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Oct. 16th, 2005 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgrey Belonging, Part Three
Spike told himself he was doing this because it was a way of thwarting Angelus. He had to tell himself that because he had no freakin’ clue why else he was doing it except perhaps because he’d started it and now it was a game and if he kept the Watcher alive and more or less intact, he won, but if Angelus made him scream and scream before ripping his throat out, Angelus won. Watcherboy was fucked either way, but Spike didn’t think that was important. He was a soulless serial killer not a soddin’ social worker.
Dru kept whispering nonsense in his ear. “We have to help him. Help him against Daddy so he can help Daddy later. And he can help us. Helps you. Miss Edith says so and although she’s very naughty she sometimes knows....”
So far, he had to say, he was definitely ahead on points. Angelus had done his whole cape flourishing mwahahahah crap and, as far as he could tell, Watcherboy had pretty much giggled his way through it. Spike knew how embarrassing it could be to do something spectacularly evil and not get a fitting reaction. Perhaps he’d overdone it a little on the painkillers, whisky, and happy tablets, but the effect had been pretty bloody funny. On the other side of the bedroom door Watcherboy had certainly made noises, some of them high and some of them loud and most of them quite surprised, but very emphatically not the kind of screaming that people made when they were dying an agonizing death. There had been some whimpering sort of sounds as well as the alto schoolboy line Watcherboy had briefly sung in response to something that made his voice climb higher than K2, and there had been that low rumble of sound from Angelus and some laughter and some very unexpected childish giggling from the Watcher. And this morning, Watcherboy was still alive and – this was the real surprise – intact. Not ‘intact’ as in virgo intacto, of course. If Spike’s ear for a creaking bedspring was still as finely tuned as before his accident, Watcherboy was about three fucks, a vibrator, and some serious fingering, away from being one of those now, but he still had both eyes, both ears, all his fingers, all his toes, two testicles, and each limb in its usual position.
One look at Angelus’s face as the vampire strode out of the bedroom told Spike that maybe those happy tablets had been working even better than he’d thought because Angelus looked in a reasonably good mood and already inclining back to his natural emotional state of smug wankerdom.
And it seemed that Watcherboy’s best defence, next to Spike and his whisky and pills diet, was Watcherboy himself. There was a kind of weird innocence about the scraggly little twerp that was so far carrying him through it. Angelus strode out, all leather trousers and recent orgasm and unbuttoned shirt, alpha male machismo up his bleedin’ wotsit, and Watcherboy toddled out after him, cut, bruised, black eye, fat lip, stinking of come, absently rubbing his bondage-bruised skinny little wrists, wearing a shirt, sort of, and some pants, sort of, barefoot and bed-haired, and…giggling.
Spike openly gawked at that because when warm-blooded breakable humans spent the night with Angelus they tended to come out of his bedroom the next morning one of two ways: dead or wishing they were. If Watcherboy had just been happy and giggly, Angelus would have taken him apart very slowly and with great thoroughness, of course, but he was unpredictably interesting with it. Staggering out unsteadily and looking up at the high ceilings of their ‘borrowed’ house with his mouth open in a groin-aching ‘O’. He turned around, saw Drusilla, and immediately lit up and staggered over to give her a hug as if she were his favourite sister, while she made little crooning noises as she tidied his hair as if he were an errant doll.
“Did you have fun with Daddy?” she asked him.
“Daddy?” He looked at her blankly. “They’re never fun, are they?” When he turned around and saw Angelus, smirking and poncing about, hair-gelled up the wazoo, he did a huge double-take and literally staggered back three paces before saying: “Angelus…!” with just the kind of breathless disbelief and awe that Angelus probably dreamed about while whacking off.
Angelus did his soft shoe shuffle towards him, all Scourge of Europe and pleather pants and Wesley kept on gazing open-mouthed before saying earnestly: “You killed lots of people.”
Angelus gave a supposedly modest shrug that probably didn’t even fool the cockroaches. Wesley began to cast about for something and when Angelus asked him what he was looking for, said over his shoulder: “A crucifix, because – you’re a vampire.”
Angelus glided in front of him. “Do you think I'm going to eat you?”
Wesley looked at him wide-eyed. “Yes, if you’re hungry, I’m sure you will. Would you happen to have a crucifix around here anywhere?”
Angelus was practically beaming at the befuddled boy and Spike just knew he was mentally congratulating himself on his most shining creation. “Not really a decorating choice I’ve ever embraced, Wes.”
“Oh.” Watcherboy cast about in confusion. “Holy water?” Angelus shook his head, still grinning. “What about a stake?”
Angelus produced something from inside his shirt that was stake-length but was made of pink plastic and had a very definitely rounded tip. As Spike rolled his eyes in disgust and Dru giggled behind her hand before waggling her finger at Angelus in mock reproach, Angelus held it out with a flourish. “Will this do?”
Wesley examined the object carefully and then solemnly shook his head. “It has to be made of wood and it needs to have a point on the end so you can….” He mimicked making a staking motion and was visibly distracted, moving his hand backwards and forwards before looking up at Angelus with a smile on his face. “It leaves trails. They’re so pretty....”
Spike figured that anyone with an ego even a notch less gargantuan than Angelus would have worked out that Wesley was pumped full of mind altering drugs at that point, but, no, the vampire was so convinced that he had successfully frightened the Watcher out of his wits that he just smiled indulgently. A smile which only got wider when Watcherboy said: “You were in all our books at school.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Christ, he’ll be telling you he had your picture inside his locker next.”
Wesley turned around awkwardly as he tried to locate Spike, turning almost a hundred and eighty degrees to his right without success before spinning to his left and then stopping with a lurch. “No, because Angelus is bad,” he explained helpfully.
“You don’t say,” Spike returned, thinking how unbelievably annoying this would be if the scene was just happening as opposed to him having engineered it. As things were though, he was actually having fun for the first time in a long time. The stakes were as low as they could possibly be. He didn’t give a damn if the Watcherboy lived or died, but it was like picking white or black on the chessboard; it didn’t matter which you chose, just that whatever you chose won. This was the same. He looked across at Angelus. “Are you going to kill the Watchersprog or do I have to do it?”
Wesley blinked at Spike with great concentration for a moment and then pointed at him triumphantly. “William the Bloody!”
Spike looked across at Angelus. “For the love of onion rings and chicken wings will you just off the little bugger already?”
“You tried to kill my father.” Wesley giggled suddenly. “Pity you didn’t try a bit harder.” He clamped a hand across his mouth. “I didn’t say that.” He looked across at Drusilla. “Did I?”
