Choose Your Author Round 7: A-Hunting We Will Go (Spike/Drusilla, NC17)
I've just posted my cya_ficathon entry to the Choose Your Author archive. I had three out of five requests looking for Fanged Four pre-series, so I hope I've pleased a couple of others along with my actual prompter! A little history for you...
Title A-Hunting We Will Go
Author Brutti ma buoni
Characters Spike/Dru, Angelus/Darla
Rating NC17
Words 1750
Warnings Vampire violence, so character deaths
Prompt Spike/Dru: "I’m great with anything from the 1800’s right up until they appear in Sunnydale. So long as they’re being their evil selves, I’m happy"
Setting Pre-series (Austro-Hungary 1889, to be precise)
There is a rottenness in the air of Vienna. So Dru says, at least, and Spike's prepared to believe her. Or else she's bastardising the words of the bard just for the hell of it, and he's never averse to a little literary blasphemy, so good luck to her.
There's glory to be found here. Great glory, for a great and glorious Empire that's gnawing itself to death like a flea-ridden bitch. They're building a ring around the old city, a flaunting ring of self-importance, shouting greatness where once there were walls promising security. No more. Vienna's open to the world, and strangled by its own self-importance all at once. Vast head of an Empire that’s eating itself, gnawing from within like a foxcub within the Spartan boy’s cloak.
Spike's not a man for swanky European cities. Paris makes him itch. Madrid makes him yawn. Rome's only good for outraging Catholics. He'd as soon be elsewhere. More so, this week, as Angelus and Darla whisper their plans. They aren't for sharing, though he's pressed Dru to see what she can see. Has a feeling Angelus is planning something spectacular, and that tends to lead to a swift exit. He's half packed up already. Doesn't want to leave his best souvenirs behind, as happened in Berlin that time.
(Bloody Krauts. Efficient even in their mobs.)
*
Drusilla can't read Angelus's plans entire, but she sure as hell gets excited by what she can pick up. Wakes Spike one frozen afternoon to whisper of blood, and princes. Two of her favourite things, and she's waving a fairy tale fantasy of horror around them.
It's never truly dark in the city, not when there's snow out, but the gloom is pressing as Dru dances round their room, pale flesh, dark hair, and fangs flashing from time to time. Spike laughs with sheer joy of this woman, and grabs her as she passes for the fifth time. Fuck and forget the boredom, that's what he'd like to do, worship Drusilla the way she should be worshipped.
But not today.
"William," says the second-least-welcome voice in the world right now. Bloody Darla. Bloody hell. "Forgive the intrusion into your playtime, but we have work to be done."
*
Now, it's important to note that Spike isn't anyone's bootboy. Not at all. He's his own vampire, and he has his place within the family. It's not his fault he's the last man in. Nor that Angelus and Darla have treated Drusilla largely as a naughty daughter, on account of her being quite hard to take as a fellow adult. As Drusilla's hanger-on, Spike may have fallen into the role of bad boy, the one who makes Darla roll her eyes, but that is not his place in the wider scheme of things, so we're clear.
Because at that moment, Drusilla's hard-chilled nipple poised between his gently-biting fangs, aiming for an afternoon of debauchery and desire before they were interrupted, Spike should not act like a guilty schoolboy. But he does.
Darla brings it out in him, like Angelus brings out his inferiority fears. Both of them know Drusilla from way back. Between them, they broke and remade her. All Spike did was pick up the beautiful fractured girl and love her. Sometimes, he's afraid he's not demon enough for her. He'll bring her all the corpses in the world, and smile as he does so, but he hasn't the patience for the long game, the subtlety to create true horror and outrage. A fast fight and a good meal is Spike's idea of a night out. Angelus despairs.
*
Angelus has a look that Spike recognizes well. I’ve got a stand-out idiotic idea for a Vampiric Outrage. It’ll cause men to tremble, shake the fate of nations, and get me into the knickers of the two vampire girls I’m squiring around. Darla’s already looking hornier than she has since they came to this city of endless shopping, dancing and other distractions.
Spike fucking hates Angelus’s big plans. Hates Dru for falling for them every time. Hates himself for being secretly impressed by them, and for never, ever coming up with anything comparable. For all the dead kids and ravished females, Spike is mere quotidian evil. Angelus is the real thing, soaring. Makes Spike want to puke, or punch him, or to throw him into sunshine and watch him burn, or all of the above. But it’s undeniable. He’s not even surprised when Dru turns to the bigger bad. How can he be?
