Danse MacabreAuthor: xyellowroset
Summary: A Victorian Christmas – written for enigmaticblues' Christmas Ficathon.
Pairing: Spike/Dru
Disclaimer: I own neither BtVS characters nor Christmas – just having fun and trying to flex my long dormant writerly muscles.
Notes: Mucho props to my roommate, uisage_beatha for quite literally beating me into writing something, and then betaing it when I did.
~~~~~~~
London, 1884
"Spike, the snowflakes are dancing." Drusilla tilted her face up in the direction of the falling snow. "They're doing a waltz, in and out and round and round." She twirled, her arms out to her sides, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight.
"It's cold out, pet; we should get you inside." He took her by the hand, and tried to lead her away, but she resisted.
"What day is it today?" She asked as though it were suddenly very important.
"I dunno, pet, December something-or-other." He was confused and frustrated by the line of questioning.
She looked up at the sky again. "Mars is in Capricorn, and Venus is in Virgo," she pointed to a blank patch of sky. "It's Christmas Eve."
"Of course it is," he answered, humoring her. The wind kicked up, blowing snow down the ally, and chilling him further. He really just wanted to get inside, and see how many times he could make Drusilla scream his name in ecstasy.
"Listen," she asked, "can you hear the music? Everyone's singing in harmony, and the snowflakes are dancing, dancing, dancing."
He paused and realized she was right. There were carolers in the background, and the church bells were ringing. "Why right you are, luv."
"Magic," Drusilla squealed. "Magic and presents and trees and cookies." She sniffed the air. "Gingerbread. My mother used to make gingerbread men. I ate their heads first and fed the rest to the dogs."
Spike raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. "Why you are a wicked bint, aren't you."
"I'm a princess!" she announced. "Tell me I'm a princess." She raked a long fingernail down his cheek as she ordered him, "Tell me!"
"You're a princess," he obeyed her, feeling the blood begin to pool in the cut she'd just inflicted. "A dark, wicked, delicious princess." He wiped the blood she'd drawn from his cheek and placed his finger in her mouth, letting her suck deeply.
"Mmmmm," she moaned in contentment. "You taste like candy canes."
"Sugar and spice, and everything not nice, my luv." He bared his teeth and nipped at her playfully.
She returned the gesture, biting him on the lower lip – the two of them in the alley unabashedly sharing their mutual passion, oblivious to the shocked stares of passersby.
"Now, my princess," Spike asked breathlessly as they pulled apart. "Would you like a new dress for Christmas. . . maybe a necklace. How about that, then?"
"Presents!" She grinned and clapped her hands with glee. "I like presents!"
He bent down, to kiss her on the forehead. "And I like giving 'em to you." He took her hand, "Let's go. We've got a lot of stores to visit before sunrise."
=====//====== "Which one, my love?" Spike pointed through the shop window, at the dressmaker's display.
"The red one. It reminds me of blood on the snow – and candy canes!"
"It's yours then," he answered her and drove his shoulder through the window, shattering the glass.
Drusilla squealed again, "Look at all the shiny little pieces. They're screaming, screaming, screaming . . ." She held her hands over her ears. "Oh, the beautiful noise."
"Are they now, pet?" Spike asked, indulging her, and then, changing the subject said, "Let's get your dress now." He lifted her through the window and then climbed in after her.
"It's so soft." She rubbed her face against the lush velvet material and fingered the fine lace trim. "I want to change into it now! She hastily unbuttoned her shirtwaist and shed the dark dress she was wearing in favor of the red one in the dressmaker's window.
"You look beautiful," he commented, as she spun for his approval. "Red is your color."
"I'm red inside and out!" she commented, fingering the material, "And soft. Do you want to touch it Spike?"
"Not now, luv," he dismissed her, though he would've gladly indulged in a little sensory exploration. They had a lot to do before the sun came up.
Seeing her face fall, he promised, "later," poking her gently in the waist. "Let's go getting some baubles. In fact . . ." Spike eyed her appreciatively. "I think a new string of pearls would set off your neck quite nicely. My black pearl . . ."
The swiftly falling snow had already covered the broken glass by the time they crawled back through the window. "The music! It's stopped. Spike, make it start again."
He glanced up and down the narrow street, dazzled by the snowflakes dancing in the light of the gas lamps. Looking beyond the obvious, he noted a jewelry store, and pointed. "How about there, ducks? That strike yer fancy?"