She waggled a finger at him. “Bad Wesley, said naughty things about his Daddy. My Daddy may have to spank you some more.”
“Are we going to eat him or what?” Spike demanded, hoping he had now made it abundantly clear that by keeping Watcherboy alive Angelus would be deeply irritating him.
“No eating the guests, William. Where are your manners?” Angelus purred, still watching Wesley in a manner that was halfway to doting. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t just snap his neck on a whim, of course, but so far, so kind of going to plan.
Drusilla nodded. “Tsk, tsk, William. Very bad. Mustn’t eat the guests or else they can’t come back again or bring us any presents.” She took Wesley’s hand and pulled him into the open space in the middle of the room. “Dance with me, Wesley. Dance a waltz with me. Can you hear the music?”
He listened intently and then shook his head at her solemnly. “No.”
“Then I must sing it for you.” She began to hum the ‘Blue Danube’, a tune Wesley evidently knew as he hummed it along with her, slightly less tunefully than Drusilla, and was waltzing with her soon as well as an inebriated and drug-addled ex-public schoolboy could waltz, which was pretty badly on the whole.
Angelus watched them, still practically purring to himself, and Spike rolled himself over to look up at him. “Are you going to eat him or turn him?”
“Neither.” Angelus kept watching Dru teaching Watcherboy how to waltz, a self-satisfied smile on his face because he had made them what they were, and what they were was crazy as hell and soon to be obedient to his every insane whim.
“Look, mate, family’s family, humans are food. Humans can’t be family.” Spike deliberately didn’t look at Angelus as he said it. Playing the old poof was always a dangerous game but the mood Angelus was in at the moment it might be enough for Spike to state that something was impossible for Angelus to embrace it.
“You can’t believe how warm he is,” Angelus said dreamily. “You can smell it on him – life; feel the blood pumping under his skin.... And I owe the Watcher more than a corpse or someone else he has to stake.”
Spike darted another glance at Drusilla. She looked happy, being twirled around the place by Watcherboy while she hummed Strauss and he tripped over his feet and looked up at the cavernous ceiling of their ‘borrowed’ home as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. If Angelus was planning to send another message to Giles, the previously tweedy and currently psycho Watcher, then Watcher Junior was going to need a lot more pills. Spike figured he had about four days supply and then reality was going to kick in and Angelus was going to lose his temper in a big way. “What are you planning?”
Angelus shrugged. “To have some fun....” And then he was slinking across the room to where Dru was trying to hold Watcherboy up while he made himself dizzy looking at the ceiling lights. He tapped Watcherboy on the shoulder. “Can I cut in?” The boy lurched around the wrong way, trying to see who was there, and Angelus casually grabbed him by the hair, said, “Go play with Uncle Spike” and threw Wesley at him.
Spike swore as the clumsy idiot fell across his knees before slithering to the ground. He shoved him off shortly, “Look where you’re falling, Watcherburger.”
“Can I have him as my own?” Dru pleaded with Angelus as he spun her out of a waltz and into a tango.
“This one’s mine, Dru,” Angelus purred at her as they tangoed across the room. “We can get you another one to play with seeing as Spike’s all broken and useless and can’t get it up for blood nor money.”
“I like this one. He’s pretty.”
Angelus glanced across at Watcherboy who was slowly moving into a sitting position, hindered by his fascination with Spike’s wheelchair. “Isn’t he though?” He raised his voice imperiously: “Feed him, Spike.”
“Are you taking the piss?” Spike demanded. “I don’t feed humans. I feed from them.”
“Just do it.” And there was that look from Angelus that still had the power to give him a bit of jolt; even though those days were long since gone when he was newly reborn and Angelus was this big bad scary showing him the ropes.
Muttering under his breath, Spike grabbed Watcherboy’s shirt and hauled him along behind his wheelchair to the place where he kept his stash of possessions. The boy sat where he was shoved, quite obediently, cross-legged and looking up at Spike in fascination.
“What?” Spike demanded.
“You changed your hair.” Watcherboy made vague hair-related motions with his finger; his own hair sticking up like a little kid’s as he did so.
“Some of us move with the times,” Spike returned.
Watcherboy frowned as he peered at him intently. “Isn’t that punk rock thing a bit…eighties?”
“This look is eternally cool and when I need advice on getting a make over from some tweedy brylcreemed little tosser like you I’ll let you know.” Spike shoved a bar of chocolate at him. “Eat this.” He felt the moment when Angelus’s attention was diverted by Dru and her wandering fingers; Angelus slipped his hands under her dress in response and Spike tried not to let it show how much it sickened him that anyone but him could touch her and she’d welcome it. There was a relationship between sire and child that no one else could understand, he knew that; it was part of why he loved her so completely; it was also unfortunately why she still loved Angelus.
Watcherboy was solemnly unwrapping his chocolate bar. “It’s not Cadbury’s,” he observed.
“It’s Hershey’s. You’re in America now, get used to it.”
Watcherboy sucked on his phallic chocolate bar in a way that was completely unselfconscious. Spike was momentarily distracted by the sight of his mouth working on the chocolate, that little lip lick as he tasted the chocolate curiously, and felt his groin twitch. Watcherboy continued to gaze up at him as if Spike was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Did you really kill two Slayers?”
It made a nice change to be looking down at someone after all those sitting at the bottom of a bloody well moments with Angelus he’d had to endure of late. Watcherboy was gazing up at him with absolutely no awareness of his ripped clothes, bruised skin, the smell of recent sex all over him, sucking away on that chocolate bar while inviting Spike to tell him about His Greatest Hits.
“Yeah.” Spike shifted a little uncomfortably. “One in the Boxer rebellion and one in the 70s.”
“Do you have a pen?”
Spike reached around on the debris of his table and then handed one over. “Here you go.”
“And some paper?”
Spike supplied it.
“Thank you.” Watcherboy looked up at him expectantly. “Can you tell me about killing the Slayers, please? It would be very useful for us to know about it.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Watcherboy frowned, looking between pen and paper and then back at Spike. “No, because we’re supposed to stop that happening, you see, and if we knew how you’d done it we might be able to in the future. Professor Graden always used to say that you could learn as much about military strategy from studying defeats as victories.”
“Go on, Spikey,” Angelus called across. “It is your only claim to fame. You may as well tell the one person on the planet who’d actually be impressed.” Then he was biting Drusilla’s neck and she was moaning and arching into the steady rhythm of his sucking and Spike was gripping the arm of his wheelchair so hard it almost splintered.
