Title: Going Down, Part 1/3
Author: Neena (varscona_pal@yahoo.ca)
Rating: FRAO
He was old enough now. Old enough to make his own decisions. Old enough to break free of the watchful eyes of the watchers…of his father. Old enough to finally see, first-hand, what he was ‘destined’ to do battle with for the rest of his life.
He had the right to know. Not just what was written in musty old books—not what some tweedy, stodgy know-it-all watcher said was so. He needed proof, up close and personal proof. He needed to confront a real, live…or, rather, undead…vampire. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to find one while he was under the protection of the Watcher’s Council.
This, however, was not what he’d bargained for. He’d done his research, and he’d come to London, where he’d been told there was a large nest of vampires. He came prepared to do battle, ready to take on every one of them single-handedly. Only, he couldn’t find them. Not a single one. Oh, he thought he’d spotted one late one night near Marylebone, but a splash of holy water yielded nothing more sinister than a punch in the gut from an irate, and very wet, vagrant.
Four months away from home and it looked like his first journey into the world of demons and vampires was a bust. But he couldn’t go home. Not a chance of it. He had his pride, after all, and he refused to go home to face the smug remonstrations of his father. He would go home triumphant, or not at all. No matter that he’d run out of money ages ago…hell, hundreds of kids his age were thriving on the streets of London. If you knew where to look, and if you had quick fingers and a sharp wit, you could pluck a decent living out of the city’s deep pockets.
It was on a night like all the others—could have been a Tuesday or a Saturday for all it mattered to him—when Rupert Giles caught his first break. He’d all but given up on his prospects of finding the den of vampires he’d been searching for. It was more out of habit than expectation that he found himself wandering down the wharves. The place was desolate and reeked of self-pity and despair. People who came out there alone at night were people who no longer wanted to be part of the great human race. It was the perfect place to play the mouse and lure the cat. At the end of the pier, with nowhere left to go but down, Rupert might as well have had a bull’s eye for vampires painted on his neck. But as yet, not a single one had taken the bait.
“She’s not worth it,” came a man’s voice from behind him. There was a slight Cockney twang to his accent, but there were deeper, more exotic nuances as well. This was a man who’d seen the world…who might even be the vampire he’d been searching for.
Rupert turned around slowly, his hand grasping tightly to the stake he always carried with him, but he was disappointed. It wasn’t a vampire. It was just another street-smart loner like himself…perhaps a bit older, and definitely worse off, by the looks of him. His mop of light brown hair was in desperate need of a trim, and his brown, leather jacket looked like it had survived both World Wars.
“What’s that?” asked Rupert.
“I said, she’s not worth it.” The man lit a cigarette, and in the brief flash of light, Rupert saw the deep scar that cut through his left eyebrow and the world-weary expression in his pale blue eyes.
“There is no ‘she’,” said Rupert, relaxing his grip on the stake in his pocket just a little.
“Alright—‘he’, then.”
“There’s no ‘he’ either.”
“Right—there’s no ‘she’ and no ‘he’, and yet you’re taking a one-way nose-dive into the Thames.” Cynicism and disbelief dripped from his words, and Rupert could tell from his body language that he was looking at a jilted man.
“I wasn’t planning on going in,” said Rupert. “Why? Is that why you came here?” he asked. “To make one last splash and end it all?”
“If only it were that easy,” the other man muttered. “So tell me, then—if you’re not here for a bit of late night skinny-dippin’, why are you here?”
For the briefest moment, Rupert almost considered telling him the truth. He wanted so badly to have someone to share his secret with, and there was something oddly compelling about this stranger. But the lie was safer, and by now it came more easily to him than the truth: “I just come here sometimes to be alone—clear the head, that sort of thing.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” said the stranger with just a hint of sulkiness.
“No, don’t leave,” said Rupert. “I could do with a bit of company tonight.”
The other man’s cigarette twitched as a smile chased its way across his face. “The name’s Spike. And you are…?”
“My mates call me Ripper,” he lied. No one had ever called him ‘Ripper’, but he couldn’t tell a guy who’d just announced himself as ‘Spike’ that his name was Rupert. It lacked…drama.
“Spike and Ripper…” Spike shook his head slightly and chuckled, but he didn’t let Rupert in on the joke. Instead, he strolled the rest of the way to the end of the pier and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, looking down at the murky water below.