“We’re going hunting, children,” says the biggest bad of all. “Come into the woods.”
*
It doesn’t feel much like a great evil plan, this time. Starts on a suburban train. Into the woods, perhaps, but a tame woodland. Hunting ground for princes, and not an inch of it really wild, in Spike’s opinion.
No, Spike has no qualifications in judging the wildness or otherwise of woodland. He’s an urban creature by upbringing and preference. But he knows authenticity, and this is not that.
The little lodge they creep up to is nothing too special, either. Fancy enough to be annoying, but nothing more noticeable than that. So, Angelus wants to create an outrage among the aristos, they’re the only types likely to be renting hunting lodges in this area. Excellent. They hunted a group of hunters from the Quorn a few years ago; nothing quite so much fun as your aristocrat in full panicked flight. Though the hunting box is quieter than he’d have expected from that scenario, and repetition is not a favourite motif of Angelus’s. So, what then? An ambush, maybe, but that’s not Angelus’s style, to invite others along for a surprise killing. He likes to take those one on one.
No, apparently, not a mass slaughter at all. Just two people inside one small study. She’s young and pretty; he’s older, with the typically heroic Viennese moustache that makes them all look so bloody similar to Spike’s bored eyes.
Angelus murmurs in Dru’s ear. “He’s for you, my sweet. All for you. But let him watch while we have our fun with her.”
Dru is smiling. “You remembered my birthday!” Death-day, more honestly, but Spike realizes he’s been outflanked. He bought her champagne and a fancy sommelier to serve it yesterday. The waiter’s blood mixed beautifully with the Widow’s finest. This, whatever it is, gives her much more, though. Her eyes are rolling with delight, but she pauses and reaches for Spike. “And my William shall share.”
Angelus looks less than thrilled, but Drusilla reaches up to kiss-nip-lick at his cheek. “For it is my pleasure, sire,” she adds, curtseying. Bloody princess fantasies again, sure, but Spike’s flattered by her favour.
So it goes. Swift figures, tapping at the window. Spike wonders how they’ll get inside, but Angelus hails the man with confidence.
“Hey, Rudy, brought my friends for that party you wanted. Can we come in?”
Moustachioed man (Rudy, apparently. Rudolf, probably, to his mother) looks annoyed, but nods. There’s a moment before he adds, “Come,” when he might have saved himself. But he’ll never know that.
They slip into the room, four figures practiced in the arts of death. Spike pins Rudy neatly, embracing him from behind with an unbreakable grip, and with his emerging fangs hovering against the well-fed neck. Dru kisses his hand. “Sire.”
Rudy isn’t listening. He’s watching the pretty girl as Angelus and Darla take her. A lengthy nip of blood for each, to make her feeble, before her screams are given breath. Then the coup de grace, stripped and weakened, and with two vampires feeding, their hands moving across her body as the death-ecstasy takes her. Her eyes are wide, bulgingly frightened throughout. Fixed on Rudy, as though he might save her.
Rudy tries to scream in his turn, but Drusilla turns, hisses, quick-smart and viperfish, right in his terrified face. He makes few more sounds, mostly like a man of the verge of apoplexy, but he doesn’t speak again.
“Your imperial highness,” says Angelus. “Have I that correct?” He waits for no answer. “It has truly been a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” A pause, theatrically judged. “Goodbye.”
Drusilla turns and kisses poor Rudy, full on the mouth and drawing blood. “He tastes…. He tastes of Charlemagne,” she says, inexplicable even more than normal. A wave of her hand gives the permission Spike’s been waiting for, and he sinks his teeth into Rudy’s neck in his turn. Bloke tastes of blood, to Spike, and he’s glad of it. Well fed, rich blood, and plenty. He’s easily drained.
“Empires fall,” says Drusilla. She looks exalted, eyes cast up to the heavens.
“Now,” Angelus dusts his hands, “Let us create.”
This is the bit Spike hates. Why, when the bloke’s dead and you’re full of rich blood, do you want to be prancing around creating masquerades? Especially half-baked masquerades of this type, the girl laid out on the bed, the man sitting beside her, not a tableau of anything much, apart from death. A couple of knife wounds smear the bite marks into illegibility. A letter, produced from Angelus’s pocket.
Spike had a bellyful of that game last year, in Whitechapel. Seems unsporting, sending the hue and cry elsewhere. He’s underwhelmed.