Under cover of telling Watcherboy about offing the Chinese bint in the Boxer rebellion, Spike sorted through his pills, trying to work out how few he could get away with. The painkillers were important as this boy was definitely too mind scrambled to reason right now; he only wasn’t going to struggle when Angelus was playing with him because it didn’t hurt so there was no reason for him not to stay relaxed, and given Angelus’s bedroom technique that meant a lot of painkillers. It was probably a huge novelty for Angelus to get to fuck a human who wasn’t screaming and bleeding all over the place while he was doing it. It had to be a very long time since he’d had sex with anyone who giggled because it ‘tickled’. He thought there was something deeply perverted about what Angelus was doing with the Watcher, all this snuggly-wuggly crap was just…sick. Raping and killing were honest in their way, but Angelus had always been twisted; Spike was just trying to anticipate his twists, for once, and so far it seemed to be working.
“Drink this.” He handed him the whisky bottle. Watcherboy made a face after the first sip and Spike glared at him, gripping his shoulder tightly. “Do as you’re told.”
Watcherboy gulped down the whisky, pulling a lot of faces as he did so, and then gasped, hissing: “We’re not allowed!”
Spike held him by the jaw and clamped the palm that contained the tablets across his mouth. “Swallow,” he ordered, turning into game face for emphasize. Watcherboy gazed into his yellow eyes, shocked, and obediently swallowed. Spike pushed the bottle back between his lips. “Now, drink.”
More grimacing, more swallowing, then reproachful blue eyes looking at him. “I’ll get a detention.”
“Not if you hand in this essay.” Spike changed back out of game face and tapped the piece of paper upon which Wesley had been scribbling. “You’ll get an ‘A’ for that.”
Watcherboy brightened and Spike kept telling him what had happened to those two Slayers while he diligently wrote it all down, although not in English, Spike noticed after a moment. “What language is that?”
“Code,” the Watcher explained. “Because what you’re telling me is top secret because it’s about Slayers and it can’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Sweetheart....”
They both looked up to find Angelus smiling down at Watcherboy like a predator with a particularly tasty prey. “We are the wrong hands.”
Angelus casually yanked Spike’s wheelchair around and gave it a shove and then as Spike scrambled to spin his wheelchair back round to see what was going on, Angelus sank into a crouch in front of the big-eyed Watcher who looked up at him in the usual awe but with a hint of reproach. “William the Bloody was telling me about killing Slayers. He said I’d get an ‘A’.”
Angelus took the paper from the Watcher and looked at it. “Well, I doubt anything Spike tells you is going to be much use to anyone.” He crumpled the paper up and tossed it at Spike who could only grit his teeth as it bounced off his cheekbone. “You’ve got an essay to rewrite, remember?”
Watcherboy looked helplessly after his notes and then back at Angelus. “You gave me a ‘C’.”
Angelus grinned delightedly. “Well, I am a blood-sucking fiend.”
“But I’ve never got a ‘C’ before. A ‘B’ minus once but I had flu and there were special circumstances. I got an ‘A’ in the exam.” Watcherboy’s lower lip was practically quivering.
“Stop whining,” Angelus told him. “Rewrite it and maybe I’ll give you an ‘A’.”
Watcherboy brightened at that prospect, gazing up at Angelus with a lot more hope.
“Supposing I don’t decide to pull out your spine or skin you alive first,” Angelus shrugged.
Watcherboy looked up at him wide-eyed and Spike thought the chances of Angelus offing the human had probably just shrunk even more; no way was he going to give up the prospect of someone giving him the ‘but you’re really Angelus’ eyes fifteen times a day.
“I could rewrite it now,” Watcherboy offered meekly. “I can write very fast.”
It was Spike’s turn for his jaw to drop as Angelus reached out and ruffled the Watcher’s hair. “Good boy. Off you go.”
As Wesley scrambled off to the table where his folder on Angelus was still sitting, the vampire watched him go benevolently. “I’m thinking of adopting,” he announced.
“Still think you should eat him or turn him,” Spike muttered.
Angelus watched Watcherboy hunting around in his briefcase for pens and paper, then abruptly spun Spike’s wheelchair around, trying to make him dizzy, while Spike hung on grimly. When Angelus finally let it come to a stop, he grinned at Spike smugly. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have a pet human of your own to play with.”
“When I play with them they stay dead,” Spike retorted.
“But then how can they tell anyone what you did to them?” Angelus countered. As Dru slinked over to them, he wrapped his arms around her. “You like my pet, don’t you?”
“I love him.” She flexed her blood red fingernails. “So sweet and new. I bet he tastes like honey.”
Angelus stroked a finger across her mouth. “No tasting, Dru. He’s too breakable. We’re keeping this one whole. You look after him for me while I go and fetch us some supper. Don’t let mean old Spike eat his eyeballs. And I mean it about the no tasting.” He slipped a hand down her bodice and she giggled with pleasure. Spike closed his eyes and thought about Angelus burning alive, slowly if possible, before turning into a big pile of dust, the bastard.
Spike wasn’t sure what was the weirdest part about the rest of that day; the way Watcherboy could concentrate so diligently on his essay while in a vampire hideout or the way Angelus let him just get on with it. Even knowing the human was stuffed full of mind-altering drugs it still seemed pretty fucked up to him. Angelus went hunting and brought them a girl who was still warm; Spike and Dru drained her between them while Watcherboy cross-referenced like a…Watcher. He didn’t even notice her corpse arriving or leaving.
Angelus went hunting again and came back smelling of blood and satisfaction, the spattered death throes of a paramedic all over his shirt, and carrying a crate of refrigerated blood. Spike drank deeply and thought about how much he hated blood out of a bag, so different from a warm delicious meal that came directly from the vein, perfectly spiced with fear. But Dru clapped her hands and told Angelus how clever he was and insisted they had a picnic on the floor and that all her dolls should be invited.
Angelus wiped the blood from a pizza box with his sleeve, ordered Wesley to sit in the circle with them and tossed him the pizza. Watcherboy bemusedly examined the food and pronounced it cold and not the topping he liked best. Spike waited breathlessly for Angelus to snap the boy’s neck for insolence but Angelus only smiled indulgently and told him to eat up. Watcherboy managed one slice before his mind wandered but Spike guessed that was enough to keep him alive.
Then Angelus insisted they needed to do the laundry, reminding Spike of what a pernickety old poof he really was, always having to wash blood out of his shirts when everyone knew you just stole some more. “This is silk,” Angelus insisted when Spike pointed that out. He turned to the Watcherboy. “You know how to use a washing machine, don’t you?”