“So? Which is it?” asked Rupert, peering sidelong at his new companion. “A ‘he’ or a ‘she’?”
Spike peered back, levelling him with an appraising eye. When he seemed satisfied that the question was well intentioned, he answered; “Both.”
“Hard luck,” Rupert replied, risking a sympathetic pat to the other man’s shoulder.
Spike chuckled again, but this time there was no humour in it. “She wanted to spice things up a bit—introduce some new blood into the mix. I thought I was ‘in’, you know? Turns out I was the third bloody wheel all along. I had it all…then she ran off with him and left me with nothing. Do you know, they didn’t even have the common decency to leave me a note?”
Rupert listened to Spike’s soul-baring tale, his hands dug deep into his pockets to ward off the evening chill. He listened until the name Drusilla was as familiar to him as his own. It was a fascinating story of romance and adventure too twisted and sordid to be believed. And of course he knew it was mostly exaggeration and outright lies, but there was a kernel of truth there that had him thoroughly hooked. Only when the chattering of his teeth became loud enough to distract Spike, did the tale come to an abbreviated end.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?” Spike reprimanded.
“Aren’t you?” asked Rupert.
“I don’t feel the cold like I used to.”
Rupert nodded, understanding. “Been on the streets a long time, then?”
“Three lifetimes,” Spike answered more truthfully than Rupert could have guessed.
“I’ve got a place nearby we can crash, if you like,” Rupert suggested. Then, realizing he’d been a bit too forward, sheepishly added, “th-that is…if you want to hang out for a while.”
The slip did not go unnoticed by Spike. The lad was up for some ‘company’ tonight. He sized him up—good build, strong jaw and cheekbones, gentle demeanour, despite the tough act—and decided he could do with a little ‘company’ tonight himself.
“You’re on,” he said. “Not like I had any pressing plans or anything.” Spike tried his best to sound indifferent, and not at all like someone who, only a short while ago, really had been thinking of making one last splash and ending it all. Images of his body floating down the river, bursting into flames as the first rays of dawn kissed the Thames, were replaced by images of a soft bed, and a stranger’s kind, green eyes.
This time it was Spike’s turn to listen to Rupert’s story as they meandered through the wharves and back to the quiet, pre-dawn streets of London’s lower east end. He really couldn’t care less about the young man’s struggle to defy his father and experience life on his own terms. After all, he couldn’t be much more than twenty—what could he possibly know about defiance or experience? Still, he let the kid talk, just to hear his voice. It was silky and cultured, despite his attempts to make it sound coarse. Like him, he came from good breeding, but was trying hard to shuck it off.
“Well…this is it,” said Rupert at last, stopping in front of a dimly lit doorway at the end of a long line of row housing. “Sounds like there’s a bit of a bash going on, but…”
He was abruptly silenced by a sudden kiss to the lips. It was so unexpected and it was over so quickly that Rupert didn’t have time to react. When Spike pulled away, Rupert was left blinking at him in mute astonishment.
“You’re freezing,” he said at last, and mentally kicked himself for not coming up with anything better to say.
Spike’s lips curled up in a cat-like grin. “You could always warm me up.”
Spike eased up to him and kissed him, unzipping Rupert’s leather jacket to snuggle up against his broad chest. He slid his hands around his waist, delighting in the heat trapped there.
Rupert wrapped his jacket around both of them, thrilled at the way things were speeding along—he’d never been this bold before. Never been with a man before, either, for that matter, which made it all the more thrilling. Spike was nibbling at his neck, sending goose flesh up and down his spine. And then, abruptly, he stopped and stepped away.
Rupert groaned in protest. “Don’t stop—that felt amazing.”
“What’s this?” asked Spike, his voice suddenly as cold as his skin. Rupert looked down to see that he’d got hold of his stake.
Rupert sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You were out hunting vampires,” Spike stated matter-of-factly.
“Alright,” Rupert admitted, “maybe you would.” He cleared his throat nervously, feeling like a schoolboy facing his headmaster. “It’s silly, really. I’d, uh, heard there was a large nest of vampires in London, so…I came to see for myself.” He shrugged it off, feeling foolish under Spike’s intense scrutiny.
“But you haven’t found any, have you.”