Yet Angelus looks satisfied. “That’ll keep them confused,” he says, nodding, as his comrades slip out of the window by which they entered. “With a fudge and a cover up, they’ll never truly know what passed here. It’ll eat them alive.”
Spike doesn’t know who ‘they’ are, not quite yet. Not till Dru, full and content, snuggles against him on the train back. “I’ve tasted holy Romans before,” she murmurs, “But I’ve never changed the world.”
That would be the moment that Spike realizes they’ve killed the heir to all this. That the tottering Empire has no succession. That Angelus has pulled the rug out from under old Europe.
The mysterious death tableau is the least of Angelus’s plans. He’s playing for Empires now.
Spike ignores his suddenly churning guts, where the mortal remains of Crown Prince Rudolf are making themselves felt again. This is big evil, and once again Spike faces the truth that beside Angelus, he’s mere domestic-level evil. Just wants to be left alone with his girl, and a few decent fights to the death each week. He’s a simple soulless being.
He tries, though. Tries for impressive and portentous, to reflect his uneasy stomach in words of lead. "All that follows - it's all on you, Angelus."
*
The eleventh of November 1918 passes quietly for Spike and Drusilla. They have a pleasant little apartment in New York, acquired from a charming young woman about town, who died over three days with a variety of screams Spike was hard-pressed to muffle enough to keep the neighbours ignorant.
They've settled in well. Life is good.
The morning paper brings tidings of Armistice, sober and grief-muffled as the toll of the dead is recalled.
15 million. All on you, Angelus.
And perhaps it’s not strictly fair, and perhaps the conflict would have come anyway, but today Spike’s remembering, and knowing that they didn’t help that total, the night they went hunting in the Vienna woods.
They haven't seen Angelus since the Boxer Rebellion, but his shadow is long. Hey, old man. What are you thinking today? What an outrage, hmmm? Your best ever.
Drusilla leans over Spike's shoulder. The air from her words tickles his ear. "Oh, Daddy, Daddy. Look at the wonderful mess you made."
The pleasure goes out of Spike there. Such admiration in the words. He'll never make half so much of a mess as this, now, will he?
***
Historical Note:
This is the Mayerling Incident in which the only direct heir to the Habsburg Empire died mysteriously at his hunting lodge, with his mistress. It threw the Empire into crisis, and is still not fully resolved today, as most of the evidence was destroyed.
Besides, who would have believed it was the vampires?
***
Title A-Hunting We Will Go
Author Brutti ma buoni
Characters Spike/Dru, Angelus/Darla
Rating NC17
Words 1750
Warnings Vampire violence, so character deaths
Prompt Spike/Dru: "I’m great with anything from the 1800’s right up until they appear in Sunnydale. So long as they’re being their evil selves, I’m happy"
Setting Pre-series (Austro-Hungary 1889, to be precise)
There is a rottenness in the air of Vienna. So Dru says, at least, and Spike's prepared to believe her. Or else she's bastardising the words of the bard just for the hell of it, and he's never averse to a little literary blasphemy, so good luck to her.
There's glory to be found here. Great glory, for a great and glorious Empire that's gnawing itself to death like a flea-ridden bitch. They're building a ring around the old city, a flaunting ring of self-importance, shouting greatness where once there were walls promising security. No more. Vienna's open to the world, and strangled by its own self-importance all at once. Vast head of an Empire that’s eating itself, gnawing from within like a foxcub within the Spartan boy’s cloak.
Spike's not a man for swanky European cities. Paris makes him itch. Madrid makes him yawn. Rome's only good for outraging Catholics. He'd as soon be elsewhere. More so, this week, as Angelus and Darla whisper their plans. They aren't for sharing, though he's pressed Dru to see what she can see. Has a feeling Angelus is planning something spectacular, and that tends to lead to a swift exit. He's half packed up already. Doesn't want to leave his best souvenirs behind, as happened in Berlin that time.
(Bloody Krauts. Efficient even in their mobs.)
*
Drusilla can't read Angelus's plans entire, but she sure as hell gets excited by what she can pick up. Wakes Spike one frozen afternoon to whisper of blood, and princes. Two of her favourite things, and she's waving a fairy tale fantasy of horror around them.
It's never truly dark in the city, not when there's snow out, but the gloom is pressing as Dru dances round their room, pale flesh, dark hair, and fangs flashing from time to time. Spike laughs with sheer joy of this woman, and grabs her as she passes for the fifth time. Fuck and forget the boredom, that's what he'd like to do, worship Drusilla the way she should be worshipped.