Watcherboy nodded and was sent off with an armful of clothes to do the washing. All the doors and windows were locked, so it wasn’t as if he could just leave, but Spike still thought Angelus was taking a risk. When he hadn’t come back after half an hour, Angelus strolled off to look for him and came back after about five minutes, leading him by the hand. “He was watching the clothes,” he explained, still indulgently.
“They went round and round,” Wesley explained.
Drusilla touched his nose with her fingertip. “I like that, too.”
“I like the red clothes best,” he added.
She beamed at him. “They’re mine.”
Angelus turned on him slowly while Spike waited for the inevitable mangling and screaming. “You put all the different colours in together?”
Watcherboy nodded. “Yes.”
Angelus hit him with casual brutality, smacking him into the nearest wall, and, as he crumpled and slid down it, turned to look at Spike and Drusilla. “You just can’t get the help these days.”
“He’s a fuckin’ loony tune,” Spike pointed out. “What do you expect?”
“He’s trainable.” Angelus reached out and grabbed the dazed Watcher by the collar and yanked him back to his feet, intoning clearly: “Wash. Dark. Colours. Separately.”
Spike said: “Does this mean you’ve got pink underwear now because if so I’m buying the little tit a drink.”
Wesley was feeling his aching face tentatively, looking at the blood from his bleeding mouth which was now on his sleeve in some confusion. He looked up at Angelus in shock. “You hit me.”
Angelus pointed at himself. “Scourge of Europe, remember?”
Watcherboy continued to give Angelus reproachful looks from under his girly eyelashes, a hint of a pout around his pretty mouth, but for some reason instead of ripping his throat out, Angelus just spun him around, patted him on the ass indulgently, gave him a shove, and told him to go and give Miss Edith some pizza.
While Angelus danced with Drusilla to some more of her mental mood music, Spike managed to shove a few more pills and a couple more gulps of whisky down the boy’s throat before Angelus hauled him off to show him some more of the games vampires could play in the bedroom. In a few minutes the Watcher was singing that alto line again and he shook his head in disbelief. Fifteen decades of raping and torturing and Angelus decided now was the time to introduce a guy to his prostate gland.
“Daddy likes new things.” Drusilla wrapped her arms around Spike’s neck and sat on his lap.
“Never thought he’d get bored with listening to people screaming.” Spike kissed her and marvelled at it all over again, how much he loved her, how she was everything to him; how he only existed because of her.
Drusilla put her head on one side to listen. “It’s almost like screaming.”
“I didn’t know a bloke’s voice could go that high.”
“He doesn’t understand.” Drusilla began to sway backwards and forwards on Spike’s lap. “Doesn’t know why things are feeling all warm and tingly in his tummy.”
“Don’t think it’s his tummy Angelus is exploring right now, pet.”
“He thinks it’s to do with the wallpaper. He thinks it’s funny.”
A giggle from the room confirmed the still scary accuracy of her fragmentary powers.
“Angelus doesn’t know why he thinks it’s funny. He doesn’t know whether to spank him for being a naughty boy for not screaming or make him laugh some more.”
Hysterical giggling from behind the door seemed to settle that one. Spike shook his head in disbelief. “Angelus is in there…tickling his little human pet?”
Drusilla beamed at him and confided in a whisper: “I can control him with my super mind powers.”
“If you say so, love.”
Drusilla kissed Spike tenderly and whispered in his ear. “I know he saves you. If he isn’t there to save you, they’ll stake you. We have to keep him alive, Spikey. Have to save him from Daddy.”
“Daddy’s going to eat him, pet,” Spike pointed out. “Sooner or later, it’s going to happen.”
“He loves Daddy. I see it.”
“Then Angelus must turn him.”
She shook her head. “Wants him warm, always. Wants to keep him breakable. Daddy loves him. But only if Daddy doesn’t eat him first.”
Spike tried to make sense of what she was telling him. He could understand the snugglefest she was seeing taking place if Angelus turned the Watcher into his youngest child, and if it stopped Angelus putting his hands all over his Dru because he was playing with the new boy instead Spike had no problem with that. But, however addled the Watcher’s mind was from a combination of shock, drugs, and booze, he couldn’t see him falling in love with the Scourge of Europe while still in possession of a soul.
Dru’s eyes widened. “Daddy’s going to kill him very soon. But then he won’t be there to save you, just a stain on the floor and all quiet and you taken from me.” She gripped his shoulders. “Can’t lose you, Spike. You’re mine. They said I could have something of my own.”
“You’ve got me and I’m not going anywhere,” Spike insisted.
“Going straight to hell if we can’t save the boy from Daddy.”
He gazed into her eyes and saw that disconcerting sanity that occasionally peeked out from behind the madness. She was probably right. She never saw the whole picture and she couldn’t always explain what she saw but she certainly had the Sight. Not for the first time he had a terrible pang for the way things had been, when they were a family, Darla and Angelus the psychotic parents, and he and Dru the crazy happy children. They had ripped their way through Europe, dancing from massacre to slaughter, the air thick with blood and screaming; and life had been one long beautiful party. Everything ruined by Angelus and his abandonment of them.
“Wish the old wanker would just fuck off again,” Spike muttered.
Drusilla gave him a look of reproach, resting her forehead against his. “You’re a bad grandchild.”
“Love you, pet, not him. Always love you.” He closed his eyes as he felt the chill perfection of his skin against his.
“We have to save the little Watcher,” she whispered tenderly in his ear.
“Kept him alive this long, haven’t we?”
“Need to give him back before Daddy breaks him.”
“Give him back?” He imagined trying to send a Watcher via parcel post to England. “Where?”
“Give him back to the other one like him. The handsome one with all the books.”
Spike looked at her in disbelief. “You think the Slayer’s poncy Watcher is handsome?”
“Eyes like emeralds, he has. Ever so handsome.”
“Remind me to kill him next time I see him,” Spike protested, aggrieved.
“The boy’s handsome too. He has brown eyes like Daddy. Did a naughty spell to make me want him. Still do....” She licked her lips, swaying again, and Spike could feel how aroused she was; he hoped it was sitting on his lap making her horny and not thoughts of Xander Harris, Rupert the Librarian, or freaking Angelus.
“I’m handsome,” Spike reminded her.
She kissed him hard and then bit him harder, sucking the blood from his neck and then he didn’t care who Angelus killed or when or how as long as he didn’t interrupt them.