Drusilla nodded and grinned, and so for the second time that evening he forced his way through window glass. "Now then," he said, perusing the display, "wot'll it be?"
He watched her, as she coyly pursed her lips, attempting to make a decision. "Oh, who am I kidding?" he asked of no one in particular, and smashed the first case, grabbing fistfuls of jewels and shoving them in his pockets. "We'll take them all."
He moved to the next case and repeated the process, filling his pockets with assorted gemstones and trinkets. He knew Drusilla would never care about most of them – the bigger gift for her was the destruction that came in the taking, the reckless disregard with which he smashed and grabbed.
At the final case he stopped momentarily, hovering over a broach – a woman's face carved into jet, her features stark white against the black background – cold and heavy in his hand, unmoving serenity of her expression unsettled him.
"I don't like it; put it back." Drusilla had crept behind him, and was eyeing the cameo from over his shoulder.
"What now, darling?" he asked, startled.
"You love her more than me," she answered, and plucked it the broach from his fingers to smash under the heel of her boot. "I hate her."
"Drusilla, my love, that was just a picture."
"Promise that you'll never leave me," she begged, desperation creeping into her voice from an unknown wellspring of terror.
"Of course, pet, we'll be together for eternity." He calmed her, knowing that the only thing he could do at this point was ride out her emotional storm.
"Even if I get sick," she asked, deep worry lines etched between her eyebrows.
He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close, until he could whisper in her ear, "We're vampires, remember? We don't get sick."
He couldn't tell whether his words had struck home – the expression on her face never changed, remaining distantly pensive, and she shuddered even as he held her tighter, and for a moment, he wondered if she wasn't seeing something that he couldn't. If the delusions weren't something a little more.
And then, she was rubbing against him, the tautness of her backside evident even through the layers of material she was wearing, and he couldn't help but respond. "Here?" he asked, "Now?"
"We need to dance," she told him. "It's Christmas." She grasped his hand in her thin one and started to lead him to the back office.
=====//===== Spike lay still, sated and stunned as he watched Drusilla pick her clothes up off the ground. The contrast of the red velvet and her unearthly pale skin was one that he enjoyed. Drusilla, was a creature of contrasts – nothing more could be expected with her angelic exterior and wicked interior. "Let me . . ." He finally moved, picking up a stocking and sliding it up her leg – her skin as pale and smooth as a fine china.
"You are a goddess," he whispered, "a wild, wicked, wanton goddess."
"You . . ." she answered in response, "are a bad, bad boy."
He grinned lasciviously. "I know."
"Santa's not going to leave anything in your stocking," she admonished.
"I've got the only stockings I want, right here." He reached for the other one, and helped her into it, fighting the impulse to nibble at the delta between her thighs.
He paused, leaving his hand resting on her hip. "How about you, kitten? Do you have everything you want?"
"You could get me a dolly!" she announced. "Angelus smashed them all . . . smash, smash, smash . . . He thought they wouldn't tell on him, but their spirits whisper in my ear."
Spike didn't doubt that on some level that was true. "We'll go to Hamley's," he promised, naming the most famous toy store in the city, and you can have any dolly you want."
"I'll name her Miss Edith." Drusilla decided with solemnity. "She will love me even when you don't."
"I'll never stop loving you," he swore. "You're my dark princess."
Drusilla didn't say anything as she fastened her skirts, and he found her silence deafening, the room suddenly grown cold. "I'll never stop loving you," he repeated.
She patted his cheek. "My sweet William. You're such a good boy."
"No!" It was his turn to contradict her. "I'm wicked and evil and rotten to the core."
"Yes," she agreed with him. "You are. That's why you're going to stop loving me."
He didn’t see the sense in arguing with her.
=====//===== Sunnydale 2001
It wasn't until years later that he remembered that night. They'd finished by crashing a Christmas dinner – setting the goose aside in favor of feasting on the family. Drusilla had a particular penchant for the children – perhaps it was because she was so childlike herself.
The papers reported everything, and they'd chuckled together at the confusion of the police. Scotland Yard was nothing but a bunch of ponces anyway.
He'd been struck when he'd first seen her – with a sense of something achingly familiar that he'd originally written off as the aura of a Slayer.
And now, as he lay watching her sleep, drawn instinctively to the warmth of her skin as a plant is to the sun, he saw it. The same serenity, etched in unmoving detail across her face as she slept, the same delicate features – the face in the cameo that Dru had accused him of loving so long ago.
He shivered slightly, and edged closer to her. It had to be a coincidence.
FINIS
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