But not today.
"William," says the second-least-welcome voice in the world right now. Bloody Darla. Bloody hell. "Forgive the intrusion into your playtime, but we have work to be done."
*
Now, it's important to note that Spike isn't anyone's bootboy. Not at all. He's his own vampire, and he has his place within the family. It's not his fault he's the last man in. Nor that Angelus and Darla have treated Drusilla largely as a naughty daughter, on account of her being quite hard to take as a fellow adult. As Drusilla's hanger-on, Spike may have fallen into the role of bad boy, the one who makes Darla roll her eyes, but that is not his place in the wider scheme of things, so we're clear.
Because at that moment, Drusilla's hard-chilled nipple poised between his gently-biting fangs, aiming for an afternoon of debauchery and desire before they were interrupted, Spike should not act like a guilty schoolboy. But he does.
Darla brings it out in him, like Angelus brings out his inferiority fears. Both of them know Drusilla from way back. Between them, they broke and remade her. All Spike did was pick up the beautiful fractured girl and love her. Sometimes, he's afraid he's not demon enough for her. He'll bring her all the corpses in the world, and smile as he does so, but he hasn't the patience for the long game, the subtlety to create true horror and outrage. A fast fight and a good meal is Spike's idea of a night out. Angelus despairs.
*
Angelus has a look that Spike recognizes well. I’ve got a stand-out idiotic idea for a Vampiric Outrage. It’ll cause men to tremble, shake the fate of nations, and get me into the knickers of the two vampire girls I’m squiring around. Darla’s already looking hornier than she has since they came to this city of endless shopping, dancing and other distractions.
Spike fucking hates Angelus’s big plans. Hates Dru for falling for them every time. Hates himself for being secretly impressed by them, and for never, ever coming up with anything comparable. For all the dead kids and ravished females, Spike is mere quotidian evil. Angelus is the real thing, soaring. Makes Spike want to puke, or punch him, or to throw him into sunshine and watch him burn, or all of the above. But it’s undeniable. He’s not even surprised when Dru turns to the bigger bad. How can he be?
“We’re going hunting, children,” says the biggest bad of all. “Come into the woods.”
*
It doesn’t feel much like a great evil plan, this time. Starts on a suburban train. Into the woods, perhaps, but a tame woodland. Hunting ground for princes, and not an inch of it really wild, in Spike’s opinion.
No, Spike has no qualifications in judging the wildness or otherwise of woodland. He’s an urban creature by upbringing and preference. But he knows authenticity, and this is not that.
The little lodge they creep up to is nothing too special, either. Fancy enough to be annoying, but nothing more noticeable than that. So, Angelus wants to create an outrage among the aristos, they’re the only types likely to be renting hunting lodges in this area. Excellent. They hunted a group of hunters from the Quorn a few years ago; nothing quite so much fun as your aristocrat in full panicked flight. Though the hunting box is quieter than he’d have expected from that scenario, and repetition is not a favourite motif of Angelus’s. So, what then? An ambush, maybe, but that’s not Angelus’s style, to invite others along for a surprise killing. He likes to take those one on one.
No, apparently, not a mass slaughter at all. Just two people inside one small study. She’s young and pretty; he’s older, with the typically heroic Viennese moustache that makes them all look so bloody similar to Spike’s bored eyes.
Angelus murmurs in Dru’s ear. “He’s for you, my sweet. All for you. But let him watch while we have our fun with her.”
Dru is smiling. “You remembered my birthday!” Death-day, more honestly, but Spike realizes he’s been outflanked. He bought her champagne and a fancy sommelier to serve it yesterday. The waiter’s blood mixed beautifully with the Widow’s finest. This, whatever it is, gives her much more, though. Her eyes are rolling with delight, but she pauses and reaches for Spike. “And my William shall share.”
Angelus looks less than thrilled, but Drusilla reaches up to kiss-nip-lick at his cheek. “For it is my pleasure, sire,” she adds, curtseying. Bloody princess fantasies again, sure, but Spike’s flattered by her favour.
So it goes. Swift figures, tapping at the window. Spike wonders how they’ll get inside, but Angelus hails the man with confidence.
“Hey, Rudy, brought my friends for that party you wanted. Can we come in?”
Moustachioed man (Rudy, apparently. Rudolf, probably, to his mother) looks annoyed, but nods. There’s a moment before he adds, “Come,” when he might have saved himself. But he’ll never know that.