***
Spike told himself he was doing this because it was a way of thwarting Angelus. He had to tell himself that because he had no freakin’ clue why else he was doing it except perhaps because he’d started it and now it was a game and if he kept the Watcher alive and more or less intact, he won, but if Angelus made him scream and scream before ripping his throat out, Angelus won. Watcherboy was fucked either way, but Spike didn’t think that was important. He was a soulless serial killer not a soddin’ social worker.
Dru kept whispering nonsense in his ear. “We have to help him. Help him against Daddy so he can help Daddy later. And he can help us. Helps you. Miss Edith says so and although she’s very naughty she sometimes knows....”
So far, he had to say, he was definitely ahead on points. Angelus had done his whole cape flourishing mwahahahah crap and, as far as he could tell, Watcherboy had pretty much giggled his way through it. Spike knew how embarrassing it could be to do something spectacularly evil and not get a fitting reaction. Perhaps he’d overdone it a little on the painkillers, whisky, and happy tablets, but the effect had been pretty bloody funny. On the other side of the bedroom door Watcherboy had certainly made noises, some of them high and some of them loud and most of them quite surprised, but very emphatically not the kind of screaming that people made when they were dying an agonizing death. There had been some whimpering sort of sounds as well as the alto schoolboy line Watcherboy had briefly sung in response to something that made his voice climb higher than K2, and there had been that low rumble of sound from Angelus and some laughter and some very unexpected childish giggling from the Watcher. And this morning, Watcherboy was still alive and – this was the real surprise – intact. Not ‘intact’ as in virgo intacto, of course. If Spike’s ear for a creaking bedspring was still as finely tuned as before his accident, Watcherboy was about three fucks, a vibrator, and some serious fingering, away from being one of those now, but he still had both eyes, both ears, all his fingers, all his toes, two testicles, and each limb in its usual position.
One look at Angelus’s face as the vampire strode out of the bedroom told Spike that maybe those happy tablets had been working even better than he’d thought because Angelus looked in a reasonably good mood and already inclining back to his natural emotional state of smug wankerdom.
And it seemed that Watcherboy’s best defence, next to Spike and his whisky and pills diet, was Watcherboy himself. There was a kind of weird innocence about the scraggly little twerp that was so far carrying him through it. Angelus strode out, all leather trousers and recent orgasm and unbuttoned shirt, alpha male machismo up his bleedin’ wotsit, and Watcherboy toddled out after him, cut, bruised, black eye, fat lip, stinking of come, absently rubbing his bondage-bruised skinny little wrists, wearing a shirt, sort of, and some pants, sort of, barefoot and bed-haired, and…giggling.
Spike openly gawked at that because when warm-blooded breakable humans spent the night with Angelus they tended to come out of his bedroom the next morning one of two ways: dead or wishing they were. If Watcherboy had just been happy and giggly, Angelus would have taken him apart very slowly and with great thoroughness, of course, but he was unpredictably interesting with it. Staggering out unsteadily and looking up at the high ceilings of their ‘borrowed’ house with his mouth open in a groin-aching ‘O’. He turned around, saw Drusilla, and immediately lit up and staggered over to give her a hug as if she were his favourite sister, while she made little crooning noises as she tidied his hair as if he were an errant doll.
“Did you have fun with Daddy?” she asked him.
“Daddy?” He looked at her blankly. “They’re never fun, are they?” When he turned around and saw Angelus, smirking and poncing about, hair-gelled up the wazoo, he did a huge double-take and literally staggered back three paces before saying: “Angelus…!” with just the kind of breathless disbelief and awe that Angelus probably dreamed about while whacking off.
Angelus did his soft shoe shuffle towards him, all Scourge of Europe and pleather pants and Wesley kept on gazing open-mouthed before saying earnestly: “You killed lots of people.”
Angelus gave a supposedly modest shrug that probably didn’t even fool the cockroaches. Wesley began to cast about for something and when Angelus asked him what he was looking for, said over his shoulder: “A crucifix, because – you’re a vampire.”
Angelus glided in front of him. “Do you think I'm going to eat you?”
Wesley looked at him wide-eyed. “Yes, if you’re hungry, I’m sure you will. Would you happen to have a crucifix around here anywhere?”
Angelus was practically beaming at the befuddled boy and Spike just knew he was mentally congratulating himself on his most shining creation. “Not really a decorating choice I’ve ever embraced, Wes.”
“Oh.” Watcherboy cast about in confusion. “Holy water?” Angelus shook his head, still grinning. “What about a stake?”
Angelus produced something from inside his shirt that was stake-length but was made of pink plastic and had a very definitely rounded tip. As Spike rolled his eyes in disgust and Dru giggled behind her hand before waggling her finger at Angelus in mock reproach, Angelus held it out with a flourish. “Will this do?”
Wesley examined the object carefully and then solemnly shook his head. “It has to be made of wood and it needs to have a point on the end so you can….” He mimicked making a staking motion and was visibly distracted, moving his hand backwards and forwards before looking up at Angelus with a smile on his face. “It leaves trails. They’re so pretty....”
Spike figured that anyone with an ego even a notch less gargantuan than Angelus would have worked out that Wesley was pumped full of mind altering drugs at that point, but, no, the vampire was so convinced that he had successfully frightened the Watcher out of his wits that he just smiled indulgently. A smile which only got wider when Watcherboy said: “You were in all our books at school.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Christ, he’ll be telling you he had your picture inside his locker next.”
Wesley turned around awkwardly as he tried to locate Spike, turning almost a hundred and eighty degrees to his right without success before spinning to his left and then stopping with a lurch. “No, because Angelus is bad,” he explained helpfully.
“You don’t say,” Spike returned, thinking how unbelievably annoying this would be if the scene was just happening as opposed to him having engineered it. As things were though, he was actually having fun for the first time in a long time. The stakes were as low as they could possibly be. He didn’t give a damn if the Watcherboy lived or died, but it was like picking white or black on the chessboard; it didn’t matter which you chose, just that whatever you chose won. This was the same. He looked across at Angelus. “Are you going to kill the Watchersprog or do I have to do it?”
Wesley blinked at Spike with great concentration for a moment and then pointed at him triumphantly. “William the Bloody!”
Spike looked across at Angelus. “For the love of onion rings and chicken wings will you just off the little bugger already?”
“You tried to kill my father.” Wesley giggled suddenly. “Pity you didn’t try a bit harder.” He clamped a hand across his mouth. “I didn’t say that.” He looked across at Drusilla. “Did I?”
