soul.
Spike took the $500 the burly man shoved at him before telling him to get his scrawny ass out of his room. He pocketed his share-$300-and stuffed the rest in the envelope he was to drop off at the escort service. Then he stumbled to the nearest bar, got hammered drunk, and passed out in an alleyway just outside his apartment building. That had nearly got him dusted when the sun came up that morning. Ooops, nothing like waking up with your arm on fire. And bugger all for that $300. Blown rent and blood money on Jack Daniels and Jim Beam.
After that first time, it wasn’t so bad. Spike quickly grew popular with men, and he was nice looking enough to get a fairly high-scale list of regulars. The regulars were nice. He got to know them and what they liked and expected, and they paid him better than your one-trick johns. Rather a nice list of fellows actually, who usually liked to take him out and show him off. One or two of them even knew Spike was a vampire. They didn’t mind and seemed to get off on it. They kept him in blood and smokes regardless, so Spike was sort of…satisfied.
The other escort blokes working for the service were a pretty nice lot as well. All 5 of them were strictly and 100% gay. They only did men so Spike was the only switch hitter. And he also got on well with the female escorts, a nice bunch of ladies in his book. Of course, Spike did always get on with the ladies. It felt good to be well liked.
Sometimes a woman would call in for a date. Those were the times Spike could really shine. None of the other men in the service would do women. Women were something Spike knew, something Spike was good at. They were usually older, lonely women who’s husbands had either died or left them for younger birds. He could take a woman to the heights of ecstasy, make her squeal with delight, make her beg him for it. And he could pour all his painful, unwanted love into it. It didn’t stop the ache in his heart…just dulled it for a while.
Soft and smooth and needy women, they tasted and smelled so sweet. It was something he was good at-fucking. And if he was lucky, and one of that night’s tricks was a woman, he would get a chance to patch the gaping hole in his heart for a little while. Give a woman who needed the attention all the love in his heart for one night. Spike knew he was a whore. But then, wasn’t that what he had always been? Get it hard, service the…. Well, whatever.