Written on the Wind

Title: Written on the Wind

Rating: PG. Yes, there are references to BDSM, ménages à trois, character death, and even operettas, but it's all too silly for more than PG.

Notes: I was trying to finish a fic, and everything came out as cliché or melodrama. I started thinking of those lists people post of things they hate in fanfic. They always make me cringe, because I’m usually guilty of at least one of those badfic sins. I started thinking of the list I’d read most recently, by Barb, a writer I admire a lot. The next thing I knew, I was writing a passage illustrating one of her “hates.” Then I remembered how Keswindhover had managed to cram a host of fanfic hates into her comic classic, Brave Spike.

Did you ever have one of those boring afternoons when your nearest and dearest didn’t have the time or inclination to do anything to relieve your boredom? But, as soon as you settled down to write, or read, or play with Paint Shop, or maybe just watch a DVD, they kept making their presence known just enough to aggravate you?

Spike’s having one of those afternoons. Set in my Buffy/Spike/Angelverse, but there’s no threesome action here. Just silliness.

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. Only the lame plots and dialogue herein are mine.

Special thanks to Keswindhover for the beta and the perfect title, and to DorothyL for the beta and the Gilbert and Sullivan.

The list that inspired me is at the end of the story. Thanks again, Barb, for giving me both the inspiration and the permission to post. And for all the goodfic you've given us!

Dedication: To Xanphibian, for encouraging me to write as badly as I could.

“Spike, are you really going to waste the whole day lying on the couch and drinking beer?”

Spike looked up to find Angel frowning down at him. “Yeah,” he said. “Wait, no. Maybe I’ll take a stroll in the park. Weather report says 80 degrees and sunny. Or maybe—”

“Never mind.” Angel was already wandering off towards the kitchen, where Buffy’s voice was murmuring her half of a telephone conversation.

“Just had to stop by for the random insult on your way to your daily dose of blood, didn’t you?” Spike grimaced in irritation, and then in concentration. He put his beer bottle down on the coffee table, next to, but not on, the coaster Buffy had set there earlier, and picked up a pencil and notepad.

The broody, pointy-headed chief of the undead poofters sneered at his childe, scorning the youth he had sired, ~~failing to recognize, or~~ – Spike erased and rewrote – recognizing, and suffering yet more pain and ~~melancholy~~ melancholia from the ~~recognition~~ cognizance that said childe possessed all the ~~traits~~ glorious and inspiring traits that he-of-the-overhanging-brows could aspire to only vainly, and never hope to achieve.

Spike worried about that a little. Childe sounded like something William might have written. And William was a pathetic wimp, quite unlike his cool vampiric self. He despised the little weed. Utterly.

“Childe Harold to the Dark Tower came,” sighed the remnants of the heroic vampire’s human self, recognizing that the ~~long and arduous~~ winding, sinuous, desperate and arduous path his demonic but more devilishly handsome ~~twin~~ doppelganger had followed made the vampire persona an even more Byronic character than the characters Byron had penned and poor soppy William had read about with such admiration and ~~fear~~ trepidation.

“Aw, shut up, you useless wanker,” muttered Spike, erasing that bit.

Buffy came out of the kitchen. “That was Xander.”

“How is Cap’n Hook today?”

“Don’t be a pig, Spike. He’s in a black mood, if you must know. I'm afraid he might hurt himself - or someone else. Or maybe both. I just hope he doesn't put those carpentry skills of his to some purpose the Sears Craftsman never intended.” She stomped off to the bedroom.

Spike almost got up to follow her, but he saw Angel was already on that errand, and he didn’t fancy being the bad boy in their latest drama. Let the Admiral of Angst talk her down. He is the monarch of the sigh, he is the ruler of the briny tear—

No, Spike decided, better not. Gilbert and Sullivan didn’t suit his image either.

He did spare a thought for Harris, though. Black moods. Well, Spike would have black moods too if he’d lost an eye in a pointless battle because his friends hadn’t reached him in time.

