Chapter Text
Spike woke to feral hissing in his ear and stabbing punctures in his arm. Drusilla lay curled beside him under a set of floral blankets. She snarled at his forearm, her nails digging into the skin and drawing blood.
“Dru?” he said, voice still thick with sleep. They’d commandeered the house late last night; its previous occupants were most likely still slouched downstairs in various states of rigor mortis. Far beyond the ceiling, Spike felt the sun clawing its way across the sky. Fighting through the exhaustion, Spike squinted at his skin, half-covered as it was by his sire’s fingers, completely baffled at what could’ve pissed her off this early in the day. Then again, this was Dru; his dark princess didn’t exactly need a non-baffling reason. As his eyes focused, he made out a small line of writing…
Spike tried to yank his arm from Dru’s grasp, but she held fast.
Dru removed one hand and waggled a blood-stained finger in front of Spike’s face. “This one’s not for you.”
Spike was too shell-shocked to do anything but stare at his arm. It couldn’t be… He kept trying to make out the writing (something in French, but it’d been too long since his last language class, and Darla handled most of the continental communication), because there was only one reason his skin would be marked like this, and he had never—
“Daddy!” Dru yelled with a wide grin.
Spike tried one last time to free himself from his sire’s grip.
Too soon, Angelus appeared shirtless in the doorway. His mouth curled in disgust as he looked first at Spike, then at the surrounding decor. Among the familial slaughter last night, there’d been several daughters, and Dru had taken the bedroom of the youngest. Lace and dolls smothered every flat surface. Angelus’ look clearly read: And you call yourself a man? Spike felt his fangs extend in automatic defense.
“Daddy, look!” Dru squealed, oblivious to the tension.
She held up Spike’s arm like an offering.
Angelus’ eyes narrowed, and then widened. A terrible grin darkened his face. “Well, well… An afternoon treat indeed.” He sat down, clasping Spike on the shoulder. “You’re a far luckier man than I.” Angelus turned, searching for something. Dru pointed gleefully to the bedside table where a fountain pen rested atop a lavender-covered journal. He uncapped it and wrote a single sentence across his left wrist:
Spike has a soulmate.
They all waited several seconds for the tight, looping response:
Delicious
Regardless of whether one glorified or demonized them, soulmates were a fact of life. Some people had them. Some didn’t. They could be romantic, platonic, or familial. Age gaps were common, with some people reaching their twilight years before their destined one finally wrote back.
It seemed appropriate that Spike’s would manifest only after he’d died.
“Here,” Angelus said, passing him the fountain pen.
Spike took it blankly. “What?”
“Can’t leave them waiting.” He grinned boyishly. “It’d be rude.”
“Rude? But I…” Spike tried to suss out Angelus’ intent and any possible traps. The man was the furthest thing from a romantic. He frequently whinged about his all-encompassing connection to Darla, likening her words to an iron yoke around his neck. Spike never understood the complaints. If divine hands had seen fit to bind him to his dark princess, he would’ve dedicated the rest of his existence to covering her breasts with poetry and never letting it fade.
“Who is it then?” Darla asked. She appeared in the doorway, adjusting her nightgown over her shoulders.
Angelus sighed in irritation. “That’s what dear William here was just getting around to.”
Spike stared at them all in confusion.
Dru still hadn’t let go of his arm. She sniffed it. “Weak, lost little thing,” she cooed. “Dreaming of a knight to save her… and a knight she will have.” She broke into a smile and laughed. “To cut off her head.”
“They say it’s the best blood we can ever have,” Angelus explained, looping his arm around Spike’s shoulders. “And the most willing. You see… when the words appear upon your skin, you’ll trust anything they say. You’ll do anything they ask. Even walk straight into the mouth of hell.”
Darla smiled, stretching against the doorframe like a lioness. “You were already halfway there, darling. All you needed was the final tug.”
Spike looked back at his arm. His head, now mostly awake, finally pieced together a translation of the French words:
hello, are you there?
So simple. So naive.
Spike admitted there was a bemusing irony to Angelus’ plan. The clergy often praised the sacred and virtuous mystery of the soulmate. They called it visible proof of God’s loving hand. His way of guiding His children through life. To twist that holy mystery into a devil’s noose would be corruption at its very finest…
At the same time, Spike couldn’t help but feel that such exploitation was just a tad unsporting. He wanted his victims to put up the good fight. Wanted them to lose, yes, obviously… but put up a good fight nonetheless. There wasn’t anything satisfying about taking down some defenseless brat who’d willingly lash themselves to the bloody train tracks.
The pressure increased on Spike’s arm. Drusilla’s claws sunk deeper as a low growl emanated from her throat. The other members of his family looked on expectantly.
Spike let out an unnecessary sigh and began to write.
