Spike/Weevil in Neptune

All rainkatt's fault. Also The Heat of this is England, damnit, it's not supposed to do this.

Title: Shot Glass.
Post NFA. Post S1 VM.
Not beta'd.
Some Logan/Weevil references.
Rating: PG13
Much angst, some snarkiness and lots of hot and cold references, owing to authorial heat Issues.
Disclaimer: Spike belongs to ME and Fox, Weevil to Rob Thomas and UPN.



It's too damned hot, and if a vampire can know that, it's bleeding obvious that it's only a matter of time before global warming turns the whole of California into one massive Death Valley. Who knows, it might even beat out The Big One in the Totaling Cali Stakes?

Spike knows that he'd survive. He came back from bringing down the biggest one of all down on his own head, and if dragons and the hosts of Mordor can't get him, nothing can. Though the heat's giving it its best shot at giving him an all too familiar sneak preview of the fires of Hell.

A vampire shouldn't have a problem with heat. Being warm, being alive - it's what he's supposed to want, isn't he? So what if the room temperature feels like it could char broil steaks let alone undead Englishmen; it can't kill him.

And if he takes a trip down memory lane, there's enough cold there to counteract climate change. There's a freezing boys dorm and cold showers, and the soot covered snow and ice of Christmas's centuries gone. There's the chill of eternal night seeping into a bloke's bones as he sleeps the sleep of the dead. Ice tinkling into more and more drinks as the refrigerator conquers the world. Dru's squeals as he pours the nice cold blood of hospitals over her breasts and licked it off. Fucking Buffy on a marble tombstone, never quite sure which was the colder.

Then the heat, the burning, brain boiling, eyes melting, skin cracking and burning and nothing but banked embers to try and fan back into a flame. He's done it, but looking into the ice of his tequila, he's really not sure if it was worth it.

And he's not the only one. Gunn's no better off, not since Spike and Illyria dragged him off to live when the Senior Partners took Angel. The boy's done his thing though, got connections through some of his old crew down here in Neptune. Got them all somewhere to crash, somewhere to maybe try once again to heal the un-healable. And the sight of the God King verses the Mexican Grandmother - Spike wouldn't have passed that up for all the slayers in China.

Neither would the boy that's taken him out to the bar. No where with air-con, but with a relaxed approach to bloody ridiculous drinking laws. Spike stands out as the palest of the pale in here but it's pretty obvious, from comments he doesn't need to be a vampire to hear, that the kid's brought other skinny white guys before. But, hey, Spike's used to being a substitute; he can cope, really he can. All he needs is one more drink and a lot more ice.

It's not a great bar, but it's got all he needs in bottles that scream out to be emptied. He can't drain the kid, not any more - though a few years back and the alley behind the bar would have seen more action that it could ever have dreamed of. Now, all he can do is sit on a bar stool, too close to a kid sitting too close to him and listen to a story that's all too familiar. That and look for meaning past the end of the world at the bottom of a cracked shot glass.

He's seen better bars in town to do it in; places with cool air and people drowning in their own cool, but baking in the stifling heat, nursing a glass with not enough alcohol or ice, he knows he's at home. He's never been in Neptune before, but he grew to be a man at the height of the empire on which the sun never set; he knows the stink of decay.

Spike might never touch the sun again. It won't matter; he's been burned through by it, and all there is now is the cold comfort of the shot glass and a kid that he knows he can't save. It's not cold comfort enough, but it'll just have to be enough for tonight.