They slip into the room, four figures practiced in the arts of death. Spike pins Rudy neatly, embracing him from behind with an unbreakable grip, and with his emerging fangs hovering against the well-fed neck. Dru kisses his hand. “Sire.”
Rudy isn’t listening. He’s watching the pretty girl as Angelus and Darla take her. A lengthy nip of blood for each, to make her feeble, before her screams are given breath. Then the coup de grace, stripped and weakened, and with two vampires feeding, their hands moving across her body as the death-ecstasy takes her. Her eyes are wide, bulgingly frightened throughout. Fixed on Rudy, as though he might save her.
Rudy tries to scream in his turn, but Drusilla turns, hisses, quick-smart and viperfish, right in his terrified face. He makes few more sounds, mostly like a man of the verge of apoplexy, but he doesn’t speak again.
“Your imperial highness,” says Angelus. “Have I that correct?” He waits for no answer. “It has truly been a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” A pause, theatrically judged. “Goodbye.”
Drusilla turns and kisses poor Rudy, full on the mouth and drawing blood. “He tastes…. He tastes of Charlemagne,” she says, inexplicable even more than normal. A wave of her hand gives the permission Spike’s been waiting for, and he sinks his teeth into Rudy’s neck in his turn. Bloke tastes of blood, to Spike, and he’s glad of it. Well fed, rich blood, and plenty. He’s easily drained.
“Empires fall,” says Drusilla. She looks exalted, eyes cast up to the heavens.
“Now,” Angelus dusts his hands, “Let us create.”
This is the bit Spike hates. Why, when the bloke’s dead and you’re full of rich blood, do you want to be prancing around creating masquerades? Especially half-baked masquerades of this type, the girl laid out on the bed, the man sitting beside her, not a tableau of anything much, apart from death. A couple of knife wounds smear the bite marks into illegibility. A letter, produced from Angelus’s pocket.
Spike had a bellyful of that game last year, in Whitechapel. Seems unsporting, sending the hue and cry elsewhere. He’s underwhelmed.
Yet Angelus looks satisfied. “That’ll keep them confused,” he says, nodding, as his comrades slip out of the window by which they entered. “With a fudge and a cover up, they’ll never truly know what passed here. It’ll eat them alive.”
Spike doesn’t know who ‘they’ are, not quite yet. Not till Dru, full and content, snuggles against him on the train back. “I’ve tasted holy Romans before,” she murmurs, “But I’ve never changed the world.”
That would be the moment that Spike realizes they’ve killed the heir to all this. That the tottering Empire has no succession. That Angelus has pulled the rug out from under old Europe.
The mysterious death tableau is the least of Angelus’s plans. He’s playing for Empires now.
Spike ignores his suddenly churning guts, where the mortal remains of Crown Prince Rudolf are making themselves felt again. This is big evil, and once again Spike faces the truth that beside Angelus, he’s mere domestic-level evil. Just wants to be left alone with his girl, and a few decent fights to the death each week. He’s a simple soulless being.
He tries, though. Tries for impressive and portentous, to reflect his uneasy stomach in words of lead. "All that follows - it's all on you, Angelus."
*
The eleventh of November 1918 passes quietly for Spike and Drusilla. They have a pleasant little apartment in New York, acquired from a charming young woman about town, who died over three days with a variety of screams Spike was hard-pressed to muffle enough to keep the neighbours ignorant.
They've settled in well. Life is good.
The morning paper brings tidings of Armistice, sober and grief-muffled as the toll of the dead is recalled.
15 million. All on you, Angelus.
And perhaps it’s not strictly fair, and perhaps the conflict would have come anyway, but today Spike’s remembering, and knowing that they didn’t help that total, the night they went hunting in the Vienna woods.
They haven't seen Angelus since the Boxer Rebellion, but his shadow is long. Hey, old man. What are you thinking today? What an outrage, hmmm? Your best ever.
Drusilla leans over Spike's shoulder. The air from her words tickles his ear. "Oh, Daddy, Daddy. Look at the wonderful mess you made."
The pleasure goes out of Spike there. Such admiration in the words. He'll never make half so much of a mess as this, now, will he?
***
Historical Note:
This is the Mayerling Incident in which the only direct heir to the Habsburg Empire died mysteriously at his hunting lodge, with his mistress. It threw the Empire into crisis, and is still not fully resolved today, as most of the evidence was destroyed.
Besides, who would have believed it was the vampires?
***