It was Paris in the 20’s and love was in the air. Love and hot beating hearts and foolish youth who, thinking they were invincible, were easily drawn into dark alleyways for nothing more than the hope of quick pleasure. Spike and Dru walked alongside the banks of the Seine, arm-in-arm and stomachs full, the night theirs.
Spike almost didn’t notice it at first, but beneath a street lamp, the contrast against his pale skin caught his eye.
He stopped to stare at his hand. Dru paused as well. As she followed his gaze, her eyes flashed yellow and she hissed.
Although the message written across the back of Spike’s hand was in English this time, its meager contents were nearly identical to the message of forty years ago.
“I already killed them,” Spike said blankly, half in honest confusion, half as an excuse to placate his beloved.
Dru shook her head. “Pesky lights treat life like a carousel,” she spat. “They come and go and come back again, round and round and round…” She tutted over the writing, her nails hovering over his skin. “I want to slice her out of you.”
Spike snapped his hand back; the passing decades had whittled his and Dru’s age gap to practically nothing. She couldn’t restrain him like she used to.
Course, it wasn’t like he wanted to protect the chit, whoever she was. Soulmate or not, they were a stranger, and Spike had never given a rat’s arse about strangers. Which was likely why, thirty years ago, the greatest blood that Angelus had promised hadn’t been a death-changing experience, but rather an entirely mediocre and ultimately unsatisfying kill. Spike’s “soulmate” back then had been a nine-year-old farmgirl—weak and lost like Dru had foreseen—and when Spike had looked at her, he’d felt… nothing.
Nothing at her torture.
Nothing at her death.
He’d faked the pleasure, of course—for Angelus if nothing else. But Angelus wasn’t here anymore. There was no one forcing him to go through the motions this second time.
Careful to keep his wrist out of Drusilla’s grasp, Spike drank in the night air. Drank in the curling scent of the trash-filled alleys, the faint echoes of drunken revelry, the light as it played off ripples in the Seine and reflected back into the rustling trees. There was peace here… and chaos, as long as you knew how to tip the balance from one to the other.
Spike snorted.
Angelus’ ideas of fun could be carried out by bloody Angelus. The streets of Paris cradled a thousand more promises than a single stranger’s soul.
Adjusting his shirt cuff, he pulled Drusilla back against his side with mild resistance—after two decades, she still didn’t entirely accept that Spike did things differently than her precious Daddy. One day she would though.
One day she would.
Once a month, Spike’s new soulmate rewrote the same question.
He never wrote back.
Spike’s fist connected with the jaw of the Vahrall demon, sending it stumbling back across the New York alleyway. Pain lanced deep through his knuckles, and he reveled in the sweetness of it. Another night, another dance, and it wasn’t even over anything important like money or Dru’s honor this time. He’d just gotten that itch, that clawing urge for bloodlust, so he’d dragged a fellow bar patron out by the collar to scratch it.
The Vahrall demon dodged Spike’s next punch, but instead of lunging forward in counter-attack, it paused.
“Do you want to get that?” it said, pointing at Spike.
At somewhere behind him.
Spike almost snorted. Did Mr. Tentacle Hair really think Spike was thick enough to fall for the classic point-and-turn trick? God… the trick was so pathetic, Spike wasn’t sure it even counted as a trick.
The demon grunted and tapped his hand in clarification.
Spike’s head tilted in confusion. He reluctantly glanced down at his own hand:
Hello
It was written in a child’s scrawl, the curves jagged across the backside of Spike’s fist. He rolled his eyes and stifled a groan.
Not again.
Spike dropped his hand. “It can wait.”
“Are you sure?” the Vahrall demon said. “Cause I don’t want to get in the middle of—”
Spike roared, launching himself at his opponent. He’d come out for blood, not a flippin’ tea and biscuits break. The fight didn’t last much longer. The demon’s neck snapped, and Spike stood for a moment, soaking up the echoes of the crack. Then he shook off his knuckles and returned to the bar. His opponent’s nearly full mug was still on the counter; Spike grabbed it and poured its contents into his own empty one.
Halfway through the re-filled drink, a lopsided heart appeared beneath the “Hello” in what looked like purple gel pen.
Spike cursed, pulling the sleeve of his duster as far as it’d stretch to cover the writing. The bar had low light—which, granted, didn’t mean much to a crowd of demons and vampires—so perhaps he’d be lucky for once and it’d go unnoticed.
Thirty seconds later another heart appeared. Then another.
They rapidly spread across his hand like a plague.
Spike slammed his beer down and jumped backwards off the stool. It toppled with a clatter, drawing the attention of the rest of the bar.
Damn.
Covering his left hand with his right, Spike half-stumbled, half-fled the building. Behind him, the bartender shouted for him to get back and pay. Spike ignored him—wasn’t like he’d ever been intending to pay, even before the appearance of the marks—and eventually took shelter in a neighboring alley.