“I am now but a shadow of my almost-cool-and-not-all-that-bad-looking self!” cried the creature that had once tended to wander obliviously in clown-like garb, but which was now clad in the rivets and leather of a de Sadian nightmare. “If you hadn’t been such a failure as a ~~friend~~ ~~fiend~~ friend, if you had been quicker or more vigilant in that wine cellar, you could have spared me this stabbing, relentless pain and the knowledge that I am now vile and deformed, and we might even be drinking ~~wine~~ the fruit of another vineyard in celebration. Instead, I will make you feel twenty times the pain that I have suffered!” The black rawhide lashes of the whip whizzed towards the ivory-skinned back as the ominous sound of a cordless drill seared through the air--

Spike’s eraser went to work again. No, he was bloody well not going there. He tilted his head, listening to the conversation in the bedroom. They were complaining about him, were they? His lips twisted. It wouldn’t stop them from being after him soon enough for a shag.

They were cruel and vicious, taking remorseless advantage of his utter devotion, enslaving him to their will, binding him in word and fact so tightly he couldn’t have breathed if he needed to, leaving him abject, helpless but to cater to their slightest and even their most inhuman and delightfully kinky whims—

“Spike, can you bring me the grimmoire that’s on the coffee table?” called Angel, not sounding much like someone in the throes of passion. Spike sniffed. They didn’t smell either horny or angry.

“Get it yourself, mate.” Spike made his voice sound as lazy and uncaring as he could.

Angel stomped in and out of the room, scooping up the ancient book quickly, with an annoyed glance that struck Spike as almost pro forma. No real thought behind it. The Great Broody One didn’t even bother with an insult.

Well, at least that meant they weren’t talking about him. At all. Bloody hell, they weren’t thinking about him. He sulked a little, took another swig of beer, and started writing again. Not right of them to take him for granted. It wasn’t as if they were the only lovers he’d ever had.

“Oooh, Spoike,” cried Drusilla, draping her form all over him and hanging on him like a bad set of drapes. “I’ve had another one of my creepy visions, and I see now how wrong I was to leave my sweet, sweet darling. It came to me when Miss Edith sprouted three heads and vipers for hair. The silly little bint kept hovering over my dresser last night and each head said one word over and over and over. ‘Go,’ ‘back,’ ‘Spoike.’ So that meant I should return to you. Or that you should go back somewhere, but I don’t know where. Or maybe I do, but instead of just coming out and telling you what it means for once, I’ll dance around and smirk a lot until everyone wants to slap me.”

No, not even Spike could pretend he missed Drusilla that much. He flipped over to a clean sheet on the notepad. Well, there had been other women interested in him.

“You are a meaningless maggot on the rotting corpse of this putrid world,” said Illyria, moving forward with menacing sinuosity, “Yet this scrawny but somehow sexy and leather-clad body wishes to discover what pleasures may be found by ripping those rags from your strangely enticing form and examining the elements that differ from the shell I wear before I ride you to exhaustion and tear you to pieces in a frenzy of violence and lust.”

Spike scratched that one out hurriedly. He shifted on the couch, and let the notepad drop to his stomach. It rumbled at him. He slugged down some more beer to settle it, then picked up the remote.

Some arsehole of a hillbilly was warbling to his girl.

“You are my sunshine,” crooned the vampire to his ephemeral mortal love, going down on ~~one knee~~ her pussy. “You keep me happy, when clouds are grey—”

“Ewwww!” Buffy’s voice came from the bedroom. “Spike, if you’re going to listen to that crap, turn the volume down!”

Angel laughed.

Spike was indignant. How dare that pillock? Barry Manilow’s greatest fan had no right to laugh at someone else’s choice of music. Spike brooded. There were times when he wished Angel would just take himself off—

“I’m sorry, Buffy, but I can’t go on like this. I thought I could, but it’s just too much. I have to leave. I’ve seen portents about a new hellmouth opening in Omaha; I can be useful there. At this point anything, anything, would be better than having to share Spike with someone else-”

Spike’s muse momentarily deserted him, and he began aimlessly clicking the buttons of the remote. He stopped, transfixed by the image of a speeding bus.

Angel stepped out into the street, but turned a moment later, unable to prevent himself from seeking one last glimpse of the platinum-haired object of his desire. Several tons of Greyhound steel and rubber crashed over his body, flattening his hair once and for all, just before his head was decapitated by a sheered-off axle.