“No, I haven’t. To be honest, I’m starting to think I’ve been tilting at windmills these last few months. It’s stupid, I know. Let’s just forget about it…and pick up where we left off.” Rupert opened the door to his flat and stepped inside, but Spike didn’t follow. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Don’t want to bother your flatmates.”
“It’s no bother, honestly. They won’t even know you’re here. Hurry up, you’re letting all the warm air out.”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” asked Spike, his blue eyes glinting sharply in the light of the open doorway.
Rupert’s heart jumped in his chest and he felt the heat drain from his face. He’d been so blind—only the years of ingrained training had stopped him from automatically inviting Spike into his home. Spike…a vampire! He’d just kissed a vampire! His hand shot up to feel his throat as the terrifying realization that a vampire had nuzzled it only moments before hit him like a blow to the gut. He stared at Spike, wide-eyed with shock.
“I wasn’t gonna bite you,” Spike said. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d’ve done it down at the docks.”
Rupert stood pinned to the spot with blaring music and drunken voices sounding from a room somewhere behind him, and only an invisible, supernatural barrier between him and the very thing he’d come to London to kill. Spike was not at all what he’d expected. Vampires were evil, walking corpses, creatures with twisted features and an insatiable lust for blood. Not…this. Not some love-shattered beauty with the heart of a poet.
Spike took Rupert’s continued silence as a dismissal, and, brushing the flop of bangs out of his eyes, he gave the warm and nearly willing young man one last wistful glance before disappearing into the night.
Rupert spent the entire next day stewing over the events of the previous night. Never before had he felt so confused. There were times he despised his calling and times he almost enjoyed it. But one thing had always remained constant—vampires were evil and needed to be destroyed. As much as he wanted to rebel against his upbringing, it didn’t sit well with him that he was having a hard time seeing Spike as evil. What was even more unsettling was that he couldn’t stop thinking about Spike in the first place.
He knew he’d done the right thing, not letting the vampire into his home, but he wished he’d thought far enough ahead to follow him. After all, Spike could have led him directly to the nest of vampires. He could have had his first victory over the undead, without the help of his father or the council. And if Spike had gotten in the way? Well, there was no sense worrying about something that hadn’t happened, was there?
Six o’clock rolled around and the weak winter sun was freshly buried in the east, a wan, red streak in the sky its only marker. Rupert slipped out into the bitter night without comment from any of his flatmates, and he couldn’t help wondering if they would notice if he never returned.
He knew it was foolish to expect Spike to return to the wharves again, but it was the only place he could think to look for him. And why was he looking for him? He told himself it was only to find the lair, although deep down he knew that wasn’t it.
He’d gone through half a pack of smokes before he heard footsteps approaching along the wooden dock behind him. He turned around, ready for almost anything…except the ten-year-old boy with an attitude that was standing in front of him.
The kid sized him up like he was figuring what his chances might be if it came down to a fight. “You Ripper?” he asked, clearly dubious.
Rupert perked up. “Yes, I am.”
“Don’t look much like a ‘Ripper’ to me,” said the kid.
“Looks can be deceiving,” said Rupert, glaring at the boy with enough venom to wipe the cocky smirk off his face.
The kid swallowed nervously, his eyes going wide for a brief moment before he managed to compose himself again. “Got a message for you. Spike says to meet him at the Bull and Bush Pub at ten o’clock, if you want what you came here for.”
Rupert pondered the message, trying to read between the lines, but there were far too many possibilities to know for certain what Spike meant.
“Thanks,” he said at last. The boy stood in front of him expectantly. “I said ‘thanks’, now get lost.”
“Spike also said you’d pay me,” said the boy brazenly.
Rupert barked out a laugh. “He did, did he?” He had to admire the kid’s audacity—and Spike’s cheek. Digging through his various pockets, he managed to put together enough change to get rid of the kid. It took almost every penny he had, and he could only hope that Spike would buy him a pint for his troubles. He owed him that much, at least.
The kid took off as fast as his little legs would carry him, probably thinking he’d pushed his luck far enough for one night. Rupert looked at his watch. He had forty minutes left to get to the Bull and Bush, and no idea where it might be. Turning up his jacket collar against the winter wind, he took a fortifying breath and headed off in search of his vampire.