She waggled a finger at him. “Bad Wesley, said naughty things about his Daddy. My Daddy may have to spank you some more.”
“Are we going to eat him or what?” Spike demanded, hoping he had now made it abundantly clear that by keeping Watcherboy alive Angelus would be deeply irritating him.
“No eating the guests, William. Where are your manners?” Angelus purred, still watching Wesley in a manner that was halfway to doting. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t just snap his neck on a whim, of course, but so far, so kind of going to plan.
Drusilla nodded. “Tsk, tsk, William. Very bad. Mustn’t eat the guests or else they can’t come back again or bring us any presents.” She took Wesley’s hand and pulled him into the open space in the middle of the room. “Dance with me, Wesley. Dance a waltz with me. Can you hear the music?”
He listened intently and then shook his head at her solemnly. “No.”
“Then I must sing it for you.” She began to hum the ‘Blue Danube’, a tune Wesley evidently knew as he hummed it along with her, slightly less tunefully than Drusilla, and was waltzing with her soon as well as an inebriated and drug-addled ex-public schoolboy could waltz, which was pretty badly on the whole.
Angelus watched them, still practically purring to himself, and Spike rolled himself over to look up at him. “Are you going to eat him or turn him?”
“Neither.” Angelus kept watching Dru teaching Watcherboy how to waltz, a self-satisfied smile on his face because he had made them what they were, and what they were was crazy as hell and soon to be obedient to his every insane whim.
“Look, mate, family’s family, humans are food. Humans can’t be family.” Spike deliberately didn’t look at Angelus as he said it. Playing the old poof was always a dangerous game but the mood Angelus was in at the moment it might be enough for Spike to state that something was impossible for Angelus to embrace it.
“You can’t believe how warm he is,” Angelus said dreamily. “You can smell it on him – life; feel the blood pumping under his skin.... And I owe the Watcher more than a corpse or someone else he has to stake.”
Spike darted another glance at Drusilla. She looked happy, being twirled around the place by Watcherboy while she hummed Strauss and he tripped over his feet and looked up at the cavernous ceiling of their ‘borrowed’ home as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. If Angelus was planning to send another message to Giles, the previously tweedy and currently psycho Watcher, then Watcher Junior was going to need a lot more pills. Spike figured he had about four days supply and then reality was going to kick in and Angelus was going to lose his temper in a big way. “What are you planning?”
Angelus shrugged. “To have some fun....” And then he was slinking across the room to where Dru was trying to hold Watcherboy up while he made himself dizzy looking at the ceiling lights. He tapped Watcherboy on the shoulder. “Can I cut in?” The boy lurched around the wrong way, trying to see who was there, and Angelus casually grabbed him by the hair, said, “Go play with Uncle Spike” and threw Wesley at him.
Spike swore as the clumsy idiot fell across his knees before slithering to the ground. He shoved him off shortly, “Look where you’re falling, Watcherburger.”
“Can I have him as my own?” Dru pleaded with Angelus as he spun her out of a waltz and into a tango.
“This one’s mine, Dru,” Angelus purred at her as they tangoed across the room. “We can get you another one to play with seeing as Spike’s all broken and useless and can’t get it up for blood nor money.”
“I like this one. He’s pretty.”
Angelus glanced across at Watcherboy who was slowly moving into a sitting position, hindered by his fascination with Spike’s wheelchair. “Isn’t he though?” He raised his voice imperiously: “Feed him, Spike.”
“Are you taking the piss?” Spike demanded. “I don’t feed humans. I feed from them.”
“Just do it.” And there was that look from Angelus that still had the power to give him a bit of jolt; even though those days were long since gone when he was newly reborn and Angelus was this big bad scary showing him the ropes.
Muttering under his breath, Spike grabbed Watcherboy’s shirt and hauled him along behind his wheelchair to the place where he kept his stash of possessions. The boy sat where he was shoved, quite obediently, cross-legged and looking up at Spike in fascination.
“What?” Spike demanded.
“You changed your hair.” Watcherboy made vague hair-related motions with his finger; his own hair sticking up like a little kid’s as he did so.
“Some of us move with the times,” Spike returned.
Watcherboy frowned as he peered at him intently. “Isn’t that punk rock thing a bit…eighties?”
“This look is eternally cool and when I need advice on getting a make over from some tweedy brylcreemed little tosser like you I’ll let you know.” Spike shoved a bar of chocolate at him. “Eat this.” He felt the moment when Angelus’s attention was diverted by Dru and her wandering fingers; Angelus slipped his hands under her dress in response and Spike tried not to let it show how much it sickened him that anyone but him could touch her and she’d welcome it. There was a relationship between sire and child that no one else could understand, he knew that; it was part of why he loved her so completely; it was also unfortunately why she still loved Angelus.
Watcherboy was solemnly unwrapping his chocolate bar. “It’s not Cadbury’s,” he observed.
“It’s Hershey’s. You’re in America now, get used to it.”
Watcherboy sucked on his phallic chocolate bar in a way that was completely unselfconscious. Spike was momentarily distracted by the sight of his mouth working on the chocolate, that little lip lick as he tasted the chocolate curiously, and felt his groin twitch. Watcherboy continued to gaze up at him as if Spike was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Did you really kill two Slayers?”
It made a nice change to be looking down at someone after all those sitting at the bottom of a bloody well moments with Angelus he’d had to endure of late. Watcherboy was gazing up at him with absolutely no awareness of his ripped clothes, bruised skin, the smell of recent sex all over him, sucking away on that chocolate bar while inviting Spike to tell him about His Greatest Hits.
“Yeah.” Spike shifted a little uncomfortably. “One in the Boxer rebellion and one in the 70s.”
“Do you have a pen?”
Spike reached around on the debris of his table and then handed one over. “Here you go.”
“And some paper?”
Spike supplied it.
“Thank you.” Watcherboy looked up at him expectantly. “Can you tell me about killing the Slayers, please? It would be very useful for us to know about it.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Watcherboy frowned, looking between pen and paper and then back at Spike. “No, because we’re supposed to stop that happening, you see, and if we knew how you’d done it we might be able to in the future. Professor Graden always used to say that you could learn as much about military strategy from studying defeats as victories.”
“Go on, Spikey,” Angelus called across. “It is your only claim to fame. You may as well tell the one person on the planet who’d actually be impressed.” Then he was biting Drusilla’s neck and she was moaning and arching into the steady rhythm of his sucking and Spike was gripping the arm of his wheelchair so hard it almost splintered.