The hearts were still speckled over Spike’s skin. He had to get them off before Dru saw. He licked his opposite palm and tried scrubbing, tried clawing, but that didn’t work, had never worked. For whatever godforsaken reason, it was ink and ink alone that transferred. He could rip his skin to shreds and the person on the other end would be completely oblivious. Worse, when the skin healed back, the marks would still be there, completely unblemished.
Eventually, Spike gave up. The girl would stop doodling when she saw no one responding. He’d just have to wait it out for the night until the gel pens washed away in her next bath.
On his way back to Hell’s Kitchen, Spike killed a man and ripped his shirt into makeshift bandages. It wouldn’t buy him much time (if any) against Dru’s unholy perceptiveness, but he had to do something. Ready as he was ever going to be, Spike descended into the basement of the shuttered factory that he, Dru, and several temporary minions had been calling home for the past month. His wicked plum of a lady was near the entrance, showing off Miss Edith to one of the newer minions.
“Dru, love,” Spike said, keeping his hands firmly in the pockets of his duster as she turned towards him. “I’m—”
Drusilla’s face went white, and she let out a primeval howl.
Spike stared at her. He’d known there was a chance that she’d immediately “see” through his bandages, but this rage was on a completely different level. He stood in shock as she dropped Miss Edith and attacked him. Her claws and fangs tore at his skin, and he was forced to hurl her into a stack of oil drums to get her off. She slumped to the ground, unconscious.
He shook off the newly bruised bones and fresh cuts—they’d heal by morning—then turned to the minion who was staring slack-jawed at him.
“What?!” Spike demanded.
The minion raised a trembling finger at Spike—no, at his forehead—and then ran.
Christ…
Spike entered their bedroom and tore through his drawer of possessions until he found the Polaroid camera. He scowled as he snapped a photo, then snarled, pacing, as he waited for it to develop. It took too long, and he shook the paper more than was probably recommended.
Finally, it cleared.
The photo showed pink and purple hearts covering his face. They crawled across his cheeks, ran up his forehead—
Spike roared and threw the camera across the room where it exploded in a crash of metal parts.
Head spinning with whiskey and rage, he ripped off the makeshift bandages. A fat Sharpie lay on the desk. Spike grabbed it and tore into his hand with thick, blocky letters:
STOP
He growled at his skin, daring his soulmate to respond. Several hearts smeared away, and then:
Hi! Wat’s yor name?
Spike groaned. He didn’t have the patience to deal with a sugary little bint. Perhaps he’d do things Angelus’ way again. He used his right hand to write his response beneath the girl’s. what’s yours?
With his non-dominant hand, his writing was almost as sloppy as hers, but the faster he could get a name and location, the better.
I askeb you first, she replied.
Spike paused just before he wrote the “s” of “spike.” If he wanted her to trust him, he had to sound normal.
william. you?
Buffy
Another heart appeared, this one wrapping around both of their names, and it was all Spike could do not to gag. Time to finish this.
i live in new york, he wrote. where do you live?
He waited.
His feet tapped, then devolved into outright pacing.
Ten minutes later, Spike’s body was suddenly wiped clean of the purple marks, leaving only his half of their conversation. He blinked at his bare skin, bracing himself for whatever terrors would follow, but nothing came. Warily, he re-bandaged his hands, then scooped Drusilla out the mess of oil drums and carried her to bed.
He woke up the next afternoon to a brand new paragraph drooping down his arm:
I shoed mom yor name and she wus mad. She says I am not old enuff to tell stranjers my name or were I liv even thoo yor not a stranjer but I pramised mom I wud lissen and it is still good cus we can tak abot lots of uther things!!
Her rambling was followed by another lopsided heart.
Spike slumped back into his wall of pillows and groaned.
In those first days, the only new identifying detail Spike managed to uncover was that his soulmate was a right little bitch. Buffy knew he existed, and she knew what she had to do to make him talk.
When he ignored her next misspelled ramble, the gel pen hearts resumed their relentless siege. Unlike him, Buffy apparently felt no shame walking about like a bloody Lisa Frank portfolio. Maintaining his reputation with his fellow demons was simple enough—if any of them laughed, they quickly found themselves decapitated. Drusilla, though, was another matter. She wouldn’t touch him if any marks were showing.
And that hurt.
After a week, the hearts turned to outright sentences. Apparently, it didn’t matter that he didn’t respond. Buffy seemed more than happy to use his skin as a personal, one-way diary.
As Spike stood growling at the latest Polaroid (“I am a pretty pretty princess” lay tattooed across his forehead), his patience snapped.
what is WRONG with you?
He waited, Sharpie in hand, then:
Nothing. I am purfict. What’s wrong with you?
Spike buried his face in his free hand. He should’ve never responded.
When he looked back, there was new writing.
How old are you? I am turning 6 nekst week
Spike snorted.
136, he wrote.
Are you a dragen?
yes. a dragon that eats princesses
To Spike’s ever-evolving dismay, the deadly threat only rewarded him with a cascade of glittering smiley faces.