river_meimei | (no subject)

(no subject)

This city's never fully dark. There's no star-spangled black in this sky, not even the close second-best that a clear atmosphere sometimes arches overhead; here the light pollution is ubiquitous, and the sky's a hazy humid grey under sulfurous street-lamps.

But it's night. Night, and growing later.

When there's nowhere else to go, you keep

(flying)

running. One step behind, one step ahead.

River's looking for something. A key, a rose, a door.

But here, in the city that (as they proudly say) never sleeps, it's anyone's guess what she might find. And what she won't.

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Spike steps back to let her pass. (The wary, half-dancing step of a duelist staying out of reach of a weapon -- or a matador staying out of range of the bull.)

He looks at the crazy bint uncertainly. It's all he was waiting for, the Stepford Slayer to take herself off without dragging the new girl off to a deprogrammer or an exorcist. But it doesn't feel right just to walk away.

"So's that," River says to the zhirel's back. Softly; too softly to hear, perhaps.

Perhaps not. Slayer senses.

(Pick a word. It doesn't always mean what you think.)

Her head turns slightly; it's a moment more before her eyes follow, and meet Spike's. She's poised, wary: not like she was, not trembling on the edge of violence, but uncertain and waiting and watchful.

Improvised stakes protrude from a pocket of her long brown duster, and her pale fingers curl loosely around the smooth wood of the quarrel.

Spike hasn't a clue what to say now. She's crazy and armed, and she's already refused to give her name -- fuck knows what she'll do if he mentions something really controversial, like the weather or the Yankees.

What the hell. In for a penny, in for an apocalypse. "You gonna be alright out here alone?"

Silence.

And then, low, "Long as I have to."

She hasn't relaxed at all; the words are a flat statement.

Still, it's an answer of sorts, which (whether Spike heard all the conversation or not) is more than Brianna got.

"Yeah, well. You don't have to. Is what I'm saying."

It comes out flat in return. This girl isn't Buffy or Angel, this is actual new sodding information to her, and she doesn't deserve Spike's urge to smack himself in the forehead just because he is so bloody tired of heroes stalking off into the night to deal with it, whatever it is, alone.

River is silent, studying him.

Or studying something, anyway; her focus isn't quite normal, all of the time, but she never looks away.

"Face the dark," she says softly, and perhaps to herself.

Then, "Don't I?" It treads the hazy boundary between rhetorical and genuine question.

Spike opens his mouth -- not that he has the slightest idea what's about to come out of it. He's not half as ticked as he pretends to be when he's interrupted by the pocket of his black leather coat playing a snatch of "Sugar in the Sacrament."

The cell phone's out, open, at his ear without him ever actually looking at it, in one automatic motion, like drawing a switchblade.

"Spike," he says into it, one eye on the girl to see if she'll bolt.

Spike? Angel's not picking up his phone again. Is he with you?

*Andrew's voice over the phone sounds only mildly put out, not worried. Not urgent.*

"Sorry, mate. Haven't see him since sunset. Try Gunn."

Angel's probably drycleaned his sodding phone again.

It's just that I'm at Lyle's and he's got a sale going, and I wanted to pick up some new spring-clips and maybe this really cool repeating crossbow, and I wanted to see if he'd okay it as a business expense --

River's not bolting.

Wearing a look of slightly extravagant patience, when she's not watching the shadows warily, but not bolting yet.

(Listening, though, maybe.)

Since she doesn't seem to be running away, Spike risks taking his eyes off her long enough to roll them. Weapons are all right in the right hands -- his -- but fuck if he can understand the geek passion for new and more complicated gadgets.

"Not now, Andrew. I still don't have Angel in my back pocket, and I've got company."

Company?

*A note of curiosity.*

Anybody I know?

River's currently scrutinizing a rotted rug, an anonymous no-color under dust and grime and dim yellow streetlights.

It's interesting, apparently.

He never got her name. He can't very well say "another crazy Slayer" with her pockets full of stakes, and anyway this one's not like Dana -- he doesn't want the Council coming to collect her. And lord knows how much longer he can count on the pixies keeping her amused. He'll have to sort out something to report if he wants help looking up her bout of speaking in tongues, but -- "Not now, Andrew."

*There's a pause.*

You've never watched a single action movie ever in your life, have you.

Spike blinks.

It doesn't help.

"Of course I bloody have. They're full of explosions, and people dying. And explosions." He pauses. "And sometimes nunchucks. Bit of a busman's holiday, really."

River's eyes flick sharply to him.

*Over the phone, Andrew's voice is now exasperated.*

So how have you not figured out yet that anytime you say 'not now' to somebody twice in succession, it's always important?

"I don't listen to the dialogue." Spike says, while making what he hopes is a placating, non-nunchuck-using, please-don't-run-away-I'll-be- done-with-the-nonsense-babbling-bloke-in-a-minute face.

"Wait. I don't know what you're talking about," he says to Andrew. He looks at the girl. "I don't know what you're talking about." He hands her the phone. "You're perfect for each other."

River catches the phone on unthinking impulse, staring at Spike.

"Your conclusions are fallacious," she says blankly, over the top of the phone more than into it.

...

*There's a rather startled pause.*

Um.

Hi.

Who's this?

Beat.

And then River's eyes widen, and she jerks the phone up to her ear.

"Andrew."

Her voice is strained and tight -- with stress, with urgency, and maybe with suppressed hope.

"The teeth ate the doors. All the intervals. I need an exit."

*Beat.*

*Incredulous:* River?

"You know him?"

Andrew obviously had a more interesting social life than Spike thought.