Under cover of telling Watcherboy about offing the Chinese bint in the Boxer rebellion, Spike sorted through his pills, trying to work out how few he could get away with. The painkillers were important as this boy was definitely too mind scrambled to reason right now; he only wasn’t going to struggle when Angelus was playing with him because it didn’t hurt so there was no reason for him not to stay relaxed, and given Angelus’s bedroom technique that meant a lot of painkillers. It was probably a huge novelty for Angelus to get to fuck a human who wasn’t screaming and bleeding all over the place while he was doing it. It had to be a very long time since he’d had sex with anyone who giggled because it ‘tickled’. He thought there was something deeply perverted about what Angelus was doing with the Watcher, all this snuggly-wuggly crap was just…sick. Raping and killing were honest in their way, but Angelus had always been twisted; Spike was just trying to anticipate his twists, for once, and so far it seemed to be working.
“Drink this.” He handed him the whisky bottle. Watcherboy made a face after the first sip and Spike glared at him, gripping his shoulder tightly. “Do as you’re told.”
Watcherboy gulped down the whisky, pulling a lot of faces as he did so, and then gasped, hissing: “We’re not allowed!”
Spike held him by the jaw and clamped the palm that contained the tablets across his mouth. “Swallow,” he ordered, turning into game face for emphasize. Watcherboy gazed into his yellow eyes, shocked, and obediently swallowed. Spike pushed the bottle back between his lips. “Now, drink.”
More grimacing, more swallowing, then reproachful blue eyes looking at him. “I’ll get a detention.”
“Not if you hand in this essay.” Spike changed back out of game face and tapped the piece of paper upon which Wesley had been scribbling. “You’ll get an ‘A’ for that.”
Watcherboy brightened and Spike kept telling him what had happened to those two Slayers while he diligently wrote it all down, although not in English, Spike noticed after a moment. “What language is that?”
“Code,” the Watcher explained. “Because what you’re telling me is top secret because it’s about Slayers and it can’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Sweetheart....”
They both looked up to find Angelus smiling down at Watcherboy like a predator with a particularly tasty prey. “We are the wrong hands.”
Angelus casually yanked Spike’s wheelchair around and gave it a shove and then as Spike scrambled to spin his wheelchair back round to see what was going on, Angelus sank into a crouch in front of the big-eyed Watcher who looked up at him in the usual awe but with a hint of reproach. “William the Bloody was telling me about killing Slayers. He said I’d get an ‘A’.”
Angelus took the paper from the Watcher and looked at it. “Well, I doubt anything Spike tells you is going to be much use to anyone.” He crumpled the paper up and tossed it at Spike who could only grit his teeth as it bounced off his cheekbone. “You’ve got an essay to rewrite, remember?”
Watcherboy looked helplessly after his notes and then back at Angelus. “You gave me a ‘C’.”
Angelus grinned delightedly. “Well, I am a blood-sucking fiend.”
“But I’ve never got a ‘C’ before. A ‘B’ minus once but I had flu and there were special circumstances. I got an ‘A’ in the exam.” Watcherboy’s lower lip was practically quivering.
“Stop whining,” Angelus told him. “Rewrite it and maybe I’ll give you an ‘A’.”
Watcherboy brightened at that prospect, gazing up at Angelus with a lot more hope.
“Supposing I don’t decide to pull out your spine or skin you alive first,” Angelus shrugged.
Watcherboy looked up at him wide-eyed and Spike thought the chances of Angelus offing the human had probably just shrunk even more; no way was he going to give up the prospect of someone giving him the ‘but you’re really Angelus’ eyes fifteen times a day.
“I could rewrite it now,” Watcherboy offered meekly. “I can write very fast.”
It was Spike’s turn for his jaw to drop as Angelus reached out and ruffled the Watcher’s hair. “Good boy. Off you go.”
As Wesley scrambled off to the table where his folder on Angelus was still sitting, the vampire watched him go benevolently. “I’m thinking of adopting,” he announced.
“Still think you should eat him or turn him,” Spike muttered.
Angelus watched Watcherboy hunting around in his briefcase for pens and paper, then abruptly spun Spike’s wheelchair around, trying to make him dizzy, while Spike hung on grimly. When Angelus finally let it come to a stop, he grinned at Spike smugly. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have a pet human of your own to play with.”
“When I play with them they stay dead,” Spike retorted.
“But then how can they tell anyone what you did to them?” Angelus countered. As Dru slinked over to them, he wrapped his arms around her. “You like my pet, don’t you?”
“I love him.” She flexed her blood red fingernails. “So sweet and new. I bet he tastes like honey.”
Angelus stroked a finger across her mouth. “No tasting, Dru. He’s too breakable. We’re keeping this one whole. You look after him for me while I go and fetch us some supper. Don’t let mean old Spike eat his eyeballs. And I mean it about the no tasting.” He slipped a hand down her bodice and she giggled with pleasure. Spike closed his eyes and thought about Angelus burning alive, slowly if possible, before turning into a big pile of dust, the bastard.
Spike wasn’t sure what was the weirdest part about the rest of that day; the way Watcherboy could concentrate so diligently on his essay while in a vampire hideout or the way Angelus let him just get on with it. Even knowing the human was stuffed full of mind-altering drugs it still seemed pretty fucked up to him. Angelus went hunting and brought them a girl who was still warm; Spike and Dru drained her between them while Watcherboy cross-referenced like a…Watcher. He didn’t even notice her corpse arriving or leaving.
Angelus went hunting again and came back smelling of blood and satisfaction, the spattered death throes of a paramedic all over his shirt, and carrying a crate of refrigerated blood. Spike drank deeply and thought about how much he hated blood out of a bag, so different from a warm delicious meal that came directly from the vein, perfectly spiced with fear. But Dru clapped her hands and told Angelus how clever he was and insisted they had a picnic on the floor and that all her dolls should be invited.
Angelus wiped the blood from a pizza box with his sleeve, ordered Wesley to sit in the circle with them and tossed him the pizza. Watcherboy bemusedly examined the food and pronounced it cold and not the topping he liked best. Spike waited breathlessly for Angelus to snap the boy’s neck for insolence but Angelus only smiled indulgently and told him to eat up. Watcherboy managed one slice before his mind wandered but Spike guessed that was enough to keep him alive.
Then Angelus insisted they needed to do the laundry, reminding Spike of what a pernickety old poof he really was, always having to wash blood out of his shirts when everyone knew you just stole some more. “This is silk,” Angelus insisted when Spike pointed that out. He turned to the Watcherboy. “You know how to use a washing machine, don’t you?”
