“What is the bloody problem, William?” Giles said exasperatedly, rubbing his throbbing temple.
“The ‘bloody problem’ is, I never met the chit! For all I know, I’m gonna be painting sodding Anna Nicole for the next month!” Giles’ irate nephew rose from his chair and moved across the room to the well-stocked bar, pulling out a bottle of gin and sniffing at it cautiously. “Anyone that that wanker would want is probably just waiting to find herself on a magazine’s center fold-out.”
“You were the one who absolutely had to take that call from Drusilla,” the older man said pointedly, accepting the glass of scotch provided by his nephew and taking a generous drink. “And while I know my opinion is not the most… let’s just say in tune with yours, William, I happen to like Buffy Summers.”
Spike let out a harsh chuckle, lighting a cigarette with a silver zippo in one hand, his quite large glass of liquor in the other. “Well, you’re right about one thing, Rupes. Bloody well shouldn’t’ve answered the phone. The bint broke it off with me.”
Giles sat up straighter at the news; although he had never approved of the rather morbid relationship his nephew had held with Drusilla, he knew how much William had cared for her for the past years, and knew he wouldn’t have taken the news lightly. A wary tone wormed its way into his voice as he asked, “What did you do, Spike?”
“Nothing!” The voice was innocent, almost indignant, but there was a glimmer of something in the younger man’s eyes that betrayed the truth. “Alright, Uncle, I got pretty damn well pissed the other night in some club,” he admitted, looking away from the disapproving stare. “And you’d right well be directing that gaze elsewhere, mate. I’m an adult, and I could’ve done much worse than drinking terribly overrated American beer and dancing like a poofter to some horrendously overrated American music.”
“And nothing happened when you were at the club?” Rupert asked, his gaze less of suspicion now than genuine worry. “Remember now, William, that you are still new to this city, this country, and it wouldn’t do to have your career ruined before it began.”
“Yes, Uncle; I went to the club; I drank generous amounts of alcohol; I took a cab home; and I slept. Are you satisfied?”
“Quite.” The older man began gathering up his papers and returning them to his briefcase, standing and downing the remainder of his drink in one gulp. “You’ll be expecting Miss Summers tomorrow at 12:30, then?”
“With bated breath,” Spike sarcastically added, walking his uncle out and closing the door behind him. He stood there for a moment before moving across the room to a blank canvas propped up on an easel. The blinding white of the fabric glared at him until he looked away and let out a large growl. Before he knew it, the frustrated young man was pouring another drink, and another, and another until he was completely and utterly inebriated.
Four years. It had been four sodding years that Spike had spent with Drusilla, staying with her not only during the few, fleeting bouts of sanity that she experienced in the time, but every day, waiting on her head and foot and following her every whim. She was his Dark Princess, he’d called her, choosing to view her lack of sanity as a gift, the ability to see more in the world than the average Tom, Dick, or Harry might. She was his gift, his channel to the darker side of his art—Drusilla had shown him the thing that Giles had never been able to understand about creation. The passion that was involved. The self-loathing that was necessary. The sacrifice, the pain, the rage, the lust—
“Bloody hell!” With a paralyzing bout of pain, Spike clutched his head, his hangover from last night an unpleasant reminder of the evening’s events. It wasn’t just the pain that inspired his shocked reaction. It was the image that he’d seen, something he’d surely lived but could not bring to mind in more than a fuzzy, next-morning recollection of a drunken haze.
There was a girl. A young, blonde, beautiful girl. On the surface, the typical kind of woman you’d find in Sunny California, the stereotypical female of the region. But there was something else that he’d seen, that had drawn him to her as they both stood on the dance floor to the pulsing beat of the music.
It was her light. It was her life. She was lustrous, gleaming…
Effulgent.
“Right then, William, off to bed!” he said nervously to himself, rushing from the room into the next and quickly stripping off his clothes. He did pose a certain problem, however, with the removal of his pants—their passage downwards was inhibited by the raging hard-on that had conveniently chosen to arrive upon the remembrance of the lithe blonde’s ass rubbing tantalizingly against himself.
God, the way she had looked that night. She had taken his drink order first, as he was now beginning to recall, but never brought it back. With a chuckle, Spike remembered how he’d turned on the charm when he’d spoken, the slightly dazed look in her eyes an oh-so-pleasing result. At first, it had been merely a ploy of fun, a harmless torture of an obviously naive waitress in an attempt to raise his own spirits and forget that he was depressingly drowning his sorrows in a solitary fashion. It had bothered him, though, when a different woman had ended up bringing him the glass, the wonderment of where his pretty li’l blonde had gone weighing on his mind all evening.
And when he’d gone down to the dance floor, intent on going home, wanking off, and calling his evening to an end, he’d seen her. Standing stock-still in the middle of the dance floor, with that glazed look still in her eyes, just waiting for a man to come along and show her a good time. And he did. He’d grabbed her by the hips, dragged her against his body, and given the two of them probably one of the better times in their lives.
But, as was inevitable, it ended, her phone going off just as he was beginning to have the hopes of getting a good, “let’s get over Drusilla” shag, instead of the lonely company of his hand. She had moved away, and although he knew that she would have returned and that he could have simply stayed and waited for her…
He didn’t.
There was a part of him, the part that right now was chastising him for the gratuitous amount of alcohol consumed, that would not allow him to make that girl his one-night plaything, a careless act of self-healing that would inevitably make him loathe himself more than he already did. Something stopped Spike from using that girl, from taking advantage of her radiant light.
And to think, he couldn’t even remember her face.