Sounds from beyond the bedroom door indicated that Angel had not, in fact, died. A toilet flushed, followed by a rush of water. Spike imagined the water flowing over Angel’s chest, and—

And Buffy was on the bedroom extension now, discussing Slayer training with Giles and some other people. A bleeding conference call. Spike knew he didn’t always have the best sense of timing, but he had no trouble imagining Buffy’s reaction if he went into the bathroom and started playing a rowdy game of “who’s dropped the soap” with Angel while she was trying to take care of business a few feet away. He’d have to find another way to entertain himself until nightfall.

More erasures and a few channel changes later, Spike was staring at Maggie Smith, who appeared to be instructing some students in how to morph into a cat. He wondered how Willow would handle that situation.

“Now, students, particular care must be taken not to turn your friends into rats until you’re sure how to turn them back. Enemies, of course, are another matter. What’s that? I heard you mutter something, Hermione Granger! No, we will not be discussing how to end the world by raising temples to ancient she-demons. That won’t be covered until next year, right after the course on how to induce amnesia in half the sodding school and convince old Snape he’s really Dumbledore’s love slave.”

Still toweling himself off after his shower, Angel went past the couch on his way to the kitchen. Could he go by without making some comment or other? Not bloody likely!

“It’s almost dark. Don’t forget, Spike. Tonight’s your turn to take out the garbage.”

Spike snarled. What was the point of being a creature of the night when all dusk meant was an order to trip down the alley with the leavings from a Slayer’s lunch? Chores were handed about in this family in a way that showed no respect for his superior nature.

She stared at the beautiful, blond vampire, enraptured by his ~~beauty~~ unearthly beauty, thinking he was even prettier than those Nancy-boy elves in those silly hobbit movies she liked, finding his nature almost ethereal, un-tempted by any need to partake of the sustenance mere mortal men required, lacking the baser requirements of elimination and other nasty and icky stuff that most flesh was heir too, his skin ~~pristine~~ immaculate and white, not even ~~sweating~~ ~~perspiring~~ glowing.

Spike smiled as he reached for his bottle without rising from his boneless slouch. That last bit was brilliant. Even a Shakespeare reference. Class, that was. Then—“Bugger!” he cried as he sat up, looking at the foamy mess he’d made spilling beer all over himself and his latest opus.

“What’s wrong?” called Buffy from the next room.

Spike opened his mouth to respond, but instead of words, a powerful baritone belch was forced out of a stomach rebelling from too much beer and too sudden a shift in position.

“Forget I asked,” she responded, staying in the bedroom. “I don’t want to know.”

Spike stood up, stripping off his soaked shirt.

Angel, of course, had to come out of the kitchen to look. “Damn it, Spike, if you’ve spilled beer all over again, you’d better be the one to clean it up.”

Spike ignored him, using his t-shirt to carefully dry the sheets of the notepad. He examined the paper in some concern, and, finally, relief. Double relief, actually, as the discomfort that had been building in his stomach expelled itself in a raucous fart.

But, more importantly, the words still showed clear on the yellow paper. It would have been a bloody shame to lose these scribbles. They had potential, they did.

Ten Things Barb Hates About Fic:

1. Childe.

2. Spike and William as two separate personalities. No. Just no. Don't even go there.

3. Xander as Sunnydale's answer to the Marquis de Sade. In fact, any non-vampire Scooby as Sunnydale's answer to the Marquis de Sade.

4. Conversely, Spike as Sunnydale's answer to Justine (the literary one, not the...oh, never mind.) As paratti put it once, Spike will put up with a hell of a lot in the name of love, but eventually he WILL snap and lay into you with a crowbar. "Eventually" being a matter of weeks or months, not years.

5. Bad Drusilla dialog. Stop it.

6. Bad Illyria dialog. Stop it.

7. Songfic. I'm sorry, but it's evil.

8. Writing out/killing off inconvenient canon characters to facilitate one's OTP. If I see one more story which begins with "Oh, by the way, I've decided I don't love you, and I'm moving to Omaha--wait, is that an oncoming bus?" there will be violence done.

9. Harry Potter crossovers. I don't know why. They just make me cranky.

10. Vampires who never need to attend to matters of personal hygiene. Jossverse vampires sweat, guys. They also eat. They get tummy rumbles. Which means they probably need to use the loo occasionally, and may even (heresy!) fart in bed.

The End