All About Spike - The Heart's Filthy Lesson by MustangSally and RivkaT

The Heart's Filthy Lesson
By MustangSally and RivkaT

Part of The Bowiehabarata

Part 5

Spike made his way into the alleyway behind the Bronze. It was last call, the college students wandering back to the dorms after a hard day of wasting their parents' tuition money and a hard night squandering their pocket cash on beer. He lit a cigarette and stuck to some shadows just beyond the dumpster. A blonde. He really wanted a blonde that night; he wanted one down to the pain in the pit of his stomach.

Three drunken girls giggled out of the back door, flicking their hair and clomping like deer on their platform shoes. Their skins were so fresh; they still had that new-human smell, a smell that was rapidly eclipsed by the familiar sweet smoke of pot. So young, so cute, so bloody stupid.

He crushed his cigarette out underfoot and advanced on them, pulling a fresh one from his crumpled pack. He smiled at them.

"Got a light?" he asked.

The blonde's head snapped around and gaped at him, decided quickly that he wasn't a cop and giggled.

"Guess so," she said and held out a lighter.

"Ta ever so," he said.

One of the brunettes cocked her head to the side and gave him a look of blatant interest from under her eyelashes.

"You're English?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"Been here long?"

"A very long time," he said and flashed her a ladykiller smile.

It took about ten minutes before he had them eating out of his hand. It didn't take much in California. The girls lost it for the accent and the bad-boy attitude almost as fast as they lost it for Ricky Martin, and he didn't even have to wiggle his bum to do it. The two brunettes finally figured out that he was more interested in the blonde and faded back into the Bronze. The blonde, whose name he carefully forgot the moment after she told him, had her tongue in his ear and his leg sandwiched between her thighs and was rubbing against him. The poor thing was obviously unsatisfied by the resident athletic prats hanging about the University and was desperate for some kind of sexual satisfaction. She smelled a little sweaty, but in a good, tasty way.

He bent his head down, felt his face flare hot with changing, tasted the salt on her skin.

And felt the tide of nausea, no the tidal wave of nausea, smash over him like - well, a tidal wave.

The next thing he knew, Spike was half-sprawled on the ground, his hand clamped over his mouth, feeling as though he was about to spew up his vampiric guts. Fuck. The blonde hovered over him, her face registering disconnected dismay.

"Too much to drink?" she asked.

"Hmmmm," was all he felt safe enough to say without throwing up on her shoes.

"Ummm . . . Look, it's been real, but-" she scrabbled around in her purse, came up with a slip of paper and scribbled on it, "Call me sometime, okay?"

Again, fuck.

By the time he slunk back to the cemetery and to his crypt again, Buffy and Giles were gone, leaving no trace that they had ever been there. Ripping off his coat, he dug out one of the medical supply blood packs from his stash and punctured the plastic with a fang.

Bloody hell, what good was being free of the chip when he couldn't sodding eat? Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice was suggesting that he ring Angel and get some advice on how to deal with this whole soul thing. He told the voice to shut its bloody hole and sucked on the blood bag in earnest.

Continued in Part 6