Watcherboy nodded and was sent off with an armful of clothes to do the washing. All the doors and windows were locked, so it wasn’t as if he could just leave, but Spike still thought Angelus was taking a risk. When he hadn’t come back after half an hour, Angelus strolled off to look for him and came back after about five minutes, leading him by the hand. “He was watching the clothes,” he explained, still indulgently.
“They went round and round,” Wesley explained.
Drusilla touched his nose with her fingertip. “I like that, too.”
“I like the red clothes best,” he added.
She beamed at him. “They’re mine.”
Angelus turned on him slowly while Spike waited for the inevitable mangling and screaming. “You put all the different colours in together?”
Watcherboy nodded. “Yes.”
Angelus hit him with casual brutality, smacking him into the nearest wall, and, as he crumpled and slid down it, turned to look at Spike and Drusilla. “You just can’t get the help these days.”
“He’s a fuckin’ loony tune,” Spike pointed out. “What do you expect?”
“He’s trainable.” Angelus reached out and grabbed the dazed Watcher by the collar and yanked him back to his feet, intoning clearly: “Wash. Dark. Colours. Separately.”
Spike said: “Does this mean you’ve got pink underwear now because if so I’m buying the little tit a drink.”
Wesley was feeling his aching face tentatively, looking at the blood from his bleeding mouth which was now on his sleeve in some confusion. He looked up at Angelus in shock. “You hit me.”
Angelus pointed at himself. “Scourge of Europe, remember?”
Watcherboy continued to give Angelus reproachful looks from under his girly eyelashes, a hint of a pout around his pretty mouth, but for some reason instead of ripping his throat out, Angelus just spun him around, patted him on the ass indulgently, gave him a shove, and told him to go and give Miss Edith some pizza.
While Angelus danced with Drusilla to some more of her mental mood music, Spike managed to shove a few more pills and a couple more gulps of whisky down the boy’s throat before Angelus hauled him off to show him some more of the games vampires could play in the bedroom. In a few minutes the Watcher was singing that alto line again and he shook his head in disbelief. Fifteen decades of raping and torturing and Angelus decided now was the time to introduce a guy to his prostate gland.
“Daddy likes new things.” Drusilla wrapped her arms around Spike’s neck and sat on his lap.
“Never thought he’d get bored with listening to people screaming.” Spike kissed her and marvelled at it all over again, how much he loved her, how she was everything to him; how he only existed because of her.
Drusilla put her head on one side to listen. “It’s almost like screaming.”
“I didn’t know a bloke’s voice could go that high.”
“He doesn’t understand.” Drusilla began to sway backwards and forwards on Spike’s lap. “Doesn’t know why things are feeling all warm and tingly in his tummy.”
“Don’t think it’s his tummy Angelus is exploring right now, pet.”
“He thinks it’s to do with the wallpaper. He thinks it’s funny.”
A giggle from the room confirmed the still scary accuracy of her fragmentary powers.
“Angelus doesn’t know why he thinks it’s funny. He doesn’t know whether to spank him for being a naughty boy for not screaming or make him laugh some more.”
Hysterical giggling from behind the door seemed to settle that one. Spike shook his head in disbelief. “Angelus is in there…tickling his little human pet?”
Drusilla beamed at him and confided in a whisper: “I can control him with my super mind powers.”
“If you say so, love.”
Drusilla kissed Spike tenderly and whispered in his ear. “I know he saves you. If he isn’t there to save you, they’ll stake you. We have to keep him alive, Spikey. Have to save him from Daddy.”
“Daddy’s going to eat him, pet,” Spike pointed out. “Sooner or later, it’s going to happen.”
“He loves Daddy. I see it.”
“Then Angelus must turn him.”
She shook her head. “Wants him warm, always. Wants to keep him breakable. Daddy loves him. But only if Daddy doesn’t eat him first.”
Spike tried to make sense of what she was telling him. He could understand the snugglefest she was seeing taking place if Angelus turned the Watcher into his youngest child, and if it stopped Angelus putting his hands all over his Dru because he was playing with the new boy instead Spike had no problem with that. But, however addled the Watcher’s mind was from a combination of shock, drugs, and booze, he couldn’t see him falling in love with the Scourge of Europe while still in possession of a soul.
Dru’s eyes widened. “Daddy’s going to kill him very soon. But then he won’t be there to save you, just a stain on the floor and all quiet and you taken from me.” She gripped his shoulders. “Can’t lose you, Spike. You’re mine. They said I could have something of my own.”
“You’ve got me and I’m not going anywhere,” Spike insisted.
“Going straight to hell if we can’t save the boy from Daddy.”
He gazed into her eyes and saw that disconcerting sanity that occasionally peeked out from behind the madness. She was probably right. She never saw the whole picture and she couldn’t always explain what she saw but she certainly had the Sight. Not for the first time he had a terrible pang for the way things had been, when they were a family, Darla and Angelus the psychotic parents, and he and Dru the crazy happy children. They had ripped their way through Europe, dancing from massacre to slaughter, the air thick with blood and screaming; and life had been one long beautiful party. Everything ruined by Angelus and his abandonment of them.
“Wish the old wanker would just fuck off again,” Spike muttered.
Drusilla gave him a look of reproach, resting her forehead against his. “You’re a bad grandchild.”
“Love you, pet, not him. Always love you.” He closed his eyes as he felt the chill perfection of his skin against his.
“We have to save the little Watcher,” she whispered tenderly in his ear.
“Kept him alive this long, haven’t we?”
“Need to give him back before Daddy breaks him.”
“Give him back?” He imagined trying to send a Watcher via parcel post to England. “Where?”
“Give him back to the other one like him. The handsome one with all the books.”
Spike looked at her in disbelief. “You think the Slayer’s poncy Watcher is handsome?”
“Eyes like emeralds, he has. Ever so handsome.”
“Remind me to kill him next time I see him,” Spike protested, aggrieved.
“The boy’s handsome too. He has brown eyes like Daddy. Did a naughty spell to make me want him. Still do....” She licked her lips, swaying again, and Spike could feel how aroused she was; he hoped it was sitting on his lap making her horny and not thoughts of Xander Harris, Rupert the Librarian, or freaking Angelus.
“I’m handsome,” Spike reminded her.
She kissed him hard and then bit him harder, sucking the blood from his neck and then he didn’t care who Angelus killed or when or how as long as he didn’t interrupt them.
***
